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Issue 21.2 of the Review for Religious, 1962. ; FRANCIS J. WEBER The Relics of Christ The spiritual value of a relic is directly proportional to the devotion it inspires in those who venerate it. Apart from this spiritual significance, the relic is merely a his-torical curiosity. It may or may not be of archaeological value to the museums of the world. The official attitude of the Church regarding individual relics is one of extreme reserve. In most cases, the Church prudently withholds definitive judgment on even the most demonstrably ancient relics. In fact, while reluctant to proclaim the authenticity of a particular reli.c, the Church has not infrequently withdrawn from public Veneration relics whose claims were found to be dubious or spurious. In recent memory, this has happened in the case of "St. Philomena," center of a devoted cult for more than a cen-tury, though she had never been formally canonized and nothing actually was known of her life. Despite the many miracles attributed to the relics of this supposed second century martyr, unearthed from a catacomb in 1802, mod-ern research shed doubt on the authenticity of the re-mains. It should be noted that the decree of the Sacred Congre-gation of Rites in 1961 dropping the feast of St. Philomena from the liturgical calendar did not touch on the validity of the miracles attributed to her intercession. They may well have been genuine miracles performed by God be-cause of the faith and devotion of those who prayed for them. The oldest and most cherished of Christian. relics nat-urally are those reputed to have been connected with the holy person of Jesus Christ Himself. Those few that are still extant, for the most part, have sufficient historical documentation to merit scholarly attention. It must be borne in mind that the honor and veneration given to these objects is directed primarily to Christ. Hence, in, some cases where documentation establishes only doubtful authenticity, the Church is certainly jus-tified in remaining silent, if it is understood that in so doing the Church is not giving positive approval and if 4, 4. Francis J. Weber, a dPiorcieesste o of ft hLeo As rAchn-- geles, is presently assigned to Catholic University, Wash-ington 17, D.C. VOLUME 21, 1962 79 4. 4. Francis ~. Weber REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 80 greater honor and glory are thereby rendered to Almighty God. Our approach to this obscure and sometimes contro-versial subject is that of the historian, who presents only the facts, leaving conclusions to the reader, The True Cross The Cross on which our Savior died has been tradi-tionally the most precious of all Christian relics. Tiny splinters of the True Cross have been so widely distributed that, in the words of St. Cyril, "the whole inhabited earth is full of relics from the wood of the Cross." St. Helena is credited with discovery of the True Cro:;s in 327 A.D.1 Early testimony of the fathers, among them Ambrose, Jerome, Sozomen, and Theodoret, recounts this marvelous event in copious detail. The Cross was found in an abandoned cistern near Mount Calvary. Identifica-tion as the True Cross, according to St. Ambrose, was easy enough since the titulus was still affixed. To commemo-rate this great occasion, St. Helena orderd a magnificent basilica to be erected over the H61y Sepulchre. She gave it the name of St. Constantius in honor of her son, the Roman emperor. When Helena returned to Rome, the relics were placed in the Sessorian Basilica, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. A substantial segment, of the. Cross-was left in Jerusalem where it annually attracted thousands of devout pilgrims. It was captured in the seventh century by Khosru II, the Persian conqueror. When the holy relic was returned by Heraclius in 628, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross was instituted. The Jerusalem relic was divided many times. When certain of these fragments fell into the hands of the Mohammedans, the Crusades were inspired to restore them. An extensive and intensive study of the True Cross was made and published in 1870 by Rohault de Fleury. After examination of all extant fragments claimed to be from the True Cross, he drew up a minute catalogue of them, with precise weights and measurements. His findings proved that if all known pieces of the True Cross were put together, they would consitute less than one-third of the original Cross. This effectively silenced skeptics who had scoffed that the total of supposed fragments was bigger than the Cross itself. De Fleury's calculations2 were based on a cross of pine wood weighing an estimated 75 kilograms. The volume of 1 Louis de Combres, The Finding of the True Cross (London: Trubner, 1907). = Charles Rohault de Fleury, Mdraoire sur les instruments de la Passion (Paris: Lesort, 1870), pp. 97-179. this. cross would have been approximately 178 million cubic millimeters. Known volume of the existing relics does not exceed ,t0 million cubic millimeters. 0 Crux ave, spes unica! The Title of the Cross There are many fanciful legen~ls associated with the dis-covery of the True Cross by St. Helena. The manner of distinguishing the True Cross of Christ .from those of the two thieves is usually related with colorful if not his-torically accurate circumstances. However, St. Ambrose testifies there was no problem in identifying the True Cross as the titulus or title-piece was still intact. Other writers corroborate this account, notably Sts. Cyrils and Jerome. As has been the case with so many holy relics, the titulus was divided into seveial pieces. The Diary of Etheria lo-cates a piece of the titulus in Jerusalem in 380 A.D, Helena undoubtedly brought a part of the title back to Rome with her. Regrettably, there is no further documentation avail-able on the fate of the Jerusalem relic, For some reason, very likely to protect it from invaders, the Roman relic seems to.have been walled up in an arch of Santa Croce by Placidus Valentinian III in the fifth century. In the twelfth century it was accidentally un-earthed by Gherardo Caccianemici, titular cardinal and later Pope Lucius II. The future pontiff placed his seal on the reliquary and replaced it in its hiding place. In 1492 Cardinal Mendoza of Toledo rediscovered the relic which he immediately presented to the then Holy Father, Innocent VIII. A papal bull, Admirabile Sacra-mentum, was issued, after which the titulus was exposed for public veneration in Santa Croce. The title-piece is of wood, about nine by five inches in size, and comprises two-and-one-half lines of faded in-scription. Hebrew, Greek and Latin characters are dis-cernible, all of which axe printed in reverse, a practice common with the Romans of the time of Christ. The Shroud of Turin It is recorded in Chapter 27 of St. Matthew how Joseph. of Arimathea wrapped the body of Jesus in a "dean linen cloth." No further mention of this funeral shroud appears in Christian literature until the time of St. Nino4 (d. ~38), who relates how Peter removed the shroud from the tomb shortly after the Resurrection. The fourteenth century Byzantine historian, Nicephorus Callista, tells how this 8Philip Gonnet, De Sancti Cyrilli Hiersolymitani Catechismt~ (Paris: 1876). ¯ Edward Wuenschel, C.Ss.R.0 Sell-Portrait oI Christ (Esopus, New York: Holy Shroud Guild, 1954). ÷ ÷ ÷ Relics ot Christ VOLUME 21, 1962 81 4. Francis $. Weber REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Holy Shroud, soaked with the blood of Christ and bearing an image of His holy face, found its way to Constantino-. pie: "Pulcheria, Empress of the East, having built a basil-ica. at Blachernes in 436, piously deposited there the fu. neral linens of Our Savior, which had just been rediscov-. ered and which the Empress Eudoxia had sent to her." Eyewitnesses to the presence of the Holy Shroud at Con-stantinople are recorded in the Annals of 631, 640, 749, 1157 and 1171 A.D. During the Fourth Crusade, the Holy Shroud was sur. rendered in recompense to Otho de la Roche, Duke of Athens and Sparta. The Duke in 1204 sent the prized relic to his father in France. Soon after, it came into possession of the Bishop of Besan~on. A fire caused minor damage to the shroud in 1349. Later that same year, it was stolen from its case in Besan~on Cathedral and given to King Philip IV who in turn gave it to Geoffrey, Count of Char., ney and Lord of Lirey. There is documentary evidence ¯ that it was at Lirey in 1360. During the Hundred Years War, the Holy Shroud wa:; handed over by Geoffrey's granddaughter to the House of Savoy for safekeeping. In 1454, Pope Sixtus IV directed the Duke of Savoy, Louis I, to build a shrine for the shroud at his Chambery residence. During the troubled war years of the sixteenth century, the Holy Shroud was moved from town to town in France. It narrowly missed being destroyed a second time by fire in 1532, and in fact its corners were noticeably singed. At the request of the aged Charles Borromeo, the shroud in 1578 was brought to Turin where it has re-mained for the past four hundred years. It is presently preserved in the black marble chapel specially built for it behind the city's beautiful fifteenth century cathedral. Several pronouncements by the Holy See leave litth: doubt regarding the Church's official attitude toward the Turin Shroud. An Office and a Mass were formally ap-proved by Pope Julius II in the bull Romanus Ponti[ex issued in 1506. Sixtus IV had previously stated that in thbl Holy Shroud "men may look upon the true blood and portrait of Jesus Christ Himself." A remarkable discovery was made in .1898, when a pho-tograph of the Turin Shroud revealed the faint, blurred image on the ancient linen to be an actual "negative" produced by vapors from a human body covered witll spices. The negative of the modern photo~a negative of a negative, thus producing a positive--offered a far more pronounced picture of a human face than was previously recognizable. ChemiCally, this "vapograph" was caused by the am-moniacal emanations from the surface of the body after an unusually violent death. It has been proved experimen-tally that these vapors are capable of producing a deep reddish brown stain which would vary in intensity with the distance from a cloth soaked with oil and aloes. Hence the image of Christ's face on the shroud is a natural nega-tive. This modern evidence, together with the identification of human bloodstains, prompted Dr. Paul Vignon to read a brilliant paper before the Acaddmie des Sciences, in which he suggested that any explanation denying the authenticity of the Turin Shroud would be scientifically inaccurate. It might also be mentioned that, the impression on the shroud of the Grown of Thorns is in perfect conformity with the "helmet type" of crown displayed at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Further, the nail wounds are not in the palms of the hands but in the wrists. It has been re-alized only in our own times that this was a physical neces-sity, for nails in the palms .of the hands would not have been able to sustain the weight of a human body. One of the major opponents and critics of the Turin Shroud was the anti-pope Clement VII, first of the Avig-non Pretenders. His opposition apparently stemmed from a vague charge made by the Bishop of Troyes that the shroud was the work of a local craftsman skilled in the subtle art of simulating antique handiwork. Other shrouds, thirty in all, each purporting to be the genuine article, have turned up through the centuries. Most notable are thosestill preserved at Besan~on, Ca-douin, and Champiegne. These shrouds likewise bear im-pressions alleged to be those of Christ's face and body. However, the preponderance of ,historical evidence seems to leave no doubt that among all the claimants, only the Shroud of Turin has a valid pretension to au-thenticity. The Pillar of the Scourging The column of the Praetorium to which Christ was bound during His scourging was discovered in the For-tress of Antonia in 373 A.D., according to a chronicle penned by St. Ephrem. St. Paulinus of Nola,5 writing after 409, refers to several relics of the Passion, among them "the pillar at which He was scourged." Philip of Brosserius saw the pillar in the Church of the Holy Se-pulchre in 1285. Some time before the end of the four-teenth century it was broken and one part was sent to Constantinople. An interesting Christian" tradition, dating back to .the See Letter 310f Paulinus. ÷ ÷ ÷ Relics o] Christ VOLUME 21, 1962 83 ÷ ÷ ÷ F~ancis $. Webe~ REVIEW I:OR REI.I~IOUS 84 fourth century, holds that Christ was actually scourged twice. St. John Chrysostom tells us this second flagellation took place at the house of Caiaphas after the mock trial. This tradition finds prominent mention in early chroni-cles. The pillar used for the second scourging was reserved in the Church of Mount Sion, the Cenacle, where St. Jerome reported he saw it. During the Persian invasion, it too seems to have been broken into several pieces. The portion left at the Cenacle was lost in 1537. The other part was returned to a church subsequently erected on the sit~ of the house of Caiaphas. Here it was venerated until the fourteenth century, when it completely disappeared. In 1222 A.D., Giovanni Cardinal Colonna, papal envoy to the Orient, returned to Rome with a fragment of the Pillar of the Scourging, apparently given him by the Sara-cens. He enshrined it in his titular church of St. Praxedes, where it may be seen today. The Roman pillar is of mar-ble, about two feet four inches high. It is.probably one of the parts of the Praetorian column. Its counterpart in Jerusalem is of a different material and may have formed the lower part of the pillar. The Holy Stairs Among the many treasures brought back from the Holy Land by St. Helena was the marble staircase from the palace of Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem. It is still extant,e The stone steps number twenty-eight and are said. to have been sanctified by the feet of Christ himself when He as-cended this stairway at the Praetorium. The stairway, reconstructed in Rome, originally formed part of the old Lateran Palace, leading into a chapel dedi-cated to St. Sylvester. When the Lateran Palace was torn down by Pope Sixtus V in 1589, the stairs were moved to their present location. Today the Scala Sancta constitutes the entranceway to the Holy of Holies~ an old private papal chapelY In its present site, the Scala Sancta is flanked by additional stair-wells on either side. Traditionally the Holy Stairs are ascended only on one's knees. The last pope to ascend the stairway in this fashion was Plus IX on the eve of his exile from Rome in 1870. Pope St. Pius X decreed a plenary indulgence for those who devoutly ascend the Scala Sancta on their knees as testimony of their love for Christ. Replicas of the Scala Sancta have been erected at Lourdes and other centers of pilgrimage. e Herbert Thursfon, The Holy Year o] Jubilee (Westminster: New-man, 1949). ~ Philippe Lauer, Le trdsor de Sancta Sanctorum (Paris: Leroux, t~o~). The Soldier's Lance Mention is made of the soldier's lance in Chapter 19 of St. John. In his account of the Savior's death, St. John re-lates that "one of the soldiers opened His side with a spear . " The first extra-Biblical.~mention of~,this relic seems to be by Anthony of P~efiZ~, who wrot~'~a~;he saw the Crown of Thorns and "the lance with which He was struck in the side," in the Basilica of Mount Sion.s A miniature of the renowned Syriac manuscript, illu-minated by Rabulas.in 586, assigns the name Longinus to the soldier whose lance pierced the crucified Christ. Gas-siodorus and Gregory of Tours speak of a spear venerated at Jerusalem, which was thought to be identical with that mentioned in Scripture. After the fall of Jerusalem in 615 A.D., several of the major relics of the Passion fell into the hands of the Per-sians. The Chronicon Paschale relates that a piece of the soldier's lance came into the possession of Nicetas, who enclosed it in an icon and presented it to Santa Sophia in Constantinople. In 1241 the Holy Lance was given to King St. Louis for Sainte Chapelle in Paris. No trace of this part of the lance has been found since it was lost during the French Revolu-tion, some time after its removal to the Bibliothkque Na-tionale. The second and larger part of the shaft of the soldier's iance was reported seen by Arculpus in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem about 670 A.D. Later it was taken to Constantinople, where Sir John Mandeville writes about it. It was sent to Pope Innocent VIII in 1492 in return for favors shown to the captured Zizin, brother of Sultan Bajazet. At request of the French hierarchy, during the pontifi-cate of Benedict XIV an investigation was conducted to ascertain the .relation, if any, between the two relics, one at Paris, the other at Rome. A papal brief, issued after the inquiry, concluded that both relics were originally parts of the same shaft. Several other supposedly genuine Ho!y Lances are pre-served in various treasuries of Europe, but none of the others offers a valid claim to authenticity. Even the story told by William of Malmesbury about the Holy Lance given to King Athelstan of England is historically in-accurate. Since the tragic loss of ihe Paris relic, only the Roman lance remains. It is exposed each year for veneration dur-ing Holy Week by the Archpriest of St. Peter's Basilica. 8 Francois Martin, Reliques de la Passion (Paris: Lethielleux, 1897). 4- 4- 4- Relics of Christ VOLUME 21, 1962 85 + + + F~ancis ~. Webe~ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 86 Veronica's Veil According to the historian Eusebius in his commentary on the Legend of Abgar and according to remarks con-tained in the apocryphal work Mors Pilati, several au-thentic portraits of Jesus Christ were made at various times during His lifetime. The oldest and most authenticated of these images has been known to Romans for centuries as the Vera Icon or Veil of Veronica. So highly has this image been held in Roman esteem, that a Mass celebrating it was composed and inserted into at least one of the early Augsburg Missals.9 There is no reference in Scripture to a woman offering her veil to Christ during His Sacred Passion. But it is highly plausible that there was such a compassionate soul among those who followed Christ on His way to Mount Calvary. The incident itself is undoubtedly worthy of some credibility, since it has found its expression since very early times in the Christian devotion of the Stations of the Cross. Apparently the holy woman in question, known in pious legend only as Veronica, found her way to Rome, where she presented her Vera Icon---True Picture--to Pope Clement I. The veil, ostensibly bearing the image of the suffering Jesus miraculously pressed into it, was vener-ated in several places until the pontificate of John VII who had it enclosed in an ornate reliquary. During the ensuing centuries, the Holy See has exhibited particular solicitude for this precious relic. It had been reserved to the Pope's own chapel, St. Peter's Basilica, where it is ex, posed briefly during Holy Week for veneration by the faithful. The Holy Grail A whole cycle of romantic legends has been woven about the theme of the Holy Grail,1° but the legendary quests, inspiring though they may be, add nothing to the few slim historical facts available. Of the two notable "pretenders" to genuine Grailship, one alone merits se-rious consideration. And while tl~e chalice displayed at Valencia is not generally accepted as genuine by histo-rians, its proponents present a tolerable case in its behalf. An account by Bishop Siuri of Cordoba relates that the chalice used by Christ at the Last Supper was brought to~ Rome by St. Peter soon after the death of Mary. It was used frequently at Papal Masses until the pontificate of Sixtus II. During the persecutions of Valerian, St. Lawrence sent the chalice to his native Huesca in the northern part of o Sainte Veronique, apostre de l'Aquitaine (Toulouse: 1877). a0 Nutt, Studies o[ the Holy Grail (London: 1888). the Spanish peninsula where the Holy Grail remained until 713 when it was removed to San Juan de la Pena for protective custody during the Moslem invasion. A deed of exchange, dated September 26, 1399, testifies that King Martin acquired the Holy Grail for his private chapel in the Palace of the Aljaferia. About 1424 .the chalice was moved to Valencia by King Alfonso V. The chalice has remained at Valencia since the fifteenth cen-tury except for a brief period during the Spanish Civil War when part of the cathedral was burned by the Com-munists. It was restored to its chapel in the Metropolitan Cathedral at Valencia by the Franco government in 1937. Artistically, the Holy Grail is Corinthian in styling,ix made of agate or Oriental carnelian. The handles on ei-ther side are common appurtenances for drinking vessels of its period. The costly pearls, rubies, and emeralds were added much later. The Crown of Thorns St. Paulinus of Nola, writing early in the fifth century, is the first of the chroniclers to mention specifically "the thorns with which Our Lord was crowned." Other early writers allude apparently to this relic of the Passion, but their comments are vague and inconclusive. Writing about 570, Cassiodorus speaks of "the thorny crown, which was set upon the head of our Redeemer in order that all the thorns of the world might be gathered together and broken." The pilgrimage of the monk Ber-nard establishes that the Crown Of Thorns was still at Mount Sion in 870. According to fairly recent studies, the whole crown was transferred to Byzantium about 1063, although many ot the thorns must have been removed at an earlier date. The Latin Emperor of Constantinople, Baldwin II, offered the Crown of Thorns to St. Louis in 1238. After lengthy ne-gotiations with the Venetians, the r(lic was taken to Paris and placed in the newly built Sainte Chapelle where it remained an object of national devotion until the French Revolution. For security, the crown was placed in the BibliothOque Nationale during the bloody days of the upheaval. In 1806, it was restored to Notre Dame Cathedral. It was en-shrined in its present rock crystal reliquary in 1896. All that is left to be seen today is the circlet of rushes, devoid of any thorns. What remained of the original sixty or seventy thorns were apparently removed by St. Louis and deposited in separate reliquaries. The king and his successors distributed the thorns until nothing remained at Paris but the circlet. The Holy Chalice o/the Last Supper (Valencia: 1958). 4. 4. + Relics o] Christ VOLUME 21, 1962 Francis J. Weber REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 88 Reportedly there are more than 700 "holy thorns" scat-tered around the world. But only those traceable to St. Louis, to one of the emperors, or to St. Helena are genu-ine. Such authentic thorns aCe at Cluny, St. Praxedes in Rome, Santa Croce, and at Aachen, to mention but a few. The Nails There seems to be little agreement among Biblical scholars on the number of nails used to fasten our Blessed Lord to His Cross. Religious art of the early Middle Ages almost unanimously depicts the crucified Savior with four nails~ In the thirteenth century, however, it became in-creasingly common to represent the feet of Christ as placed one over the other and pierced with a single nail. Either of these methods is compatible with the informa-tion we have about the punishment of crucifixion as practiced by the Romans. The earliest authors, among them St. Ambrose, speak only of two nails.12 And it is a point of interest that the two oldest known representations of the Crucifixion, the carved door of Santa Sabina in Rome and the Ivory Panel in the British Museum, show no signs of nails in the feet. The most commonly accepted opinion is that there were three nails that actually touched the body of Christ. This is borne out by the evidence of the Shroud of Turin. In addition, there were probably another three nails used for the titulus, the seat block, and the foot rest. St. Ambrose and St. Jerome speak of the discovery of the nails in Jerusalem by Constantine's mother, St. Hel-ena, in the third century. Sozomen notes in passing that St. Helena had no trouble identifying the nails. One of the nails was fashioned into an imperial diadem for the emperor. This Iron Crown of Lombardy is now at Manza. Another nail was made into a bit for the imperial horse. This relic is believed to be the same as the one at Carpentas. A third nail was venerated for many years in Jerusalem before being moved to Rome's Santa Croce by Pope Gregory the Great. Several European treasuries claim to possess one or more of the true nails, but their, authenticity is clouded with the passage of time. Most of the confusion regarding the thirty or more known spurious nails can be traced to the well-intentioned Charles Borromeo who had reproduc-tions made of the nails and gave them out as memorials of the Passion. Conclusion These, then, are the more commonly accepted relics as-sociated with the holy person of Jesus Christ, our Savior. u De Combres, op. cir. If they have served to increase devotion to Almighty God, they have fulfilled their noble purpose. A saintly priest was once heard to exclaim: "Our Savior's greatest bequest to His children was not a treasury filled with mere material relics, but a golden tabernacle in which He Himself resides to be our fo6d~f6r all ~tei'nit~.!: 4. Relics ot Christ VOLIJME 21, ~962 89 EDWARD J. STOKES, S.J. Examination of Conscience for Local Superiors ÷ Edward J. Stokes, S.J., is Professor o[ Canon Law at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, Munde-lein, Illinois. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 90 In the summer of 1961 Father Edward J. Stokes, s.J.0 was asked to conduct the annual retreat for a group of local superiors. One of the projects he asked them to do during the retreat was to compose on the basis of their own experience an examination of conscience to be used by local superiors at the time of the monthly recollection, the annual retreat, or at any other suitable time. The ques-tions submitted by this group of local superiors were syn-thethized by Father Stokes who then submitted them to the REvmw. The questions were further revised by Father John E. Becket, S.J., of the editorial staff of the REw~w; the final version of them is given in the following pages. Readers, whether superiors or subjects, who have ideas for the improvement of this examination of conscience either by way of addition, deletion, or emendation are urged to submit their views to the Rzwvw. If enough of such improvements are received, a newly revised version of the examination of conscience for local superiors will be published in a later issue of the R~viEw. Personal Religious Li[e 1. Do I strive to come closer to Christ by leading the life of union and interior peace with Him? Do I do everything in, with, and for Christ? 2. Am I afraid of sanctity because of the demands that it will make on me? 3. Have I forgotten that if I live better, I will pray bet-ter, and that if I pray better, I will live better? 4. Am I firmly convinced of our Lord's words: If you love me, my Father will love you and we will come to you and make our abode with you? 5. Am I convinced that this office of superior, when ful-filled to the best of my ability, is a source of sanctification for me? 6. To be a superior means to carry a cross. How often do I thank our Lord for the privilege of suffering with Him? 7. Am I a superior truly aware of my ownnothingness? 8. When I suffer discouragement, is it because I have not succeeded in doing God's will or because I have not succeeded in pleasing men? ~-,, . ~ °~' ~ 9. Am I deeply convinced that if I have done my best to fulfill God's will, I have succeeded? 10. Do I accept as personal any recognition, privilege, or service accorded me by reason of my office as superior? 11. How often do I make a Holy Hour in petition for the solution of a problem or to obtain a special grace for my fellow religious or myself? Ever a Holy Hour of thanks-giving? 12. Do I make the Sacred Heart of Jesus the King and Center of our religious house and Mary its Queen? 13. Do I take St. Joseph as the advocate and the pro-tector of the interior life of each one dwelling in our house? Personal Recollection and Prayer 14. Am I convinced that recollection is an absolute ne-cessity for any progress in the life of prayer? 15. Is my spirit of recollection such that it provides an atmosphere conducive to prayer? 16. How do I prepare the points of meditation in the evening? 17. What special meditation has drawn me closer to Christ?_ 18. Do I sometimes excuse myself from my prayers by telling myself that this or that duty must take first place? 19. Have I given full time. to my prayers or have I hur-ried through them in order to get to my other work? 20. Does the demand for great activity cause distractions in my prayers or perhaps lead me to neglect prayer; or does it rather make me realize my dependence on God? 21. Have I said common vocal prayers reverently and not annoyed others by my haste? 22. Am I observant of recollection immediately after breakfast? 23. Do I make a special effort to keep recollected on the days when it seems especially impossible? 24. Do I ever revert to God's presence in me throughout the day, to adore Him, thank Him, love Him, speak to Him about the needs of soul and body, my own, and those of my fellow religious? Confession 25. Do I make it a point to confess my added responsi-bility by reason of my office when I confess criticism of su-periors or priests? ÷ ÷ ÷ local Superiors VOLUME 21, 1962 91 4, 4, E. ]. Stokes, $.1. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 92 26. Do I make it a point to confess my added respons.i-bility as a superior when I confess failure to exercise ju:~- tice or charity in dealing with my.fell0w religioug? 27. Do I take advantage of my weekly confessions to re-ceive spiritdal direction? 28. Have my confessions been hurried due to an in-efficient planning of my time? Particular Examen 29. Is my particular examen specific? 30. Do I make a tie-in of retreat resolutions, the particu-lar examen, and weekly confession? 31. Do I make a daily examination of the motives that govern my external life? 32. Do I make my particular examen a vital part of my day as a religious? Mortification 33. Do I realize that my chief mortification is to tie found in the justice and the charity of my dealings with others? 34. Am I willing to perform one interior and one exte-rior act of mortification each day in order to obtain the blessing of our Lord on my community? Charity 35. Is love for others the outstanding virtue in my life? 36. Have I deliberately practised acting towards Christ in each person I meet? 37. Do I appreciate the importance of my personal charity to this community as a cell of the Mystical Body? Faith 38. Are the mysteries of Christianity the basis of my re-ligious life? 39. Have I made the connection between these mys-teries and the Rule, or have I let concern with the Rule obscure my reliance on broader Christian principles? Hope 40. Am I aware of the need for Christ's help in sanctify-ing myself by governing others? 41. Do I realize that Christ is able to utilize my faults in sanctifying others? Principles of Government 42. Do I realize that the most exalted duty of a su-perior is care for the spiritual life of his subjects? 43. Do I seek to serve God by serving my fellow re-ligious always and everywhere? 44. Do I pray regularly for the spiritual well-being and growth of those in my house? 45. Do I try to help each religious to develop a deep inferior life by my words and by my example? 46. Do I give my fellow religious an example of the love of regularity? . 47. Do I try to help my fellow religious develop a ready and loving acceptance of God's holy will by the example of my own acceptance of it in all my difficulties, trials, and failures as well as in my joys and success? 48. Do I realize and am I firmly convinced that seeing, accepting, and willing all that God wills for me in every circumstance of my life is the essence of sanctity; and do I teach my fellow religious this? 49. Am I trying to establish in my fellow 'religious a sense of the Mystical Body so that they are able to com-municate spiritually one with another? 50. Do I look for Christ in the problem religious? in the impudent child in the classroom? Do I see Him looking at me through the eyes of all my charges, seeking my love and devotion? 51. How often have I passed a fellow religious in the hall without noticing and greeting him? 52. In making use of the aspiration, "Praise be to Jesus Christ" during the periods of recollection, do I really try to see Christ present in that person?' 53. Did I personally visit at least one sick person of the parish or community, or delegate a religious to do so? 54. Have I in any way, by actions or words, shown a mere toleration for lay persons associated with our work? Or have I accepted them as allies in our work? Community Exercises 55. Do I faithfully observe the daily order? 56. Do I realize that as superior I set the tone and the spirit of the house, in recollection, cheerfulness, peace, hospitality? 57. Do I let human respect interfere with the duty I have as superior to insist on charity and the observance of the rules in my community? 58. Do I miss or am I late for spiritual exercises unless for a grave reason? 59. What community exercises have I missed in the past month? My reasons? Did I make them up at another time, or did I let them go through neglect or carelessness? 60. What can be done to make the chapter of faults more effective? 61. Do I create a family spirit? 62. Is my recreation self-centered? Do I do what I want and not talk or .do too much of the talking? Local Superiors VOLUME 21, 1962 95 ]. Stokes, FOR R~:LIGIOUS 94 63. Do I endeavor to make community recreation an exercise of wholesome family spirit? 64. Is my house truly a religious house or does it have the impersonality of a modern railroad station? Personal Qualities 65. Am I even-tempered? 66. Do I show true joy in my work? 67. Have I betrayed immaturity and lack of courage by disproportionate manifestations of disappointment and discouragement? 68. Do I allow my feelings to regulate my actions? 69. Do I have a good sense of humor? 70. How much self-pity does my countenance mirror when things go wrong? 71. Am I approachable? 72. Do I try, as far as possible, to treat all my fellow re-ligious in the same way--not showing any partiality or favoritism? Have I excluded any or passed them over iu the sharing of responsibility or favors? Are the same few always near me? 73. Do I treat as sacred anything that a fellow religious tells me in confidence? 74. How many times in the past month have I been im-patient with my fellow religious? 75. How do I act or react when I know that one of my fellow religious has offended me? Do I~take it in a Christ:- like way or do I hold-a grudge? Do I consider violations of rule as offenses against me? 76. Do I as superior always show exterior peace, calm, and happiness? I must do this if I am going to be the un-derstanding, religious superior that I should be. 77. In the presence of outsiders do I always show great loyalty to each and every member of my community? 78, Am I as reserved as I should be while visiting in the parlor? 79. Am I kind to all lay people, regardless of how much they can, orhave helped financially or otherwise--look-ing to the good of their souls first and foremost? Government 80. Do I run a disorganized house so that my subjects tend to say: "We never know what we are going to do next"? 81. Do I get all the facts before I make a decision? 82. Do I hesitate in making the decisions that I must as superior? Do I harm my fellow religious by my habit of procrastination? 83. Am I under someone's influence in the decisions that I make, an older religious or a former superior? 84. Do I contradict my orders, thus making it difficult to know what is my will? 85. Am I available to my fellow religious? 86. Am I open to suggestions? 87. Do I delegate responsibility and do I trust those to whom I have delegated it? If a duty is not being done as I would, do I give it to someone else or take over myself rather than try to help? Do I show interest without in-terfering? 88. Do I give authority as well as responsibility to re-ligious when I give them a job? 89. Am I a politician in dealing with my fellow religious instead of a Christlike superior? 90. Am I unnecessarily secretive in trivial matters, keep-ing the community guessing? Do I not see that this will cause bad feelings? 91. Do I talk uncharitably or show displeasure to one of my subjects about another subject in the house? 92. Should I not close my eyes to many insignificant petty things? Should I not use tact and by my example bring it about that these failings and imperfections will vanish--al'though perhaps not totally? 93. How have I controlled the conversation at table? Was I alert always to see to it that it never became un-charitable or critical, especially regarding students? 94. Do I initiate conversation regarding worthwhile reading? 95. Do I give the required instruction time to the young religious? Do I conscientiously prepare these instructions? 96. Do I complain about fnoney? Am I overly anxious regarding finances? 97. What is my attitude toward the suggestions, deci-sions, or orders of extern superiors in the institution in which our community works? Fellow Religious 98. Do I as superior treat my subjedts as mature, dedi-cated persons? 99. Do I trust my fellow religious and have confidence in them and show them that I do by the way I treat them? 100. Do I correct all when only one needs the correc-tion? Do I not see that this causes much criticism and irritated discussion? 101. Do all the members of the community feel that they belong and are an important part of the whole? 102. Do I give my fellow religious encouragement and show them gratitude for the good work that they are doing? A pat on the back does not cost much but it means a great deal especially to those inclined to get discouraged at times. 103. Have I within the last month made it a point to 4. Local Superiors VOLUME 21, 1962 95 .÷ ÷ ÷ E. ]. Stokes, .S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 96 compliment or praise or show attention, at least in some small way, to each religious in my charge? 104. Has each of my subjects received some word of praise (not flattery) from me recently? 105. Do I encourage group discussions so that all the community can express themselves? Do I see that such discussions are well-prepared and stimulating? 106. Do I see to it that the rest of the community share,,i in the rich contributions that some of its members can give, those, for example, who have had special oppor-tunities for studies? 107. Do I seek to serve God by serving my fellow re-ligious always and everywhere? 108. Do I show concern for the trials and crosses of my fellow religious? 109. How often do I check and consider the welfare of ¯ each of my subjects--spiritual and physical? 110. Is understanding the essence of my charity? Do I try to put myself in the subject's place and realize his emotions, attitudes, and difficulties--or is my charity based solely on my own attitude and outlook on life? He might not always want done to him what I would want done to me. I must try to understand his viewpoint. 111. Is each religious an individual to me? 112. Do my fellow religious.feel wanted and valued by me? 113. Do my fellow religious find the quality of thought-fulness in me? 114. Do I make it a habit to direct my attention to each religious individually at least once during the day? 115. Have I tried to satisfy each one's basic need to be accepted, the need for belonging? 116. Have I made use of each one's talents (all of them), or do I level them down to an equal share from each? Do I, then, expect only three talents from one who has and can give ten talents? 117. Do I take too much ~or granted the conscientious and well-balanced religious who does not demand my at-tention? 118. Do I give each individual religious my undivided attention regardless of who he is and how often he may come to me in a given day? 119. Do I make a sincere effort to speak to each re-ligious some time each day? 120. Do I give a sufficient amount of time to those who need to talk over with me the question of students who may be a problem to them? This could be a problem of behavior or some method that would help teaching. If a teacher is weak in discipline, this is a good means of gently getting across the fact that the child is not always at fault. 121. How well uo I "listen" when religious come for permissions, advice, and such? With preoccupation? With patience? With haste or annoyance? And this especially at difficult times? Or am I gracious, patient, helpful, Christlike? Have I shown impatience with those who come to me with trifles? Which of them? Do I r~ally listen when a religious is telling me something---or am I finish-ing up this job or starting another? 122. Have I treated each religious the same behind his back as I have to his face? 123. Do I control my hurt when one of the religious tells lies about me to religious of our own house? 124. Can my subjects sway my will by flattery? 125. Do I afford my subjects the opportunity of sug-gesting spiritual reading books? 126. What have I done to encourage professional read-ing on the part of my subjects? Do I give them an ex-ample in this regard? Do I ever check,up on them on this point? 127. Do I seek to prepare my fellow religious for fu-ture responsible positions in the community? ÷ Local Superiors VOLUME 21, 1962 97 KATIE ROCK Restoration, with a Difference 4. + 4. Katie Rock lives at 200 Oak Street, Falls Church. Vir-ginia. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 98 Washington, D.C. is a city of contrasts. There are beau-tiful green expanses and there are dark, depressing alleys. There are massive monuments and tremendous buildingsl and there are rows and rows of shabby, run-down homes. Happily, there is city-wide slum-clearance consciousness; and already in some parts of town the monotonous rows are being converted into magnificent Town Houses with every modern feature. Restoration is taking place for many reasons, but unfortunately the power and profit motives seem the big reason. It is therefore refreshing to know that some are bringing their talents and inspiration to the restoration simply because they want to have part in "restoring all things to Christ." An assignment enhanced by my own curiosity took me to Foggy Bottom, the latest dilapidated section to be-come the site of intensive re-making. Situated only one.~ half mile from the White House, it is bounded roughly by Georgetown, George Washington University, the new State Department Building, and the Potomac River. This was my first visit to Foggy Bottom since it became "fash-ionable," and I was so fascinated as I walked down the narrow streets that I stopped to browse a bit. Gradually tiny broken-down row houses are being transformed into confortable city homes. Interesting colors, small but per.; fect gardens, unique combinations of contemporary and forsaken styling are attractive and appealing. Among the private homes there are apartment hotels arising. ¯ It was fun to speculate about the insides of these color., ful homes as I walked along the old brick sidewalks. Oc.; casionally a brass plate revealed an M.D. was occupant, or a navy captain, or a professor. A baby carriage in a tiny yard indicated there is new life in Foggy Bottom, too; When I arrived at my destination, the corner of H and 25th Streets, I stopped in wonder and admiration. Be-fore me was a turreted three-story structure of brick, painted a soft yellow with black trim which offsets awe-somely the octagon-shaped tower, dormer, and windows. There is a terrace in front, a landscaped yard, and I peeped onto a sheltered patio. A lacy black iron fence surrounds the property and a brass plate announces that this is the home of Melita god~ck,~A.I.A, g: Associates. I was welcomed inside by Melita, who introduced me to her assistant, Bernice, and after' being made to feel at home, I settled down to hear the story of a wonderful new venture into the new frontiers of our faith. Who is Melita? The decor and art work and religious atmosphere of this first floor indicate an unusual life. Melita was born in Milan, Italy, and educated at Vienna Polytechnic. She is a convert to Catholicism. Although she is an artist and sculptress, her professional experience and livelihood have mainly been centered On architec-ture. Twelve years were spent with other firms. Included in her work with those firms were high schools in Arling-ton, Virginia, and Rockville, Maryland, commercial buildings and a shopping center, a drive-in restaurant, hospitals.and the huge Medical Center of the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and many government buildings ranging from a missile base to renovations of Post Offices. Since establishing her private firm about three years ago, Melita has designed the Queen Anne's Lane Town Houses in Foggy Bottom valued at :~1,000,000 (and which won for her a Goid Medallion award), many residences, the Consolata Missions Semi-nary in Buffalo, New York, the Ayles~ord Retreat Center in Chicago, and remodeling of churches in southern Mary-land. For the Government, among other projects, she modified a hangar at Andrews Air Force Base. There is another facet to Melita's background. Dur-ing the 1940's she worked for four years in the Harlem Friendship House, engaged in interracial work, apolo-getics, and the practice of the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. During this time she had rich experi-ences. She undertook a formal course in philosophy un-der Jacques Maritain. She learned the principles of social justice from the best of its exponents, Father John La- Farge, S.J., Baroness Catherine de Hueck Doherty, the Sheeds, and others. During these years, she developed a great love for liturgical music through the influence of other wonderful visitors to Friendship House, one of whom was Professor Dietrich von Hildebrand. More and more, as years went by, Melita!s ability in. architecture and her various artistic talents became an integrated venture. And the motivating force in her life was her religion. Her love of designing, composing, creat-ing, on the one hand, and her love of God and her fellow-man on the other were beginning to congeal into one idea. + + + Restoration VOLUME 21, 1962 99 ÷ ÷ Katie Rock REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS I00 In 1956, Melita took several months off from work to take a trip around the world, studying and observing the architecture of many lands and plans of other countries to meet the changes of modern life. Her first stop was Australia where she visited her brother, an engineer there. Then she visited the Philippines, Thailand, and India, observing certain unique and desirable aspects of Far Eastern architecture. From India she proceeded to the Holy Land, and this part of her journey provided a re-treat, as she put the world out of mind and became ab-sorbed in the life of our Lord. Her travels continued in Turkey, on to Italy where she lingered in Rome, then to Spain and France. In Germany she studied problems in-volved in regional planning for mining. Because of a serious interest in necessity for inter-diocesan planning, Melita was deeply interested in the episcopal planning bureau in Belgium, by which city churches and rural churches and schools are planned according to needs of city, suburban, or rural life. Here in Belgium, Melita observed the tremendous effect of "Young Christian Workers" in Catholic activity. The last stop was England, then home to sift and appraise the ideas and inspiration from her round-the-world journey. In 1958, Melita began her own firm, specializing in providing for her clients complete architectural, engi-neering, and planning service combined with interior decorating. The firm has the services of excellent consul-tants in engineering and financing. When the firm was first Organized, .Melita and Bernice lived and worked in the Potomac Plaza Apartments. One day a For Sale sign went up on a deserted, dilapidated dwelling across the street from the apartment. Curiosity and vision sent Me-lita on an inspection tour. The unusual lines and the lovely view of the Potomac from the third floor tower captured Melita's heart. And the creaky stairs, plaster-bare walls and cobwebs provided a challenge to Melita's pro-fessional ability. The house today seems to say it was joy as well as work that restored it to its immense liveability and unusual beauty. So much for Melita, the architect, for she is more than an artist and an architect. Melita has vision and percep-tion and appreciation for beauty not touched by human hands. Designing is not only a business with her but a God-given talent in which she expresses the love of God in her soul. Creative art, Melita told me, is the remedy man needs in this age of technology, assembly lines, and automation. These things, cold and impersonal, produce ragged nerves and tensions and strike at man's very soul, leaving him unmindful of the purpose for which his Crea-tor put him on earth. Into all forms of art--painting, poetry, music, and so forth---goes one's own personality, reflecting a personal relationship with the Heavenly Father. The closer to God man is, ~the truer his work, and the more he will choose a good and proper use of ma-terials. In the arts a man may find peace and contentment for he may use his.creativ.e ability' to transform his inner energy in a satisfying manner,~, ~, Happily, Melita sees her obligation to use her creative ability to promote a Christian society, a Christian com-munity life. Melita is taking the giant step of using her profession solely for the glory of God and for love of her neighbor with no profit except the profit of peace in her own heart. Others have done this; for example, Dr. Albert Schweitzer and Dr. Tom Dooley and Geo.rge Washington Carver. Her heart and will having been entrusted to God some time ago, Melita began sifting ideas about putting her philosophy into practice. Then ideas had to be translated into blueprints, and these blueprints needed and received approval from her auxiliary Bishop, Most Reverend Philip M. Hannan, chancellor of the archdiocese. Then came discussions with many wise and prudent friends: spiritual directors, teachers, fellow artists, other archi-tects, and even mothers of children who are awakening to the needs of our frustrated society. Far from relying solely on her own ideas, Melita sought and listened to ~he counsel of all. The result was a plan to begin a secular institute of the design professions to be called Regina Institute. A secular institute is an association of lay people living in the world but bound by the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, performing duties suitable for their talents for the love of God. Though popular and plentiful in Europe, secular institutes are just emerging in our coun-try. Their specific purposes vary widely. In Madonna House, for instance, workers live among the poor, teach-ing crafts and catechism, nursing the sick and feeding the hungry. In the Company of St. 'Paul, members teach, work in the Government, and so forth. This is a quiet life~ there is nothing in their dress to indicate they are an organization dedicated to Christ. Members simply strive to live as "Christs" among those needy in goods or in spirit. Regina Institute is taking another direction. First of all, Melita is concerned with the arts in the service of the Church's liturgy. She would like to assist in setting stand-ards for the quality of sacred art just as Benedictines have set a standard for sacred music. Second, she is endeavor-ing to bring the Incarnation into society by bringing Christian attitudes into the building professions and in-dustry and into city planning. The Christian philosophy of man and the social teachings of the Church are being Restoration VOLUME 21, 1962 ]0! Katie Ro~k REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 102 applied, thus supporting such contemporary projects as open occupancy, adequate housing, and so forth. Third, Melita and associates try to teach all of us the visual arts and their spiritual and cultural values. My visit showed me a great deal about the practice of these ideals and the life of this infant group. Melita and Bernice filled in a picture of a day in Regina House, tak-ing me on a tour of the house as they talked about their Rule. Recently Gwen moved in with Melita and Bernice. For the present they are living according to the Rule of the Third Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Melita has served as novice mistress of the St. Therese Chapter in Washington for eleven years. The Rule seeks to instill in its followers the spirit of constant prayer and love. Early each morning the group leaves for St. Stephen's Church nearby for a halfihour.of.meditation before 7:30 Mass. Breakfast follows, then they recite in ~ommon Prime, Terce and Sext from the Little 01~ce. (On.nice days they do so on the patio which they call their "clois-ter.") At 9:00 work begins. Lunch is at 12:30, followed by None and Vespers, then free time. At 2:00 they go back to work until dinner. At 7:30 comes Compline, Matins, and Lauds, and after that there is recreation-- long walks in nice weather, singing or reading at other times. One day of each.month is spent in retreat. There are three floors in l~egina House. The first con-tains the dining area and kitchen opening onto the patio, Bernice's office, and a music area. Melita plays the piano, and there is also a stereo arid many fine records, including Gregorian chant and classical music. On the second floor, we entered a work and study spa.ce. I was fascinated with the dozens of books and their range of subjects, from the culture of the Far East to the philosophy of Frank Lloyd Wright. There are books in German and French and Spanish, books on philosophy, Catholic Action, and the liturgy, books on ancient architecture and books on mod-ern design. Attractive chairs and a lovely view are invit-ing. Melita's bedroom, also on this floor, shows all her separate interests united in her one endeavor. There are beautiful religious objects, side by side with a drawing board (she is currently working on a dental laboratory) and there were several sketches in process, both water colors and oils. On the third floor are more drawing boards. This floor also serves as a workshop for other projects. Bernice finds time to make beautiful cards by a linoleum process fea-turing Melita's impressionistic designs. Bernice has a talent for dress designing and sewing; also she does lovely ceramic tile work. I noticed several clay models of build-ings as well as wooden models; Melita explained these help her visualize her ideas. Certainly the first purpose'of this institute is sanctifi-cation of its members. Theystrive for a four-fold contact with Christ: Christ the Life, through prayer.and the sacra-ments; Christ the Truth, through study and meditation; Christ the Way, through i~bedience; and Christ the Worker, through creative human effort for love of God. Melita invites young people inclined towards the design arts, who would like to dedicate their service to God, to talk to her. Regina House is large enough to house several women. If men apply, perhaps a home close by will be found for them, while work and prayer will be centered in Regina House. The necessity for meals and housekeep-ing means the Institute must attract also "artists" of the kitchen and "masters" of the broom. In fact, Melita is ready to consider anyone who is willing to share her ideals and approach, and invites those interested to con-tact her at 801 25th St. N.W., Washington 7, D.C. So sold was I by my visit that I was ready to apply-- but Melita just won't take a mother of eight growing children. Reluctantly I said "good-bye" and went out the big black door and the lacy iron gate. I looked back with new appreciation at Regina House which today so sur-passes in beauty and liveability its original design. From the ordinary it has become majestic. I left, believing that Melita's plan for it also far surpasses the ordinary Chris-tian way of living and that its tower truly points to Heaven and its eternal history is just beginning. ÷ ÷ ÷ Restoration VOLUME 21, 1962 103 WALTER DE BONT, O.P. Identity Crisis and the Male Novice Walter de Bont, O.P., is a member of the faculty o! the Catholic University in Nijmegen, Hol-land. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 104 Beginners' Failings Father Lacordaire,1 the day after his entry into the novitiate, confided to the master of novices: "Father, I can't stay here; these young men are childish and quite silly. They think everything is funny," "It would be a shame," the priest answered, "if the former preacher of Notre Dame of Paris should, by a hasty departure, give the world the impression that his entrance into religion had not been thoroughly consid-ered. Wait a while, then." Three weeks later the master of novices asked him, "When are you leaving?" "But I do not wish to go, so long as you are willing to keep me." "But what of your young companions who are so silly?" "Father," said Lacordaire, a little embarrassed, "I am the silliest of them all." In all the novitiates of the world since the beginning of monasticism there h~tve been young men, and some not so young, who were "a little silly." No matter how more or less normal they were a few weeks.previously, before they had left "the world," here they become affected by a whole series of strange phenomena which spiritual authors call "beginners' failings" (see especially St. John of the Cross, Dark Night, 1, 1-7). Using the material furnished by the experiment described below, the following section will give a rapid and pseudonymous portrait of certain "types" who betray the curious behavior encountered among be-ginners. *This article is translated with permission from the original article, "La crise d'identit~ du novice," which appeared in Suppld-ment de la Vie Spirituelle, 1961, pp. 295-325. The translation is by the Reverend John E. Becket, S.J. Passing Vagaries Brother Clement suddenly develops a phobia for drafts; underground currents beneath his bed keep him from sleeping; he wonders whether the spinach from the garden has enough iron to supply his needs; the light bulb on his work table endangers his eyes; and so on. No one has de-scribed more humorously than St. Teresa of Avila this kind of hypochondriac novice who seems "to have entered the cloister solely to labor at staving off death." She her-self, for that matter, knew this temptation of seeking "not to lose one's repose here below and still to enjoy God in heaven." John is a real gourmet--in search of spiritual delicacies. All his efforts are aimed at getting the satisfaction of a very sensible devotion from' prayer; In his :better moments he feels inundated with grace and spends hours in the chapel. When consolation no longer comes to him, he is desolate and lamentsin the blackest sorrow. At such times he passes the time of meditation breaking in books. Guy fears to embark on the road to perfection, excusing himself as one who was not meant to accomplish great things. He even thanks God for not making him too in-telligent. Comparing himseff with others, he has already lost all courage. Some suffer from quite peculiar sexual problems. At the very moment of prayer, confession, or communion, sexual feelings and reactions surge up. Cassian has already spoken of a brother "who enjoyed constant purity of heart and body, having merited it by reason of his circumspection and humility, and who was never afflicted with nocturnal emissions. But whenever he prepared for communion, he was sullied by an impure flow in his sleep. For a long time fear kept him from participating in the sacred mys-teries" (ConIerences, 22, 6). And then there are the pilgrims of ,the absolute with pure and perfect ideals. They are so punctual in their ex-ercises that you can set your watch by them; but they easily forget that the rule is merely a means to love God and their neighbor better. Burning with enthusiasm, they seem to have sanctity within their grasp. Lacking patience, they try to force the ascent toward God with Draconian measures. The novitiate is the decisive year in which holi-ness must be achieved. For them profession is a final set-tlement and not a decisive beginning. Or else there are the grim ascetics. In his enthusiasm for purity, Henry Suso did not scratch, nor even touch, any part of his body. Throughout the day he abstained from all drink. In the evening at the sprinkling with holy water, he opened his dry lips and gaped toward the 'sprinkler, hoping that a tiny drop of water would fall on his arid 4. + + Identity Crisis VOLUME 21, 1962 ]05 4. W. de Bont, OJL REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 106 tongue. At the age of forty, luckily, when "his whole na-ture was so devastated that nothing was left for him but to die or leave off his austerities," he opted for life and threw his whole arsenal of instruments of penance into the lake. For most of these novitiate "follies" are only temporary. Sooner or later good sense reasserts its rights, and the spiritual life of the subject becomes more balanced. St. Teresa had already clearly sensed that this bizarre conduct of the novice-beginner was somewhat forced and not genuine: Anything which gets the better of us to such an extent that we think our reason is not free must be considered suspicious, for in that way we shall never gain freedom of spirit, one of the marks of which is that we can find God in all things even while we are thinking of them. Anything other than this is spiritual bondage, and, apart from the harm which it does to the body, it constrains the soul and retards its growth (Book of the Foun-dations, Chapter 6, from The Complete Works ot Saint Teresa oI Jesus, translated and edited by E. Allison Peers, Volume III, p. 32 [London and New York: Sheed and Ward, 1946]). If "our reason is not [completely] free," then we are not fully on the plane of moral defects, but partially on that of psychic determinisms. And it is precisely the psychic aspect of these, phenomena that we propose to study in this article which has no other aim than to throw some light by the help of modern depth psychology on this strange being whom the masters of the spiritual life have been ob-serving for centuries, the beginner par excellence, the novice, and on his imperfections. The perspective of this article must, then, be clearly emphasized. This is not a work of spiritual theology. The theologian contemplates the events of the novitiate with the eyes of faith; he sees there the hand of God and the conflict between grace and sin. The perspective of this article is much more modest; it is, to put it simply, psychological. Without in any way denying the workings of grace, we shall systematically ab-stract from them; for the designs of God and the ways of grace are not apprehended by the purely human ways of kno~ving which alone are at the disposal of the psychol-ogist. While leaving aside the supernatural aspect of the growth of the novice, we are bound to point out that this aspect tias been amply clarified by the masters of spiritual theology from Cassian and St. Benedict to St. John of the Cross and contemporary authors. Working Hypothesis and Methodology To initiate the psychological study of the novice and of his "imperfections," we took as "subjects" twenty-eight male novices belonging to two quite different communi-ties. We asked for volunteers only, but in each novitiate everyone volunteered. The age of our subjects varied from eighteen to twenty-two years. The level of their previous instruction was for the most part uniform, and they were about equally divided between those, from rural and those from urban backgrounds. The experiment was made dur-ing the fourth month of the/novitiate. i~ A double series of tools was used, since our aim was to clarify certain problems of the spiritual life. of the sub-jects by a study of their personality in the course of evolu-tion. a) For the study of personality, projection tests were used, especially the Rorschach and the Thematic Apper-ception Test (T.A.T.), since these two tests are universally recognized as highly useful for this purpose. The admin-istration of the Rorschach was preceded by the drawing of a human figure, so that the subject might implicitly per-ceive that a creative effort was expected of him. b) For the study of their spiritual life, the novices were asked to write a four-page essay entitled "The Ideal and the Difficulties of My Spiritual Life." c) To complete our information from the character-ological as well as the spiritual side, we conducted inter-views of about an hour with each subject, his master of novices, and the assistant to the master of novices. It was striking, especially in going over the Rorschach protocols, to see the number of signs of anxiety, of ten-sion, and of disintegration. Equally striking, however, were the efforts at synthesis. Given the age. and the situa-tion of our subjects, this called to mind the psychological situation described by Erik Erikson under the name of "identity crisis" (see Erik Erikson, "The Problem of Ego Identity" in Identity and the Lqe Cycle, volume one of "Psychological Issues" [New York: International Univer-sities Press, 1959]). As a matter of fact, the novice is a young adult, around eighteen to twenty years of age. As others become doctors, engineers, and fathers of families, he, at the end of his adolescence, chose in a more or less definitive way the role he wanted to play in adult society: that of religious or priest. This role is the result and syn-thesis of his entire previous development. In this connec-tion, Erikson uses the word "identity" because in this role the young man ought to be able to accomplish the best he is capable of while at the same time promoting the aims of society. The novitiate is his first serious testing of this role; he is vested in the religious habit and he follows the rules of his community as they are adapted for re-cruits. What does this identity of pries.t-religious become in the novitiate? Is the young man able to realize it here in the way in which he dreamed of doing? Does the com-munity he has chosen respect this identity? If these ques-tions receive a more or less negative answer, .a crisis oc- VOLUME 21, 1962 curs, an identity crisis because it is the novice's identity that is brought into question. As with every crisis it is manifested by certain symptoms; and one may assume that the imperfections of beginners are precisely the signs of this crisis on the religious plane. Our hypothesis then is this: The novitiate induces in the young religious a crisis about his identity, about the role he wishes to play in life, a role which is the end prod-uct of all his previous development; this crisis comes from the fact that this role is threatened by the novitiate; and the imperfections of beginners are the symptoms of this crisis. In order to understand this hypothesis better, a more ample presentation must be made of Erikson's notion of identity. This will be done in several of the following sec~ tions. ÷ ÷ ÷ W. de Bwnt, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 108 Identity, Synthesis of the Personality During adolescence all the impulses of earlier life re-appear accompanied by a strong genital drive. It is the characteristic work of the male adolescent to subordinate this chaos of impulses under genitality and find them their proper object, a girl. But this adjustment of one's infan-tile heritage to one's new acquisitions does not confine itself solely to the level of impulsive life; it equally con-cerns the other functions of the personality, the ego and the superego and their identifications. For the young man. must subordinate his previous identifications to a new kind of identification, an ultimate identity learned in so-cial contacts and competitive apprenticeship with his equals. These new identifications no longer have the ca-priciousness of infancy or the experimental fervor o youth; with extreme urgency they impel the young indio. vidual toward choices and decisions which progressively conduct him to a final definition of himself, to an irrev-ocable configuration of rol~s, and then to lifelong com-mitments. The normal adolescent performs this reintegration him. self, using spontaneously chosen adults and older adbles-cents as his models. But the age at which this synthesis is completed varies considerably. The more complicated a civilization is, the longer it takes its members to integrate their personality and find their place in society. At the bee ginning of our era people were married at Sixteen, a thing that rarely happens today. Suso entered the novitiate ar thirteen, whereas nowadays even canon law considers thi.~ too early. Moreover it would seem that workers or farm people come to adulthood before members of the profes. sional classes who have more to integrate and spend a longer time in training. Finally, the presence of acute conflicts can make this integration even more difficult and slow. At the worst, they may even render such integration impossible and the subject becomes neurotic or psychotic. Identity, a Psychosocial Reality This ultimate identity of which we have been speaking is unique for each individual because no two ,develop in identically the same way. '~Id~e'~,er, it is fa~'~O~ being individualistic. A person becomes himself only in a given society and in order to live in that society according to that identity. Ideally, identity implies that one is most oneself when one is most in relation with others and that our personal values and ideals coincide for the most part with those of the environment which is accepted by the person and in which he feels himself accepted. It is of ex-treme importance for the formation of the identity of the young man that society respond to him and that he receive a function and a status which integrates him into the community. In order to take his place in society the young man must acquire the skillful use of his principal ability and fulfill it in some activity. He should enjoy the exercise of this activity, .the companionship which it furnishes, and its traditions. Finally he must receive a setof teachings which allow him to see the meaning of life: religion, philosophy, or some ideology. Speaking psychosocially, the'h, identity is the role, integrated into the character, which the indi-vidual wishes to play in society and for which he expects the approbation of society in order to give meaning to his life. After the psychosexual delay of the period of latency there must, in consequence, be another delay, adolescence, so that the already sexually adult young man may, by freely experiencing different roles, find himself a place in some section of society, a place which in its definiteness seems made uniquely for him. The Genesis o[ Identity Identity must not be confused with identification. The simple addition of infantile identifications (the child act-ing like his parents, his brothers, his uncles, his teachers, his friends.) never results in a functioning personality. These identifications are too disparate and too contra-dictory; they are, moreover, often far from being socially acceptable or realistic, since the child's imagination dis-torts the image of his. parents or other models to suit his own needs. The final identity which emerges in the course of adolescence and which at the end of its development is largely fixed, is rather a new configuration which includes all previous usable identifications while transcending them all. They are transformed to make a whole which is unique and reasonably coherent. This new configuration ought to be achieved in such a way that in it the physical 4. VOLUME 21, 1962 ]~9 ÷ ÷ W. d~ Bont, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS constitution of the young man, his affective needs, his best liked capacities, his effective defense mechanisms, and his successful sublimations find their rightful use. The formation of personal identity, then, has its roots in the most distant past of the individual, a past often lost in the clouds of the unconscious. It begins with the first introjections and projections of the baby whose relative integration depends on a mutually satisfying relationship between the child and his mother. For it is she who must give him that basic trust in himself and in others which is at the foundation of any process of becoming social. Then follow the different identifications of childhood which will be the more successful according as.their proto-types show themselves to be both loving and firm. The last step of the formation of the ultimate identity begins when the usefulness of identifications is over. It consists of the repudiation of some infantile identifications and an absorptive assimilation of others of them into a new configuration, which in its turn depends on the proc-ess by which a society (or the subgroups of a society) "identify" the young man by recognizing him as someone who ought to have turned out as he did and who is ac-cepted as he is. Society in its turn feels "recognized" by the individual who demands to be accepted, or profoundly and aggressively rejected by the individual who seems un-interested in any social integration. Identity manifests itself, then, in the role which the young man is going to play in society. Identity Crisis When the young man, emerging from.adolescence with his newly acquired identity, does not find in society the place he needs in order to continue to be what he has been and to develop still more, he runs the risk of a crisis. His ambitions may be too vast, society too different from his ideal; certain aspects of his identity may be poorly de-veloped in relation to what is demanded by the customs of his milieu from the viewpoint of sex, occupation, or in the area of academic or athletic competition. This constitutes a failure, at least a partial and provisional one. The at-tempt to enter into a relationship with society will piti-lessly reveal any weakness up to now latent in his identity. There results a state of confusion with the following symp-toms: a feeling of isolation, a breakdown of the feeling of personal continuity, shame, inability to enjoy any ac-tivity, a sense of enduring life rather than of actively living it, a distorted perspective of time, and finally, an extreme mistrust of others as if society were in opposition to what the subject wants to be. But no matter how many neurotic or psychotic symp-toms may be discovered, an identity crisis is not a sickness. Rather, it is a normal crisis, that is, a normal phase of sharp conflict characterized by an apparent wavering in the strength of the ego, but also by great possibilities for growth. Neurotic and psychotic crises are characterized by a tendency to perpetuate themselves because o~ a loss of defensive energy and ~i deep social isolation.~ A'grOWth crisis, on the contrary, is relatively more easy to overcome and is characterized by an abundance of utilizab!e energy. This energy, doubtless, causes the reawakening of dormant anxieties and engenders new conflicts; but it supports the ego in the functions it has newly acqtiired or developed during the search for new opportunities or for, new rela-tions which society is more than ever ready to offer. What appeared as the .onset of a neurosis is often only a quite acute crisis which dissipates itself and helps more than it harms the formation of the subject's identity. Some cases, however, reach a less fortunate outcome: derangement, suicide, or a confirmed case of nerves. We have already briefly mentioned the characteristic symptoms of the identity crisis, now it will be worthwhile to give a more ample description of them by contrasting them with the dimensions of an ultimate identity success-fully achieved. The Dimensions of Identity and Its Crisis At each stage of man's psychosocial, development cer-tain criteria allow us to see whether the individual has passed through this phase successfully or whether he has failed. So it is with the baby's crisis of trust (in the oral stage of development); with the crisis of autonomy at the age of two (during the anal phase); with the crisis of in-itiative around the age of five years (the age of the Oedipus complex); with the assimilation of work during the time of schooling; the crises brought about by marriage and the birth of children; and the problems posed by maturity and old age. What interests us here are the criteria which let us evaluate the identity crisis in the passage from puberty to adulthood. Erikson gives eight criteria which show whether the young man has succeeded in building up for himself in accordance with his possibilities an ultimate identity which is both balanced and accepted by his environment, or whether he remains at grips with an outgrown identity which is deficient and replete with conflicts. As has just been said, each growth crisis reawakens sleeping anxieties, the relics of old battles in former crises which were buried but not done away with. In the identity crisis certain con-flicts of preceding stages of psychosocial development are reawakened. This reawakening evidently does not bring these conflicts forward under the shape which they had when the subject was still a baby or a small child, but in a Identity Crisis VOLUME 21, 1962 ÷ ÷ W. d~ Bont, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS way that is colored by his current development. The first four dimensions of the identity crisis mentioned by Erik. son are reawakenings of former crises which, as we have mentioned, have to do with trust in o~hers and in oneself, personal autonomy from others, the ability to take the ini.~ tiatives by which one becomes "someone," and the ability to do one's work well. But the young man is not formed by his past alone; he is also stretching towards the future; The last three dimensions of the identity crisis are then foretastes of the problems which he will have to resolve later on in his life when he marries, when he becomes a fafher, or when he .reckons up the balance of his whoh: life. ¯ Here then are the eight criteria or dimensions of the identity crisis: a) Presence. or absence of a perspective in life. The young man in the grips of an identity crisis manifests a confused attitude toward time which may be more or less grave according to the case. He sees no prospects for him-self in life. Since his identity is not well defined and he is fully confused with regard to his place in society, his con-fidence in the future is completely overturned. He is in despair, even if this shows up as a headlong precipitancy with which he tries to reach his goal, like the student who, for an elementary examination in biology, studies only the most advanced articles. This is a derivative revival of the impatience found in the child who has not yet realized that all human activity realizes itself only gradually in obedience to the progressive nature of time rather than all at once as if by magic. When the young man resolves his crisis and begins 'to become himself, when he synthesizes the different aspects of his character and finds his place in society, this co:a-fused attitude toward the temporal element of his life is changed into a rich diversity of prospects; at the same time he becomes open to the temporal dimension as indispen-sable for every building up of his personality. Moreover, through the temporal dimension of the ideology which it offers him, society can help the young man to rediscover the feeling that his past and his future have a meaning. Most religions, philosophies, or political doctrines teach that there is a meaning and a direction to life. Even though such an ideology may not be altogether realistic and may represent a certain simplification of the order of things, still, in such a situation its pedagogical usefulness is real. b) Self-certainty or self-consciousness. The young man going through an identity crisis is characterized next by insecurity, by a doubting of himself accompanied by shame at what he is or has been. What reappear are the social characteristics of the anal stage. Once he has regained at a higher level the balance which he had achieved before, the new sense of his own meaning gives him the necessary assurance to face life and to assume his chosen role in society. Here again, in the recovery of assurance, social surroundings can be a powerful aid by the uniformity of conduct, arid ,sometimes of~:clbthing, which they impose, often without even demanding them by an explicit code. With the help of this uniformity, the young man, though in a state of confusion, may tempo-rarily hide his shame and his doubts until his identity is sufficiently reestablished. c) Free experimentation with roles or its absence. The healthy young man's entrance into adult society is char-acterized by the provisional adoption of a great variety of roles and initiatives, each of which is tested by a process of trial and error in order to .decide which is better for him so that he may make a final choice which will determine the principal content of his adult life. This is a prolonga-tion of the child play of the Oedipal age in which the child sought to overcome anxiety by his identifications; the child of four who plays at driving a bus attains, in this way, at least in his imagination, equality with the adults he fears, especially his parents (the castration complex of classical psychoanalysis). But in certain cases, especially if adoles-cence is unduly prolonged, the opposite of this free ex-pe. rimentation with roles is found. To characterize this other extreme, Erikson speaks of negative identity, that is, "an identity perversely based on all those identifications and roles which, at critical stages of development, had been presented to the individual as most undesirable or dangerous, and yet also as most real" ("The Problem of Ego Identity," op. cit., p. 131). The 'young man whose mother is always saying, "If you act that wa~ you will turn out like your uncle [a drunkard]" can end up precisely that; he identifies himself with what is forbidden because it is more real for him than the positive ideal which' his mother never spoke of with such eloquence. According to some recent research (that of Adelaide Johnson and her staff) juvenile delinquency (in the area of aggressivity)and perversion (in the sexual area) are frequently the result of such largely negative education. But there are still other ways to renounce a free experimentation with roles; for example, the renouncement of personal identity in an ex-treme conformism which tries to root out everything which goes against even the excessive demands of the en-vironment. Here again the different segments of society offer the young man initiations or confirmations which are apt to encourage the spirit o[ initiative while channeling it and allaying the reawakening of Oedipal guilt. "They strive, within an atmosphere of mythical timelessness, to com- . 4- 4- 4- VOLUME 21, 1962 113 ÷ ÷ ÷ W. ~e Bo~t, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS bine some. form of sacrifice or submission with an energetic guidance toward sanctioned and circumscribed ways of action--a combination which assures the development in the novice of an optimum of compliance with a maximum sense of fellowship and free choice" ("The Problem of Ego Identity," op. cit., p. 144). d) Anticipation of achievement or work paralysis. The next characteristic of the adolescent who is initiating him-self into society is the anticipation of success. He feels able to accomplish something, to fulfill his function in the. community in such a way that the other members will re-pay him by their esteem. This is a prolongation of the ap-plication to school work during the period of latency. When things go poorly, the subject, instead of feeling him-self able to assume his role, is paralysed in the work he is doing either because his ambitions are too vast or because his environment has no place for his special capacities or does not give him the recognition he hopes for. Or he risks everything to gain everything and throws himself." prematurely into an intellectual or social activity which is extravagant and rigid and which may in the end com. pletely destroy his personal happiness, if not his physical existence: At the root of ~ill these forms of work pathology we find, according to Erikson, a reawakening of Oedipal competition and of the rivalry with his brothers or sisters. The different segments of society help those who are the process of learning and of trying out their social role by offering them .a certain provisional status, that of ap-prentice or student--with all that these imply of duties, competition, freedom, and also of potential integration into the hierarchy of jobs and of classes, as in associations for young adults (for example, political parties have their sections for youth which act ~s an initiation into adult life). e) Identity or confusion. The most general character-istic of the young man who has not yet achieved interior and social balance is confusion. This is the global result of all the imbalances set up by the reawakening of old conflicts and of all the confused attitudes which come from the fact that the ~oung man is still unable to take his place in the community of adults. A multiplicity of contradic-tory roles results. Two souls come to exist in one body, as the hermit and the power mad man did in Francisco Jimfinez de Cisneros (Le Cardinal d'Espagne), or ~2z~chiely and Tenebroso-Cavernoso in Father Joseph, the grey emi-nence, "combining in his own person the oddly assorted characters of Metternich and Savonarola" (Aldous Huxley, Grey Eminence [New York and London: Harper, 1941], p. 128). Nevertheless, when the conflict has been crystal-lized, that is, become irreversible, we no longer speak of an identity crisis or of confusion, but of neurosis (sympto- matic or characterological) and of psychosis in which the 'T' has become someone else in the complete collapse of the sense of oneself, as in the case of the novice who, having divested himself in choir, appeared on the altar before the community piously assembled for a ho.ly hour and said, "I am the Immaculate C6nceptiofi."'~ The opposite of this confusion, which emerges in a more or less definitive way at the end of a successful ado-lescente, is identity. It is the feeling of having integrated into one's person all the valuable elements of one's child-hood heritage in order to give oneself with all one's forces .to love, to work, and to the social commitments, of adult life. We need not develop this sinc~ it has already been treated in previous sections of this article. f) Sexual identity or bisexual.conIusion. We come now to the ch~aracteristics of the identity crisis which are not derived from old, preadolescent' conflicts reawakened by physical maturation, but which are rather the precursors of conflicts which will find their climax and their.resolu-tion later in the ages of preadulthood, adulthood, or ma-turity, The proper task of the preadult period is intimacy, es-pecially sexual intimacy, with a partner. According to Erikson the "utopia of genitality" ought to include: mu-tual orgasm with a loved partner of the opposite sex with whom one is willing and able to share mutual responsibil-ity and with whom one is willing and able to adjust the cycles of work, procreation, and recreation in such a way as to assure their offspring a similar satisfactory develop-ment. As for the celibate, "a human being should be po-tentially able to accomplish mutuality of genital orgasm, but he should also be so constituted as to bear frustration in the matter without undue regression wherever consider-ations of reality and loyalty call for it" (Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society [New York: Norton, 1950], p. 230). Whoever fails at this stage becomes an isolated personality. In the identity crisis the precursors of these extremes are seen. The one who will later succeed in entering into a true intimacy with another is the one who succeeds in integrating into his personality the true characteristics of his sex, who sees himself both consciously and uncon-sciously as pertaining to his sex, and not more or less to the other sex. In those periods when the personality is less structured, and especially in irreversible pathological cases, there is a clear incapacity to assume the role proper to one's sex, a confusion of masculine and feminine traits which exceeds the relative confusion which' is normal at the beginning of adolescence. Intimacy presupposes, therefore, a sense of one's iden-tity, a capacity to be oneself on the sexual level as on other levels: "The condition of a true twoness is that one must ÷ ÷ VOLUME 21, 1962 115' 4. 4. 4. W. de Bont, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS first become onself" (Erik Erikson, "Growth and Crises of ~he 'Healthy Personality' " in Personality in Nature, So-ciety, and Cultizre, C. Kluckhohn and H. Murray, eds. [New York: Knopf, 1956], p. 222). Anyone who has .not achieved his own identity can not have intimate relations with another. He will take refuge in a sterile isolation for fear of losing himself completely; or else he will turn him-self over to another body and soul borrowing the identity of the other to fill up his own void, in this way vainly seeking to resolve an identification which was not success- [ul in childhood. Different societies have very different means of helping through these difficulties the young man who is already physiologically, though not socially, adult: by demanding complete sexual continence; or by permitting sexual ac-tivities which do not lead to definitive social engagements; or by stimulating sexual play without intercourse (pet-ting). The purpose of this prop is to stimulate and to strengthen the ego and its identity. g) Authority: orientation or conIusion. The adulthood of a truly healthy man ought to be characterized by pro-. creativeness; this means assuming responsibility for' the. next generation by parenthood or by other forms of al-truism and creativity. A failure along this line means that' one is absorbed in his own problems instead of placing his energy at the service of others. This is a victory for narcissism: "Individuals who do not develop generativity often begin to indulge themselves as if they were their own one and only child" (Erikson, "Growth and Crisis of the 'H~althy Personality,' " op. cir., p. 223). What forecasts this approaching procreativeness in the young man is the ability to be either a leader or a follower according to circumstances. The attitude of the subject {n everything that conc(rns authority (exercising it or obey., ing it) is realistic. Any future failure of procreativity be-trays itself in the inability to lead or to follow when one of these two relationships is required. It is especially in sub-groups of his.companionsthat society gives the adolescent the opportunity to try out this strength in the area of aw thority. h) Ideological orientation or conIusion o] ideals. When he has arrived at maturity, the normal man has the sense of having completed his task as far as possible. He accepts responsibility for what he has made of his life and of his personal abilities. Having helped others to become them-selves, he can now pass on this responsibility to the next generation and withdraw from the scene. The man, on the contrary, who has not realized his potentialities for the service of others will experience despair and disgust with himself. He would like to begin his life over but realises that it is too late. His life is a failure whether he admits it to himself or hides it by projecting the blame onto others. This was the case with Father Joseph, that "grey emi-nence" whose double identity was mentioned above. At the end of his life, he felt the bitterness and frustration of a man who has seen God, but who, through his own fault, has lost Him in the attempt t6i'ser~ two mastersJ~loser to us, we have the story of, Sister Luke' and of all those who leave their communities around the age of forty. These two possible attitudes which can emerge at the crisis of maturity are foreshadowed with the'young man by an ideological orientation, "a choice among many val-ues of those which demand our allegiance"; or on the con-trary, by a chaos of ideals without connection or sy.nthe-sis. Society helps the young man here by proposing a variety of ideologies each of which may be useful to him in proportion to its internal consistency. The above paragraphs are a brief presentation of the eight criteria which, according to Erikson, show whether and how the young man succeeds in constructing an iden-tity of his own. If in one or other of the eight areas listed he does not succeed in extricating himself from the confu-sion engendered by this indispensable maturation of his personal identity, he risks becoming the victim of a more or less profound psychic derangement, which may assume the shape of one of the classical forms so thoroughly stud-ied by clinical psychology: symptomatic neurosis, charac-ter neurosis, delinquency, psychosis, and so on. In spite of the interest there might be in studying these personality troubles as functions of the eight dimensions enunciated by Erikson, it is more to our purpose to apply the light of what has been said about the identity crisis of the young man to a study of the problem of the novice, of his quest for identity, and of the crises which this quest may involve. Identity Crisis in the Novitiate The young man who arrives at the door of the novitiate already possesses a certain identity which is more or less well-founded. It shows itself in the choice he has made: to become a celibate instead of marrying; instead of becom-ing a doctor, engineer, or grocer, he aspires to a function in the Church. Moreover, he has chosen this particular community rather than some other. All these factors (cel-ibacy, priesthood, community) are so many aspects of the role which he wishes to play in life. Vaguely he sees him-self in the future as such and such a person, with a more or less specific function, whether it be that of preacher, pro-fessor, pastor, or diplomat attached to a nunciature. This role is the end product of the candidate's total past life, the synthesis of his previous psychic development, But after four months of ttie novitiate (the stage at which the novices who were the subject of our experiment had arrived), the ÷ ÷ ÷ Identity Crisis VOLUME 21, 1962 W. d~ Bont~ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS great majority o[ novices are plunged into a more or less pronounced Crisis o[ identity. Signs oI the Crisis In the tests a considerable number of confusion symp-toms were.found, many more than in a group of students of the same age and background who were beginning their studies at a university. We cannot enter here into the more minute d~tails of these symptoms because of their too tech-nical nature; nevertheless, the following should at least be mentioned: a) The universal presence of a considerable anxiety. Anxiety is always an experience of the disintegration of the sell when old conflicts renew their attack. b) Equally striking was the great number of poor in-terpretations in the Rorschach, although they ought not to appear in a normal protocol. Even by using the Ameri-can scoring system of.Klopfer who tends to diminish their number, twenty-two out of twenty-eight novices gave them. This indicates a certain loss of contact with reality which is experienced as too hard, a retreat into phantasy which accompanies the identity crisis. c) Almost all the novices suffered from bisexual con-fusion with a reemergence of feminine traits. This was not manifested in overt sexual responses (except in two cases),, for the novitiate for the most part suppresses overt manifestations of sexuality. But it was visible, for example, in the defective sexual identifications given to the human figures on the Rorschach.cards and those of the T.A.T. (sixteen novices out of twenty-eight). d) Besides, seventeen out of twenty-eight subjects had a deficient image of their own body, according to their drawing of a human figure. This should not be surprising, for the image (more or less unconscious) we have of our own body is a visualisation of our identity. It is very sen-sitive to the influences of the environment; for example, to the interpretative power of clothing. The substitution of the religious garb, a skirt, for lay dress (masculine) has, from this point of view, a profound effect on one's sense of one's identity. "We identify ourselves with others by means of clothes. We become like them. By imitating their clothes we change our postural image of the body by taking over the postural image of others. Clothes can thu:; become a means of changing our body-image completely" (Paul Schilder, The Image and Appearance ol the Human Body [New York: International Universities Press, 1950], p. 204). The great number of deficient images of the body means that our subjects were in a siate of transition between their former identity (the "old man") and their new one. At the level of conscious behavior the crisis betrays it- self in all kinds of sentimental, per~ectionistic, depressive or even mildly paranoid traits. Brother Claude feels sad-dened by the November weather; another is not at ease working with the lay brothers in the garden; Robert thinks that his companions have something~against him when his prayer is not going well; Josephofeels depressed because he may not go out; and the imagination of John-Paul takes refuge in the past. As' for authority, almost all had a poorly balanced attitude, falling either into an exaggerated sub-missiveness or into revolt, or ifito indiscreet exercise of their own authority. Examples of these will be given later. The majority of the novices, then, manifested the two dimensions of the identity crisis which are at the heart of the religious life, for they relate to the vows of chastity and obedience: bisexual confusion and confusion with re-gard to authority. Catalysts of the Crisis The causes of the identity crisis can be summarized in this way: There is crisis, confusion, and disintegration be-cause the novitiate calls into question the initial identity with which the young man came to the novitiate. a) The young man already had a certain role in life before his entrance into the novitiate; he was president of his class, a member of Catholic Action, a well-known foot-ball player. He had a status in his environment, and be-cause of it he enjoyed the esteem of others. Entrance into the novitiate puts an end to all this. He changes his envir-onment and he must remake his reputation. Former modes of satisfaction no longer exist. A whole network of rela-tionships is broken; and it was precisely within this net-work that he found his own place, that he had realized, provisionally but really, his identity. All this he has to do over again. The impossibility of living out his identity in the old way almost inevitably causes a disintegration. The aspirations of the subject and almost their entire psychic substructure remain in suspension until they can be replaced by others or be reaffirmed. Before his novitiate Claude was in love with a some-what maternal girl who was a great help to him in his dif-ficulties. She forced him to become open, although in his own words he had tried to kill his sensitivity. She made an opening in his armor; he could communicate his ideal instead of pursuing it all alone. Separation from her at his entrance into the novitiate was difficult for him. His mem-ories of tenderness keep him alternating between melan-choly and aggressiveness. Arthur, the son of a farmer, is a young man whose strong ambition was enough to assure his success in stud-ies at the rural high school he attended, though from time to time he got on the nerves of his companions. In the ÷ ÷ VOLUME 21, 1962 ll9 novitiate he is more or less forgotten, for the smarter city boys leave him in the shadows. They take in with ease and naturalness everything that he had to fight hard for with an unremitting labor which had in turn cut him off from his modest origins. He can no longer play the role into which he had thrown all his energy. He has lost his place in society. He becomes depressed, grows still more ambi-tious in doing the Work of the novitiate, and becomes over sensitive to the least remarks of others. As for John-Paul, the role he wishes to play in life can be adequately summed up as that of an important priest, very esteemed by his people. Already at college he had to be first in the class to get admiration; and later, feeling himself crowded too closely by the other students, he plunged himself into extracurricular activities for the same reason. But the novitiate, the first step toward the realization of his identity as a priest, becomes a place of frustration and crisis. There he is far from college where he played a role of the highest rank and equally far from a friend whose affection gave him a sense of personal value. Here no one knows him. Hence his homesickness. During meditation he thinks of his friend, of past times, especially of those scenes in which he played an eminent role; or else he thinks of the future, he sees himself in the pulpit as a preacher. Evidently John-Paul is hypersensitive to the impression which he makes on the other novices; for example, in his reading at table. He takes great care with his hair, gives it a real coiffure, and contemplates himself in the mirror. b) Entry into the novitiate not only deprives the sub-ject of a part of his previous identity, but the community also wishes to change the candidate who comes to it in order to make him into a man who bears the community'.~ image and likeness; in other words, a religious with the spirit of his order. It is far from accepting the candidate as he is. The community has quite fixed ideas about what its members ought to become. Certain aspects of the nov-ice's previous identity, therefore, are necessarily destined for elimination while others must be developed to a more considerable degree. This is a changing of habits with its intellectual accompaniment--indoctrination. The conditions necessary for all indoctrination are (see Erikson, Young Man Luther [New York: Norton, 1958], p. 134): Isolation from the exterior world: family, friends, the old environment. Restriction of the sources of sensory stimulation and an immense value-increase in the power of words. The elimination of all private life, emphasis being placed on common life. Common devotion to the leaders who constitute and represent the community. The novitiate is a closed society; no influence is toler-ated there which would compromise the work of reforma-tion and indoctrination. Consequently no girls, no going out, no radio and television,.rio~,p6cket moridy~V~i~y~ ~ew visits. As for papers and magazines, only the more pious and serious ones will be allowed, In order to occupy the mind of the novice now emptied of worldly concerns, it is filled with spiritual teaching. So that he may be put on. the right road, the candidate is submitted to a daily pro-gram that is rigorous and unchanging and thateventually forms his mind as drops of water wear away stone. He is required to judge his own failings in the twice-daily ex-aminations of conscience. He may have no other company than that of the people who embody or partake of the desired ideal: the master of novices, his assistant, the other novices; there is no other model with whom he may iden-tify. The novitiate is, then, a dosed society in which the voice of indoctrination reverberates like an echo in an empty cave. For a change so profound must be brought about in the young man that once he has set out into the world upon his apostolic mission his' new identity must be the one which prevails over all previous attachments. He must himself become a representative and an incarnation of the spirit of his institute. That the "old man" feels uneasy in this hothouse should not be surprising. For example: Brother Yves states that: the isolation from people causes me some trouble, for I feel the need to be fully accepted as I am and also to be understood . My greatest fear about religious life and particularly about common life is that I may cease to be myself in order to fall into line. I fear a conformity in which all would be superficial and artificial, in which nothing would be assimilated, made per-sonal. I do not desire conformity, uniformity, stoic equanimity in my life. Here we discover an interesting difference between the two novitiates we have studied. In one, spiritual forma-tion is much more intense than in the other. The novices give reports of their spiritual progress to the master of novices, who follows and directs them very closely. The other master of novices, on the contrary, is a proponent of less exacting methods. In the "tight" novitiate, certain of the young men regressed to a point that was not reached by comparable novices in the more relaxed novitiate. Their crisis was more violent, for inevitably the less ac-ceptable aspects of their old identity were attacked with greater force. c) A third cause of the identity crisis in the novitiate ¯ comes from the fact that the previous ideas of the young man about the community of his choice are rarely real- 4. 4. 4. Identity Crisis VOLUME 21, 1962 121 ÷ ÷ ÷ 1¥. 4~ Bo~t, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 17.2 istic. Most often they are based on an idealized image of certain members of the community whom he knew before he entered either personally or through reading. He may imagine that every Franciscan is a Poverello, every Jesuit a Teilhard da Chardin, and every Dominican a Sertil-langes. He wishes to become like them. But he finds out very quickly that most of the members of the religious community are far from being the incarnation of this ideal, and then the novice frequently wonders whether his place is in the institute he has chosen, since it is of so little help to growth in his present identity. When Brother Irenaeus triumphantly ascertains that certain of the old fatheks do not practice what is demanded of the novices, his pride and his mistrust are the means by which he pro-tects his own high ideal. Francis, on the other hand, criti-cizes his fellow novices: they should be more perfect. He can't understand why they should be looking out the win-dow, why they should quarrel, or why they slip apples into their pockets after dinner to eat them in .their rooms. All this is personally disgusting to him. "If they entered religion to act like that . " And he is sorry that "medi-ocrity is not only found in the world, but also in the cloister." His excessive criticism is a means of defending himself against the temptation to do what they are doing, a temp-tation which is inadmissible because of a too rigid con-science. d) Finally, most communities have a great number of ministries to perform. It is often the decision of superiors which determines what role will later be assigned to the novice; whether he will be a missionary, a professor of apologetics, a parish priest, a teacher of the young, or the treasurer of the house. For one who has set his heart on the role of missionary, for example, obedience may create from the novitiate on a climate of uncertainty, a doubt about the possibility of realizing his role in life, his iden-tity. For we must not forget that one's identity is a synthe-sis of all one's previous development and hence it is not changed as one changes clothes. The novice ought, never-theless, to leave himself open to the possibility that the vow of obedience may make altogether a different thing of his life than what he thought. So it is that John-Paul wonders whether his superiors will let him go to the mis-sion where "the pagans, once converted to the faith of the gospel, will know better than the people of this coun-try the value of a priest." For he seeks everywhere the love and security he has up till now not found, and it was this quest which impelled him toward the priesthood. These four inevitable factors provoke an identity crisis in the novice which can go just "short of psychotic dis-sociation" (Erikson, Young Man Luther, op. cit., p. 134). This is a kind of fragmentation of the ego, a breakdown of the personality synthesis in a clash with the new en-vironment. The breach which the impact of this environ-ment makes in the synthesis is always located at its weakest point; that is, in certain conflicts Of the past Which Were poorly dealt with. In this serise,, the novitiate,brlngg .OUt the worst in oneself; the combined pressure of competition, adaptation to the level of the environment and the very rigid mode of life causes even the smallest weakness in the identity of the novice to burst fortl~. Beginners' Faults as Dimensions of the Crisis We can now parallel" the faults of beginners with Erik-son's eight dimensions of the identity crisis; for, according to our thesis, these faults are their equivalents in the re-ligious domain. As a matter of fact, it is not only the sogial life of the candidate which is troubled, but his spiritual life; all the more so since this constitutes the principal content of the life of the group and its members. We re-peat, we are studying the spiritual life here only under its psychological aspect and not at all under its theological aspect. a) Loss of perspective, the first of the dimensions of the identity crisis, betrays itself on the spiritual plane by a lack of patience, by a failure to apprehend that religious development has both its heights and its depths as does any other human evolution. This quest for the immediate is evident in spiritual gluttony and in its counterpart, dis-taste for spiritual realities when they do not procure a sensible satisfaction. It is equally to be found in those who wish. to push precipitously ahead. In his spiritual life Brother Mark seeks the love and consolation he did not receive enough of when he was little. In high school he created an environment for him-self which answered more or less adequately to his needs. But the change of environment deprives him of this sup-port and obliges him.to seek it elsewhere, in God. He seeks "the divine presence, a mysterious presence which I try to locate in myself without success. Each of my members dis-covers new sensations at this moment.". But when the quest does not succeed, "I feel a kind of di~sgust without reason or apparent motive. At such times Jesus does not seem to satisfy me; I thirst for something else too vague to be men-tioned or clearly defined." For Andrew, the need to rush ahead and a false apostolic zeal arose when common life and the demands of the no-vitiate for a change in his habits simultaneously reinforced a precocious superego and the unacceptable impulseg he was trying to harness] The unrealistic demands proper to these last two "imperfections" cause this novice not to feel at home with his less demanding comrades and his father ÷ ÷ ÷ Identity Crisis VOLUME 21~ 1962 ÷ W. de Bont, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS master who are themselves far from accepting with benev-olence this excess of zeal. To novices who have such difficulties the religious com-munity provides a helpful balancing factor in the per-spective of the future it opens to them. They are told of the various stages of the spiritual life; in the religious life there is a step-by-step education over several years (no-vitiate, philosophical and theological studies, ordina-tion.). There is a daily program set up in detail and firmly enforced. Finally, the candidate is promised cer-tain success in this world or in the next if he perseveres. b) Lack of assurance manifests itself in all those im-perfections which seek to hide certain defects by an im-moderate reaction: excessive shame for faults, a too literal adherence to the rules, indiscrete mortifications. Two ex-amples have already been given (B~'others Irenaeus and Francis). The novitiate offers the novices a provisional protection against their initial clumsiness in the unifor-mity it imposes in observances, clothing, spirituality. With this protection the novice is able to regain little by little the confidence in himself which was upset by the causes listed above. c) Pusillanimity in the spiritual life can be considered a failure to experiment with various roles; and certain forms of jealousy (of the progress of others) and of hypo-chondria (in connection with fasting, for example) can be considered as derivatives of Oedipal conduct. So it was that Henry, who was not able to identify with his dead father in order to attain, at least in his imagination, a superiority over his brothers which would give him a spe-cial title to the love of fiis mother, wished to carry on his apostolate in such a way that "after my departure people will forget completely that I was ever around, and that it was I who handled mattersY Fearing competition he does not dare to push himself forward. By always doing exacdy as the others, by effacing himself, he denies that he is dif-ferent, jealous, guilty of favoritism. In this case, the novitiate tries above all to encourage him to attempt one role, that of the apprentice religious. The novitiate is nothing else but an initiation into this role, begun with the taking of the habit as an exterior sign of the status which will be had henceforth in the com-munity and continued every day in the life of the novice. d) Paralysis about work clearly reveals itself in the dif-ficulties which the novice has from time to time in his spirit.ual exercises, meditation, examination of conscience, recitation of the Breviary. For Henry, for example, exami-nations of conscience remain at the surface of his person-ality. He fears lest his jealousy and anxiety come to the surface. Religious educators do everything in the noviti- ate to allow positive fulfillment, by teaching the novice suitable methods for achieving success in this domain. e) Lack of identity or confusion of roles manifests itself in a vague feeling of not b.eing at home in the novitiate, by nostalgia for the past, by the impo.ssibility of finding a place and a role in the communi~y: Examples Were" given above. The novitiate seeks to remedy this by encouraging the recruit to identify with his community by proposing to him in an exclusive way the spirit of the congregation or the order. f) Bisexual confusion manifests itself by all sorts of dif-ficulties with sex: the sexualization of religious life, for example, in sexual impulses at the moment of communion or confession; in particular friendships unddr the cloak of a spiritual relationship; in scruples about ~bad thoughts." Brother Guy, for example, transfers to Christ and St. John his tender feelings about a friend whom he has left in the world: You must have embraced very tenderly, as gently as do two beloved people spontaneously when one has acquired the other's special admiration; when one wishes to protest more deeply his profound joy in and friendly respect for the other. I would have liked to spend with the two of you those long evenings beneath the stars, as I had the happiness to spend them with James, speaking no doubt of Your ambitions, become those of Jol~n s~nce You loved him so tenderly, and he loved You. This transfer is meant to fill the void left by the impos-sibility of continuing an earthly friendship. What the novice should learn here, with the help of his spiritual director, is to renounce the exercise of his sex-ual faculty while at the same time .developing his manli-ness. This is impossible unless this renunciation is in-spired by valid and for the most part conscious motives ("for the kingdom.of God'i)and as little as possible af-fected by fear, shame, distaste, or guilt. g) The lack of reasonable attitudes with respect to au-thority is expressed by a crowd of symptoms: an extrava-gant docility, revolt against authority, a kind of freezing up in relations with superiors; too great a zeal to convert others where the aim is much more to resolve one's own problems than to help one's neighbor. 'Michael, for ex-ample, is so docile as to worry the master of novices some-what. He wants to be told what to do; he never resists; he has the spirit of. sacrifice; anything may be asked of him. If he is nettled, he gives a start and then merely smiles. His spiritual ideal is~ complete abandonment to God. He wishes to forget himself in order to be concerned only for God and His interests. Michael is a young man Whose mother thwarted him in his desire :for masculine inde-pendence. At the conscious level he submitted but uncon-sciously he rebelled against her. In the novitiate obedience 4. 4. Identity Crisis 1~5 4- REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is a most important matter and there are very few possi-bilities for aggressivity (for example, sports) left open to him. His problem, then, is accentuated. It may be under-stood, then, that for him God and the master of novices are conceived after the image of his mother. Peter's sense of his priestly mission still has "some end other than a supernatural one." The reason for this is that by a slightly megalomaniac identification with pater-nal authority, of which he makes himself the prophet, he is protecting himself against a feeling of persecution. The image he has of his father is split into two, and his feelings are equally divided. Everything good about his father is projected into God, everything bad into the devil. Accord-ingly, to save the world by his apostolate means in fact to preserve the connection with the good parent (God) and to eliminate the bad (the devil). Since the novitiate is a completely masculine society and at the 'same time by it.~ nature demands obedience, it further accentuates the con. flicts about sexuality and authority which underlie thi:~ apostolic identity (according to psychoan.alytic theory, the paranoid personality is rooted in homosexualized relation-ships with the father, the representative of authority in the family); but at the same time it makes the experience o[ the apostolate impossible for the time being. One may not go out during .the novitiate, and so the balance of forces in Peter is upset. The master of novices will have the difficult task of teaching the novices the just mean between the docility of a sheep and revolt at the barricades, as in the case of the novice who barricaded his door when the superior knocked to get him to rise (he always got up late). To give the novices certain opportunities for leadership frora the novitiate on may contribute to the development of the orientation which is desirable in this domain. h) Finally, a confusion of ideals is the most obvious thing about the novices who do not yet know whether they want to stay or leave the novitiate to return to the world or who hesitate to choose among several communities, Brother Mark has grave doubts about his perseverance because he is torn between a "worldly" past made entic-ing by the admiration he commanded at school and tile frustrations of his present conventual life caused by the lack of tenderness and esteem received from others. Spir-itual training here seeks to take away all ambivalence by presenting the novice with the ideology of his order and excluding all other ideologies (newspapers are ban-ishedl). A certain simplification results from this which sometimes becomes a caricature; one novice will think he is living the "pure gospel" because he walks .around in sandals as the apostles did; another will think he has found the perfect balance between contemplation and action because in his community Compline is sung in common before sleep. When the new identity of the nov-ice is sufficiently established, this simplification will no longer be necessary. Psychologically speaking, the faults of beginners are merely attempts to maintain'. Or to reestablish 15rovision-ally the psychic equilibrium which has been upset by the impact of the environment, an impact which has struck the novice at the weakest points of his former identity. As Father Mailloux has said, they are not "typically pathological reactions per se, but rather.irrational modes of expression, upon which the psychic apparatus will normally fall back whenever an individual is unable to cope with a stressful situation in some rational man-ner" (Rev. Noel Mailloux, O.P., "Sanctity and the Prob-lem of Neurosis," Pastoral Psychology, 10 [February, 1959], 40). For in successful cases the novice readjusts; he incorporates the identity elements offered him by the religious environment into the best which his identity al-ready has and gets rid of the less acceptable elements. Having provoked the crisis, a well-directed novitiate helps also to heal it. And once the adaptation is made and the novice has regained his place, this time in the community of his choice, his beginner's faults disappear like hay fever when the season has passed. In less successful cases, there is a failure. Concord be-tween' the identity of the novice and the demands or the support of the environment remains impossible: The reasons may come from two quarters: a lack of flexibility in the subject consequent upon an identity too charged with conflict as with the brother of the barricades cited above who left his community a little later,, or on the part of the community which is unable to Offer the novice the place which he seeks for his gifts and his particular abilities as in that sufficiently large novitiaite where .eighty percent of the novices left because of a master of novices still living spiritually in the nineteenth' century. The shock was the greater for them as their previous educa-tion was the more liberal. Conclusion We have studied in this article the psychological side of this night of the senses which the novitiate arouses by its very nature. By uprooting the candidate from his for-mer environment, it deprives him of the support which his identity enjoyed before in order to invite him to a higher spiritual balance. Our perspective, it is true, has been a restricted one; we have described only what the novitiate may have in common with any identity crisis studied by the psychologist. On this plane, the crisis of the novice resembles that of a young man who prepares 4. ÷ Identity Crisis VOLUME 21, 1962 W. de Bo~t, 0~. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]28 himself for army service at West Point, or who leaves hi.q small-town home to go to a large, university--although course the crisis has a different content according as concerns military formation, the situation of a student, or religious training---celibacy and examinations of con-science do not figure largely in a military perspective. For methodological reasons we have left aside that which con~ .stitutes the very essence of the life of the novitiate: the introduction to the life of consecration to God to which by His grace He has invited the novice. It is this properly spiritual aspect which masters of novices are best ac-quainted with, and they can guide themselves in this by a solidly established spiritual theology. Our only inten-tion has been to draw their attention to the psychological side of this introduction to sanctity, a side which it 'is better not to be totally ignorant of. The "follies" of nov-ices should not be seen as faults which are exclusively in the moral order, as pride, for example, considered as the capita) sin. There is question rather of provisional, and unsuccessful efforts to adapt oneself to a new situation; hence they are normal phenomena which always arise under one form or another when a man must remake the synthesis of his personality. Nevertheless, they are real difficulties and not imaginary, often very painful for the subject who undergoes them and annoying for those around him. The wisdom of an alert master of novices will assuage much of this human pain, and this the more so as he knows better the identity of the novice in ques. tion, with its strong points and its weak. This present article is limited to describing the iden-tity crisis of the novice. It does not pretend to furnish the elements of a possible prognostication. If almost all nov, ices undergo this crisis in some degree or other, how, among so many of the "imperfect," can those who will persevere be singled out from those who will leave or merely mark time for the rest of their lives? This is an important question, for the novitiate terminates with a profession which, even though it be temporary, repre-sents a real and very profound commitment. Certain re-marks of St. John of the Cross (Dark Night, 1, 9) coukl provide us with a point of departure for such a consid- ¯ eration; but this task must be reserved to a later article. PAUL W. O'BRIEN, S.J. Introducing the Young Sister to Prayer One of the problems facing the young sister is learning to pray. She h~is probably been pra

Issue 22.5 of the Review for Religious, 1963. ; THOMAS DUBAY, S.M. Personal Integrity and Intellectual Obedience If only through what we may term'a nebulous feeling of supernatural discomfort, no thoughtful religious long escapes the knotty problems implied in his reasoned re-actions to his superior's directives. Sooner or later he wonders how the perfection of obedience could possibly and honorably require that he judge to be wise and prudent what he may on occasion strongly feel to be un-wise and imprudent. Some of the implications of this complex question we have explored in two previous articles.1 The interest shown in these questions together with the oral and epistolary discussions consequent on them have prompted us to propose several additional problems and to seek suitable solutions to them. The Problems Religious superiors, like the rest of humankind, usu-ally do not know what we may call the content of the divine will. As I type this sentence I cannot be certain that objectively speaking this is what God prefers me to be doing at this moment. When a major superior as-signs a religious to teach the tenth grade, he cannot be sure that such is precisely the divine preference for this particular religious. In both of these cases all we can know is that our action, and our intentions are good. At times we may be reasonably assured that the action we contemplate is in its concrete circumstances better than some other, but even then we do not see how God judges the situation. Does not our inability to know the content of God's will render pointless the whole concept of intellectual obedience? Is the subject supposed to conform his judg- 1"Psychological Possibility of Intellectual Obedience," R~w~w FOR RrLtO~OOS, v. 19 (1960), pp. 67-76, and "The Superior's Precept and God's Will," REVIEW FOR RELmXOOS, v. 20 (1961), pp. 435--41. 4, 4" Thomas Dubay, S.M., is the spiritua director at Notr. Dame Seminary' 2901 South Carroll ton Avenue; Ne~ Orleans 18~ Louisi aria. VOLUME 22, 196~ 49~ ÷ + ÷ Thomas Dubay, $.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 4:9,1 ment to the superior's judgment because the latter is somehow expressing the thought of God when he com-mands? And if the superior is not expressing the divine mind, why should one try to think as he thinks? Meaning of Intellectual Obedience Before we wrestle with these questions, we should per. haps review the fundamental principles involved. And among them we may recall first of all that intellectual obedience implies the attempt of a subject to see the wisdom of his superior's decision. While it does not re-quire a man to call black white when his superior is manifestly wrong, yet it is more than an assent to the mere proposition that God wills the non-sinful act of compliance. This latter assent plainly is not a conformity to the thought of the superior (as the classical concept of intellectual obedience would have it) or even an at-tempt at conformity (with which the classical concept would be content when more is not possible). Agreeing that God wills execution of a given command is nothing more than an assent to a universally received principle of Catholic theology: God wills obedience to legitimately constituted authority. Intellectual obedience according to the formulation of St. Ignatius .Loyola in his well known letter (from which Pius XII said we may not depart) requires that the subject "think the same, submitting his own judg-ment to the Superior's, so far as a devout will can incline the understanding." And hence in the many matters in which evidence is not coercive, "every obedient man should bring his thought into conformity with the thought of the Superior" (America Press edition, ;~ 9). This doctrine presents no problem when the subject possesses a founded certitude that his superior is either right or wrong. In the first case his judgment is con-formed by the very seein~ that the direction is correct, and in the second there is no need to try to conform to what is obviously false. The problem arises in debatable matters, matters in which an honest and objective man will agree that there may be something to be said for each of two or more opposing views. Since the evidence in these cases.is not coercive, a religious practices in-tellectual obedience when he makes a serious attempt to see reasons ~or the superior's view as well as for his own. We spont.aneously conjure up reasons for our own opinions, and so intellectual honesty hardly requires much effort regarding this half of the situation. But we do not spontaneously think up reasons for an opposing opinion, and so effort is requisite if we are to be co~n-pletely open. While this effort should be made in our disagreements with any man, it is especially needful in the relationship of the subject to his superior. Because of the position the latter holds as a representative of divine authority and because we may presume that this representafive re-ceives divine help in the exercise of his office (not, how-ever, a help that makes him infallible), the ftillriess of religious obedience bespeaks an especial effort to agree with his thought insofar as honesty permits and a devout will can bring it about. When a good religious, therefore, receives an unpalatable directive, this third and highest degree of obedience suggests that he make an earnest at-tempt to see his superior's point of view whenever the matter is important enough to consider motives at all. Man's Knowledge of the Divine Will From the point of view of the divine will, we may re-call to what extent a conformity is possible and in what sense a superior may be said to manifest that will. A man's will is materially conformed to God's when he wills precisely what God wills. If God were to give him a pri-vate revelation indicating exactly what He wished done at a given time and if the recipient of the revelation carried out the command, there would be a material con-formity. In this case the person's activity would corre-spond exactly with what we have called the content of the divine will. On a moment's reflection one can easily see that a material conformity known to be such is usu-ally impossible. A man simply does not know as a ,rule precisely what God knows to be the preferable course of action together with the circumstances that should sur-round the action. A religious superior is no exception to this limitation on our knowledge of the divine intellect and will. Frequently the superior cannot know that this directive or that is exactly what God would like done at this time and in these circumstances. And if the superior cannot know, neither can the subject. Formal conformity, however, is another matter. It re-fers to the motives one has in doing whatever he does. A man conforms his will to God's when he refers what he does to the divine good. Such is the conformity that St. Paul taught when he enunciated the command that we do all for the motive of God's glory: "Whether you eat or drink, or do anything else, do all for the glory of God" (1 Cor 10:31). While we often cannot know the content of the divine good pleasure and therefore cannot be sure whether or not we possess a material conformity to it, we can always know the motive with which we are to act, and thus we can be sure that we possess a formal con-formity. Hence, even thongh I cannot be sure that my proposal to give ten dollars to this particular poor man is the best thing I could do with the money (God may 4- 4- 4- Intellectual Obedience VOLUME 22, 196.,1 495 ÷ ÷ ÷ Thomas Dubay, $.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 496 well know some other better way in which I could use it) and even though as a consequence I do not know whether my will is materially conformed to His, yet if a~ a matter of fact I do give the gift out of love for God I am sure that my will is formally harmonized with His. And this is all that I am commanded to do in the situa-tion. I am bound to have the right motive for whatever good act I perform. When all this, then, is applied to religious obedience, it means that a superior usually does not know the con-tent of the divine will and consequently may or may not be commanding-, in material accord with it. From the point of view of the subject obeying, this does not matter. God does will that he carry out the precept as long as there is no evil in it. (We must notice that in this prac-tical execution of the command material conformity is always possible and commendable, that is, conformity to that content of the divine will which has revealed that it wants men to obey their superiors.) Furthermore, the subject should possess the formal element, the proper motive for obeying, which proximately is the authority of the superior and ultimately the ordering of his obedi-ence to the divine goodness by charity: Suggested Solutions We are now prepared for the first of our problems. Why should a religious try to make his judgment regard-ing some precept conform to his superior's judgment when he is not even sure that the latter's represents the content of the divine will? How can the constitutions of some religious congregations admonish members that they should make their superior's judgements their own, that they should "obey" even the superior's thought inso-far as such is possible? In answering these questions several principles must be borne in mind. First of all, any man is bound by mere natural honesty to conform his mind to the truth insofar as he is able. No one has a right to entertain error. He may have a right to immunity from attack because he is in error, but this is not to say that he has a right to cling to the error. There can be no right to what is unreal. Secondly, in a'genuine difference of opinion between two persons in which difference the truth is not definitely established with 'an objective certitude, honesty demands that any man make a sincere effort to see the reasons for the other's view. Any man is bound to weigh the other man's reasons as well as his own. Any other procedure is mere prejudice. Hence, the demand of intellectual obedi-ence that a subject try to see that his superior's directive is wise is no intrusion on his human dignity or intel-lectual integrity. On the contrary, this perfection of obedience is protective both of intellectual humility and of integrity since it aids a man in divorcing himself from his often inordinate attachment to his own opinion. It opens his mind to other views and other opinions. Hence, this fundamental honesty by which we give a sympathetic consideration to the intellectual position of another is common both to the subject-superior relationship and to the ordinary man-to-man relationship. Yet there is a difference. There must be a difference. Otherwise, we could hardly speak of the attempt a re-ligious makes to conform his judgment to that of his superior as a distinct degree of obedience. But what is the difference? What is the difference between Brother X and Sister Y trying to look sympathetically upon their superiors' decisions and these same two persons attempt-ing to discuss a question of politics or philosophy in an unprejudiced manner? In both situations there is a pursuance of truth, an effort to maintain intellectual in-tegrity. The solution to this problem is difficult, admittedly difficult. And we frankly confess that we are not at all sure that our solution is adequate. We think that it is correct as far as it goes, but we are not sure that it says all that needs to be said. We believe that there are two reasons why a religious' attempt to see his superior's decision as feasible and cor-rect is something over and above this same religious' ef-fort to see a differing view in an ordinary discussion. The first "something over and above" is the supernatural posi-tion of the superior. While he remains a weak, imperfect, and entirely fallible human being, an ecclesiastical su-perior does occupy in the supernatural society which is the Church a position which is ultimately derived from God Himself. As Pope Pius XII rightly observed, the authority by which religious superiors rule is a participa-tion in the divinely received authority possessed by the Roman Pontiff. Therefore, while the religious superior does remain fallible, and sometimes sadly fallible, yet his dispositions and directions enjoy an ontological rank that other dispositions and directions do not enjoy. This basis and rank are the foundation for a new reason over and above intellectual humility and integrity why a sub-ject should seek to view his superior's disposition sym-pathetically and seek, if possible, to conform his judg-ment to it. A second reason is based on the relationship between the first and second degrees of obedience with the third, that is, the relationship between execution of the com-mand (first degree) and conformity of will (second de-gree) with the submission of intellect (third degree). A mere reflection on the psychology of obedience indicates ÷ + Intellectual Obedience VOLUME 22, 1963 ÷ ÷ ÷ Thoma~ Dubay, S.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 498 that the perfection with which a man executes a directive and with which he conforms his intention to that of his superior will ordinarily be dependent on his intellecttial agreement or disagreement with the judgment implied in the directive. Our point is not that the typical religious will not execute a command unless he sees its wisdom but that he often will not execute it as per[ectly when he believes it to be unwise or foolish. Our point is also that he will find conformity of the will, that is, really wanting to carry out this command, much more difficult when the precept appears to him unfeasible. A religious priest whose superior directs him to teach a course which he judges to be of flimsy value hardly throws himself ir, to the task of doing an excellent job with it. He teaches the course, yes. But unless he is a man of rare virtue, he cuts at least some minor corners with it. A sister who is asked to organize a testing program that seems to her ineffectual is an unusual person if she does not experi-ence difficulty in wanting to organize it. Because there is a lack of intellectual harmony between these religious and their superiors, harm is done to the first and second degrees of their obedience. This fact affords us another reason over and above mere open-mindedness why a subject should seek to see the wisdom of his superior's decisions and to conform his judgment to them. If our analysis is correct, it seems to follow that intel-lectual obedience is rooted in the will. The conformity on this third level is, of course, found in the intellect; but the force moving the intellect toward it is the will. This observation is not surprising when we consider that the "moving-moved" relationship is the case even with the execution of a command. The actual operation of teach-ing or sweeping is executed by the other faculties, while the moving role is that of the will. We may speak, there-fore, of obedience of the intellect because it is the in-tellect in the third degree of obedience that is harmo-nized with the intellect of the superior, even though it is the will that moves it to the harmony. There remains another facet to this problem, or, if one prefers, another problem. Granted that we have in-dicated two reasons over and above mere intellectual honesty why a subject should attempt to see his superior's view, we must yet discover what guarantee of truth can be offered that will justify the subject's conformity. After all, is not evidence the fundamental criterion of truth; and if we are going to ask a religious to hold a precept as prudent or feasible, do we not have to assure him of its validity on the basis of objective evidence? And if a religious superior has no divine guarantee that his di-rections conform to the objective truth of things, how can one rightly ask another to harmonize his intellect with them? This is no easy problem. In answer to it ~ve must first, remark that no one is asking a subject to extend the value of his intellectual assent beyond available evidence. We do not suggest that a religious ought to make a certain judgment that his superior is correct ~vhen there simply is no irrefragable evidence that he is correct, nor do we feel that the sub-ject should entertain a judgment of higher value than his superior entertains. If the superior only thinks that this course of action is feasible, surely the subject is not re-quired by intellectual obedience to be sure that it is such. As a matter of fact, the latter would be a difformity, not a conformity. We may observe, likewise, that in many of the disposi-tions made in a religious community neither the superior nor the subject can be prudently sure that a particular course of action is the most feasible. An autocratic su-perior may act as though he is certain that his decisions are the only reasonable ones; but this does not, of course, mean that they are. How often can one know with complete certitude that a given sister should teach the third grade rather than the fifth or that a brother should specialize in history rather than in political sci-ence or that a priest should serve on the mission band rather than on a parish staff? Many of us may entertain strong opinions in such matters, but few could offer in most cases objective evidence that one decision alone is reasonable or even the best possible. It would seem, then, that intellectual obedience frequently does not require a certain assent. But we think that it often requires an opinionative assent, that is, an assent that holds a proposition to be probably true because based on one or more solid mo-tives. Two reasons suggest this statement. First, when an intelligent man or woman (we refer to the superior) decides on a course of action, one may usually presume that there is at least one solid motive behind it that would found at least an opinionative judg-ment that the decision is a prudent one. Secondly, the superior himself usually judges his directive as at least probably correct; and so il~ he can find some good reason for it, the subject of good will should frequently be able to find it also. The first reason bears on extrinsic evidence (authority), the second on intrinsic. Is a guarantee required for the objective truth or wis-dom of the command? Must the superior in looking for intellectnal obedience in his subjects offer them some guarantee that he is at least probably if not certainly right in his dispositions? Although the two questions ÷ ÷ ÷ Intellectual Obedience VOLUME 22, 1963 499 4. 4. + Thomas Dubay, $.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 500 may look equivalent, we would answer yes to the first and no to the second. No man can rightly give an intellectual assent to a proposition unless he has some motive pro-portioned to the quality of his assent. I do not proceed in an orderly fashion when I judge to be certain an as-sertion for which I have only probable evidence or when I hold an opinion with not even probable evidence. Hence, a religious need not judge his superior to be surely correct when he can see only probable reasons in favor of the command. When the subject can see no intrinsic reason in favor of the precept's feasibility (and such is rare, indeed), he should either refrain from judg-ing it altogether or base his opinionative judgment that it is feasible on the mere fact that his superior thinks, it so. In this second case he rests on extrinsic authority or evidence. His intellectual honesty is preserved in that he has not made a certain assent, and his obedience is per-fect in that he has made every reasonable effort to bring his judgment into accord with that of his superior. A superior is not ordinarily bound to offer the guar-antee for the assent his subject is to give to his disposi-tions. It would be unreasonable to expect one in author-ity to explain his reasons every time he decides upon some course of action. And it happens occasionally that natural secrecy prevents him from disclosing why he acts as he does. Yet at the same time we feel that often, if not usually, a superior should spontaneously offer reasons for his directives when they are out of the ordinary or when they are especially susceptible to misunderstanding. would even say that unless secrecy forbids it, a superior ordinarily does well to let the reasons for his commands be known whenever an intelligent subject could not l easily conclude to them and when the matter is impor-tant enough to go into them at all. Otherwise, it is dif-ficult to see how the subject could give an intelligentl assent or bring his judgment into line with that of hisJ superior except perhaps by a sheer act of will. As we have just hinted in the preceding paragraph,, all of our above attempts to give a reasonable account the roots of intellectual obedience as it bears on the ob-jective order of things are directed toward cases in whichl an agreement with the superior's mind is called for. There are many cases in the ordinary living of the re ligious life in which the directions given are not impor tant enough even to concern oneself about a conformity~ of judgment. In these it is rather blind obediertce thai is indicated: the willed execution without any thoughi as to why the command is given. We hardly think tha, a sister who has been asked by her superior to serve a.~ companion for another on a trip to town should bothei about trying to discover the rightness of the request o~ why it was made. Such scrutiny too easily lends itself to pettiness. Our above discussion rather envisions more important matters in which a religious should know his superior's mind that he may all the better carry it out. How, then, may we answer the questions with which we began? Does our inability to know the content of the divine will render meaningless the whole concept of in-tellectual obedience? It the superior is perhaps not ex-pressing the divine mind when he commands, is there any point in the subject trying to conform his judgment to that of his superior? Man's inability to know the divine mind in many of the practical details of human lille does not render mean-ingless the widely received principles of intellectual obe-dience. The religious is not assenting to his superior's direction as though it were an infallible oracle, nor is he judging that it is the only possibly reasonable disposition of the matter. Precisely because we reject the notion that a superior is revealing the content of the divine mind do we dissolve at the same stroke that other mistaken notion that in intellectual obedience the subject is assenting to a certain proposition known as such by God. Rather is the subject merely trying to put his whole being, intellect as well as will and body, into a harmony with his su-perior, a man who takes the place of God for him. And this attempt at harmonization implies no violence to in-tellectual integrity for the simple reason that it rests on evidence, either intrinsic or extrinsic. We may conclude, then, that the religious who prac-tices perfectly all three degrees of obedience integrates rather than disintegrates his personality. He executes di-rectives promptly and wholly, and thus establishes a new contact with God who has parceled out some of His supreme authority to men. He wants to carry out the precept because he sees the divine authority in a human instrument, and thus he places himself in the genuine stream of what is. He attempts to set his intellect in ac-cord with his superior's, and thus he simultaneously maintains intellectual integrity and submits his supreme faculty to the divine order. And all this is done through supernatural charity. This is sanctity because it is reality. ÷ ÷ ÷ In~ellectual Obedience VOLUME 22, 1963 501 PAUL HINNEBUSCH, O.P. Requesting in Charity ÷ ÷ ÷ Paul Hinnebusch, O.P., is the chaplain at Rosaryville; Pon-chatoula, Louisiana. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ~02 We are all very conscious that charity inspires us .to give help to others, but have we ever realized that char-ity also inspires us to ask for help? St. Thomas Aquinas was well aware of this. He writes, for example, to a prince: "Your charity has asked me to reply in writing to your question. It is not proper that the requests which charity faithfully offers be refused by a friend.'u Thomas realized so well that charity seeks help as well as gives it, because he knew from experience what unity in lively charity can be. Living in the golden age of the Order of Preachers, when community life was fully synonymous with life in charity, when mutual charity penetrated everything, Thomas daily experienced char- ~ty at its best. Charity was a mutual give and take in per-fect spontaneity. Those early friars knew well the spirit behind St. Augustine's command in their rule: "Call nothing your own, but let all things be held in common among you." In the thinking of Augustine, this statement applied not only to material goods but to whatever the Christian has, whether material or spiritual, whether gifts of grace or talents of nature. Augustine was remarkably conscious of the unity of all Christians in Christ, of how all live one same life together in Him. For example, constrasting his own intensely active life as a bishop with the leisurely contemplation of a monk to whom he is wri(ing, Augustine says: "We are one body under one head, so that you are busy in me, and I am at leisure in you" (PL 33:187). Because I am one with Christ, what Christ is doing in you He is doing for me. And because you are one with Christ, what Christ is do-ing in me He is doing for you. We are one body with many functions of one life. We are one mystical person in Christ. Elsewhere Augustine writes: "Whatever my brother has, is mine, if I do not envy and if I love. I do not have it in myself, but I have it in him. It would not be mine, if we were not in one body under one Head." x Martin Orabmann, The Interior Lile o] St. Thomas Aquinas (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1951), p. 9. In this unity of life in Christ, this one life in love, the mutual sharing of spiritual and material goods is love in action. Love receives as well as gives, love asks as well as grants. If the bond of love makes us consider that our brother's needs are our own and inspires us to supply him with what he needs, that same bond of love does not hesitate in appealing to our brother's love for help. Our appeal is based upon our love for him and his love for us. It is only right that what we expect him to grant in char-itY should be requested in that same charity so that both the asking and the giving are an exercise and a strength-ening of the bond of love. Our blessed Savior sets a beautiful example of these things in dealing with the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. In His love for the woman, He desires to do her a service; but good psychologist that He is, He knows that her pride will resent His offer of help. And not merely because in her particular case pride will resent the un-veiling of her sin but because human beings in general like to be independent and do not care to admit that they need others. Their pride instinctively resents anyone who tries to help them. We have all experienced at one time or another the pain of having our charity rebuffed. And therefore when Jesus wishes to do this woman a service, instead of immediately offering help to her, He begins by requesting help from her. He knows how valu-able a request for help can be in establishing good rela-tions among people. Rather than give her pride an op-portunity to resent His help, He appeals to what is best in her human nature. Human nature was made for love. But love's proper act is to give. To win the woman's good will and love, Jesus gives her the opportunity to give to Him. He asks her to do Him a service: "Give me to drink" (Jn 4:10). His humble request and His need immediately wins her sympathy and benevolence. Upon the initial good will which she thus manifests, Jesus proceeds to build an eternal friendship. By humbly accepting the service of her love, He leads her humbly to accept His love in re-turn, His love with its gift of "living water" springing up into a divine love, binding her to Him in an everlast-ing friendship. This is the apostolic technique which Jesus teaches to His apostles. Christian charity has to be mutual, love has to be a response to love. From the prospective convert the apostle must draw forth some sort of love, even if it is only an act of natural benevolence towards him. Grace, seizing upon this, can transform it into some-thing divine. Since man was made for love and love's proper act is to give, if we would set up a bond of love between our-÷ ÷ Requesting in Charity ÷ ÷ Paul Hinnebusch, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 504 selves and our fellow we must give him the opportunity to give to us. We must win his benevolence and sym-pathy by humbling ourselves before him in need. Love knows how to receive as well as give. Is not the recogn:i-tion of another's need a natural incentive to sympathy and love? Is not then the humble recognition of our mu-tual need of one another the best soil for mutual low:? For charity is mutual giving. Almighty God has deliber-ately created us mutually dependent upon one another that we may have an opportunity to love by giving ar, d to love by receiving, that thus the bond of love may 'be perfect. Therefore our blessed Lord instructed His apostles to receive even while they gave: they were to accept the hospitality of those to whom they wished to preach, they were to eat what was placed before them, they were to sleep on what was prepared for them (Lk 10:7-9). They were to be humbly dependent for material things upon the people upon whom they wished to shower super-natural gifts. Thus there would be established a balance and the mutual interchange which is charity in action. St. Paul's words describe the situation well: "There is a just bal-ancing- your abundance at the present time supplying their need, that their abundance may in turn supply your need, thus making for an equality" (2 Cor 8:14). Christ used this same technique with the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Though it was getting towards evening and the day was far spent, He acted as though He were going on, giving them the opportunity to urge their hospitality upon Him, so that by their love in giv-ing to Him their hearts would be prepared to receive His greater gifts (Lk 24:28 f.). Christ our Lord sent forth His disciples two by two so that they could mutually give and receive as they trav-elled to their missions, upholding one another in love. For in Christianity there is no room for the proud inde-pendent spirit which rejects others as though he does not need them, spurning their help as though he can get along without them, refusing to accept from others lest a debt of gratitude make him dependent upon them, carefully hoarding his own resources in fear that giving to others will impoverish him and make him dependent. How tremendously more fruitful all of our labors would be if all of us would work together in this humble charity which recognizes our need of one another! True charity is ever humbly aware of our mutual dependence upon one another in Christ and of our solidarity in Him; and therefore it is willing not only to give help but humbly to accept it and to give again in grateful return. For Christians must never give to others with an air of condescending superiority but must always humble them-selves to the level of the needy, in genuine compassion. "Be minded as was Christ Jesus," says st. Paul. "Though he was divine by nature, he did not consider his being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, bi~t on the contrary he emptied himself, taking the nature of a slave, and was made like to men" (Phil 2:5-6). For the gifts of God, whether spiritual or material, are never given to us in order to exalt us above our fellowmen but rather to give us the means of serving Him in humble love. "Freely ~have you received, freely give" (Mr 10:8). If St. Thomas Aquinas always looked upon requests for his help as proceeding from humble charity, in humility he considered himself the servant of all in that same charity. For example, a young Dominican lecturer of Venice once wrote to him a list of thirty-six questions and asked for the answers within four days! Though this may seem to be an inconsiderate abuse of the generosity of an extremely busy man like Thomas, especially since the questions were vaguely phrased, nevertheless in sending back all the answers Thomas gently replied: "Although I h~ave been very busy, I have put aside for a time the things that I should do, and have decided to answer in-dividually the qusetions which you proposed, so as not to be lacking to the request of your charity." We must beware, then, of setting self-sufficient bound-aries about ourselves, saying, as it were, "This is my sphere of influence in the community, this is the work I will do. I can do this and no more, and I will accept no help in doing it, for I am self-sufficient within these lim-its. I want no help, because I wish to be independent of the need of helping another in return. So let us all de-marcate our spheres of influence, let us carefully portion out the common resources of our community life. This portion shall be mine, that portion shall be yours, and let us not trespass upon one anotherl You may not borrow my help or my equipment or my resources even in time of need, for at all costs we must avoid trespassing the 'rights' of one another. In short, let us kill all the spon-taneity of community life in charity." Religious who by vow have renounced everything, even their own wilI, are the last people in the world who should be insisting upon their rights. Is not charity a higher law than rights, does not charity break down the wails of proprietorship? Does not charity concede to others that to which they have no strict right? For whenever we have something and our neighbor is in true need of it, then it is no longer our own but his. It is not his in justice, but in charity. He cannot demand it of us--unless he is in dire necessity--but he can humbly ask it in love, and we grant it in love. We owe it to him + + + Requesting in Charity VOLUME 22, 1963 505 Paul Hinn~bu~ch, O.P. REVIEW FOR REL|G~OU$ in the charity which makes all of us one body under one Head. And yet, there is order in charity. For though what I~ have is given me by God not just for myself but for the service of others in Christ, yet I must use and distribute what I have in an orderly way, using it for the appointed purposes in community life. If I am called upon to de-vote some of my time or my resources in giving emer-geny help to another so that my appointed tasks may seem thereby to suffer, rather than stifle charity's eager-hess to help I entrust my own affairs to divine providence while I attend to the immediate needs of my neighbor. On the other hand, the common ownership of all things in community life, in this one body under one Head in charity, does not justify any one member or group of members o[ the religious community in appro-priating an unjust share of the common resources, taking more than should be alloted when distribution is made to each according to his need. If resources are unjustly appropriated in this way, even the charity of those who are unjustly deprived cannot approve of the injustice, though they may have to endure it in patience. Even charity cannot approve of the injustice, for charity is obliged to love the common good and cannot permit this harmful swelling of one member at the expense of an-other. We cannot appeal, then, to the fact that we are one body under one Head to justify any highhanded appro-priating of the common resources. What my neighbor has is mine, what the community has is mine, but only in the friendship of charity. I have only love's rights to these things. And therefore only in humble charity may !1. re-quest more than is already allotted to me. Only mutual charity makes what is his mine and what is mine his. Charity never demands, charity humbly asks. And when she has received, in due course she makes a grateful re-turn. Everyone who is generous in fulfilling the law of char-ity and is ever eager to be at the service of others sooner or later runs into those who abuse his generosity by mak-ing, in the name of charity, requests which charity has no right to make. There will be those who will use the main point of this article as an excuse for imposing upon others, saying, "I request this in charity, so in charity you may not refuse me." Are there situations when we may refuse requests for help without violating charity? At first sight it would seem not, for our Lord says, "Give to everyone who asks of you" (Lk 6:30). However, our Lord never asks the im-possible. There are times when one is so laden with other duties of justice and charity that he cannot possibly ful-fill a request for help. But in a case like this, charity must know how to say "No." "There is always a way of refus-ing so graciously," says the Little Flower, "that the re-fusal affords as much pleasure as the gift itself would have." Lest we abuse charity's rigl~t to ask help, we must al-ways be very considerate of those of whom we ask help. We should not ask a generous person for his help when we could do the things ourselves easily enough. For if the one we ask is really charitable and generous, then we can be sure he already has more than enough to do, for every-one is asking his help. We must take care never to ask un-necessarily or selfishly. If we really do not need help and the person we ask sees that this is so, then he is not uncharitable in refusing us. In this case a work of charity is not called for, since by definition a work of mercy is aid given to one who has true need. Furthermore, a busy religious has to be dis-criminating in the works of charity he undertakes. Since it is impossible for him to do everything, he does not violate charity if he makes a prudent choice about whom he is to help or about the type of aid he is to give; for as we have said, there is an order of charity. No one is obliged to sacrifice the greater works of charity and jus-tice to aid someone who would abuse his charity. Even in refusing a request which charity has no right to make, we must be charitable in our manner of refus-ing. One must patiently bear with the fault of the one who seeks to impose upon him. Likewise, we must be careful in judging whether or not a person really is abus-ing charity's rights to ask. Ordinarily we ought to pre-sume that the bond of charity lies at the basis of all re-quests for our help. If we may refuse help to those who are uncharitably inconsiderate in the requests they make of us, on the other hand we should anticipate the needs of those whose charity is so considerate of us that they hesitate to ask our help lest they unduly burden us. If, when necessary, charity knows how to refuse help in a gracious way, true charity is also always gracious in its manner of giving help. If our consent to help another is grudging and ungracious, we deal him an uncharitable blow even as we help him, for we humiliate him by our attitude. My son, to your charity add no reproach, nor spoil any gift by harsh words! Like clew that abates a burning so does a word improve a gift. ÷ ÷ + Requesting in Charity VOLUME 22~ 1965 5O7 Sometimes the word means more than the gift; both are offered by a kindly man. Only a fool upbraids before giving: a grudging gift wears out the expectant eyes (Sir 18:14-17). "The word means more than the gift" because the gen-uine charity behind the asking and the giving, the giving and the receiving, is the one thing precious above all else. 4- 4- 4- Paul Hinnebusch, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ANTONIO ROSMINI Three Q estions on the Spiritual Life [Antonio Rosmini, 1797-1855, was one of the great figures of the Church in the nineteenth century. Besides founding the Rosminian Fathers (the Institute of Charity), he also founded the Sisters of Providence (the Rosminian Sisters). As the founder of the sisters, he was naturally solicitous for their spiritual progress and advancement. The Review is happy to present here a translation of a letter :from Father Rosmini to the members of the Sisters of Providence in England on three important matters of the spiritual life. The translation has been made by the Reverend Denis Cleary, I.C.; Saint Mary's; Derrys Wood; Wonersh; Guildford, Surrey; England.] Stresa~ September 24, 1850 Dear Daughters in Christ, I would not wish you to judge my charity towards you by the number of letters which you receive from me. The Lord knows that I have you in my heart and that I offer you to Him every day on the altar. If I write infrequently, attribute this to my weakness and to the fact that I know you have a superior who is full of zeal for your growth in Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, now that this superior of yours, and my dear brother in Christ, is returning to you after his journey to Italy, I cannot but send with him a letter which will serve to thank you for the gifts which you have sent me in your charity as a sign of your devo-tion and in which I shall answer those three important questions which you sent to me. I answer these questions because, although I know that you could have the same answers from your immediate superior who is full of wisdom and the spirit of God, I think that hearing the same things from me, as you desire and ask, will give you consolation and strength in doing good because of that affection and obedience which you grant me in Christ Jesus. It is for this reason that I write, not necessarily for your greater instruction. The first question which you ask me is this: "How can one use a spirit of intelligence without falling away from simple and blind obedience?" ÷ Three Questions VOLUME 22, 1963 + 4. ÷ ¯ 4ntonlo Rosmini REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS This question and the other two which follow show your spiritual discernment becau.se they manifest your de-sire for instruction in the most perfect things. Perfec-tion demands that we know how to join and harmonize in our daily actions those virtues which, at first sight., seem opposed and even, perhaps, to exclude one another reciprocally. In fact, although no virtue can ever truly be opposed to another, just as no truth can be opposed to another truth, there is an art in uniting harmoniously those virtues which belong to faculties and passions which have contrary tendencies. When possessed by a per-fect man these faculties and passions come together in an orderly way. Knowing how to bring them together, there-fore, belongs to the study of that perfection to which we are consecrated. The person who seeks for perfection is rather like a composer who knows how to blend the voices of contralto, baritone, and bass. Coming now to your que.,stion, I say that simple and blind obedience can be joined with a spirit of intelli-gence and that this can be done in various ways. The First Way. It must be realised that the higher and the more universal the reason which governs our actions, the greater the use we make of a spirit of intelligence. Acting with a spirit of intelligence only means acting ~c-cording to reason without allowing ourselves to be moved or disturbed by any passion whatsoever. Now the highest and most universal of all reasons for acting is that of doing in everything the will of God (I expect you have seen what I have written on this matter and have also read it). But he who obeys with simplicity and purity is certain of doing the will of God who has said concerning ecclesiastical superiors: "He who hears you hears me." This is a simple but efficacious and sublime reason for acting. It contains so much good in itself that, when it is present, it renders every other reason superfluous. So you see that although obedience is called blind this is not because it is without light but because it has so much light that it does not need to take it from elsewhere. It is as though a man is said to be without light because he does not light candles when the sun shines. The Second Way. Besides this, he who obeys blindly and simply can use his spirit of intelligence in the way in which he carries out what he has been commanded. Two persons carry out a command of their superior: one of them does it without reflection, without attention, without putting his heart into the work, without think-ing of what he has been told, without endeavoring to understand what has been commanded; the other does the same work trying to know, first of all, what his supe-riot's intention was, then endeavoring to carry out that intention in the best way possible as if it were his very own. The former, you see, acts without conviction and almost in spite of himself. The other performs his duty willingly; he desires to succeed; he finds his happiness in this work since he is certain of pleasing God. The latter obeys both with simplicity and with a spirit of intelli-gence, like a living and intelligent person, not like a machine. It is obviously impossible for the superior, when he commands, to mention in detail all those things which concern the way in which the order, is to be carried out. He gives the command and then leaves the subject to carry it out. The subject who has the greater spirit of intelligence can be known immediately through observa-tion of the manner in which he carries out his duty. The Third Way. It often happens that the command is more or less general and that many things are left to the common sense of the one who receives it. In this case, the subject must be careful to note the sphere of action de-termined for him by the command of his stiperior. Within that sphere he is obliged by obedience itself to work in a personal manner, not capriciously, 9[ course, but according to sound judgment, that is to say, with a spirit of intelligence. If you consider the different members of a religious congregation, you will see that they all act through obe-dience, even the general of the order because he is subject to the pope at least. Nevertheless, obedience leaves a more or less free field to the details of their obedience. .Superiors have greater scope in this respect than subjects. According to his position, each one can .and must make use of his spirit of intelligence. In your own house, you begin from the central superior and you go down through all the other offices, each of which is subordinate to the one above and so directed by obedience. Nevertheless, all the work has to be carried out with a spirit of intelli-gence. Everyone has to use this spirit in so far as obedi-ence leaves the matter to her discretion. Take another example, a teacher or a nurse, for in-stance. Obedience imposes this work, and so the merit of obedience is present. But what a great deal of intelligent application is needed to carry it out perfectlyl And if you consider even particular commands, you will find that the greater part of them leaves some liberty where one's own intelligence can be used. For instance, you have to write a letter and have even been told in general what to write. Is it not still necessary to think carefully about the way in which the matter is to be expressed? Obedience, therefore, never determines all the actions which a person does--that would be impossible. Many commands give scope, and great scope, to the exercise of personal initia-tive. + + + Three Questions VOLUME 22~ 196~ ~ntonlo Rosmini REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS The Fourth Way. This concerns the observations which we make respectfully to our superiors about the commands they give us. These observations are perfectly lawful, but in order to make them with a true spirit of intelligence three conditions are required: first, that these observations spring simply from zeal for good and t.he glory of God, not from any self-interest; second, that they are not made lightly--in a word, that we do not say the first thing that comes into our head without having re-flected upon the matter; third, that they are made in spirit of submission so that if the superior insists upon his command the subject does not sulk but does what he is told with alacrity and joy. If the matter has great importance for the glory of God and it seems that what is commanded by the superior is not the right course, one can have recourse to a higher superior. This is not contrary to the simplicity of obedi-ence provided that the three conditions mentioned are put Jr;to practice. Superiors like to hear the observations of their subjects provided that these are offered in a spirit of charity and humility. If after all this it happens that what has to be done and what is done for obedience leads to some harmful effect (provided, of course, one is not treating of sin), the one who obeys has lost nothing. On the contrary, he gains because his act of obedience con-tains a mortification which is most pleasing to God. The man who mortifies himself in order to obey has taken great step forward on the road to sanctity both because he has denied his own will and because he has sacrificed his selblove and submitted his reason to a greater reason, God's very own, from which the command comes. That is suflacient for the first question. The second question is this: "How can one unite prac-tically the spirit of contemplation to an active life en-gaged in works of charity?" Since the union of holy contemplation with the exer-cise of works of charity is the aim of our congregation, follows that we must not be satisfied until we have ob-tained from God the light to join these two things in our-selves. I say that we must obtain from God the power of uniting contemplation and action in our life because the' only master who can teach us such a sublime science is, Jesus Christ Himself who gave us a most perfect example' of it. You see, this science consists in nothing else but' union, and the closest possible union, with Jesus Christ. In His mercy He has already prepared in His Church the' means necessary for this union. Even before we were born or knew how to desire them, these means were made' ready for us. What are these means, then, which enablel us to obtain this intimate and continually actuated union~ with Jesus Christ, this union which does not distract us from works of external charity but, on the contrary, im-pels us towards them and helps us to implement them? The first among them is the pure and simple intention of seeking Jesus Christ alone in all our thoughts, works, and actions. This uprightness of intention is harmed to a greater or less degree by any other affection which influ-ences our actions. It follows that our intention of seeking in everything Jesus Christ alone is not perfect if we have not given up self-love and sensuality entirely. I said, how-ever, that that intention which seeks Jesus Christ alone in everything is hurt by every affection which influences our internal or external actions because an affection or sensation which has no influence on our voluntary thoughts or words or actions (in which case the affection or sensation is entirely opposed by our will) in no way diminishes the purity of our intention. On the contrary, it gives it scope and increases it according to those words of God to St. Paul: "Virtue is made perfect in tribula-tion." The second means, which serves to help the first, con-sists in carrying out all our exercises of piety, and espe-cially our reception of the sacraments and our assistance at Mass, with the greatest possible fervor, tenderness, gratitude, sincerity, and intelligence. It is especially in these two acts of devotion that there is loving union be-tween Jesus Christ and the devout soul. The third means is that of endeavoring continually to keep alive the love of Jesus Christ in our hearts by hold-ing Him present, painted, as it were, before the eyes of the soul. We have to hear His words as they are recorded in the Gospel; we have to consider the actions which He performed during His mortal life and at the moment of His precious death (all these actions should be familiar to a spiritual person); we must apply His words and His example to ourselves and to all that we have to do; we must ask how He would act in our case and how He wishes us to act; when we are in doubt we should take advice, desiring sincerely to know and to do what is most perfect and is most pleasing to Him; we must listen to His voice with reverence and love when He speaks within US. The fourth means is that of beholding Jesus Christ in our neighbor. Whenever we have contact with our neigh-bor, we must endeavor to be of use to him in Jesus Christ and receive from him edification for ourselves. If we have a great zeal for the salvation of souls, we shall do every-thing in our power to win them and to bringlthem close to Jesus Christ. At the same time, we will wage war on useless and idle words and upon superfluous conversa-tioHnso awnedv vear,i nin c uorridoesrit yto. direct our every wo|rd/and work + 4. 4. Three Questions VOLUME 22, 1963 Antonio Rosrnini REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS to the betterment of others and of ourselves, and so to bring forth fruits of eternal life, two things are necessary: primarily and principally, charity should always be ou.r guiding star; secondly, we must ask from Jesus Christ the light of His prudence which multiplies the fruits of charity. A soul that always proposes to itself the good of souls in everything that it says or does will always be recollected even in the midst of many external works be-cause its spirit is always intent on charity; and he who thinks always of the charity of Jesus Christ and has noth-ing else in his heart is always recollected in Jesus Christ and in God because the Scripture says: "God is charity." To acquire the habit which enables these four means to fructify in a constant recollection of spirit even in the midst of external occupations, it is necessary to make great efforts in the beginning and mortify oneself reso-lutely with regard to everything that distracts the mind and is opposed" to this state of recollection and of the presence of God. We must ask this grace of Jesus Christ with great constancy. Only by persevering in intense prayer can the soul be established in that permanent con-dition of quiet in God which is never lost through any' external action provided the will does not give itself to evil. Here you must realise that the power which communi-cates with God and is joined to God is different from those other powers with which we work externally. When, therefore, man has come to a certain state of con-templation and union, he works with those powers which regard external actions without placing any obstacle to that supreme power which gives him quiet and rest in God. So it is that we read of certain holy persons who, while they seemed completely taken up externally, were speaking internally with their God and Creator. And this conversation of theirs, instead of impeding them, helped them to do their external works better, just as outward actions did not turn them away from their interior~ union with God. Such a desirable state is usually obtained by those faithful and constant souls who, at the beginning, suffer much and mortify themselves greatly and pray with in-tensity and wholeheartedness. This is the state which the Sisters of Providence must strive to obtain during the time of the novitiate when they have every opportunity, if only they will use it, of binding themselves indissolubly to God, the spouse of their souls. The union begt, n then must last for the whole of their life. Those sisters who have not obtained it completely during their novitiate must strive to gain it as soon as possible, But let us pass to the third question. The third question was, then: "How can one unite per- fect zeal and an ardent desire for the perfection of charity with perfect detachment from the esteem~ of others and a sincere desire for contempt and ill use." This question is no less difficult to dea,1 with than the preceding two--to answer in practice, ,I mean, not in words. But what is difficult to Jesus Christ and to those who hope in Him and pray to Him . ?~t In order to reply to this last question~of yours, I say that it is necessary to suppose in a person h foundation of solid humility. This consists in not attributing to oneself that which belongs to God alone or to other men. Humil-ity, in fact, is only justice. It is just that m~{n should think himself nothing (because he really is such) and that he should think God everything; it is just tl~at man should recognise that glory does not appertain to !nothing but to that which is everything. Therefore he should wish for no glory for himself but the greatest possible ~glory for God. When a man knows these things, it is just ~hat he should feel a certain uneasiness when he is praised by men be-cause he who is nothing cannot desire to b~ praised with-out usurping what is not proper to him. IOn the other hand, he should be joyful when he sees that men glorify God. Man however is not only nothing. He is something worse: he is a sinner (not only because of the sins which he has committed but also because of th~se which he could have committed and would commit con. tinually if God did not have compassion on him). It lis just there-fore that he should desire to be despised[and that he should rejoice when he is ill treated by mefl. Sentiments of this nature must be unshakeable and deeply implanted in the soul of a religious person. Nevertheless, this per-son must realise also that although man is a, lnothing and moreover subject to every sin, Jesus Christ lias redeemed him through His mercy freely given; He h~s saved him and clothed him with Himself in such a maqner that the Christian bears the adornments of Jesus Christ. These are more or less rich and precious according io the abun-dance of virtues, of merits, and of grace poss,essed by the Christian. A man who finds himself adorned in this man-ner is indeed mad if this causes pride in him. On the other hand, if he realises that all these treasures are given to him freely and through no merit of his own, he will humble himself and attribute to God alone dhe glory of them without usurping for himself even the sdaallest part of that glory. Yet, just as God has given to man theset'reasures of v~rtue and of grace through a wholly gratmtous love, so also He makes h~m a paruc~pator of H~s own glory. Once more, though, man must not consider this glo',ry which is g~ven to him as his own but as belonging to Jisus Christ 4, Three Questions VOLUMF 22~ 1963 4. 4. ÷ Antonio Rosmini REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS who, through His mercy, has wished to pour it out upon those who believe in Him, and to allow them a share it. With all this well understood, we can formulate certain rules which enable us to unite a desire of perfecting onr works of charity with detachment from self-esteem and, moreover, with a sincere desire of contempt (a most pre-cious thing). The rules are the following. First Rule. Generally speaking we must not give any occasion for contempt, at least through our own fault. When, despite this, we are belittled~ we must receive our humiliation with joy as something precious; we must thank God for it without fearing that it will damage our works of charity because, even if some damage does re-sult from it, this is desired by the Lord for His own ends. We ought not to turn away from it but trust in Provi-dence which will know how to obtain greater good h'om the immediate evil. Second Rule. We must never do anything whatever to gain praise from men. To do so is a most despicable act. When praise doescome of its own accord, we must at-tribute it to Jesus Christ to whom alone it belongs; we must, for our part, fear it as a danger and take precau-tions against it by internal acts of humility and contempt of ourselves; we must protest that we do not want to re-ceive it as a part of our reward. After this, if we find that praise is useful towards the perfection of our works of charity, we can take pleasure in it provided that this pleasure concerns the perfection of charity. We must not refer it simply to ourselves and we must be careful that no feeling of vanity or pride arise from it. On the con-trary, after we have received praise we should prepare ourselves for greater humiliation, persuaded that praise has made us no better than we were before. Third Rule. When we realise that the praise has been exaggerated, we should be displeased because this is con-trary to truth and justice. We should attribute it to the large heart of the one who gives it. Fourth Rule. In order to know whether we are really detached ourselves, we must see if we are glad when others are praised. You especially must ask yourselves whether you rejoice when praise is given to your sisters. Even the very smallest dislike or jealousy on this account would be a very great defect. You must be generous with others but especially with your sisters; you must consider their virtues far more than their vices; and you must try to maintain, by just means always, the esteem which others give them. Everyone must be ready to turn praise away from herself and see that it goes instead to her sis-ters. Each one must wish to be first with the work in hand and the last to be praised. This is not a dit~icult thing when a person considers his own defects and the virtues of others; when he no longer judges or condemns the defects of others; when he leaves ~ll judgment to God to whom alone it belongs; when he puts into prac-tice the lesson which Jes.us Christ tau :ht with these words: "Do not judge and you will not be judged. In fact, exposing oneself to the danger of j, " " one's brethern is the same as doing tlztdging wrongly ¯Therefore, in order not to be in danger o~ em an injury. lnj"us ¯uce against them, one must abstain [croom mevitetrinyg d aen-finitive judgment which may harm them. tions as the answers occurred to me. I hope that, if you meditate and do all this, you ever more dear to God and assure for your mortal crown. Your most affectionate fat~ Filth Rule. We must never speak of th ings for which we can be praised-~even the world considers this wrong. Moreover, although we ought not to bl'ame ourselves without good motives, nevertheless we ought to strive to cover up our virtues as far as we can andI to speak con-temptuously of ourselves sometimes provided so with sincerity This i . ¯ ~ .we can do you are speaking with yo~u rp rsaislsteewrso orrm wy iethspl et~cmerlsloyn ws h"en wh.om you are friendly, provided, once mo~, that itwl~tahs a s~ncere foundation. My dear sisters in Christ, I have replied t.o your ques- ,n our Lord will become seives an lin-er in Christ, A.R. ÷ Three Questions VOLU~ ~:,, SISTER JEAN DE MILAN, S.G.C. Toward Greater Maturity ÷ ÷ Sister Jean de Mi-lan, S.G.C., teaches psychology at Rivier College; Nashua, New Hampshire. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 518 The compatibility of neurosis and religion has re-ceived considerable attention in the psychological litera-ture of the last. thirty years. It is argued that sanctity re-quires a certain integrity in the psychic order,1 that man's struggle for perfection is directly proportionate to his mental equilibrium.2 There is no doubt, then, as to the importance of mental health in religious life where men and women consecrate themselves to God by vows to practice the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Religious commit themselves to community living and they depend mostly on one another for the works of the community and for companionship. It takes only elemental charity to prompt one to look into the dynamics of a neurosis in search of the elements incom-patible with a religious life. It is now an accepted fact that without being diagnosed psychoneurotics everyone exhibits neurotic symptoms at irregular intervals. It will be the purpose of this paper to identify these neurotic traits and to suggest measures within the framework of a religious life which can help to attenuate if not to eradicate the troublesome symptoms. The paper will be developed along twelve characteris-tics listed by Schneiders as typical of neurotic person-alities: immaturity and sensitivity, self-centeredness, un-realistic ego ideal, rigidity and anxiety, isolation, ag-gression against self, mental conflict, lack of control, sug-gestibility, irresponsibility, lack of sense of humor, and emotional instability,s These traits can be found in many people including religious; it is only when they become x Jordan Aumann, "Can Neurotics Be Saints?" Cross and Crown, v. 5 (1953), pp. 458-59. s Robert Meskunas, "Sanity and Sanctity: An Inquiry into the Compatibility of Neurosis and Sanctity," Bulletin o] the Guild o] Catholic Psychiatrists, v. 7 (October, 1960), p. 248. s Alexander A. Schneiders, Personal Adjustment and Mental Health (New York: Rinehart, 1955), pp. 390-95. a consistent and persistent pattern that/one speaks of a neurotic personality. As a type of adjustment, it is in-adequate and it represents an meffioent and unwhole-some effort to meet the demands and rdsponsibilities of daily living. / 1. Immaturity,and Sensitivity The neurotics immaturity makes allI problems and frustrations loom large and menacing, IThis tendency, often paired with regression, connotes not only loss mature habits of behavior but a consequ~ent progressive inadequacy of response. The neurotic be.comes decreas-ingly able to meet the ordinary demands for social living and begins to withdraw from acuve part~opauon, m group acuwty. He does not master hfe ~ut expects life to look after him. He is unusually sensitive to comments concerning himself and cannot tolerate/any form criticism. His sensitivity makes the stresses~ and threats of reality almost unbearable¯ Religious life favors the cultivation of a/Christianper-sonality through the development of a perfect life---~ne exquisitely balanced, of noble service to ohe's neighbor, a life most happily modeled on Christ Hi~aself. In lead-ing to spiritual maturity, religious life de~aands of one constant and close personal contacts in theI common life which comprises factors capable of actualizing the po-tentialities of the individual. To be a constructive and mature power, the individual personality ]nust exercise itself through activity upon others. Religious who can be characterized by "immaturity and sensitivity" are likely to be living in a sElf-contained world. They have refused to walk through the doors swinging outward where the self can be ektended and actualized. 2. Self-Centeredness Neuroticism is characterized by a life which is, in some respects, self-centered. It is ~mmatunty s firs.t ally. The neurotic makes his ego the center of the universe; good is what is good for the ego, bad only what unpleasant to it. Menninger, a renowned psychiatrist, b~lieves that Christ Himself laid down one of the pnnople~s of mental health that is now recognized as of paramo,unt impor-tance. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all quoted Christ when they said: "For whosoever will save his life s~all lose it, but whosoever will lose his life for my sake will save it." What better can condense the attributes of a mature per-sonality? "Some men can love others enough~ to derive ¯ more satisfaction from that than from being lo~ved them-selves. It is still a magnificent precept. If you can follow VOLUME 22, 1963 ,519 it, you will never have to make a date with a psychia-trist." 4 Religious life, because of its theocentric plan, teaches a person to surmount his egocentricity. It also provides a basis for satisfactory interpersonal relations and cha:r-ity toward fellow men in the fatherhood of God instead of in changing human sentiments.5 The spirit of self-abnegation and self-denial is fundamental to the re-ligious life. Religious are called to share one mind, one heart, one life, one love in Christ. Their social service is motivated by the love of God in the neighbor. Self-love, then, tends to decrease as a function of one's love. for others. The paradox of a self-centered religious be-comes a serious indictment. + + + Sister Jean de Milan, S.G.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 3. Unrealistic Ego Ideal The neurotic harbors an almost pathological ego ideal which prevents him from achieving a realistic attitude toward the issues and problems of daily life. His goal is a purely idealized and often artificial one. The ego ideal, the self one wants to become, may take the form of an ideal of personal conduct or it may be identified with certain desired accomplishments. The purpose of the ideal is to bring about identification with it in view of self-actualization. It emphasizes the forward movement or activity that is characteristic of living or-ganisms. The personal pattern of tendencies is projected into the future. This orientation toward future goals is commonly accepted by psychologists as a mark of matu-rity. Obviously, it reaches its highest perfection in re-ligion where man is oriented toward his ultimate goal.e Religion aims primarily at bringing persons closer to God, and by doing so it may secondarily promote their mental health. When a person believes that God assists him in a very personal way, life's perplexities and emo-tional crises become relatively unimportant. With such a clear-eyed notion of God, of His claims on the indi-vidual and His plans for him, the religious has a reliable and stable framework upon which to build a plan of life. Religion is the supreme moral virtue dominating his interior life and his relations to other human beings, and the religious view of life becomes the philosophy which dominates both thought and conduct.7 Such a man is strengthened by the sense of his own personal dignity. ' Schneiders, Personal Adjustment, p. 160. ~ James H. VanderVeldt and Robert P. Odenwald, Psychiatry and Catholicism (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1952), p. 185. e James E. Royce, Personality and Mental Health (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1955), p. 277. ~ Thomas Verner Moore, Personal Mental Hygiene (New York: Grune and Stratton, 1944), p. 236. A religious has only to gauge his serentty to evaluate himself on this trait. 4. Rigidity and Anxiety The neurotic's rigidity and anxiety d, not allow ~him to adapt to changing situations. Flexibility, suppleness, and malleability are the signs of life. I Rigidity, rigor mortis, is the sign of death. Such is the sta'te of the person who lacks malleability, whose personali~,y is excessively rigid'S Fear and anxiety, the very core of neurosis, are emo-tions which generally assume a rather egoistic character. It is well known and readily accepted thatldiffuasnexiety is reduced in the neurotic by the development of somatic symptomatology, exther phys~ogentc or psychogemc ~n nature. The physical symptoms then bdcome ways of structuring the anxiety¯ Anxiety may result from dejection flowing from one's inabilityto realize his ambitions; it maylbe due to in-jured vanity. There are surprisingly few neurotics' among people who are genuinely humble. Real Ihumil!ty is a prophylaxis against the anxieties one encounters ~n every day human interaction, for the truly huml~le person not only recognizes his own weaknesses and limperfections but he remains peaceful when his deficiencies are recog-nized by others also.9 One who has consecrated himself to God by religious vows is officially the spouse of Christ. Bu~ one can be officially the bride of Christ without having made in reality a complete sacrifice of himself in which his will is identified with and absorbed in the will of God, or without having attained to that psychologtcal state that St. John of the Cross designates as "spiritual ,matrimony." This state results in a cessation of all anxiety and a men-tal state of peace and delightA0 It is quitd remarkable how religious experiences tend to the moral perfectton of the one who has them. They give him a be~ter mode of adjustment in his relations to other humanl beings and a spiritualized conception of the nature of t~ials. 5. Isolation There is a certain amount of hostility in .he neurotic make-up coupled wtth tnabthty to get along w~th others. The psychoneurotm ts essenually a maladjusted personal- 8 Charles J. D. Corcoran, "Types Suited or Unsuited for Religious Vocation," Proceedings o] the Eighth Annual Convocation o[ the Vocation Institute (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 1955), p. 33. 0 Raphael C. McCarthy, Sa]eguarding Mental Health! (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1937), p. 253. lOThomas Verner Moore, The Driving Forces o[ H~man Nature (New York: Grune and Stratton, 1948), pp. 421-22. ÷ ÷ ÷ Maturity VOLUME 22, 1963 521 4. Sister lean de Milan, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ity and the victim of a bad system of mental habits. isolation results from a group of defense reactions, in-cluding primarily the fundamental biological reactions of defense and avoidance. The neurotic withdraws from his social group and becomes a nuisance even unto him-self. Man is a social being whose ultimate destiny is bound up with his observance of the great commandment dual charity. His perfection as a person is analogous to that of a seed which, to bear fruit, must grow outside of of itself. Religious growth in perfection can be measured in terms of one's serviceability to and influence on others. A life in the service of God and man, a wholehearted de-votion to the ideal of religious life, appears as the realiza-tion of our friendship with God. The profound feeling of loneliness and sense of isolation one experiences oc-casionally can be cured by a sincere trust in God, our friend. 6. Aggression Against Sell Neurotics are characterized by a great deal of petulance, annoyance with others, sensitivity to their at-titudes and behavior, readiness to quarrel and to find fault, and so on. Self-hatred as well as hatred of reality underlies both the spiritual and emotional disturbance. Aggression against self flows from conceited pride which has a twofold weakening effect: one of walling up its victim from reality and the other of making him super-sensitive to anything that might be construed to indicate a belittling attitude on the part of others,ix Running through all these neurotic ups and downs is a thread of chronic dissatisfaction and hopelessness which pre:;ents the eternal problem of "to be or not to be." The neurotic tries to evade the problem but no evasion is possible. He goes on unhappy and feeling offended and disregarded while it is within his power to modify, change, develop, and perfect his attitudes of mind, his emotional reac-tions, and the habits that fall under the competence of the will. It may call for the adoption of a new plan of life. Religious life, by having one strive towards the per-fection of a Christian personality, calls for a conscious development along the lines of private and social con-duct. Weekly confession is productive of a healthy ac-ceptance of one's shortcomings without introspective brooding. One is helped to come to a realistic acknowl-edgement of one's place, one's assets and liabilities, and one's dignity and dependence on God. Meditation is also a great promoter of insight. n James A. Magner, Personality and $uccessIul Living (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1945), p. 44. Mental Conflict Since it is the nature of conflict to pull the organism in different directions at the same time, deep-seated neurotic conflict is bound to disrupt the organization of personality. In the concept of. conflictI the conscience principle is of supreme importance; for it often happens that there is no real conflict between desire and its mere physical fulfillment, or between desire a~d one's sense of expediency, but that it is mainly and al~ove all between desire and the sense of duty. When impulse and fear are in conflict, the neurotic tries to resolve the conflict not by cont.trolling the im-pulse but instead by evasion and decep, uon. The fear results in behavior which seeks grauficauon while trying to keep punishment from occurring; thits strategy com-monly involves secrecy and falsehood. Th~ neurotic seeks to avoid social disapproval, but his conscle, nce hurts him. Attempts at repression may be unsuccessful and the in-dividual may resort to neurotic symptoms. Rehg~on, by reason of its experiences, behefs, and prac-uces, ~s eminently stated to the reducuon of damagxng conflict, feelings, and frustrations. It constantly reminds one of the intrinsic value and dignity of man, and of the fact that he is created to the image and likeness of God; there is no better way to offset the traumatic effects of in-feriority and the feeling of personal worthl~essness. There can be no more solid anchor than trust in! divine provi-dence and in the belief of His personal interest in each of His creatures. Conformity to the will of th~ all-wise God makes life's sorrows and fears bearable. Whlen a religious weakens under the burden of mental conflitcts, it will be wise for him to work out the debits and credits of his conduct in terms of self-will and will of G~d. 8. Lack of Control When the emotions are chronically ou~[ of control, some degree of neurosis exists. There is no neurosis with-out some evidence of failure in control an~t integrative functions. Integration presupposes wisdom ~in the intel-lect and character in the will--a scale of lvalues, self-knowledge, and habits of self-control. Most o,[ the neurot-ics are recruited among those whose will power is undeveloped. Stability amid the ups and downs of emotional moods is essential to both physical and mental heal~.h. Here the virtues of fortitude and temperance play their part. Re-ligion gives moral principles with a bac,king which makes them easier to hold onto when the going is hard. Meditation, a daily spiritual exercise for all religious, Moore, Mental Hygiene, p. 306. 4. Maturity VOLUME 22, 1963 ÷ ÷ $i~tet lean d~ Milan, $.G.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 524 readjusts their thinking to a proper sense of values. Be-sides, one is not allowed to elude the dynamics of grace for any considerable time when one truly lives his re. ligious life. 9. Suggestibility Suggestibility is closely linked with emotional im-maturity and harmful dependency. The suggestible neu-rotic is controlled by an idea or by someone else rather than by himself. His want of self-confidence makes him dependent upon others so that he leans on their judg-ments and readily yields to suggestion. He is vacillating in his purposes, uncertain in his opinions, fearful of re-sponsibility, and reluctant to assume the initiative in any activity. Such feelings batter at a person's mental in-tegrity until it is weakened or destroyed.13 Suggestibility resembles "lack of control" inasmuch as it implies lack of integration. The greater one's erno-tional vulnerability, the greater will be the predisposition to neurotic reactions. No doubt the neurotic is happier with his neurosis than he would be without it in view of all the circumstances external and internal as he per-ceives them; however, he lacks the happiness of an inte-grated personality. What VanderVeldt said of religion can be said of re-ligious life: "The condition for the mental health value of religion is that people truly live their religion.TM Perhaps not all people who are supposed to be religious and become neurotic have made their religious convic-tions an integral part of their lives. 10. Irresponsibility Sense of responsibility is the realization that one has certain duties and obligations to fulfill and the deter-mination to fulfill them to the best of one's abilities. Sense of responsibility and the willingness to accept obli-gations are dependent to a great extent on maturity. The comparison is often made of a neurosis being a closed door that bars dyn~imic development for the neu-rotic. If the doors of the neurotic hell are locked from the inside, the psychotherapist can only help the patient find the key. This is not an easy task as the neurotic pa-tient clings to his symptoms even though he is disturbed by them and seeks psychiatric help. The neurosis is a way of life that is pleasant to the neurotic, especially when he is able to manipulate the environment to meet his selfish needs. The ability to assume responsibility is in large part a McCarthy, SaIeguarding Mental Health, p. 266. VanderVeldt and Odenwald. Psychiatry and Catholicism, p. 193. matter of moral courage¯ One who has honest religious convicuons feels obhged to do something worthwhile for God and for man. He turns aside from the unwholesome pursuit of selfish pleasures. Religious Iprinciples direct his mind to the purpose of life, and in/so doing they do not deprive him of pleasure but' give it i~ abundance and permanence as he attains the great purp, ose of life in the service of God and man. If he has adopted the religious ideal with enthusiasm, then it become~ a powerful in-hibitory force against the development of unwholesome mental conditions.15 11. Lack ol Sense of Humor A good sense of humor is one of the c iteria of mental health and adjustment. It is not found in the neurotic whose life is humorless, a drab affair d~ minated by ill-ness, conflict, frustration, dissatisfaction, ~and discourage-ment. Humor is based on the perception of incongruities; it is a feeling of surprise, the joyous shock Iof discovery in our appreciation of life's incongruities. To find these con-trasts we must be self-detached,.account ourselves of little ¯ importance, look outwards and not rewards, feel drawn to people and to th~ngs ~n thanksgxwng; for humor ~s the reward o1: a wxll-to-commumty. "Wlll-to-cornmumty ~s not to be understood as a fixed determ~nauon to hve with the community but rather the will td live in a com-munity as a grateful member of a crowd,°r group. Hu-mor should be the natural endowment oflall thowsheo seek to live in religion. The test of a true sense of humor is the capacity to laugh with others at one's self; but that i~ not all. One must discover the reason for such laughter. One must learn to discover in the laughter of others s~omething like a comphment. True humor ~s akin to brotlierly love and sympathy; ~t brads us closer together and relaxes all un- ! due tensions. There is nothing so effecuve in checking the ingrowing pains of pride as a sense of h~umor. People who take themselves too seriously need the ~antidote of a good laugh to reduce values to their true llevel and to declare a permanent moratorium on manyI of their pet grievances and frustrated ambitions.17 A sense of humor combats anxiety, which is a blight on the ~ehg~ous life, by exercising the mind in a way which develops a living, vibrant suppleness. Cheerfulness is the siga which ac-companies sacrifices made out of true love, the love of God. Gloom and sadness are the signs of s~lcrifice made ~ Moore, Mental Hygiene, pp. 244-45. xo Ferdinand Valentine, The Apostolate o[ Chastity (Westminster: Newman, 1954), p. 15. x7 Magner, Personality and Success]ul Living, p. 48. ÷ Maturity VOLUME 22~ 1963 out of self-love, out of vainglory. A" sense of humor enables one to behd without breaking under the weight: of the cross, to see the proportion between the suffering,; of this life and the glory of the next, and to see oneself in the humble relationship of creature to Creator. 12. Emotional Instability Emotional instability is a dominant feature of the neurotic personality and a primary determinant of the neurotic's difficulties. Along with his emotional change-ability and high general emotionality, he exhibits be-havior that is characteristic of a spoiled child. There is an intimate connection between mental and moral health. Wholesome effective living and mental stability require an adequate scale of values, or philos-ophy of life, and a set of worthwhile attitudes and habits. These qualities can be provided more efficaciously and more abundantly by religion than anything else in one's life. Only moral virtue can give a healthy, integrated personality. The virtues moderate one's emotions and temperament, bringing them into balance. A virtuous life will result in unity and integration of personality. Summary and Conclusion Religious are not immune to neurotic behavior; at one time or another, a religious is likely to exhibit neu-rotic traits. But by its very nature, the religious life can help one counteract the possible neurotic tendencies. A brief discussion of the positive contributions of religious life to mental health was introduced with the discussion of each neurotic trait. The religious man or woman of humble faith in God, of daily prayer and consultation with God, of devotion to his or her religious duties as God has given light to see them has the assurance of a full perspective on life, health of mind, peace of soul, and a view of time in the light of eternity,is ~s James A. Magner, Mental Health in a Mad World (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1953), p. 298. 4. Sister Jean de Milan, S.G.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 526 ROBERT j. KRUSE, C.S.C. Au in Religio 'From a supernatural point of view, th, exercise of re-ligious authority and the practice of ehg~ous obedience are meaningful only when conceived as~ participations in the authority and in the obedience of Christ our Lord. eAd::a°~n:r~ ~Vreo~tern~p. t to understand authority and obedi- . ~ a ~nrist-centered way of ~ife, we become gud~ of gloss misunderstanding In such }a situ . - gardless ot the reasonableness "a n d t h et ingenudittlyO oIlf~ oreu-r solutions to the problems which religiouslauthority and religious obedience pose, such solutions remain void of genuine supernatural worth. In discussing authority and obedience, therefore, our first and constant care must be to associate them with our life in Christ. ~therwise our discussion will remain purely human and natural and a ~. consequence sterile Attempts ,~ ~-~ - ~-,. ¯ s. hfe~as ~,s Christian a"nd relig~io tu~s x lcifaett~ ~m Uu~lvt lbnee wanaal~zffd in divine terms. To confront supernatural reality with purely natural reflections betokens a wand of reverence ~r~he g~dly way of life with which we ~re ~a . ~st our Lord. ~ ceu ~n In this article we will speak of authority in the r - ligious life. In a subsequent article we will ~er some r~ flections on religious obedience. Of the t~o topics the latter is the more all,cult. Both are intimately connected. Afith~rity and obedience are relative terms so that what-ever ,s said o~ the one necessarily contains implications for the other. In our discussion of authority ~e ~ill group our considerations about three focal poiqts: first, re-ligious authority and the mystery o[ the ~ncarnation; second, religious authority and the imitation of Christ our Lord; and third, religious authority and] the mystery o~ the Redemption. Divine life flows to the souI through many channels. Ultimately, however, all of those channels drink at a sole spring and that spring is Christ. It is He who gives ÷ ÷ Robert J. Kruse, C.S.C;, is a faculty member ot? Holy Cross Fathers Semi-nary; North Easton, Massachusetts. VOLUME 22, 1965 Robert CK,~.Ce., REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 528 to the soul living water, "a fountain of water, springing up unto life everlasting" (Jn 4:14). What is it that the Christian and that the religious seeks? He seeks a share in the life of God. For without a share in the life of the eternal God, man is deprived of all eternal significance. Unless a man looks outside of himself to a higher order, to the transcendent order, to God, in search of an ex-planation for his own existence, unless a man looks be-yond self to Another for the fulfillment of his own noblest hopes, he remains imprisoned without hope in the finite, in the created, in the temporal order--with no more persona/significance than that of any other transi-tory phenomenon. Ultimately, all religious questions re-duce themselves to this sole question: the nature of man's relationship to God, the possibility of man's sharing in the life of God. For apart from such a possibility man becomes merely a moment in time. And self is incapable, totally incompetent to satisfy its own profoundest aspira-tions. So that man seeks a way out of the maze of human, created, and limited reality, finite love, imperfect good-ness and truth, a way which will lead him to the enjoy-ment eternally of unlimited reality, infinite love, perfect truth. That way is Christ. Christ is the sole way. There is no other way. Among all communications of divine life, none re-motely approaches that enjoyed by the holy humanity of Christ our Lord. For in all truth the human intellect, the human will, and the human body of our Savior are the intellect, will, and body of a divine person. No created being save the holy humanity of Christ, that hu-manity f.ull of grace and of truth, enjoys this personal union with God. Truly in the womb of the Virgin Mary are celebrated the nuptials of God and of man. In the mystery of the Incarnation, we witness the wedding of the divine and the human in the person of the Word made flesh. And in virtue of His holy humanity, the Son may be said to render perfect obedience to His Father and our Father. "Therefore in coming into the world, he says., a body thou hast fitted to me .B.ehold, I come., to do thy will, O God" (Heb 10:5-7). It is indeed significant that because of His obedience our Savior is glorified and exalted. "Appearing in the form of man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even to death on a cross. Therefore God also has exalted him" (Phil 2:7-9). It is equally significant that because of His obedience our Savior lays claim to His Mystical Body, the Church, and wins authority over that Body. "Christ is head of the Church, being himself savior of the body," so that, "the Church is subject to Christ" (Eph 5:23-24). God has made all things "subject under hwihsi cfhe eint,d eaendd i sh hiims b hodey ""a (vEepn hea a2so: 2 'o2-v--e2 r-~ ,a) . r/t t,h, e_ C h u r c h., indeed would onlyY g uruhdrigsitn. gOlyn athssee ontth teor lhthaen dw, imll aon y." sup.eriors. The obvious explanatiofi is a~t hand: ~h:uir. Perxor" ,s not Chtr. iIsn d e e d , t h e s u p e./rior ma n be conspicuously Christlike T~;o ~.2, .y ot. even. course, irrelevant. For the. s.u. p,~er-i~olras naauttlhoonr iat s", .ot authority of Christ even if tbo . ¯ ,~ - y as the --- ~uperaor § conauct is far t~oro gmr ~asnpr itshtlei kper.o Tfohuen rdo osti gonf itfhicea pnrcoeb olefm.~/tihiees I innc aa rfnaailtuioren. God has willed to use human channels fo~" the communi-cation of divine life. First and foremost, t~e holy human-ity of the Word Incarnate. That humani,ty is, of course, "tried as we are in all things except sin" ~Heb 4:15). But in His Mystical Body the Incarnation ~1of the eternal Word is extended through all the centuries of man's pilgrimage in exile. And to His Body C~rist has com-municated His authority. In the Church~.~which is the prolongation through history of the mystery of th c,.,arn.auo.n--davme life is communicated ;,,! ,.~" .~__ t, oa. lhe Church can do this only becaus~ Christ is her Head; and in Christ human nature has lald claim on the divine, on the life of God. So that in th~ Church, the Body of Christ, the perfection and humanity receives truly divine gifts, fduilflfneess of Chri.~t's There is, of course, this crucial our Savior's fence between is --' r-. ,., r~.er ~s holy, perfectly sinl,~ss; the latter str~lYesP:~t~ut~iYn "fer~n'wnghi21.y. In the lmeantime it ~vL~.rot~uide of the holiness of its Hena ~dt. sBeuetk ws rite.~h:daelm Cphtriiosnt oin r - h.as c,o,.mmumcate.d to His Mystical B.bdy a arti~i- ~m,~e, ~sni.n ~f.un ltnaless osw on[ a tuhttaato Mrit"ys, tai c~aa]r-t i_cri, ~.,.;.~ i ~soay cann~o, ~t msucbnv eevretn. t~r,~a, ~,~,,.e~ m_t_ynstee.rry l nofta t}hlie. bIlnec naronra itmm.np ercecmabalien si m~ plliivciirt~lyg aty today and everyday. Such religious are ~unwilling to admit that divine life can be communicated to them through human channels---channels ¯ frailties which the very term "humans"u ibmjepclite tso. Talhlu tsh ien our treatment of authority, perhaps our basic need is to emphasize more the "humanness" of it~that it is the ex- ÷ tension and continuation of the mystery of ~he Incarna-tion, the m)stery of God's making His own a human ÷ nature in order thereby to redeem human nature. y our Loro resid " ~mperfect and sinful human bein¢~. . I , ~ an --~, we mUSt also alIlrm ~ut~i~y VOLUME 22t 1963 5,?,9 4" 4" Robert Kru~e, C£.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 53O that it is a duty incumbent upon those in authority to become increasingly perfect and sinless. In this effort those in authority have a sure guide: our Lord's exercise of authority. We have here a question not of what author-ity might be but of what authority must be. That is to say, there is an obligation for those in authority to ad-minister their trust in a Christlike manner. It is not, therefore, a question of some vague, elusive ideal but rather a question of serious moral obligation. Of cour:;e, as in every creaturely .undertaking, perfection is never totally realized. That does not, however, render its quest any less imperative. What, in more concrete .terms, does the Christlike exercise of authority involve? Fundamental, it seems to us, is the sense of service. "But Jesus called them (the apostles) to him and said, 'You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. Not so is it .among you. On the contrary, whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant; and whoever wishes to be first among you, shall be your slave; even as the Son of Man has not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many' " (Mt 20:25-28). In the last analysis it is the functidn of those in authority in the religious life to contribute by their direction to "building up the Body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the deep knowledge of the Son of God, to perfect manhood, to the mature measure of the fullness of Christ" (Eph 4:12--13). Religious authority, then, stands in service of Christ's Mystical Body. The superior must never forget that his commands are addressed to a subject in whom the Spirit of Christ dwells. Let those commands never grieve that Spirit. Authority's commands must come from Christ: and be directed to Christ. That is, the superior must speak words which are sensitive to the Spirit of Christ within himself--words which the Spirit of Christ within the subject recognizes as springing from a kindred Spirit. It is the same Christ who both commands and obeys. Con-siderations of a purely human kind, attitudes which re-flect a purely natural assessment of the nature of author-ity-- these are entirely out of place and constitute a degradation of religious authority. Fundamentally, the superior's role is to act as an instrument for the more per-fect rule of the Spirit of Christ over the hearts and over the conduct of those vowed to religious obedience. In the fulfillment of this role, external trappings de-signed to enhance authority's position are of dubious value. One of the most gifted theoIogians in the Church today writes in connection with this point: In the life of the cloister there are still to be found age-old rituals governing the etiquette of superiors, involving demands of respect from subjects, secretiveness, ma ifestations of su-periority, appeals of superiors to a hi her wi ¯ 5°.? escens,o etc. All hould m' ,hs?lay . or w.Juter away. ~UDerlors s .,~a o ~ ~ permitted to me worm aroudd ,~.~ cast a long ~nd quiet lance at fluential, who re~e~'L~ff?c, . w~o ~re truly ]powerfu~ and in- ¯ ~ a ~reat ~ea/ ot unquestioning obedience pompous front. Superiors should oyu, inetflly i andsmeciut trhitayt ibne cheirntadi na Circumstances their subjecu know ~ore than ' matter at hand? ~ey do about displays of condescension "ro~w st o:- these ourel x , . y e 3ernal competence of the superi8or m proDort~on to ¯ . The truly l~r--- the ~n recognizes spontaneously the 7 ~ cat superior speaking, of all these trappings.i nInsi gthniisf ircea~nacred, ist pisir situuraelllyy salutary to read and meditate upon our Eord's r " . sh~p w~th H~s apostles. Nowhere in the ,ospelse~a~'°~e find our Lord making a fuss over SUch trivia, "You me Master and Lord, and you say well, fqr so call therefore, I the Lord and Master have wasOed yIo aumr f~e eIft,, you also ought to wash the feet of one a,nother. ~i~ ~u ]~ ~x~le, that as I hav~ done t~J ~ ~ ~noum oo (in 13:13-15). Regarding the matter of superiors' see~I i'ng coun~s e' l, some reflections are in order. Today, perha~ps more than at any time in the past, given 'the comolekit o tieth-cent . t Y f twen- . ury apostohc activity, it ~s'urgent ~hat superiors tsheeek i nadspviicrae.t iHonolsy o Mf oththee Hr tohle. ,C ch~ur:c_h:, .e v e ~ .s-e ~ns .i t~"ve to necessity in th~ ~-:-~'o- u s y r ~uVle-s- tw~,h picrohw sohees dd oto~tr tohvise ~ve ~rv 5nao-tt -t.hueg amd- vo¯rice es eorniol ubsu -ot uestions t-h.~ ~,k,u .~. .~ o tfLter n r~e" ulres y the consent of councId.ors asq well. Superiors should gladly reco~ize the Chu ~ch's w" -~d-~ta_g ~ersd taoi nojne gg aai~nde dw firlolimng sleye akvina~il ctohue-m~s :e1l~v,e_s7 o.~'-t~sff~ any reason w ,, the., .k_. ,. ,o . ,,o~,. l~or is there sistance and ehn~l i,g~hyt e~n-mouelnat ctoo nthnonsee t /o~eciria sl~l,a arpcpho fionrt eads-for this task. To put the matter very frankl ~: the Holy Spirit is perfectly capable of inspiring eact and every religious in a community with both a supern ttural view-point and useful practical suggestions re. arding the apostolic work entrusted to the communit, blu.n gtin the s " ' . , Far from + we!gh carefullyu tbhjee cstusp mernmaatut~ravl em, ethrieto s u- e~-'m--r sh,ou!d courage the religious to appropriate ~aoc otit oa n~ wtophoesnal ,p eon-s-sible, and in every case welcome the subject's interest and enthusiasm. It is false to suppose that ;vorthwhile l0 t0 K9~ar0l )R, aph,n 3e~r,4 S. .J . , " R e f l e c t i o n s o n O b c, dience," Crc Currents v. Authority VOLUM~ 22, 1963 Robert K~,r~u.~se,., REVIEW FOR REL)GIOUS ideas can emanate exclusively from those in authority. Such an attitude is an affront to the Holy Spirit. Related to the matter of seeking counsel is the matter of openness. Some superiors, regrettably, are excessively secretive even regarding insignificant daily directives. Many of their undertakings are shrouded with an aura.of mystery. The real mystery is what advantage they think derives from such a procedure. It is small wonder that subjects fail to display much enthusiasm for the su-perior's proposals when they are rarely invited to share in the superior's confidence. We would recommend to such superiors prayerful reflection on the words of our Lord spoken in the intimacy of the Last Supper. "No longer do I call you servants, because the servant does not know what his master does. But I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from my Father I have made.known to you" On 15:15). What a contrast between the conduct of our Lord towards iHis apostles and the conduct of some superiors towards their religious. In this connection it is most helpful for supe-riors to cultivate within their communities a family spirit and that holy familiarity which the term "family" suggests. Nothing is to be gained by remaining aloof and distant. How can one who is aloof and distant touch and quicken the hearts of his subjects with the Spirit.of Christ? We might consider many other practical questions re-garding the Christlike exercise of authority. More im-portant, though, than coming to grips with parti(:ular problems is grasping the ideal which will serve as a guide for the resolution of every problem. That ideal is at once easy to understand and difficult to practice. What would our Lord do if He were in my place? How would He handle this problem? How would He win to Himself this person? To be a good superior demands intimate knowl-edge of our Lord and constant docility to the inspirations of His Spirit. Finally, some comments regarding authority and the mystery of the Redemption. The religious life, as all Christian life, is at the same time both incarnational and eschatological in character. It looks beyond the temporal order to the creation of new hea,~ens and a new earth. Indeed, the mystery of the Incarnation is itself the prin-ciple of this transformation. God makes Himself a sharer in our humanity only that we in turn might: share in His divinity. And ultimately our divinization will be accomplished solely by our personal sharing in the mys-tery of the Redemption. We must make our own the mys-tery of Christ's passover from death to life. With Christ, the great wayfarer, we journey each day through ter-restrial exile and affliction to our celestial dwelling and resurrection. "Wherefore we do not los! heart. On the contrary, even though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by d~y. For our pres-ent light affliction, which is for the moment, prepares for us an eternal weight of glory that is beyond all measure (2 Cor 4:16-17). Every Christian in the fulfillment of h, is vocation en-counters the cross of Christ. Justly does Saint Paul declare that we are ' always beanng about ~n our Ibody the dying of Jesus, so that the life also of Jesus maylbe made mani-fest in our bodily frame" (2 Cor 4:10). Certainly the re-hg~ ous superior ~s no exception to th~s rule. The exercise of authority is a cross. The superior shoul~l willingly em-brace that cross recognizing that only by Isharing in the mystery of the cross is self-love subject to passion and to death and the love of God to renewal and ~o resurrection. "This saying is true: If we have died withI him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall rilso reign with him" (2 Tim 2:11-12). To exercise authority with anxious care is the supe-riot's cross. It requires no small self-sacnfic,e. On the con-trary, thanks to the constant demands of all kinds made ¯ upon his time, his energies, and his interest, the superior is truly "poured out in sacrifice" (2 Tim 4:8). A continu-ing death to self-love attends the wgflant superior s com-mitment to his holy trust. In this context welmust address ourselves to one problem in particular--a problem which occasions the deepest suffering for the conscientious su-perior. Stated in the broadest possible term~s, that prob-lem is one simply of remaining faithful t~o the super-natural order m the face of the pressures wli~ch a purely natural wewpo~nt bnngs to bear on rehgmus hfe and the apostolate. How many superiors are d~str, essed by the disintegration of spiritual values with which they are periodically confronted? How are they to res~pond to this challenge? Doubtless, the question is a vexifi~.g one. In such cases what is clear is that the super!or must re-main faithful to supernatural values. Spec~ous as the temptation to compromise may be, such compromise un-dermines. the very structure of religious life. S~metimes it may appear that only by making concessions to man's innate self-indulgence can harmony be maintained. Are not such concessions a mistake? Has not our ILord Him-self declared: "Do not think that I have come to send peace upon the earth; I have come to bring alsword, not peace., and a man's enemies will be those of his own household" (Mr 10:34-36). Obviously we are not sug-gesung that the superior pounce upon every trifling de-parture from regular &sc~phne. Shortcomings of this kind are usually nothing more than manifestations of our common frailty in persons of genuine goo~,d will. To ÷ ÷ ÷ Authority VOLUME 22, 1963 533 ÷ Robert Krt~e, .S.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 534 tax the subject's good will over every peccadillo is hardly a Christlike manner of exercising authority. The situ;t-tion we envisage is far different. We have in mind the case of the religious who deliberately and systematically by his actions and attitudes exhibits practical contempt for the religious life. Cost what it may the superior mtlst courageously resist such a betrayal of religious values. To permit flagrant disregard for the supernatural order to go unchecked is intolerable. It proves demoralizing for those religious honestly striving to fulfill their vows and scan-dalizing for the faithful who almost inevitably become acquainted with such a state of affairs. Certainly in all such cases those in authority must dis-play arl exquisite kindness and sympathy, tempering the rmness of their decisions with tangible benevolence, t,ut I firm tliey must be--for the sake of the religious life it-self. Let St. Paul's exercise of authority be their model: "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not make war according to the flesh; for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but powerful before God to the demolishing of strongholds, the destroying of reasonings--yes, of every lofty thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every mind into captivity to the .obedience of Christ" (2 Cor 10:3-6). Surely no cross burdens the zeal-ous superior with more anguish than the recalcitrant subject. It taxes both his prudence and his courage to the utmost. Only let him recognize in tiffs cross an instrument for his personal sanctification. For the realization of God's will let him sacrifice his own popularity. To act with firmness and decision seems temperamentally almost impossible for many superiors. Nevertheless, their voca-tion demands just such firmness. In their weakness let them surrender to the Spirit of Christ their Lord, the Spirit of fortitude, who has been poured forth in their hearts. By so doing they will purify their own souls and will contribute significantly to the sanctification of their subjects. For their course of action is self-crucifying and so redeeming. Regarding positive steps to be taken in such situations, it is extremely difficult to generalize. Two suggestions come to mind which may prove of some utility. First, when dealing with such cases it would seem particularly desirable for the superior to work in close harmony with his councilors. Such collaboration contributes signifi-cantly to an objective evaluation of the problem at hand, minimizing the danger of the superior's being prompted by merely human considerations in his analysis of the situation. In addition, one or another councilor may be in a much more advantageous position to cope with the problem than the superior himself. Second, it would seem a duty incumbent upon the superior to neutralize and even to turn to the spiritual advantage of the corn .any d!sedification or scandal ar;~;n~ t_AJ_ ,mun"l.ty ject's behavior Cann~, -~-- .o,,:~ ~,ul~ an unruly sun- ,,L L.c superior exploit this oppor- ~t~rn2~aYn~n~?Cf~lrC~etaer:nnce~hn:ne~ elli:k,gelo,u as s~ ;wttiteuldle sa osf tuon- encourage prayer and sacrifice 'both for dheir delino confrere and for their own . : ¯ v,--o~vc,ance ~n noeiity. This ~uh~ULnb7 odn°noe;~of_ co,urse: ,m. a spirit of h~mility. Passinl~ tiit-~rS snoulo. I~e SCFU U ' " violatioofn - - . e rChh ri.s.t.h. kpe sIpoiruit swlhyi cahv ~ohoiduled dan aimsa ate ! the entire community. Rather, a sense of cornorate re-sponsibility and an awareness of man's Inborn weakness should be developed. In some such anner as this can the superior offset the harm done y th problem reli-b ! gtous in his community. In this article we have attempted to relate the exercise of religious authorit,, to the fun-'- our faith¯ the Incar~nation a--~ -u~a-m- e,~n t-a tt m. ysteries ot ¯ .tt ttte l~eclemDtlon A from such a vision of .~-^-: . t : 2 part dn~,.~.~u ,.~.,. ,~.~. . -,,~:,~,tLty mere e, XlStS tlae real ,at purely natural attitudes will invade our minds and shape our thinking along lihes devoid supernatural dimensio¯ns Such in~r,,o:~-- l_ . - of dured. That is why, practically "s -n~e,a~k,-isn c,~an .nt.o_t _o e, en- ,- ~,,I t,e sole tr .bmee Cashurrt.set s0 ,of wthne eCxherirsctiisaen oe¯xf eirtc ~ioo^,~-- u^-t', -a.".u.[ni o, r¯ltv can onu.e devoted some attention to ¯ xoi tHIS reason we also ¯ authori"ty and ~th e ~¯m~¯ tation of Christ. In closing, we would recommend to all who seek more knowled,,e on the su~-:- - -- ,~ d- ivine Lord¯ For l~ove of Him iosj cbcotr nm oatf t~,~kenyo wstuleadyg oeu orf Him,. and out of love shall grow likeness. And ultimate that ~s all Christian authority needs: to be ~hristlike. ly + + ÷ Authority VOLUME 22~ 196~ BROTHER PHILIP HARRIS, O.S.F. The Parent's Role in Guidance 4. Brother Philip Harris, O.S.F., is the vice president of development of St. Francis College; Brooklyn, New York. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS One area of formal guidance1 in the schools today which has been most neglected but which holds the great-est promise for the future is parent guidance. Although extensive training is now provided for a profession or an occupation, little assistance is offered to the newly-mar-ried couple facing one of the most challenging human responsibilities--the rearing and education of children. The average parents want to do a good job of raising their offspring as useful citizens. But they need the~ as-sistance of educators who are willing to share the fruit of their own special knowledge and experience. Such a partnership with parents can be a.great aid to the over-burdened and under-staffed guidance department as it seeks to help a maximum number of youth in adjusting to a confusing and complex twentieth-century world. By right, and in fact, the parent is the child's principal counselor. Jusot as parents have the primary duty to edu-cate their children, so they have the basic obligation of providing sound guidance to them. Any guidance en-deavors of the school should be based on this premise, for educators only supplement the counsel given to students by their parents. The influence of parents on a child's life decisions is formidable. It is the task of the school also to aid the parent so that the young person makes the correct decisions and attains optimum personal development. It is understandable that in this age of rapid techno-logical changes, vocational opportunity, and personal challenge parents would look to the guidance specialist to help them discover, develop, and direct all of the God-given potentialities of the child. The theme of this con-ference is "The Adjustment of Young People to a World in Accelerated Technical and Economic Evolution." Par-ents possess the opportunity to assist today's youth to be- 1 This is the text of a paper delivered to the International Con-ference on School and Vocational Guidance, Paris, July 16-22, 1962. come tomorrow's successful adults. Ho!ever, the faculty in general and the guidance worker in[particular must help parents to understand the child of tl~ television and the space age, to project themselves into the future so as to determine educational and vocational possibilities for their children in the decades ahead, to appreciate the school and the guidance department's objectives and practices, to utilize good principles of met tal hygiene and right living in their families. Such a plan for cooperative and compiementary child formation by parents and educators must be~in with the pre-school youngster and continue throul~h ~aigher stud-ies. How to accomplish this will be the Isubject of this paper. Before examining the methods for peiping parents to fulfill their natural role as guides, it is ~seful to realize the advantages of such emphasis through t ae student per. sonnel services of the school. Values o[ Parent Guidance A parental guidance program strengthms a schooI's guidance efforts in the following ways: l) Teachers are limited in the amoun~ of time and energy they can devote to helping pupils so~ve their prob-lems and meet life's challenges. Trained counselors, even on the high school level, are few in nurhber and can guide only a fraction of the student bod~. Any sound guidance practices, therefore, that parents can utilize with their offspring will lessen the educator's load and permit school counselors to do more effectiv~ worL 2) Prevention of more serious problems ~hould be the aim of .any. paren.tal gu¯idance effort. If p~rents can be alerted to signs ot emotional disturbances, .to the effects of broken homes or rejection, to their children,s needs especially psychological), to the acceptance Iof their chil- ~tgi~srd.less ,of speci.a.1 talent or limitation~, then many 3) Througinh stchheoiro cl ownitlalc bt ew riethd upcaerden otsr ,a evdouicdaetdo.rs may gain insight into the family background ofttheir pupils and are better able to understand each child! 4) Parents gain a greater appreciation of]the school's program and the teacher's efforts. As a resuh, they may give increased support to school activities, fcr they truly appreciate every endeavor made for their chil ~l's improve-ment. Some of the means for translating these calues into realities through the school's guidance effor follow: Parent Clubs Teachers are familiar with various home-sc/~ ol groups, such as the Parent Teacher Association and Fathers' or Mothers' Guild approach. Such or~anization~. o ]. however, ÷ ÷ ~Pmarde Gntusidance VOLUME 22, 1963 4" 4" 4" Phili~ HaOr.Sr.iFs,. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS should have a two-way effect. The parents may raise funds for special school projects and assist in other ways; the school should provide, in turn, programs that help the members do a better job in their role as parents. Par-ents with exceptional training and skills may be willilxg to aid pupils and other parents with special knowledge and experience. For example, speakers for a career day can be recruited from a parents' guild; or parents who are doctors, nurses, or psychologists, can be called upon to address the parent group. Volunteer workers of all types from among the pupils' parents may offer free service to the school. A well-functioning parent club can be a deterrent to juvenile delinquency and offer good leisure time activ-ities for both parents and children. It not only will bring the school and home into closer cooperation but also may promote greater harmony and understanding between parent and child. Parent Forums Any aspect of child development or improvement serves as a good topic for a parent forum. It is best ithat parents be invited together who represent children of distinct grade or age levels, such as the upper, middle, or primary grades, or the pre-adolescent or adolescent pe-riod. Thus, there will be some common meeting ground for discussion. The student's intellectual, vocational, so-cial, or moral development can serve as the basis for a number of group conferences. This type of affair can be conducted in various ways. One is to have a guest or faculty speaker whose address is followed by questions from the floor. Another procedure brings in a specialist whose talk is discussed by a panel of parents with a faculty member as moderator. Parents of the graduating or senior class often profit from an educational forum to which representatives of high schools (or colleges) which the graduates will likely attend are invited for individual questioning or group discussion. These general meetings of parents are most effective when they do not take more than two hours for the total program. They may be preceded by some type of audio-visual aid while the assembly hall is slowly filling up. Sometimes films on adolescence or family mental hygiene may be projected and then followed by a discussion led by one of the faculty. Usually parent forums are held in the evening, but a week end or holiday afternoon may prove appropriate. Refreshments served after such events help teachers to meet the parents in a relaxed, social atmosphere. Parent Group Conferences These conferences are small group me~etings of parents and a teacher. If a guidance counselor or~ school l~sychol-ogist is available, these conferences may be arranged with him. These group interviews run'from ~fteen to twenty ~tin.utes and ,gi.ve the parents an. opport,~nity to present ae~r parental ~mpressions and experiences and to hear the educator's evaluation of their child. ~uch interviews have great potential for "preventive" ~ ¯ cational, vocational, or social areas. Tclo{uen tseechhn~n iinq ueed uis, most effecti.ve when these conferences a~e arranged parents a common problem, rot ex!mple, ents of students failing the sam~ two school subjects or the parents of pupils who are truant or.l.the parents of students who are withdrawn and antisocial or the parents of "exceptional" children--such natural groupings will permit the process of multiple counselin~ to take place. The teache~-counselor must prepare for ~he conferences by studying the family background anbdeI t¯horoughly fwahmosilei apra rwenitths mthaek ec uump tuhlea tgirvoeu pre. cords of the studbnts ,u. oSno motm tet~ i.sn p.terorecsetidnugr ree sbeya rPcrho hfaess sboeresn Sreapwo r~tnedd Mona ah vlearr iaa-t Chico State College in the United States. Their gr0ut~ counseling approach included botfi parents and student~. It centered a~0und underachieving pupils and involved a series of eight sessions where freedom of e~xpression was uppermost. First, students were asked to sit in a circle of six with a counselor, while the parents Isat off to the side as observers. Then, after personal introductions stu-dents were asked to express their feelings a~s to why ,they were ,u.nderach.ieving. The sessions were structured aproos.tut~.moan sK weye rteo ps,w cist cohre qdu, ewstiitohn tsh. eA pfaterre nthtsir itn3 ~th mei ncuirtcesle the and the youth as observers. Prior to such meetings~, it is helpful if both parents and students fill out an inventory of their attitudes toward each other and sc[ ool. Gradually, parent and offspring will gain insight into their own personal relationships and uriders~ anding as to why the child is not obtaining better grade.,. A plan for improvement can be developed, and a gap of time be-tween the fifth and the last two sessions will )ermit them to try out these ideas in practice. Then, th~ final guid-ance periods can be devoted to reports of success or fail-ure as well as a realistic review with implications for the future. The initial results of this technique i adicate that such family counseling can become a useful part of the school guidance program. Parents and Guidance + + ÷ Philip Harris, O .S.F. REVIEW FOR REL]G|OUS 540 Individual Parent Guidance Teachers and administrators have long met with par-ents on an individual basis to discuss their mutual con.- cern--the student. Frequently, such meetings were con-cerned with an analysis of the pupil's problems, abilitiet~, potential, and plans. However, this old technique can be made more effective by the use of some modern ap-proaches. For example, with the student's permission, his autobiography, anecdotal records, test results and ventories may be interpreted and discussed with parents. Another useful procedure is role-playing--the teacher switching to the role of the parent or the child and pos-sibly the parent switching to the role of the student. Or, the youth may be invited to attend the session to explain his feelings or position, or to "role-play" his parents. Parent Bulletins and Reports In addition to the written reports commonly given to parents by schools, bulletins which interpret standard-ized test results may be prepared to help parents gain greater insight into their child's abilities, aptitudes, and interests. A newsletter can be issued by the guidance de-partment, principal, or parent organization on: com-munity guidance and psychological resources; suggested means of helping a child with specific physical, psycho-logical, or social problems; a bibliography of free or in-expensive publications useful in the guidance of youth, of use to parents; scholarship or student aid opportuni-ties; entrance requirements of local institutions of higher education; projects for family group recreation; adoles-cent needs and conflicts; and principles of good human relations in the home. In working with modern parents, it is wise to consider the changes that have taken place in parental attitudes toward education and their goals as parents. The Chang-ing American Parent by Daniel R. Miller and Guy E. Swanson (New York: Wiley, 1959) is but one example of published reports that provide much light on the sub-ject. Many guidance books for teachers contain a chapter or two on working with parents. A recent volume, for example, Guidance in the Elementary Classroom by Gerald and Norma Kowitz (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959) devotes the last chapter to "Counseling with Par-ents." Another recommended work is Adlerian Family Counseling edited by Dreikurs-Corsini-Lowe-Sonstegard (University of Oregon Press). The school's attempt to aid the parents to fulfill their God-given responsibilities as guides to their own children will undoubtedly prove fruitful in the good accomplished attaining the objectives of the school guidance service, in saving on teacher time and energy, and in the, good public relations thus promoted. SISTER TERESA MARY, C.S.CI Religious 0 ce and Critical Thinking It is often said that we are living in a critical t.he people of the present tim . L . a.ge,. T, hat mose of the ,~, o,~L- _, ~- ,~-,: naor,e critical t~aa consc.musne~s s. .o.f. t~h,e,, ~co, mat pteIeaxstl tmy opfa rtth, efr uon~i tvheerisre g. eMateenr recognize that they must constantly adapt [their thinking to manifold new discoveries being made.~ While it is not necessary to doubt the existence of absolutes as some of I our contemporaries do, the need. to recq~ze relative aspects of man's being and knowledge o~ the world is much more apparent today than ever b~fore A new manifestation of the evolutionary ~rocess in th ha,s . ~coe ab?y~ largely because ot t~he ~e~t ro e world ~twy esncthioetlhar cs einnt uthreiesse Mpeoriroedosv eisr, bethe ~ i"nng o cw o¯~m ~em,~ u g -ne i c a a a.te c~ea~ath m content and method to large masses of or " ~eople. The spread of scientifi- -~ . ,-- , dreary the development of the crit~ic ~a-lu supginrti tn eacmespsnargil ym menea. nIss this critical spirit a good or an evil for them? than e a s g ~re Although the wordc .n.t~.osm,, often e a to break down some existing structurec ownintohtoeus ta desire apprec~atmn of facts~ ~t need not have th:~ 1 . ~rop~r meamng As a genuine intellectual effort, ~,t~s ure-sfuolrttsu nmaatye more often be presupposed as good and ~onstructive. Criticism is usually offered out o~ a sincere ~ntent'on to better the existing structure, not to destroy i~, and~is the m~ural product o~ a creative mind. Without seein~ the ~ ly as the values which he holds have been critically examined, Sister Teresa ra~"mnally acceet~d,.an~ then u~e Mary, 5 as general guides to behavior is in-ra~ her than as ng~d mvmlable principles can the perso~ be character- structor in theolo~ ~zed ~ liberally educated." Paul L. Dressel, "'The Role of Critical at St. Mary's Col-Thinking in Acquiring Enduring Attitudes and lege; Notre Dame, w~th Revolutionary Chan~es ~ . Know'ledge to Deal Indiana. National Con er~ . ~. ?~.u, a paper presente~ to a. 19 .~ f . u n~gner Education in Ch'cz£. ~ ~' v0~v~ ~, ÷ + ÷ Sister Teresa Mary, C.S.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS deficiencies in the current state of our existence, individ-ually and within a group, we cannot even maintain our present good, much less acquire all the good that is po:~- sible for us.2 The tendency of the modern age to be critical can, if rightly exercised, open up wider oppo:r-tunities for full human existence. Having recognized the value of the critical process in human activity, we come to the problem of this article, to consider the relationship of criticism to the virtue o[ obedience in the religious life. While attachment to per-sonal judgment has always been the crucial issue in the question of obedience, this matter takes on added dimen-sions in an age which emphasizes the value of a good, free, critical personal judgment. When a subject has been educated to think for himself, there is bound to be a se-vere adjustment for his personality if he is obliged to give this up in the interest of religious obedience. Part of our problem will be to determine whether the subject of obe-dience is obliged to give up personal judgment in any way and, if not, how he is to coordinate a conflicting judgment with the will of the superior. The following examples from current articles should suffice to show that there are a variety of answers to the problem of obedience. These answers have seldom been compared so that some sharp differences among them could be properly noted. It will be well to look at them first before trying to answer whether religious obedience and critical thinking are compatible. All authors, of course, agree on two points: the supe-rior's will is to be obeyed in all commands which are not sinful, and this obedience must be more than a mere external execution of the command; as a genuine human act it must flow from self-determination to the goodness of the act of obedience. The religious subject recognizes in the light of faith that the superior has been invested with authority in a congregation estab

Issue 68.4 of the Review for Religious, 2009. ; Theology and Life Religion; Life Models ,Exemplars of Faith Sharing ,Experience QUARTERLY 68.4 2009 Review for Religious fosters dialogue with God, dialogue with ourselves, and dialogue with one another about the holiness we try to live according to charisms of Catholic religious life. As Pope Paul Vl said, our way of being church is today the way of dialogue. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published quarterly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Telephone: 314-633-4610 ¯ Fax: 314-633-4611 E-Maih reviewrfr@gmail.com ¯ Web site: www.reviewforreligious.org Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©200~ Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribution, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. ~ gournalof Ca~hohc ~pirituah~y eview for religious Editor Associate Editor Scripture Scope Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming sJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Eugene Hensell OSB Mary Ann Foppe TracT Gramm Judy Sharp Paul Coutinho sJ Martin Erspamer OSB Margaret Guider OSF Kathleen Hughes RSCJ Louis and Angela Menard Bishop Terry Steib SVD QUARTERLY 68.4 2009 contents prisms 340 Prisms 342 353 theology and life Christian Existence and Theology's Relevance Randall S. Rosenberg sketches how the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar challenges us to ask whether theology is not simply about understanding, but about an understand-ing that includes aesthetic-dramatic encounters. How You Eat Matters A. Paul Dominic SJ draws the implications from sacrifice, meals, and human eating in the Hindu, Jewish, and Christian traditions that all human eating is truly meant to be a religious act. Questions for Personal and Group Reflection 364 379 religious life models Opening a New Window: Fifteen Years after the FORUS Study Patricia Wittberg SC proposes that current religious , congregations consider encouraging social-movement organizations (SMOs) as viable versions for future religious life. Revisiting Religious Identity William P. Clark OMI carefully reflects on how Vatican I! presented religious life and brought a freshness once again to the special vocation offered by God to those consecrated by religious profession. " Questions for Personal and Group Reflection Review for Religious 389 exemplars of faith ~ Encounters Early and Late: John Bosco and Paul Leo J. Heriot SDB draws upon the experience of St. Paul and of St. John Bosco to show how God may communicate with us, telling us to find him in our contemplative awareness of others and ourselves. 395 On Hilda of Whitby Sister Hilda Kleiman OSB reflects on the origins and spirituality behind her new religious name, Hilda, which means "Battle Maiden." 4O4 411 sharing experience ~ World Youth Day and Religious Life William Prospero SJ describes how World Youth Day promotes consecrated vocations by providing young Catholics with a joyful experience of living the evangelical counsels. Marriage and Celibacy: Rivals or Complements? Benny Phang OCarm works from an insight from John Paul lI's Theology of the Body to see the complementarity of the vocations of marriage and celibacy rather than viewing them as rivals. 427 432 443 departments ~ ,~ ~ Scripture Scope: Praying the Psalms with an Elephant in the Room Book Reviews 2009 Index 339 68.4 2009 prisms I n early January 2009, I was told that I had less than a year to live. As I come to write these reflections in our final issue of the year 2009, I share various reac-tions that have been part of the landscape over the past months. My first response to the doctor's prognosis ff)r pancreatic cancer was that it is a gift to be told that one has so many months to live and that an end is in sight. The doctor, of course, went on to give options. I could have an operation, and it would likely add some months. I could also have the operation, followed by chemotherapy/radia-tion, and it would add some months and likely some years. The doctor wanted to give me some time to think about the options, but I immedi-ately agreed with his own stated preference that I would undergo the operation and follow up chemotherapy. It seemed that medically I was in a place where I should follow the biblical injunc-tion, "choose life." The operation seemed to be successful in removing the visible cancer, and the six-month- long chemotherapy treatment has been an experimental study program including a vaccine that eliminates radiation. I have fin-ished the program as of the publication of this issue. Now I live within a wait-and-see time of measurement and ~esting. Revie~v for Religious November remains a church time to remember the dead and remind ourselves of our own mortality. I have been feeling even more attuned to the reality of my own personal dying throughout these past months so that it is easy to celebrate November liturgy. It is nice to be put "on notice"--which is how I consider the identi-fication of my cancer. The likelihood of dying is just made more real and, as it were, within reach. It allows me time to reflect and pray how I face this kind of time, what attitude I want to take, and how I want to use the time I have. It does not seem fearsome or dark. In fact, it seems full of surprises of how God wants to meet me in unexpected ways, sometimes not initially pleasing to me. I seem to be taught a lot about powerlessness, patience, and the goodness of strangers. I also believe strongly in the efficaciousness of the prayer support of others. Advent is a church time of looking forward to new life and especially of our life forever with God. It con-eludes with Christmas, a celebration of how God, in Christ, enters into our human life, never to let it go. Throughout 2009 with all its medical focus, I have con-tinued to be blessed with finding new life and I again look forward to entering into Advent with greater ¯ appreciation. Christmas will be God's own gift to me of celebrating the gift of human life for however many more months and years God intends. With celebrating Christmas, it is good to remember that we were all born to be living a life forever with God, and that remains my hope too. David L. Fleming SJ 341 The Review for Religious Advisory Board and Editorial Staff wish all of our readers a most blessed Advent and Christmas season. 68.4 2009 RANDALL S. ROSENBERG Christian Existence and Theology's Relevance theology and life 342 "Ihe Swiss thinker Hans Urs yon Balthasar is something of an enigma. He has been called the greatest Catholic theologian of the 20th century. He is the inspiration behind many believers who understand themselves as "orthodox" or "solid" Catholics. His work has been seen as an example of greater integration of spirituality and theology. He is the author to whom Jon Sobrino SJ refers in his reflec-tions on the "faith of Christ," a controver-sial position which has been criticized by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. His ideas about gender complementarity and women's ordination have angered many. Some scholars, with strong Thomist commitments, have vigorously criticized his Christology and ¯ soteriology. Other scholars besides Sobrino are Randall S. Rosenberg is assistant professor of religion and philosophy at Fontbonne University (a school spon-sored by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet); 6800. Wydown Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63105. Review for Religious beginning to make use of his thought to meet the con-cerns of liberation and political theology. My plan here is not to analyze all these currents. Rather, I intend to look at Balthasar's distinctive ideas about the aesthetic-dramatic constitution of Christian reality. He sees God's revelation, God's self-disclosure, as occurring first in aesthetic and dramatic forms, and he sees Christians as called to be co-actors in this "theo-drama" through liturgical ritual and a distinctive way of living. A Generational Concern Some of my attraction to Balthasar is probably gen-erational. I was born ten years after the Second Vatican Council. Although my childhood was shaped by a won-derful Catholic parish and school, my contemporaries and I still experienced what William Portier has called "the dissolution of the American Catholic subcul-ture." Not that I particularly desire a restoration of the good old days; for many, those days were apparently not so good. But it seemed to me, as I began to read Balthasar, that he was not only restoring something of the Christian vision's rich particularity and oddness, but also pointing out to people how beautifully and dra-matically that vision has enhanced all kinds of human lives, the great variety of saints most eminently. As he writes in Love Alone Is Credible, "Lovers are the ones who know most about God; the theologian must listen to them" (p. 12). It was exciting to discover a thinker who brought into his theology the witness of holy people and great texts not normally found in systematic theologians' reflection: Th~r~se of Lisieux, John.of the Cross, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Dante, to name just a few. 68.4 2009 Rosenberg * Cbristian Existence and Tbeology's Relevance Balthasar preserved what he called a "kneeling theology," without downplaying the use of reason in Christian life. And yet this same thinker also engaged seriously the thought of Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. In other words--Rodney Howsare has shown this in his book Baltbasar and Protestantism: The Ecumenical Implications of His Theological Style--Balthasar's theological vision had room both for God's revelation in Christ and for the works of reli-gious- philosophical scholars as legitimate moments in under-standing and present-ing Christian truth. Balthasar preserved what he called a "kneeling theology," without downplaying the use of reason in Christian life. His enviable dis-play of both loving devotion and a critical engagement with modernity prompts me to see him as embodying in important ways the dual task of ressourcement and aggior-namento set by Vatican II. Christian Existence as Theo-Drama The aesthetic-dramatic nature of Christian life is shown in the Scriptures. Moses and Paul experienced, aesthetically, the beauty or glory of God in the burn-ing bush and on the road to Damascus. These aesthetic encounters were also dramatic, and they led to the rest of their lives' being high drama as well. It is a com-mon feature of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures that experiences of God are not just holy feelings; they have a vocational, missionary purpose. The first part of Balthasar's multivolume trilogy, The Glory of the Lord, describes the way we first encounter the phenomenon Review for Religious of divine revelation as beautiful. The second part of the trilogy, Theo-Drama, recognizes that God's revelation is not something we merely look at; rather, we are drawn into the drama of revelation and are called to respond. Robert Barron nicely captures Balthasar's aesthetic-dra-matic emphasis: Christianity--like painting, baseball, and philoso-phy- is a world, a form of life. And, like those other worlds, it is first approached because it is perceived as beautiful. A youngster walks onto a baseball dia-mond because he finds the game splendid, and a young artist begins to draw because she finds the artistic universe enchanting. Once the beauty of Christianity has seized a devotee, she will long to submit herself to it, entering into its rhythms, its institutions, its history, its drama, its visions and activities. And then, having practiced it, having worked it into her soul and flesh, she will know it. The movement, in short, is from the beautiful (it is splendid!) to the good (I must play it!) to the true (it is right). In my own encounter with Balthasar, I have most appreciated his dramatic emphasis. In the first volume of his breathtaking five-volume Theo-Drama, Balthasar gives attention to the drama of human existence by using writers like Shakespeare, George Bernanos, Bertolt Brecht, Eugene Ionesco, and even the American Arthur Miller in a kind of prolegomenon to his understanding of Christian existence as "theodramatic." His range of reference to Christian, non-Christian, and even anti- Christian dramatists is astonishing. He uses the theater to illuminate the risk and gravity of human life, the catastrophes and tensions that constitute our existence, and the finite time span within which we must struggle for the good, under judgment and in the face of death. The theater can offer an opening to people's encoun- 68.4 2009 Rosenberg * Christian Existence and Theology'$ Relevance 346 ter with revelation. Balthasar's theodramatic approach employs the metaphor of the world stage. As actors in history, human beings share in the Son's mission, under the Holy Spirit's direction. Just as an actor's role in a theatrical drama constitutes a limited part of the play for a particular purpose, the finite lives of persons who share in the mission of Christ, no matter their life span, dis-close meaning that is relevant for the whole of history. On a personal note, I have appreciated Balthasar's dramatic treatment of the tragic in human existence. I have made my own the following remark of Rowan Williams: "What I found in Balthasar's work was an extraordinary depth of contemplative understand-ing, along with vivid awareness of the tragic quality of human existence--the hellishness of humanity and God's involvement in it--which resonated very deeply with me." Ever since I was a child, I have been par-ticularly sensitive to this tragic dimension, a disposition that has been heightened by my wife's daily work with children who suffer from cancer. The problem of evil as it manifests itself in sickness, natural disasters, random acts of violence, war, oppression, and genocide is never far from my mind. The late British theologian Donald MacKinnon, noting that Balthasar rarely treats the horror of the Holocaust directly, adds that "the nervous ten~ion of the whole argument witnesses to the author's passion-ate concern to present the engagement of God with his world in a way that refuses to turn aside from the over-whelming, pervasive reality of evil." Balthasar does not paper over the pathos of the real world, a pathos full of darkness and ambiguity. For him, God, in the incarna-tion and passion of Jesus, "steps to his opponent's side and, from within, helps him reach justice and freedom. Review for Religious Hnitude, time, and death are not negated: they are given a new value in a way that is beyond our comprehension. Indeed, even what is hostile to God, in all its profound abysses, is not abandoned; God does not turn his back on it: it is taken over and reworked." Balthasar never taught academic theology at a uni-versity. He spent many years, however, as a university chaplain. In the Switzerland of the 1940s this kind of work was largely cultural. Balthasar the chaplain spent his time giving lectures, in the evening debating in various student societies, and giving retreats. To borrow John W. O'Malley SJ's useful catego-ries from his Four Cultures of the West, Balthasar's thought more resembles cultures three and four--"Poetry, Rhetoric, and the Common Good" and "Art and Performance"-- than it does culture two--"The Academy and the Professions." O'Malley's remarks on Erasmus could be said about Balthasar: "He felt he could criticize Scholastic theology because he had an alternative to offer: a return to the more literary and rhetorical style of the Fathers. That was the 'ancient and genuine' the-ology, quite different from the 'modern' theology. It was genuine because it was drawn directly from the sacred texts and because it had led to a 'theological life.' It touched the heart and centered on the few truths that were essential to Christianity rather than on the second-ary issues the Scholastics pursued" (p. 160). Balthasar once remarked that his study with the Jesuits, largely in Neo-Scholastic mode, was a "grim struggle with what men had made out of the glory of revelation." He Balthasar never taught academic theology ,at a university. 68.4 2009 Rosenberg * Christian Existence and Tbeology's Relevance 348 ~ "could not endure this presentation of the Word of God and wanted to lash out with the fury of Samson," tear "down the whole temple," and bury himself "beneath the rubble." It is often true that Balthasar's mode of presentation resembles a patristic sermon more than a scholastic treatise. In my recent experiences of presenting papers, giv-ing academic lectures, and doing job interviews, it has become evident that this aesthetic-dramatic emphasis genuinely excites scholars and ordinary laypeople. This emphasis could also be said to be Balthasar's greatest shortcoming as a "systematic" theologian. He is called "unsystematic" by those who argue for the indispens-ability of a more scientifically or theoretically con-structed theology in the manner of Thomas Aquinas. Let me address both sentiments. On the one hand, I am convinced that Balthasar's aesthetic-dramatic emphasis nurtures an appreciation for the inexhaustible mystery that resides at the heart of Christian revelation. He offers a richly symbolic and imaginative approach--one that fosters better Christian living, namely, the dramatic artistry needed for fulfill-ing our own unique missions. That is, his theology can give momentum to the religious feelings and beliefs that help us accomplish good in the particular circumstances of our lives. On the other hand, the aesthetic-dramatic emphasis is not always helpful when one does "system-atic theology" in order to answer the further questions that arise out of one's aesthetic-dramatic, liturgical, or devotional life. Balthasar's theology, besides being eclectic, has a contemplative emphasis that prefers to let "paradox" be the answer, rather than carefully working out a set of terms and relations and bringing a theo-logical intelligibility to the concrete conditions in which Review for Religious Christians live their lives. One is more likely to find this kind of intelligibility in Bernard Lonergan or Karl Rahner. Let me offer an example. It was my encounter with the writings of Balthasar that helped me discover the "weightiness" of the mystery of the cross. Balthasar is not content with presenting the cross as merely a consequence of Jesus' prophetic stance in the world. It is that, but it is also much more. It contains a vicarious element, which somehow involves Jesus' "taking on" the sin of the human race. Balthasar desires to do justice to a dominant theme in the Fathers, namely, the admirabile commercium, God's "wondrous exchange," with sinners. With aesthetic and dramatic power, Balthasar communi-cated to me the cross's power and centrality. And yet as questions arose--How did Jesus "take on" sin? Did he also take on our guilt? If so, did he also experience a loss of hope and the kind of darkness sinners experience?-- I became less satisfied with his systematic answers (or lack thereof). In my own research I have been more satisfied with a Thomist pattern of explanation (also not without its critics), given contemporary expression in Bernard Lonergan's writings on "Satisfaction" and the "Law of the Cross." Such writings offer terms and relations that can be used in engaging the modern sciences construc-tively. Balthasar has often prompted in me an excite-ment and concern about such theological questions Balthasar's theology, has a contemplative emphasis that prefers to let ',paradox" be the answer. 349 68.4 2009 Rosenberg * Christian Existence and Tbeology's Relevance and then failed to give me adequate answers. In his De Verbo Incarnato, Lonergan writes that, if one approaches Christ's passion and death with primarily a "symbolic mentality," where image and feeling predominate, then one is likely to express the meaning of the cross in terms of "substitution" or "satispassion," that is, in terms of Jesus' "suffering enough" for sins. These words do not do justice to the sophistication of Balthasar's approach, but they indicate something about his theological style in general and his theology of Christ's passion and death in particular. In my estimation, because of its dramatic terminology and its reliance on the mystical experiences of Adrienne von Speyr, Balthasar's theology of Christ's passion and death is often unclear and even reckless. I wonder, though, whether this theological question, sparked by the power of Balthasar's presentation, would have occurred to me at all without his help. Balthasar himself was not concerned with meeting the requirements of a technical, theoretical, systematic theologian. He once said in an interview, "My books are not the kind of theology that belongs to the aca-demic guild and therefore they are not particularly suited for dissertations." He remarked, "I have to say that for me the only truly interesting theologians are the saints: from. Irenaeus through Augustine to Anselm, to Bonaventure, or figures that allow the radiation of holiness to show forth, such as Dante or Newman; one could also mention Kierkegaard and Solovyov." A Call for Fruitful Integration My concern goes beyond the question of Balthasar's adequacy as a systematic theologian. I have accentuated his aesthetic-dramatic approach here, but I know there are many other approaches as well. My concern is the Review for Religious shape of Catholic theology in the 21st century and the place of the aesthetic-dramatic style therein. Vv'hat does theology conceived in Anselmian fashion as "faith seek-ing understanding" mean in light of the many theologi-cal styles we have inherited from the 20th century, from what Fergus Kerr has called "the Heroic Generation"? In my discussion of the cross, I have offered a "the-oretical" or "explanatory" challenge to Balthasar's theological style. Let me now say that Balthasar, too, offers a challenge. He makes us ask: Must not theol-ogy go well :beyond understanding to an understand-ing that is aesthetically and dramatically in touch with the joys and challenges of ordinary Christian existence? Shouldn't theology be more attentive to the Mystery that is encountered in aesthetic and dramatic form in our workaday world's prayer and worship? A question remains regarding what to do with the diversity of theological styles we have inherited. R.R. Reno has suggested that "we need a period of consolidation that allows us to integrate the lasting achievements of the Heroic Generation into a renewed standard theology." Let me suggest, without adequate exposition, one possible way forward, a way which has been similarly outlined by Robert Doran SJ. The chal-lenge of this generation is to integrate three 20th-cen-tury theological movements--contemporary Thomism, the ressourcement project of la nouvelle thdologie, and the various expressions of political-liberation theol-ogy. These three movements could be of help (1) in explaining theological doctrines in a theoretical man-ner that is capable of engaging with the natural and social sciences in search of a unity of knowledge; (2) in experiencing and mediating Catholic thought and culture through aesthetic-dramatic forms; and (3) in 68.4 2009 Rosenberg * Christian Existence and Tbeology's Relevance dealing with concrete human suffering of all kinds in light of the gospel mandate to transform a world in need. Such a grand vision would require sympathetic and critical conversations, the highlighting of comple-mentarities and dialectical differences, and the humil-ity to be open to revision. If such an integration were to occur, it would require doing justice in an orderly way to the richness of being human in the flow of his-tory, that is, being psychological, intellectuall rational, moral, loving, mystical, and worshipful. For this enter-prise Balthasar would certainly not have all the answers, but he would have much to contribute to it. By Beauty Tethered God of the dawn and high noon and of twilight and midnight; God of the tides and the myriad droplets of dew; God of gardenias and larkspur and tulips; by beauty, God,~ tether my being to you. Mary Anne Huddleston IHM Review for Religious A. PAUL DOMINIC How You Eat Matters I fEatthien gti,t lAe sJeoeymous sa Sbaict rpiufizczel.i"n gIn, It hper ompoatstee ra noof tehaetr-: ing, as in every other human exercise or experience, there is surely more to it than meets the eye, or indeed the tongue or any other sense organ. Perception of such impalpable reality may take no time or consume no little time. Communicating that reality, however, normally requires time, and maybe a detour. Anyway, in the present case, the process has been for me an experience of obscurum per obscurius, though at the end it was all darum (clear), bathed in light. "Hindu Prayer: A First for Congress"--that was the title of the news item from India Abroad News Service on 14 September 2000. The news was the historic event of a Hindu priest delivering the opening prayer in the United States House of Representatives.1 The prayer ran as follows: "O God, you are omnipresent, omnipo-tent, and omniscient. You are everything, and nothing A. Paul Dominic SJ wrote for us about dreams in 2008. His address is Aishalton c/o St Ignatius Mission; Lethem P.O.; Rupununi, Guyana (South America). Emaih pauldominicsj@yahoo.com 68.4 2009 Dominic ¯ How You Eat Matters is beyond you. You are our mother and father, and we are all your children." It continued: "Whatever you do is for our good. You are the ocean of mercy, and you forgive our errors. You are our teacher, and you guide us on to righteousness . Today, in this great hall, are assembled the elected representatives of the people of this nation. They are ready to perform their duties. God, please guide them in their thoughts and actions so they can achieve'the greatest good for all." The prayer ended with an invocation from the ancient scriptures of India. "May all be happy, may all be free from disease, may all realize what is good, may none be subject to misery; peace, peace, peace be unto all." The fact of the Hindu prayer in the U.S. Congress was objectionable and even threatening to some. Many others strongly counterprotested. Anyway, the words of the prayer cannot be construed really offensive to any-one, except of course an atheist. As a matter of fact, they breathe the deepest longings of harried humanity hop-ing in the Divinity. The way they are addressed to God smacks of no narrow Hinduism nor any sectarianism for that matter, but an inclusive theism. The God invoked is everybody's God.2 If the Hindu priest had his own traditional or peculiar thoughts about God, in no way does that show itself in his prayer. Even the concluding prayer, taken from the Hindu scriptures, sounds indeed more universal than particularly Hindu. It seems to show that genuine prayer cuts across ,barriers of religion. Everything connected with prayer in Hinduism can-not, of course, be explained thus. There are aspects of Hindu worship that are confined and meaningful only to adherents of Hinduism with its practices and tenets. Even here, however, it is wise to distinguish between what is exclusively Hindu and what is purely religious-- Review for Religious even though in practice the two are generally too inter-twined to detect. We should, however, exercise ourselves in this regard, for we can be surprisingly enriched as Christians and, what is more, find ourselves agree-ably bonded with other sincere believers. For example, though the ritual of sacrifice in various religions is dif-ferent in all of them and likely to distract and distance other people, the faith element in those sacrifices can be heartwarming and edifying to all those who can intuit it. Some reading I did about Hindu sacrifice proved to be quite inspiring. From it I got a sense of the homely and heavenly meaning of sacrifice beyond the altar's formal vesture, furnishings, and ceremony. I have grown to believe that eating at table has the character and odor of a true sacrifice. I was confirmed in my belief when I found a simi-lar thought in a poet with a Christian background. He shares his vision charmingly and persuasively: Since you must kill to eat, and rob the newly born of its mother's milk to quench your thirst, let it then be an act of worship, And let your board stand an altar on which the pure and the innocent of forest and plain are sacri-ficed for that which is purer and still more innocent in man.3 I have no inkling of how the poet arrived at his vision of profound truth. I can recount, however, my experience in this regard, recalling first the Hindu insight. i have grown to believe that eating at table has the character and odor of a true sacrifice. 68.4 2009 Dominic * How You Eat Matters A Hindu Adumbration The universe in the ancient Hindu vision originat-ing from the Vedic4 times of 2000 BC consisted of three worlds: the physical, the psychological, and the spiritual manitCesting themselves not as separate but congruent spheres. Fire (Affni in Sanskrit) at the physical level was obviously visible flames, like those burning a sacrificial offering to the deity. At the psychological level it was the mind exercising itself in thinking and knowing. At the spiritual level the same word was a name of God. Given the superiority of the spiritual over the physical and the psychological, the latter two were regarded and grasped as manifestations of the one supreme Spirit called Agrni, extending through the three-tiered universe. "The fire which is the sun, the fire which is the earth, that fire is in my own heart," as a Vedic verse put it pithily. One cannot miss the images of the three worlds: the sun standing for the spiritual, the earth for the material, and the human for the psychological.5 Anyone who is not at ease with this ancient under-standing needs only a moment's thought to see its con-nection with reality. For this a comparison with another religious tradition may help. In the Judaic tradition, physical fire serves the cultic needs of purification and liturgical rituals of offering. Fire that necessarily burns can signi~ blazing anger and, more importantly, the tribulation that cleanses the heart and proves the soul righteous. Fire is predicated of God's own self in theophanies of saving presence, transcendence, and benevolence. God appears as the burning bush and the pillar of fire and indeed as consuming fire (Dt 4:24, 9:3; Is 33:14). God purifies his servants and sets them afire with zeal so that the whole universe may shine in glory. Christian tradition has inherited this entire view Review for Religious and given it its own emphasis. Recall Jesus saying: "I have come to bring fire on the earth and desire that it be kindled" (Lk 12:49).6 Observing parallels in the Vedic and Biblical views of the world, one may see other ones as well. In the Vedic thought, sacrifice involves a conscious perception that the three worlds are bound together as one universe. Sacrifice involves lighting a fire and burning an obla-tion on the altar. The idea behind the ritual is that the spiritual fire that is in heaven is also buried in the earth, and so it bursts forth when stones or sticks are struck. By being burned, the gifts laid on the altar are carried to heaven. The fiery sacrifice returns all that is on the earth to its original source in heaven. The ideal of sacrifice behind this graphic picture is not absent in the Bible. Elijah's successful sacrifice when the prophets of Baal miserably failed (1 K 18:22.-38) comes to mind here. To continue still further with the inner significance of the Vedic sacrifice, as long as sacrifice is performed everything keeps returning to its origin, and human beings find themselves living in harmony with the uni-verse. When people fail in their duty of sacrifice, they interfere with the cyclic rhythm that sustains the world of which they are a part. They use the mountain of gifts without attending to their nature, thereby isolating both themselves and all things from their origin. They violate the law of the universe. But, when sacrifice is duly and gratefully done, it redounds to universal prosperity. This seems reflected in Psalm 50: "Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay your vows to the Most High." The last element of all sacrifice is perhaps too obvi-ous to be striking: it is eating the sacrificial offerings. What is offered in sacrifice is normally things that peo-ple eat, and so a sacrifice ends as a sacrificial meal. But 68.4 2009 Dominic ¯ How You Eat Matters In the matter of sacrifice, the universal beliefwas that, when humans ate something of the sacrifice, the deity had partaken of it first. who eats in sacrifice? Those who sacrifice, of course. But, as the sacrifice is not offered to themselves, they do not eat alone. When the sacrifice is consumed by fire, it is believed that the deity above consumes it. This understanding is highlighted in the Hindu scriptural verse: "I, the Lord, become the fire of life, and seated in the body I consume the four kinds of food." This passage is certainly obscure for many, though it is for Hindus a familiar verse (vakya in Sanskrit) of the Bhagavad Gita, perhaps the most personal of all their scriptures. Anyway, what it says links human eating with divine eat-ing. In the matter of sacrifice, the universal belief was that, when humans ate something of the sacrifice, the deity had partaken of it first. Similarly, one may well conclude that what humans eat in ordinary meals is at the same rime consumed by "the fire of life," which is none other than God dwelling in human bodies. And so a human meal itself becomes a sacrifice to God. Bede Griffiths, the English Benedictine who, along with other foreign pioneers in India, continued the Indian tradition of ashram (akin to monasticism in the Western tradition), explains the point thus: "That fire, which is in the heaven above and in the earth beneath, is in our own bodies; we offer our food in sacrifice in that inner fire and it is consumed in the fire and surrendered to God again. So a meal is a sacrifice." Here is a subtle move from a sacrificial meal eaten on occasion to daily Review for Religious meals eaten in the joyous, harmonious spirit of sacri-fice. Drawing from another stanza in the Bhagavad Gita, Griffiths concludes that "anyone taking a meal without sacrificing is a thief; this is to take the gifts of God and appropriate them to oneself instead of receiving them as gifts and returning thanks.''7 A Christian Follow-Up Such a thought can startle nominal or profane Christians who have no thought of God whatever when they satisfy their hunger and thirst or overly indulge their tastes. Normal devout Christians accustomed to their routine mealtime prayer may well find more mean-ing in their daily practice. The grace before and after meals will then become the grace of meals as sacrifice. The whole meal from start to finish becomes an exercise and experience of grace, with the grace understood in terms of sacrifice. If sacrifice involves material fire for burning the oblation, daily meals as sacrifice ought to burn with the psychospiritual fire of desire--desire not merely for food, but for the One who gives the food. The Giver of food gives not only the natural and won-derful food and drink, but also the hunger, thirst, and taste buds necessary to enjoy it. Further, through our gratefulness God raises our minds beyond the mean philosophy of eat, drink, and be merry before it is too late. Enkindled by this grate-fulness, we cannot but experience a burning hunger for God. This does not produce asceticism in us so much as refine our taste for the simple, healthy, necessary food that makes for joyous living. At the same time it enables us to find God in food itself.8 This way of eating, that is much more than munching and gulping, becomes a sacrifice by virtue of the prayer surrounding our meals. 68.4 2009 Dominic ¯ How You Eat Matters As St. Paul says, food is for the stomach and the stom-ach for food, and ultimately the body is for the Lord (1 Co 6:13). Sacrificial prayer, then, from hearts burn-ing with fervor for God, rises like incense and raises people's spirits while leaving them contented with their daily bread. It is the very opposite of making a god of one's belly (Ph 3:19)9 and sacrificing to it. This talk is not farfetched or feverishly imagined. It breathes the spirit of Jesus who, being more a mystic than an ascetic, ate with much gratitude to his Abba God and with the childlike merriment of having been blessed. When necessary he gave hungry people food, but he also chided them for not understanding their hunger aright. One may learn a lot from his controversy with them as they were looking for him the day after he had miraculously fed them with bread and fish to their hearts' content (Jn 6). He unveiled to them their own undignified thoughts regarding food and satisfaction. He warned them not to work for food that cannot give life, but for the food from God that gives eternal life. "God's bread comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." Jesus told them that people do not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from God's mouth (Mr 4:4). Jesus' conduct in eating teaches about meal as sac-rifice. He takes the bread, looks up to heaven where his Abba Father dwells, gives thanks to him, and shares the bread with those around him generously, then pre-sumably eats along with them till finally making sure that nothing that remains goes to waste (Mt 14:19-20). While this pictures partly the proper Jewish uttering of a blessing such as "Praised be thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who bringest forth bread from earth," Jesus portrays more faithfully and characteristi- Review for Religious cally what his Abba intended when he led his people, feeding them with manna and so training them for life. His counsel to his eager listeners on the Mount is not to worry about food and drink. His words are meant to uplift them with the realization of their blessings on any given day, making of it a sacrifice of praise and grati-tude. The same spirit suffuses the prayer Jesus taught people to pray: "Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread" (Lk 11:2-3). Because our daily meals are ideally sacrifices filling us with gratitude and.uniting us with the bountiful Abba Father, Jesus began his unique sacrifice at an ordinary, if festive, meal, his last meal before he died. And there he bequeathed his new sacrifice in the form of a unique meal. It is with the same inspiration that he spoke of the heavenly life with God as a banquet of communion with God and all God's beloved (Mt 8:11, 22:2). What happens when, thinking of a penitential aspect of sacrifice, we lose sight of the sublime aspect of eat-ing and drinking? One answer is that then we cannot fully engage in the divine mystery of our Christian sac-rifice. We would even act contrary to the spirit of the sacrifice when we are not celebrating the Liturgy for-mally. The Corinthians did this, as Paul reminded them. When they came together for the Lord's Supper, they did not wait for the Lord. Paul says: "When you meet together, it is not the Lord's Supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal, and one is hungry and another is drunk" (1 Co 11:20-21). To spell out an implication in Paul's words, ordinary human meals should be much like the Lord's Supper. There is or should be etiquette and the spirit of sacrifice in every ordinary meal. 361 68.4 2009 Dominic * How You Eat Matters 362 The Hindu version of what happens when we do not honor the sacrificial aspect of human eating is best illustrated by a Hindu story. A man sought to know from a Hindu priest the greatest being in the universe worthy of a sacrifice. Following the clear instruction, he began offering food to the newly acquired idol in his house. One day he found a rat eating the offering. Inferring that the rat must be greater than the idol, he began making his sacrificial offering to the rat, till one day he saw a cat threatening the rat. So he began mak-ing his sacrifice to the cat. One day the man's wife saw the cat on an eating spree in the kitchen and chased it away with a stick2 Made aware of this greater power of his wife, he began making his sacrifice to her. Then one day, finding the meal she cooked and served too salty, he shouted at her. She quivered at his anger. That encounter made him feel superior to his wife, and so he began to offer food sacrificially to himself. He ate and ate until he died. Can anyone be so foolish? Not in such an obvious way, but most of us are probably about half that foolish. The really wise, of course, would know how to enjoy food and drink while recognizing that they are also part of the grateful sacrifice due to God. There is something beautiful and divine in such sacrifice pervading daily life without formal rubrics and yet illumining the rubrics of the altar. "So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God" (1 Co 10:31). Notes ~ There was a similar first occurrence of prayer, this one in Sanskrit, spoken by a Hindu in the Nevada State Assembly on 19 March 2007 and in the Nevada State Senate on 7 May 2007, both in Carson City. See Kaumudi USA-News, March 2007 (front page). 2 Some Muslims, however, would not agree on this. Review for Religious 3 Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1976), p. 30. 4 The word derives from the Vedas, the earliest Hindu scriptures in Sanskrit. s See Bede Griffiths, A New Vision of Reality (New Delhi: Indus, 1992), pp. 58-59. 6 See John L. McKenzie, Dictionary of the Bible (Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation, 1998), pp. 277-278. 7 Griffiths, New Vision, p. 61. The verse itself runs thus: "Nourished by your sacrifice, the Gods will grant you your heart's desires. / What a thief is he who enjoys their gifts but gives nothing in return!" (3:12). See Raimundo Panikkar et al., The Vedic Experience (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1977), p. 428. s As Jesus overturned the notion of unclean food in Jewish Pharisaism and declared all food clean (Mk 7:19), he would also declare all food good against what may be called Christian libertinism. 9 Of course, in the Pauline context the reference was to Jewish dietary laws that in Christianity were being superseded, whereas here it is the regrettable exaltation of food for food's sake. Questions for Personal and Group Reflection 1. How do you consider grace before and after meals meaningful to your Christian living? 2. Can you explain that the Last Supper exemplifies for us how our daily meals are "ideally sacrifices filling us with gratitude and uniting us with the bountiful Abba Father"? 363 68.4 2009 PATRICIA A. WITTBERG religious life models Opening a New Window: Fifteen Years after the FORUS Study More than fifteen years ago, Miriam Ukeritis csJ and David Nygren CM published their groundbreaking study, The Future of Religious Orders in the United States) In it they predicted that religious congregations had only a ten-year window of opportunity before the aging of their current members and the lack of new entrants would render them nonviable. Many resisted this prediction, refusing to believe it. Some spun visions of an alternate (and socio-logically naive) future in which religious con-gregations would expand to include married and single, vowed and nonvowed, Catholic and non-Catholic, male and female, all somehow gathered together under the aegis of a vaguely defined charism? Others, not knowing what to believe, considered religious life's future Patricia A. Wittberg SC wrote about the "recipro-cal identities" of apostolic life and consecrated life in our July-August 2002 issue. Her address remains 2141 Dugan Drive; Indianapolis, Indiana 46260. Email: pwittber@iupui.edu Review for Religious something they could do litde about and focused their diminishing energies on their ministries instead. Fifteen years later, for many religious congregations, the window of opportunity appears to have closed. Few if any of their members are under the age of sixty; no one has entered for ten or even twenty years; vocation directors are burned out or depressed. Many members coverdy believe--and some openly argue--that it is use-less and unethical to invite young people to enter. It is for these congregations, especially, that I am writing this article, but I offer it as well to communities which are in less dire straits. I. believe that both could profit from the following alternative. I would like to point out a different--and more sociologically feasible--path for the future of declining religious congregations. I do not see this as replacing traditional religious life--which is thriving on a smaller scale in some (but not all) of the CMSWR congregations in the United States, and on a larger scale in Africa and South Asia. There will always be a place in the church for the traditional model of religious life. But U.S. Catholic culture is no longer as hospitable to this model as it once was. If it were, several hundred, not a few dozen, traditional religious congregations would be springing up in this country, and they would be doubling in membership every decade. Such explosive growth was the norm for religious congregations founded in the 19th century, and it obviously is not happening today. This comparative lack of interest, however, does not indicate that present-day U.S. Catholics are unspiritual heathens. They simply are not attracted to the traditional model. I believe that American Catholicism would be bet-ter served if several other versions of religious life were also available to young Catholics. By"other versions" I 68.4 2009 tVittberg ¯ Opening a New Window A social movement is a wave of beliefs and/or actions that sweeps large numbers of persons into working toward a specific goal. 366 do not mean the lifestyles currendy being modeled by most of the non-CMSWR religious congregations. These are faring even worse than the traditionalist orders in attracting new members. Their charisms are still beau-tiful and, for the most part, still valid in today's world. But they are not being presented in a form that appeals to young Catholics today. Instead, I want to suggest a different strategy for handing on a congregation's charism to a new generation: starting one---or preferably severalmsocial-movement orga-nizations. To explain how this would work, I first need to define a few terms. Broadly considered, a social movement is a wave of beliefs and/or actions that sweeps large numbers of persons into working toward a specific goal. Examples are the civil-rights movement, the women's movement, the envi-ronmental movement, and the right-to-life movement. Each of these movements may con-tain dozens of separate social-movement organizations (SMOs) which focus on particular activities, particular groups of people, or particular issues related to the larger movement's goals. Thus, the environmental movement includes large organiza-tions like the Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy, and Greenpeace and also many smaller groups that focus on saving the monarch butterfly, cleaning up a local river, opposing the dumping of toxic waste, and so forth.3 There have been religious social movements and, thus, religious social-movement organizations as well. In Review for Religious Protestantism, a succession of social movements called "Great Awakenings" sparked a host of religious revival groups throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, several of which developed into full-fledged denominations such as the Mormons, the Seventh-Day Adventists, and the various Pentecostal churches. In Catholicism, waves of devotionalism swept through both 17th-century France and 19th-century North America,4 spinning off pilgrim-age societies, sodalities, and prayer groups devoted to particular saints, scapulars, or novenas. These were not .religious orders at their inception, but some later did develop in that direction. Other times they simply strengthened the existing orders. I am suggesting that religious congregations con-sciously try to foster something similar today. Most still have one or more members who are passionate about meeting some particular need in today's world, be it sav-ing the environment, feeding the poor, sheltering home-less women and children, providing free medical care to the uninsured, or mentoring the spiritually searching,s Many of these members have already worked out a more or less specific theology to ground their activities and to explain how their passion fits with the congregation's charism. Some have recruited a corps of volunteers to help them in. their work. To paraphrase the famous line from MoliEre,6 they are already "forming a religious SMO without knowing it." However, these passionate members are often less connected to the rest of the con-gregation. For years, even decades, the other members may have left them alone to "do their own thing." But it is only a small step from what these indi-vidual religious are already instinctively doing, for their congregation deliberately to form and maintain several SMOs to enflesh its charism for subsequent genera- 68.4 2009 Wittberg ¯ Opening a New Window 368 tions. All that remains is to help each incipient group to articulate its identity publicly, to specify clearly its religious grounding in the congregation's charism, and to take specific steps to ensure its leadership continuity and stable membership. This might simply involve: ¯ Picking a name connected with both the charism of the congregation and the specific focus of the group: "Vincentian Servants of the Homeless," "Franciscan Brothers and Sisters of the Earth," "Centering Pray-ers," and so forth. ¯ Adopting an identifiable sign of group affiliation, for example, a common T-shirt or a medal. ¯ Maintaining a public-relations effort to inform potential volunteers, donors, other members of the con-gregation, and the church at large about the group's existence and to attract them to its mission. ¯ Spelling out the criteria for entering and exiting the group, expectations of membership, and ongoing group governance. Previous evidence indicates that, paradoxically, groups with more rigorous expectations are more likely to succeed than those which demand less of their adherents.7 The first two steps are relatively simple, and may already have been taken. But they are not enough. Unless some provision is made for the continuance of the SMO, it may not survive its founder's retirement. The founding brother or sister may be neither inter-ested in nor skilled at such bureaucratic maintenance activities. For the remaining steps, therefore, a religious congregation may be able to offer valuable help from its communications office (for the third task), and its leadership (for the fourth). The kind of social-movement organization I am advocating may or may not be represented by a con- Review for Religious gregation's associate program. A congregation's associ-ates could certainly be this kind of group--but only if they are organized around a readily articulated spiri-tual focus and/or apostolic activity that distinguishes associate membership from the larger call given to any Catholic. Simply stating that associates are devoted to "living the charism of the founder" is not enough. The more focused the associates' commitment--whether in monthly or weekly prayer/lectio according to the founder's spirituality, or in working on a regular basis with the vowed members in their ministry, or in staffing some auxiliary ministry that complements that of the vowed members--the more my SMO proposal here can be applied to them. Otherwise, an associateprogram will not be sufficiendy distinct from the lifestyle of non-associates to enflesh the order's charism on its own. Advantages of the SMO Model I am suggesting that some congregations--especially those whose members have tacitly abandoned the hope of attracting new vowed members--make a point of acknowledging this and then start to recruit people for their present members' particular SMOs. What would be the advantages of such a strategy? First of all, any given religious congregation will survive only to the extent that its members are passionately devoted to some particular version of their founding charism. The future of religious life does not rest with the tired or apathetic, but after a long period of decline many religious now are both. Most congregations have only a few members with the needed passion and enthusiasm. Moreover, these members may not all be focused on the same passion. Some may live and breathe God's call to serve the poor; others may devote their energies to preserving God's 68.4 2009 Wittberg ¯ Opening a New Window Any given religious congregation will survive only to the extent that its members are passionately ~devoted to some particular version of their founding charism. 370 creation through environmental activities; still others, with a more contemplative bent, may foster spirituality through centering prayer, pastoral counseling, or reli-gious art or music. A religious order faced with only a handful of healthy and passionate vowed members, each deeply devoted to a different passion, faces a serious dilemma. It can either focus on one of these passions to the exclu-sion of the others (which would be profoundly alien-ating to those left out), or it can try to include all of them (which dilutes the con-gregation's spe-cific identity and its ability to rally its members around a common goal). Either way, a congregation's ability to recruit to vowed membership is weakened if its remaining passion-ate members are devoted to different articulations of its charism, because its overall corporate mission identity will be weak.8 In contrast, enfleshing these articulations in several different SMOs would strengthen a congregation and improve the chances for its charism to survive. Since each SMO's participants are not necessarily vowed to the congregation, it is not only possible but desirable that several could exist under the same congregational "rOOfo''9 The more different SMOs a congregation's members "spin off," the greater the chance that one, at Review for Religious least, will catch fire. As I will argue below, this may then become the seed for the congregation's future. A second advantage of the SMO approach is that it is a sociologically feasible way of incorporating temporary members or inviting specific demographic groups into the congregation's family. The prospect of temporary membership in permanently vowed religious congrega-tions has been discussed for over thirty years without ever coming to fruition.'° This is probably a sign that the concept is unworkable. A host of decisions would need to be faced in a congregation that included both permanent and temporary members: financial expec-tations, for example, or voice and vote in chapters. Maintaining a distinction between the two groups could imply a second-class status for the temporary members; erasing the distinction would depreciate the perpetually vowed members' commitment. Also, there is not now and never has been any indi-cation that large numbers of potential entrants are clamoring for the option of temporary membership in communities with perpetual vows. If anything, the opposite is the case. In contrast, however, various lay movements that are similar to SMOs are thriving in the church--which may be a sign that the model is a more compatible and sociologically viable Way of enfleshing a religious call in today's world.'1 Lay social-movement organizations are compat-ible with temporary commitment. In fact, many actu-ally expect that their members will stay no more than three or four years. Prayer or volunteer groups specifi-cally targeting high school or college students would be examples of these. A recently begun group is the St. Joseph of Arimathea Society--groups of high school students in Cleveland and Louisville who help provide 371 68.4 2009 Wittberg ¯ Opening a New Window A final advantage of religious ¯ social-movement organizations is that it is less devastating for the members if they dissolve. dignified and reverent funeral services for homeless peo-ple, and for murder victims and deceased old and young people whose relatives are too few or too devastated to arrange a funeral themselves. The students provide sing-ers and pallbearers, tend the "potter's field" cemetery, and collect money for flowers and grave markers. More traditional examples of student organiza-tions include prayer groups (Athletes for Christ, rosary or adoration societies) or twinning arrange-ments with a school in a poor area. There is no expectation that the students will remain members of these groups after their graduation, although they may be directed to affiliated adult groups which they may or may not choose to join. A final advantage of religious social-movement orga-nizations is that it is less devastating for the members if they dissolve. While no data exist on the number of failed attempts that preceded or accompanied the suc-cessful founding of religious orders in previous centu-ries, anecdotal evidence in our histories indicates that at least as many attempts to found religious orders have failed as succeeded. This appears to be true today as well. Of the 97 new religious communities listed in the 1999 Directory of Embrging Religious Communities, 24 had dissolved by 2006, and another 21 had lost members.~2 Founding or truly refounding a religious order is a chancy business, and those who commit their lives to one of these new groups risk losing both financial security Review for Religious and mental/emotional health if they fail. Committing oneself to an SMO carries with it many fewer risks. Outcomes For those religious who are concerned for the pres-ervation of their congregation's charism, forming one or more SMOs could have several beneficial results: ¯ Social-movement organizations may be effective recruit-ment vehicles for vowed membership. With few religious teaching in Catholic schools, most young Catholics have never seen a sister or brother. And few religious inter-act with anyone younger than fifty on a deep or regu-lar basis. How can young Catholics join a lifestyle they know so little about? How can religious invite those they never see? Participating with vowed religious on an ongoing basis in a soup kitchen, a prayer group, or an ecological project will help young people get to know the religious involved--and vice versa. ¯ One particular social-movement organization may develop into the vehide that will carry a congregation's charism into the next generation, after all of the former vowed mem-bers are gone. If so, this would finally realize the inclusive ¯ scenario that the "Transformative Elements" painted for the future of religious life twenty years ago. How could anyone say that a religious charism was extinct if, instead of a small number of vowed religious, an SMO of married, single, Catholic, and non-Catholic men and women were living it out by feeding the hungry, praying a particular devotion, tutoring poor children, or in some other way were bringing the founder's original vision into the 21st century? "Life is not ended, merely changed." ¯ A truly successful social-movement organization will often, however, contain a number of members who do want to devote their entire lives to its vision. It may 373 68.4 2009 Wittberg ¯ Opening a New Window be that these members will not join the original community, but will instead begin a new one. If the first community is still around at this point, their wisdom and experi-ence would be invaluable for the new group. If not, the stories of the SMO's original founder--the sister who started a free clinic in Appalachia, the brother whose soup kitchen mobilized a city to feed the poor--will serve as a template. After all, Frederick Ozanam (the founder of the St. Vincent de Paul Society) lived sev-eral centuries after Vincent himself. St. John Bosco had never met St. Francis de Sales. Throughout the millennium and a half that Catholic religious life has existed, many new religious orders or lay groups have been formed from old templates. SMOs could provide templates of this very kind. Next Steps I believe that social-movement organizations could be useful, both for religious congregations that have given up on recruiting vowed members, and also for more-viable communities that still attract some young people. For the former, it may be the last remaining way they have of passing on their charism to a new genera-tion. For the latter, it may help them attract even more new entrants. The next steps I would suggest to con-gregations wishing to found such organizations--or to foster the ones their individual members have already begun--are as follows: ¯ Take inventory of today's society: What are its deep-est needs or desires? As I have noted previously,~3 the best way to determine these needs is to look at what larger social movements are currently growing. The most pressing social movements reveal themselves by the large number of SMOs they spawn. Are there already Review for Religious a lot of small environmental groups? Prayer groups? Adoration groups? Groups working with the poor? Women's groups? Check out the directory of associa-tions on the Internet Public Library (http://www.ipl. org/div/aon/)to find out. Is there room for another SMO, locally, in this movement? For example, is there a group that the movement currently does not reach, such as Hispanics or high school youth? Is there a new tactic or way of addressing the issue that existing SMOs do not use? Could adding your congregation's spirituality or charism deepen commitment to the social movement? ¯ Take inventory of your congregation: Who are your passionate members? What are their passions? How, if at all, do these passions relate to the charism of your founder? What larger social movements do these pas-sions relate to? Are your community's passionate mem-bers interested in leading or organizing a group to assist them in their work? Or, better, have they already done so? Are other members in your congregation interested in helping them? ¯ What does the group still need in order to succeed? Does it need to expand its pool of potential volunteers? Secure more stable funding? Plan for the founder's retirement? What is the optimum size for the group? Would expansion be good for it--or dilute its unique character? If the latter, can the group's model be "fran-chised" in some way, with separate independent chap-ters in various cities?14 ¯ What assistance can the congregation render? Can your communications office help to publicize the group? Can your vocation personnel and/or associates help locate new volunteers? Does the group need a place to meet? Need mentoring in finances or grant writing? What about retreats or prayer days on the charism? And 68.4 2009 Wittberg ¯ Opening a New Window 376 who in the congregation could provide these services? A weakness in any new religious organization is its "liabil-ity of newness," which may lead to mistakes that imperil its very survival. A more experienced mentor could be a tremendous help. It is obvious by now that religious life is at the end of one of the cyclic downturns which have recurred over the centuries. Rather than resign ourselves to our "inev-itable" extinction--and thereby create a self-fulfilling prophecy--I think we should notice that the SMO model offers a way to midwife the new forms of religious life that will thrive and grow in the years ahead. The many permutations of this model already appearing--associ-ate programs, lay ecclesial movements, mixed emerg-ing communities--are foreshadowings, I believe, of an absorbing future. This is true even if most of them fail, as new ventures often do. More will continue to spring up until some "get it right." With their centuries-long experience and the passions of at least some of their vowed members, today's religious congregations could help in this rebirth. Notes ~ David Nygren and Miriam D. Ukeritis, The Future of Religious Orders in the United States: Transformation and Commitment (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1993). 2 A good example would be the third and fourth of the so-called "Transformative Elements" developed by the joint CMSM/LCWR meet-ing in Louisville in 1989--and cited on pp. 255 and following of Nygren and Ukeritis's book. Supposedly, this is what religious life would look like in the year 2010. In hindsight, it reflects more wishful thinking than any real-world trends for vowed religious life. 3 Fora fuller discussion of social movements and social-movement organizations, see my Pathways to Re-Creating Religious Communities (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1996), chap. 4. 4 See Elizabeth Rapley, The D~votes: Women and Church in Seventeenth Review for Religious Century France (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1990), and Anne Taves, The Household of Faith: Roman Catholic Devotions in Nineteenth Century America (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), for these waves of devotionalism. s My own congregation has individual sisters--of whom I am extremely proud--deeply involved in all of these activities. 6 Or maybe not so famous--the citation refers to a line from Moli~re's comedy Le bourgeois gentilhomme, in which a nouveau riche man is being tutored in literature and discovers that he has been speak-ing prose all of his life without knowing it. 7 See, e.g., Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), chap. 7. 8 According to the Nygren and Ukeritis study, mission identity is the principal variable influencing a congregation's success (see pp. 97-98). 9 Several religious families have known this instinctively. For exam-ple, my own Vincentian tradition includes, not only the Congregation of the Mission, the Daughters of Charity, and the various Sister of Charity Federation congregations, but also the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Ladies of Charity, Vincentian Marian Youth, the Association of the Miraculous Medal, and the Missionary Cenacle, all of which are move-ment organizations of nonvowed laypersons. Similarly the Salesian family includes, not only the Salesian priests and Visitation nuns, but other vowed religious such as the Sisters of Mary Help of Christians, the Missionaries of St. Francis, the Salesian Missionaries of Mary Immaculate, and the Oblate Sisters of St. Francis de Sales, plus lay groups such as the Association of St. Francis de Sales and the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales. to I am not referring here to societies of apostolic life like the Daughters of Charity, who make annual vows, but rather to including an option for temporary membership in congregations whose members are now expected to make perpetual vows. Moreover, even among the Daughters of Charity, there is the assumption that one's annual vows are really for life. ~' According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), Emerging Communities of Consecrated Life in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2006, p. 16), ten of the twelve most rapidly growing new indigenous emerging communities in the U.S. are mixed communities with some, or all, lay members. t2 CAP, A, Emerging Communities, p. 16. 377 68.4 2009 Wittberg ¯ Opening a New V~ndow ,3 Wittberg, Pathways, pp. 80-85. ,4 The above-mentioned St. Joseph of Arimithea Society seems to operate through "franchises"--the Cleveland and Louisville chapters appear to be separate from each other. Many.other groups enlisting high school or college students operate similarly. A Sampler of Potential (and Actual) Religious SMOs 1. "Franchised" Youth Groups (local school chapters, perhaps with a national headquarters supplying materials or training) a. Volunteers supporting a local soup kitchen b. A high school or college centering-prayer group c. Group spiritual direction, big brother/sister spiritual mentoring d. Adoration societies, sodalities 2. Ministry Groups (non-age-specific, perhaps linked nationally in a network or association) a. Supporting crisis pregnancies b. Companioning the dying c. Running a women's shelter d. Strengthening marriages 3. Spirituality Groups (may have a centralized head-quarters and/or a youth branch - see #1, above) a. Devotion to a particular saint b. Performance of a particular spiritual practice (Eucharistic adoration, centering prayer, pilgrimages) c. Spiritual mentoring, group spiritual direction 4. Lifestyle Groups a, Simple living b. Intentional communities c. Peace and reconciliation Review for Retigious WILLIAM P. CLARK Revisiting Religious Identity mnthe years following the Second Vatican Council, uch attention was focused on changes in religious life. Much writing and much effort have been directed toward rethinking or reimaging religious life. In light of all that, one might be tempted to say "Enough already!" An old saying has it that familiarity breeds contempt. Familiarity can also breed complacency and neglect. It might be good, then, to look once again at what it means to be a religious, to reflect on our religious iden-tity. Besides the decree on the renewal of religious life, Perfectae caritatis, Vatican Council II also spoke of the role of religious in Lumen gentium, the dogmatic con-stitution on the church. In chapter 6, §44, we read that the religious state "manifests in a special way that the kingdom of God and its high requirements transcend all earthly considerations, bringing home to all people William P. Clark OMI, longtime teacher and administrator, lives at St, Henry's Oblate Residence; 200 North 60th Street; Belleville, Illinois 62223. 379 68.4 2009 Clark ¯ Revisiting Religious Identity the immeasurable greatness of the power of Christ in his sovereignty and the infinite might of the Holy Spirit marvelously working in the church.'" The council is simply saying religious life gives special witness that, above and beyond earthly values, there is something we call the kingdom of God. While religious life's characteristic witness is spe-cial, it is not exclusive. It is the duty of all Christians to give witness to the kingdom of God. All Christians, be they lay or religious, are committed to living out their baptismal consecration. Emphasis on the common voca-tion of all Christians highlights what is of fundamental importance, the fullness of Christian life informed by charity. That emphasis also counteracts any tendency to draw unfavorable comparisons between the lay and religious states, as though laypersons are somehow sec-ond- class citizens or "children of a lesser God." That broad emphasis on all Christian life is rooted in the most ancient tradition of monasticism. In his masterful study The Spirituality of the New Testament and the Fathers, Louis Bouyer finds certain constants in the literature of monasticism. He affirms them because they were some-what obscured by later developments. One such insight is that the primitive monk did not appear special. Whether by himself or others, his vocation was not considered par-ticular or exceptional. The monk was simply a Christian, a devout layperson who took the most radical means to live the Christian life to the fullest. The monk proposed no other end than to be saved. All his life, the monk asked for no other teaching from his elders than the means of attaining that goal. His fundamental and persistent ques-tion was: "Tell me. How can I be saved?" Two points need emphasis. First, holiness, the fullness of Christian life, is not something reserved Review for Religious to religious, while laypersons are called to something less. Second, religious are to focus on the essential, on the search for union with God, and not see holi-ness as something incidental or distinctive which sets them apart from "ordinary" Christians. Fundamental to religious identity is one's identity as a Christian. It is the fullness of the Christian experience that constitutes Christian identity. There are three major elements in the Christian expe-rience. The first is not distinctively Christian. It is the human preamble. It consists in discovering that human happiness and fulfillment are not brought about by tak-ing. We all start out that way, looking for that certain something or combination of things which, if we could only latch on to it and make it our own, would provide fulfillment. The Christian experience becomes possible once we realize that what we really seek is something or someone to give ourselves to, something or someone greater and nobler than ourself. It is a search for some-thing or someone that will endow our life with meaning and purpose. Finding that something or someone is the beginning of faith as a lived reality. It becomes the basis of all commitment worthy of the name. The second element makes the experience specifi-cally Christian. It consists in finding that greater-than-self reality in the person of Jesus Christ. It is finding in his words meaning for our life. It is finding in his life the pattern and model for our own. The third element is the desire to share what we have found. We want others to find the meaning and purpose that have become our own. We want to live out this meaning and purpose in love for one another. The full Christian experience, then, is apostolic and missionary. 381 68.4 2009 Clark * Revisiting Reli#ous Identity 382 If this Christian experience is not real in our lives, no amount of theorizing about what it is or should be will ever make it so. Furthermore, theorizing will not help much in our lives as religious. If the Christian experience is real, it can be progressively liberating, freeing from all those attitudes of mind and spirit that limit us to operating within the narrow confines of self-ish interests. Like all Christians, religious are to give witness by their lives to the possibilities open to everyone for liber-ation from enslaving attitudes like inordinate ambition, defensiveness, possessiveness, self-pity, and cynicism. The life of religious should also be an active witness to joy, to hope, and to love. The call to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity seems so daunting that peo-ple often try to evade its challenge. In doing so, lay-persons sometimes say that holiness is something for religious and priests, not for "ordinary" persons like themselves. Likewise, religious sometimes find a type of escape through dependence on the system. Religious life involves a kind of system that includes public vows, constitutions and rules, and a goodly number of prac-tices found in the traditions of various religious insti-tutes. We might think just plugging into the system will make us as holy as we need to be. It is easy to just coast along. All too easily we can come to rate as virtue whatever is conformable to our religious surroundings. Custom and routine can so enslave us as to dispense us from personal decision. Of course, custom and routine, as well as the regular practices and exercises of religious life, are also great helps--if we understand and use them righdy. They do not, however, carry us all the way. They reflect the fact Review for Religious that in choosing to be religious we have set the direction of our lives. But they do not guarantee we never lose that direction. The need for ongoing renewal is simply the need to reaffirm, to reset our direction. The human condition is such that nothing can be taken for granted except the constancy of God's grace, of his invitation. Another point on which the council spoke explic-itly is religious consecration. Everyone of the faithful is consecrated to the divine service by baptism. Clearly, in various contexts the word "consecration" has various meanings, causing difficulties to be raised about how this idea applies to religious. In address-ing those difficulties, the council begins by relating religious con-secration to baptism. Religious consecra-tion adds nothing to the baptism's sacramental character. It is, however, in the line of baptismal grace. That grace can be lived in varying degrees of intimacy. The coun-cil speaks of religious as being "more intimately conse-crated to the divine service." That phrase is significant. It does not say "more strictly" or anything that might seem to emphasize some form of legal obligation. What the council points out by those words is that baptismal consecration can be interiorized to a greater or lesser extent by grace and by love. Ultimately, the truth of every Christian life consists in one's baptismal consecration. But God calls people to live out that consecration in different ways. For religious The call to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity seems so daunting that people often try to evade its challenge. 68.4 2009 Clark ¯ Revisiting Religious Identity the call to God's service is more explicitly determined. It takes on a particular form or style. To put that a bit differently, for religious the vital response called for by God's loving initiative is made concrete in a specific and distinctive way. By making a certain explicit profession of the evan-gelical counsels, persons technically become religious. The purpose of such profession is to commit ourselves more explicitly and more profoundly to living our bap-tismal consecration. At one time religious profession was commonly called "a new baptism" in homilies at profession ceremonies. In those days it was not always adequately explained. The council statements revitalized and clarified that idea. In reflecting on religious consecration, it is important to realize that such consecration is the work of God. Virtually every page of Scripture speaks of God's initiative in regard to creatures. Jesus told his disciples: "You have not chosen me. I have chosen you." Passages like that have a particular resonance for religious. It is God who calls religious and consecrates them through the church's ministry. Because it is God's work, religious consecration is permanent. God's choice and God's fidelity are unchanging. God is constant in the grace he offers, in his call. Our challenge is to keep trying to respond generously to that call. Religious consecration represents a special instance of the mysterious interaction between grace and human freedom. Obviously it is essential that those consecrat-ing themselves to God's service be free. At the same time we must recognize that the consecration is ulti-mately God's work. Religious profession has never been considered a sacrament by the church. In recent years many things have been referred to as "sacraments," in a broad sense Review for Religiot~s of the word. In the strict sense, religious profession is not a sacrament. That does not mean, however, that religious profession has no reality beyond the disposi-tion and conduct of the subject. Religious consecration is something accorded to free persons precisely as free. To be received, the consecra-tion requires a personal response to God's call. That response includes certain characteristics. It must be sufficiently enlightened, conscious, and free. A person's intention and the vows which formulate that intention are eminently free acts. Conversely, when the church dispenses from vows, she judges that in reality there was some impediment to freedom in the original profes-sion, something lacking in what was offered for divine consecration. The fact that religious consecra-tion is not a sacrament does not mean nothing more is involved than the liberty of the one making vows. On God's part the engagement is indefectible. A vocation consists in a person's being called to a cer-tain manner of life. Each vocation has its own structure and laws. Those laws are not to be understood as some-thing imposed from the outside. They derive from the very nature of the life in question. To ignore structure and laws proper to religious life would be to think of reli-gious life as funny putty which can take on any shape one gives it. History shows significant variations in the forms of religious life. But, in the last analysis, that life must always be directly related to what is most fundamental in Christianity, the search for God and growth in charity. A vocation consists in a person's being called to a certain manner of life. 68.4 2009 Clark * Revisiting Religious Identity In the Christian understanding of life, the goal is progress in charity. Jesus made it clear that love of God and love of neighbor sum up the whole law. Love gives ultimate value to what we do. That is why religious con-secration is wholly directed towards love of God and neighbor. It is precisely that love which gives the value of consecration to the activity of the religious. The idea that one's activities must continuously be animated by charity is certainly not new. We have heard it countless times in one form or another. Nor is it distinctive. It is true for everyone. By religious profession we are committed to that goal more explicitly, more officially, as it were. On the part of religious, the consecration of one's life consists in using distinctive means for achieving the common Christian goal of progress in charity. My cir-cumstances, my state of life, determine the means that are most appropriate for me. Jacques Maritain offered an excellent definition of means. He said means are the end in the process of coming to be. Thus, at each moment of our journey toward the perfection of love, we make that end real by employing the appropriate means, Perhaps we should emphasize the word "journey." While we hope we are on the right road and we try to keep moving in the right direction, we never reach the end, the perfection of love, in this life. Another way to put that is to say that holiness is not so much a place we arrive as it is the way we travel. Consciousness of our shortcomings and failures makes us reluctant to think of ourselves as holy. A num-ber of years ago Archbishop John Roach of St. Paul, in a pastoral letter on spirituality titled A Friendship Unlimited, offered a valuable insight in this regard. He wrote: "It's a funny thing, but for years I couldn't imag- Review for Religious ine thinking of myself as holy. I was equating holiness with perfection, and I knew I simply didn't have that. It is clear to me now that holiness is the desire to be a friend of Jesus Christ and to surrender my will to God. I may stumble along with that. I have so far--but, so long as I continue a sincere effort toward that goal, I am holy." It might help also to remind ourselves of one charac-teristic of holiness that is often overlooked. It is compat-ible with human frailty. Many stories and most statues of saints give a wrong impression, an impression of otherworldliness that obscures the fact that those saints were real human beings with human faults and weak-nesses. Examples are plentiful. St. Augustine was given to rages. St. Thtr~se of Lisieux had bouts of depression. St. Vincent de Paul, the great saint of charity, was said to be bilious and subject to fits of anger. St. Jerome was aggressive and insulting to persons who disagreed with him. In fact, one of his contemporaries said of Jerome that his malice was such that no saint could live within miles of him. The secret of all of those people is that they never gave up struggling and working to overcome their human weaknesses. They knew what counts is not the triumphant victory of total perfection, but persevering effort. Teresa of Avila said we should strive and strive and strive, for we were made for nothing else. She was right, of course, but the way she said it makes it sound hard. And it is a constant challenge. We cannot gloss over that. But I like the way T.S. Eliot put it when he said: "We are only undefeated because we keep 6n trying." In question 186 of the Secunda Secundae of his Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas treats of things that per-tain to the religious state. He speaks at length of the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and argues their ,387 68.4 2009 Clark ¯ Revisiting Religious Identity necessity for religious perfection. He points out that "a person cannot offer his whole life to God directly because that life is not lived all at once, but only suc-cessively. Hence, a person can only offer his whole life to God through the obligation imposed by vows" (my translation). Thus, our real challenge is not the perfor-mance of heroic acts, however beautiful, however noble, for every human act is by nature transitory. Our real challenge is the heroism of a whole life, offered to God without measure, without reservation, without regret. This is done through religious consecration, through the vows. And in this the entire person, mind and heart, must be involved and permanently involved. Note ' The Vatican translation and the revised Flannery translation, melded. See Lumen gentium, chapter 6, §44: "Regni Dei denique super omnia terrestria elevationem eiusque summas necessitudines peculiari modo patefacit [status religiosus]; supereminentem quoque magnitudi-nem virtutis Christi regnantis atque infinitam Spiritus Sancti potentiam in Ecclesia mirabiliter operantem, cunctis hominibus demonstrat." Ed. 388 Questions for Personal and Group Reflection If religious sisters and brothers are identified with the laity, how do you claim their special religious identity? 2. Has Clark been helpful in underlining aspects of religious identity that distinguish religious life for priests, sisters, and brothers? Would you want to add or subtract anything? Review for Religious LEO J. HERIOT Encounters Early and Late: John Bosco and Paul Saul was present at the stoning of the lov-able Stephen, and perhaps this increased the Pharisee's desire for Christian blood. Fernand Prat says, "Not content with being present at the torture of the victims, he entered into houses and dragged out the inmates, both men and women, to hale them to the dungeons."' Saul set out on the trail of Christians not to evangelize them but in pursuit of them to bring them to what he thought was justice. He had asked the priests to give him the offi-cial mission to seek out Jesus' disciples in the synagogue of Damascus and drag them before the Sanhedrin. In the Acts of the Apostles we have three accounts of the vision on the way to Damascus (9:1-19; 22:3-21; 26:12-20). It is Luke who makes the first announcement of Leo J. Heriot SDB wrote for us about Margaret Bosco in 2007. His address is now Don Bosco House; PMB Government Buildings; Suva, Fiji-Islands. exemplars of faith 389 68.4 2009 Heriot ¯ Encounters Early and Late this event; later we hear Paul giving his own account. The accounts agree on the important points: the occa-sion, the place, the time of day, the dazzling light, Saul's fall to the ground, his dialogue with the mysterious voice, his blindness, the return of his sight, and the total change in his life. From being a firebrand of a persecutor, he became a sower of the Good News of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The whole change of his behavior, his heeding of the strong voice's words, and his subsequent dedica-tion to a new cause make us aware that he was not led by fanaticism or goaded on by personal ambition. Jesus Christ seized him, pulled him close to himself. From the accounts of this conversion, nothing presaged it, noth-ing hinted that the fierce Pharisee would change regard-ing this person Jesus Christ, changing and becoming a disciple of Jesus and a preeminent apostle. Looking at this conversion, one gets the impression that it is beyond human explanation. It would be folly to try to find some simple plausible human causality. Pauline theology gives pride of place to the empow-erment of grace, and Saul was certainly under the influence of grace. It is not possible to explain this con-version apart from divine grace. Paul helps us with these assertions from his writings: "Have I not seen Jesus, our Lord?" (1 Co 9:1). "Last of all, as one untimely born, he appeared also to me" (1 Co 15:8). Grace found in this man fertile soil that would produce a great extension of the stoW of Jesus, a stoW that would make people aware of the immense, unfolding gift God gave to Saul and to the world on Saul's way to Damascus. Saul's encounter with the risen Lord as he sought to obliterate that Lord's message had a huge influence on him. One of the Apostle's boldest and most profound Review for Religious teachings was that of Christians' being incorporated into Christ's mystical body. For this Pharisee, Paul, Christ becomes all in all; Christ becomes everything. This idea is contained in seminal form in the question Jesus puts to the blinded Saul: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" (Ac 9:4). Paul was not attacking Jesus directly; he was defending his Pharisaism by trying to prevent Jews from falling into the ways of this crucified "reformer" of Judaism. In Saul's conversion God's grace is evident, work-ing a transformation immediately. It is like the blinding flash of light. The extraordinary illumination appar-ently brought about Saul's immediate com-pliance with Jesus' words and his swift transformation into a disciple and apostle. The stunned Saul changed his course once and for all. He found himself in a new world, a world almost alien to the life he had lived until then. Paul was overwhelmed by a new faith, a belief in the person of Jesus Christ as his Lord and master. He began a new and demanding life that only a strong and deep faith and love could sustain. He expresses that faith in his Letters to the Galatians and the Romans, an active faith that revolutionizes the whole person and alters the direction of people's lives. From the moment of his conversion the gaze of Saul is riveted on the person of Jesus Christ. We would go too far, however, if we reduced Paul's life to the moment One of the Apostle's boldest and most profound teachings was that of Christians" being incorporated into Christ's mystical body. 391 68.4 2009 Heriot ¯ Encounters Early and Late of his conversion. His continuing deep reflection on the mystery of God's love strengthened him as he went about his apostolic life. Our beliefs, too, are not simply the result of our reading or reflection, but come from God's communication with us, often in the quiet con-templation of a Divine Master stretching out his hand to us and telling us to find him in our contemplative awareness of others and ourselves. 392f The Boy from Becchi, Another Man of Zeal In an audience on 21 March 1858, Pope Pius IX, now Blessed, told the priest from Turin: "When you get back to Turin, Don Bosco, you write down these dreams and everything else you have told me, minutely, and in their natural sense. Save all this as a legacy for your Congregation so that it may serve as an encouragement and norm for your Sons.''2 After nine years this same pope questioned him once again. Don Bosco's reply was "I truthfully lacked the time. I was so taken with [any number of things]." The pope said, "Well then, I not only advise you, but order you to do it." Don Bosco promised to write down his early experiences, and he kept his word.3 In his poor handwriting Don Bosco scrawled out his first dream. "At the age of nine I had a dream that really changed my life and influenced me throughout my life. I dreamed I was near my house at Becchi, and a crowd of young boys had gathered there to have fun and play games. Some were playing, some were laughing, and not a few were cursing. Shocked by their expres-sions, I jumped in among the boys, swinging wildly and shouting at them to stop saying those things. At that moment a Person appeared among us. He was dressed in a long white robe, and his face radiated such light Review for Religious that I could not look at it. Suddenly he called me by name. 'Giovanni, you have to win these boys not by blows but with gendeness and kindness (bont~). So begin right now to show them that evil is ugly and virtue is beautiful.'" Although these words confused him, this little boy, nine years old in 1824, was being commissioned for God's work. He said, "I am so small and these are young men. What you are asking me to do seems to be impos-sible." But he was told: "What seems so impossible, you must achieve by being obedient and acquiring knowledge." The boy shouted, "You ask me to do the impossible!" The voice said, "I will give you a teacher under whose guid-ance you will learn and without whose help all knowl-edge becomes foolishness." Beside this Person stood the Lady to whom young Bosco's mother had taught him to pray regularly. The Lady, taking his hand, said, "Giovanni, look carefully. What do you see?" The crowd of boys was changed into goats, dogs, cats, bears, and various other animals. The Lady of his dream said to him, startlingly: "This is your field of labor." Then she gave him a one-word recipe for getting these boys to improve: "amorevolezza" (loving concern). The wild animals disappeared, having been turned into sheep. The Lady then told him, "In due time you will understand," and with that she put her hand on his head. At table for morning coffee he told his family about his dream. Each one said something different. His "At the age of nine I had a dream that really changed my life and influenced me throughout my life." 393 68.4 2009 Heriot * Encounters Early and Late brother Joseph said, "Oh, Giovanni, you are going to become a farmer looking after sheep and goats, caring for them." His brother Anthony said, "Oh, Giovanni, you are going to become the leader of a gang of ban-dits!" After other such remarks, their wise old grand-mother said in an authoritarian tone: "Giovanni, take no notice of dreams." And Mama Margaret said con-vincingly, "Prepare yourself, Giovanni, for your future apostolate." This, then, is what Pope Pius IX referred to in 1858 when he told Don Bosco: "This is the begin-ning and the foundation of your work. Give this dream to your Congregation and make it a part of their life." On the road to Damascus, Paul was astonished by the voice that changed his life. It had the power to change his life and send him on a new mission. While any comparison of nine-year-old John Bosco's dream to Paul's experience near Damascus would be lopsided, we may remind ourselves that both of them were impelled into a new life, a new apostolate, by mysterious expe-riences beyond usual explanation. Are there not many other divinely wondrous experiences as well? Why not keep them in mind? Notes ~ Fernand Prat, The Theology of St. Paul (London: Burns and Oates, 1964), p. 25. 2 The Biographical Memoirs ofSaintJohn Bosco, ed. Eugene Ceria SDB (New Rochelle, New York: Salesiana Publishers, 1980), vol. 5, p. 577. 3 Ceria, Biographical Memoirs, vol. 1. pp. 95-96. Review for Religious HILDA KLEIMAN On Hilda of Whitby ~ah~na tIr oennt eorre da tfheea msto dnaayst.e Ir yw, Ia hs ando nt orta cisheodse an Catholic, and I was not named after a saint, though I had a lovely name. After I entered, the prioress asked me to choose a patron, and I chose St. Hilda of Whitby. Initially I hesitated to choose her because, generally speaking, we do not know much about her. We know when she was born and died, where she lived, and some of the activities she pursued, activities for which she was well known and respected. But we know little about her character, her spirit, or her inner life. How did the tone of a gathering change when she walked into a room? How did she regard those whose lives and souls were entrusted to her care? Was her glance warm or cool? Did she have a glint in her eye? Answers to these ques-tions seemed permanently unavailable. A few months after I entered my community, I attended a concert given by Festival Chorale Oregon, Hilda Kleiman OSB writes from Queen of Angels Monastery; 840 S. Main Street; Mt. Angel, Oregon 97362. Email: ajkjune@juno.com 68.4 2009 Kleiman ¯ On Hilda of Wbitby a local, award-winning choir directed by Dr. Solveig Holmquist. I had been a student in her college choir for three years at Western Oregon University. I was excited to see her again, even from a distance, even from the back as she conducted the choir. When she entered the concert hall, she was as I had remembered--not tall or physically imposing, yet filled with a presence that shot through her spiky hair, her sharp eyes, and her earrings and many bracelets. I saw a woman in full possession of herself and the situation at hand. She stood before the choir and the orchestra, and they knew what to do sim-ply by the movements of her hands and a thin baton. I remembered standing before her with my eyes on every move she made. In every gesture, every expression, she embodied musician and conductor. She made the vocalists and musicians one as we let her lead us--as, with our minds but also our hearts, we let her be our breath to the very last note. When Dr. Holmquist arrived at Western, she had clearly learned how to draw people together. Shortly after being hired, she was told there were no students at Western who could really sing. Given that this was untrue, and even uncharitable, Dr. Holmquist did not listen. She simply set up a table at the activities fair at the beginning of the school year and started signing students up for auditions. By the end of the year, she had set the choral music program on its feet, doubling the size of the choir, planning tours, and establishing a student-led choir council. I began to see that music was Dr. Holmquist's life, and part of that life was invit-ing the rest of us into the music in whatever way was appropriate for each of us. I loved her for it, and I still do. Though I do not think I would have used the word at the time, I see now Review for Religious that what I received from Dr. Holmquist was a deep and vigorous image of vocation. I have no doubt that through the music she is doing what God created her to do. Shortly before I graduated, I tried to say as much to her. In her office one morning, I described what I saw in her. I said I was not a born musician like her, but rather a writer and a reader, and I was looking for my own purpose in life. The day I attended the Festival Chorale concert was November 17th, the feast day of St. Hilda, and the first time I observed her feast day as my own. As I watched and remembered Dr. Holmquist, some of the reasons why I choose Hilda began to emerge. It was not about wanting to be an abbess as Hilda was, any more than it was about wanting to be a cho- , ral conductor. It was not about imitation in such a specific sense, but about living in the presence of someone who could play a part in calling me to be who I am supposed to be and to do what I am meant to do. It was about the profound effect just one person who is living her vocation may have on those around her. If I imagined myself as a member of Hilda's monastery, much as I had been a member of Dr. Holmquist's choir, what could I learn about who I am supposed to be here and now? It was about the profound effect just one person who is living her vocation may have on those around her. 397 The Venerable Bede, an English monk and writer of the 8th century, is our sole source of historical infor- 68.4 2009 Kleiman ¯ On Hilda of Wbitby marion on Hilda. After serving as the abbess of several monasteries, she established at Whitby a double monas-tery, a community of monks and nuns. In his history of the English church, Bede tells us she taught those within her community to study the Scriptures thoroughly, to observe good works, and to foster many virtues, "but especially peace and charity." In part, the influence of her goodness was seen in the five outstanding men from her monastery who became bishops. In addition to her own monks and nuns, others from all walks of society sought her direction. In this way Hilda, "whom all her acquaintances called Mother because of her wonderful devotion and grace," guided many people to God along the path of their particular gifts and circumstances. Bede also gives us the story of Caedmon, a shy sheep-herder whom "God's grace made remarkable." One night Caedmon received a vision from God in which a man asked him to compose and sing him a song. Caedmon answered that he could not sing, and the man replied "But you shall sing to me," and he did, thus becom-ing the first poet of the English language. When Hilda learned of Caedmon's gift, she invited him to become a monk and be instructed in sacred history, which he then rendered into beautiful music and poetry. Caedmon soon became not just a poet but a disciplined and beloved member of the community as well. At his death he asked if there were any who held any ill will against him, and he was assured that there was not. When then asked if he was at peace with those attending him, he replied, "I am at peace with all the servants of God." Among well-known events of church history, Whitby is known as the site of the synod in 664 at which the controversy between the Celtic and Roman dates for observing Easter was resolved. The problem disturbed Review for Religious many people, Bede tells us, even to the point that they feared "that they might have received the name Christian in vain." Those arguing for the Roman date were victo-rious, yet Bede describes Hilda and her community as favoring the Celtic practice. While he tells us the results of the synod, Bede does not describe Hilda's response to the decision. We do not know if in the end she was saddened, relieved, or pleased. From what we do know about her leadership, however, we can perhaps assume that many looked to Hilda for guidance as to how they should respond to this decision. We can see the great respect she had for the Scriptures and the wisdom of the church. We can see that she taught those around her to be of service in all peace and charity. Even as she neared her death, she urged those in her monastery to "maintain the gospel peace among themselves and with others." I imagine that Hilda had a profound sense of perspective, of knowing, in the end, which beliefs and practices held priority. Unity within the church mat-tered more than any particular date, and gracious accep-tance of the decision of the synod mattered more than the content of the arguments. I was aware of St. Hilda before I was a Catholic because I attended St. Hilda's Episcopal Church for sev-eral years during high school and college. St. Hilda's is a small community; the church holds perhaps fifty peo-ple on a Sunday. I met the vicar, Noel Knelange, when I first arrived, and about a year later Noel's husband Bill was ordained a deacon. I attended the ordination and sang in the choir, helping to lead the congregation out of the church singing "The King's Highway" for the recessional. During the service I was taken aback 399 68.4 2009 Kleiman ¯ On Hilda of Whitby Bill's ordination gave me the image of dedicating one's life to God alone, and Noel, bluntly and without~ pretense; connected ~that image, to me, 400] by the beauty of the liturgy and the fact that Bill was grounding his life and identity in his faith. Somehow God wanted him. God wanted exactly who Bill was, a middle-aged man, a deaf man deeply involved with the deaf community of the diocese, a man who loved to fish so much that during the homily the bishop gave him a new fishing pole, now that he would be a fisher of men. Afterwards, during the reception in the parish hall, I was standing near Bill and Noel, probably eating a cookie, when Noel turned to me and said, "Well, you could do this too you know!" What? I did not want to be a deacon or a priest. I did not understand why she said that, and we never talked about it later. I forgot about Noel's words until after I had become a Catholic and been a member of the Benedictine Sisters of Mt. Angel, Oregon, for several years--even though I had often wondered when the thought of becoming a nun first came to me. Bill's ordination gave me the image of dedicating one's life to God alone, and Noel, bluntly and without pretense, connected that image to me. The seed of the idea of staking everything on "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen," as we read in the Letter to the Hebrews, was planted and would take root in ways I never suspected. Just a few years Review for Religious later, I was led to the Catholic Church, to a Benedictine monastery, and to a surprising new relationship with St. Hilda, a relationship reflected in women like Solveig Holmquist and Noel Knelange. Regardless of whether they were aware of all the details, they could and would change the course of a life in a single breath, with a single word. The name Hilda comes from the Old English and means "Battle Maiden," a fact I learned only after I received the official word from .the prioress that I could take Hilda as my new name at my final profession. I took to the image of the Battle Maiden immediately--the tension between toughness and gentleness, knowledge and innocence, between what we think we know and what we in fact do not, a tension not to be resolved but used as ingeniously as possible until the day of death. Other people have taken to my choice of the name Hilda, to the "Batde Maiden" too. "Battle on, maiden!" says my mom before she hangs up the phone. After ask-ing me to explain the meaning of Hilda to my class-mates, one of my seminary professors warns that "from now on, you gendemen better look out!" The best, how-ever, is my friend Ania. With her I have established The Society of Honorary Battle Maidens. We have taken as our charter the words of St. Paul to the Corinthians: "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed, but not driven to despair, persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies." To bet- 401 68.4 2009 Kleiman ¯ On Hilda of Wbitby ter understand our society, I have listed qualities of the Battle Maiden, which include the following and will surely be added to as I ponder this further: ¯ A persistent love, grounded in the love of God that pursues us without end. She can keep extending her love for other people, regardless of how they respond, if at all. If she feels hurt by this, she takes it to mean that her efforts were not the most gracious way to love this particular person, and it is time to try something else. She is intelligent, so her persistence does not suggest beating her head against a wall, but rather keeping her wits about her and being willing, always willing, to try again. ¯ The beginning of an understanding of the fourth step of humility in the Rule of St. Benedict: "The fourth step of humility is that, in this obedience under diffi-cult, unfavorable, or even unjust conditions, his [or her] heart quietly embraces suffering and endures it without weakening or seeking escape." She does not, in the end, resent that this step asks her to endure injustice, even contradiction, for the sake of the God she loves. She accepts that sometimes such endurance will require her to speak her mind, to name what is difficult, recognizing that endurance can be more than just waiting for the bad to run its course. Bravery of heart becomes part of her core. She understands that false sisters and broth-ers (and are not we all false and contradictory at one time or another) are part of reality; to deny this is of no use to anyone. She uses their words and actions to strengthen her reliance on the Lord so that it remains possible for her to pray for her enemies. ¯ An enduring kindness that she tries to exercise in any situation, par.ticularly in her words. At times, she may manifest her kindness in ways that are more tra- Review for Religious ditionally recognized as kindness--offering to lend a hand in household tasks, greeting guests with courtesy and assisting them in their needs, acknowledging the accomplishments of others with a sincere compliment. Kindness, however, is also needed in more challenging situations. It is a kindness to try to change the sub-ject when she hears murmuring or gossip about some-one who is not present. It is a kindness to walk away and not participate even by listening when this tactic fails, perhaps biting back the words rising in her throat that she would like to put everyone in their place with. Kindness calls her to address only in private any embar-rassing situations that involve another person, so as not to worsen the pain her words would likely cause if spo-ken publicly. To enjoy membership in The Society of Honorary Battle Maidens, you and I do not need to be in full possession of these qualities. We do need, however, to recognize their worth and strive to live with their inher-ent tensions, tensions that in the end are simply the tensions of the cross. Image Bearer One of a kind, Here for a reason, Plucked from the mire, Now wearing white, Bearing His likeness, I am immortal, A soul crafted By the Holy. Teresa Burleson 403 68.4 2009 Vv'ILLIAM PROSPERO World Youth Day and Religious Life sharing experience 40_4] Many vocation directors will confirm that a substantial number of candidates for seminar-ies and institutes of consecrated life consider a World Youth Day (WYD) experience to have been an important part of their discernment. Many candidates say they first thought seri-ously about religious life or the priesthood while on a WYD pilgrimage. What is it about WYD that promotes consecrated life? Sister Joseph Andrew, of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, asked me to speak about this very topic at a recent discernment retreat at the motherhouse in Ann Arbor. No less than a hundred 'thirty young women attended. When I asked how many had been to WYD, about one third raised their hands. The main reason for "only" a third, I William Prospero SJ is pastor of St. Mary's University Parish (on the campus of Central Michigan University); 1405 South Washington; Mount Pleasant, Michigan 48858. Emaih will.prospero@stmarycmu.org Review for Religious believe, is that most of them were too young to have attended any other WYD than the one in 2008 in Sydney, Australia. Sydney did not draw huge numbers from the United States because of the travel cost. Nonetheless, many of the young women present had managed to attend that WYD. I believe there are several reasons why WYD pro-motes consecrated life and priesthood. Though I do not have any statistical analysis to prove my points, I have a wealth of experience assisting young WYD pil-grims in their discernment about consecrated life or priesthood. I have attended four WYDs: Denver (1993), Toronto (2002), Cologne (2005), and Sydney (2008). I have served as a priest on the last three. I have wit-nessed more than ten pilgrims enter religious life or the seminary. The main reason, I believe, for the wealth of WYD vocations is that WYD gives a taste of life as a conse-crated person. Pilgrims experience about two weeks of consecrated living. WYD provides a veritable "trial run" of living the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. In. living the vows on WYD, pilgrims experience the intense joy of the universal church gathered around the pope. They make the connection that living as a religious could be enjoyable and meaningful. The possibility of consecrated vocation becomes real for the first time in many pilgrims' lives. Pilgrims experience poverty the first day of com-mitting to go on WYD. They realize that the costs can be high. As I began recruiting for Sydney, I recall sev-eral students resisting, sa.ying $2,850 was too costly. My response was: "Do you want to go? Has God put this desire in your heart? If so, then commit and the money will come. I promise. And, if not, I will personally cover 405 68.4 2OO9 Prospero ¯ World Youth Day and Religious Life Trusting God for material needs is a tangible experience of religious poverty. 406 whatever you can't. But you must promise you will com-mit to this and try your best to raise the funds. I prom-ise you, God will provide." Every pilgrim had enough funds. On four WYDs I have never met a pilgrim who fell short of funds. For the 2008 WYD in Sydney, we took seventy pilgrims from the Diocese of Saginaw, each paying $2,850. There are stories of pilgrims finding funds flow-ing in from fund-raisers and from the most unexpected sources. Trusting God for material needs is a tangible experience of reli-gious poverty: God provides. Pilgrims trust him, and all works out. From the beginning, they learn that those who commit to a reli-gious pilgrimage are cared for by God. They learn this throughout WYD, beginning with their first moment of commitment. Poverty finds many manifestations, usually very inconvenient ones. As the pilgrimage officially begins, I speak of the "great ball of suffering" that one endures on WYD. For some reason, chaos and inconvenience reign. This makes trusting God mandatory, not optional. For example, because of delayed flights, our travel time from our departure to our host parish in Kiama, south of Sydney, was thirty-eight hours. And the last two hours were in a bus with a broken heater (it was winter there) while rain and forty Fahrenheit degrees of damp cold were welcoming us. These horrendous situations created the proper spirit in which to celebrate Mass, Revie;v for Religious namely, our sense of spiritual and actual poverty: "We are not in control!" Having celebrated Mass at a crowded boarding gate in the Los Angeles airport (LAX), we found special meaning in celebrating Mass again, hungry and cold, at the very end of our trip. I was reminded of the four thousand hungry and tired people in Mark 6:1-8 who were worn out from their journey, so Jesus fed them. It was as if Jesus intentionally brought the people out to a deserted place to experience their poverty and to see and taste the goodness of God. Poverty makes pilgrims hungry for Jesus. Another example of poverty happened at the Papal Welcome at Sydney's harbor. Afterwards we were hun-gry and cold. Several pilgrims collected our chits or tickets and got our meals, bags of hot stew (option: beef or pork). After getting the same victuals several days in a row, pilgrims were cheerfully dubbing them "barf bags." Our meals were being eaten on the ground or on cement blocks or wherever we could prop ourselves up. One night, however, several alert pilgrims found some plastic chairs and brought enough over for the group of seventy to sit. We could sit and eat! We were so grate-ful. I cannot recall ever feeling so grateful for having a chair to sit on. This is what WYD does: it makes the ordinary into a gift from God. Once one begins to see that everything, everything, is a gift, then one can start living a radical Christian life. So the gift of sitting, eat-ing, enjoying each other's company, and basking in the reality that we just saw in person the Vicar of Christ, all add up to an explosive experience of the joys of the kingdom. Poverty makes human experience more real, and opens us to the true value of community. How sim-ple and uncomplicated it all is. 407 68.4 2009 Prospero ¯ Worm Youth Day and Religious Life Over and over one witnesses pilgrims making sacrifices for the sake of the group. 4081 If pilgrims are properly prepared and guided, they have a wonderful experience of interacting positively with the opposite sex. Even sleeping conditions, oth-erwise inappropriate, become an experience of intense respect and honor of boundaries. One sees the "other" as sacred and as a fellow pilgrim on the way, some-one to be honored and respected. I have never known of any of our pil-grims engaging in actions that are meant for mar-ried couples. Sleeping shoulder to shoulder with two thousand other pilgrims may seem cause for temptation and raised eyebrows, but never have I seen anything but excellent moral behavior among our pilgrims. Even where there are dating couples, they hardly ever "pair off" from the group. The whole atmosphere is one of intense commu-nal living. People are attentive to the needs of everyone, sharing and caring for one another. The pilgrim learns that one does not need to pursue or engage in roman-tic relationships to be happy. Celibacy for the kingdom becomes tangible, livable, and enjoyable. At WYD the intense communal activities, which sometimes involve distressing conditions and both-ersome inconveniences that must be endured, build a joyful esprit de corps. Over and over one witnesses pilgrims making sacrifices for the sake of the group. Opportunities for minor sacrifices abound, such as shar-ing personal items to assist another in need and collect-ing meal tickets and standing in line to retrieve meals for a group. These and other sacrifices reveal acom- Review for Religious mon care for one another. Moreover, the group lead-ers have the ultimate say in all major decisions about travel, gatherings, agendas, and special needs that arise. Individual wills give way to the group, or to the lead-ers' decisions. Through these experiences one finds joy in sacrificing one's own will for the good of the group, opening up to the gift of religious obedience. Consecrated persons make a sacrifice of their lives for the good of the church and the world. Pilgrims experience the power of loving sacrifice firsthand, and its power to build up the Body of Christ. Eddie Dwyer, a Saginaw seminarian, said: "Three things I hate are lines, sitting on the floor, and crowded spaces, but the love at WYD made sacrifice easy." All these experiences find rich meaning in the cel-ebration of the sacraments, namely, confession and Eucharist. The intensity of confessions, celebrations of Holy Mass, and Eucharistic adoration affirms God's real presence among his people. All the sufferings and joys of pilgrimage are offered up to the Father in the won-derful exchange of gifts that the Eucharist makes real. All is gift. As a priest I am overwhelmed by the power and joy of the priesthood, by the sacramental fruitful-ness on WYD. What power can be manifested in such weakness! The Papal Mass at the conclusion of WYD provides the perfect environment for the overflowing gratitude of the pilgrimage to express itself. Pilgrims, freshly and deeply aware of God's goodness, gratefully share their belongings with others. Jackets, caps, and an assortment of other personal items are offered and received in a wonderful exchange of gifts. God's kingdom becomes visible in everyone giving their things away to bring joy to both receiver and giver. In his Spiritual Exercises 409 68.4 2009 Prospero ¯ Worm Youth Day and Religious Life St. Ignatius Loyola speaks of the free exchange of gifts between those who love each other (§231). This is the Christian life. As church and bride of Christ, we receive every good thing from God and make an offering of our very selves back to him in gratitude. This joyous exchange finds particular power at the Papal Mass. The accumulation and possession of .things no longer has appeal. The giving and receiving of love becomes the reason for existing. Consecrated life witnesses to the joy of the kingdom of heaven through the. gift of self to God. The Papal Mass provides a taste of the joy offered to those who radically take up the call to follow Christ the Bridegroom wherever he goes. As I lead pilgrims to WYD, I make a point of having several priests, seminarians, and religious sisters accom-pany us. When lay pilgrims rub shoulders with conse-crated persons, consecrated life now has a face, and that face is familiar and human. No longer is the question of consecrated life somewhere off in the distance, but it is real and lived by real people. The possibility of consecrated vocation opens up as the joys of serving the kingdom find witness. I count WYD the single most important vocation promotion ministry that I do. 410 Review for Religious BENNY PHANG Marriage and Celibacy: Rivals or Complements? MMarriage and celibacy are often seen as contraries. isunderstanding about these two vocations still exists among many people who do not fully under-stand celibacy for the sake of the kingdom of heaven or the meaning of marriage. They see marriage as con-trary to celibacy, totally separated from it, and unable to contribute anything to it. And they understand celibacy as merely a pessimistic, negative rejection of married life and love. They even think celibacy is responsible for many sexual problems. About these matters people raise critical questions such as: Is marriage contrary to celibacy or even a rival? Is marriage a higher and better state than celibacy, or is it the other way around? Does marriage confirm celibacy or devalue it? If marriage confirms celibacy, how does it do so? Benny Phang OCarm, an Indonesian priest studying at the Angelicum for a doctorate in moral theology, can be addressed at Centro Internazionale Sant'Alberto; Via Sforza Pallavicini, 10; 00193 Roma, Italy. Blog: theouiosoter.blogspot.com 411 68.4 2009 Pbang ¯ Marriage and Celibacy On this topic I want to draw some reflections from the messages of Pope John Paul II (collected in Theology of the Body), from the critical reflection on celibacy in the Catholic Church written by Aloysius Pieris sJ, and from the experience of St. Th~r~se of Lisieux of her vocation to religious life. Marriage and celibacy, are interrelated. To hurt either one by being unfaithful in it also hurts the other. 412- Rival Vocations? In the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus places the counsel of celibacy in the discussion of the impor-tance of marriage, when he argues against divorce (Mt 19:3-12). Pope John Paul confirms this, saying, "[From Matthew's Gospel, Mt 19:10-12], it can be seen sufficiently clearly that here it is not a question of diminishing the value of matrimony in favor of continence, nor of less-ening the value of one in comparison with the other.''1 "Christ's words on this point are quite clear. He proposes to his disciples the ideal of continence and the call to it, not by reason of the inferiority of, or of prejudice against, conjugal union in the body, but only for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.''2 One can, however, argue for St. Paul's position when he writes, "So then, he who marries his fiancee does well; and he who refrains from marriage will do better" (1 Co 7:38). Does this Pauline text not mean that mat-rimony is good, but celibacy for the kingdom of heaven is better?3 Review for Religious We need to comprehend the reason for celibacy in the evangelical counsel. Jesus says, "There are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can" (Mt 19:12). This is the only reason for the evangelical counsel of celibacy. The reason is not to devalue marriage, but for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. To understand the "difference" between Jesus and Paul as regards celibacy and marriage, John Paul gives us an insight: In his pronouncement, did Christ perhaps suggest the superiority of continence for the kingdom of heaven to matrimony? Certainly he said that this is an excep-tional vocation, not a common one. In addition he affirmed that it is especially important and necessary to the kingdom of heaven. If we understand superiority to matrimony in this sense, we must admit that Christ set it out implicitly. However, he did not express it direcdy. Only Paul will say of those who choose matri-mony that they do "well." About those who are willing to live in voluntary continence, he will say that they do "better" (! Co 7:38). (Theology, p. 275) The conscious and voluntary renunciation of the conjugal love of marriage and family life by celibate per-sons is not a devaluation of marriage, but it is a form of self-sacrifice. John Paul explains: "Christ understood the importance of such a sacrifice . He understood the

Issue 37.3 of the Review for Religious, 1978. ; Obedience in the Contemporary World Impassioned Presence: Religious Life and Leisure Cosmic Dimensions of the Eucharist Volume 37 ~ May 1978 : ' ~ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is edited in collaboration with faculty members of the Department of Theology of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. It is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute; St. Louis, Missouri. © 1978 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Composed, printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri. Single copies: $2.00. Subscription U.S.A. and Canada: $8.00 a year; $15.00 for two years. Other countries: $9.00 a year, $17.00 for two years. For subscription orders or change of address, write REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; P.O. BOX 6070; Duluth, Minnesota 55802. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Robert Williams, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Associate Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor May, 1978 Volume 37 Number 3 Correspondence with the editor and the associate editors, manuscripts and books for review. should be sent to REWEW FOa I~L~OtJS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; Jesuit Community; St. Joseph's College; City Avenue at 54th Street; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19131. "Out of print" issues and articles not re-issued as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 North Zeeb Road; Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. Ministry Rooted in the Vows Mary T. Rattigan, C.S.J. Sister Mary is presently director of the formation program in her province. She also teaches theology at St. John's University in Queens, NY. She resides at 39 Gifford Ave.; Jersey City, NJ 07304. Simply stated, ministry refers to the service rendered in the name of Jesus Christ. Such service is a faith-response to our being sent to continue the mission of Jesus in the world. At the moment, religious are experiencing new vistas of ministry being opened up to them. They also perceive their call to service as stemming directly from the acknowledgment and de-velopment of their gifts and talents. Current involvement in ministry, then, calls for an increased ability to discern individual gifts for service and an appreciation of emerging diversity in form and style. We are asked to keep in mind St. Paul's injunction: "There are all sorts of service to be done, but always to the same Lord, working in all sorts of different ways in different people . The particular way in which the.Spirit is given to each person is for a good purpose" (I Co 12:5-7). Regardless of its form, ministry can be broadly defined as those efforts directed to bringing the love and power of God to fruition in the world. Such efforts to build up the kingdom of God ultimately spring from a consciousness of the meaning of Christian mission. Hence, an understanding of ministry, which is normally the way mission is expressed, must be sought in the theology of mission. In the first place, mission theology pinpoints the Church's need to become a perfect sign of Christ in the world. It reminds us, moreover, that the whole Church, everywhere and in all its members, ismissionary. To be Christian and to be Church means to be "chosen" for service, to carry on the work of Christ in the world. It also places a heavy emphasis on the fact that although a 321 322 I Review for Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 plurality of ministries exists, there is only one mission--the mission of the risen Jesus. This single mission; which has been entrusted to the members of his Church, is said to incorporate three elements. First, we share in this mission when we announce the new life received in Christ which makes the love and power of God available here and now. Second, acceptance of this mission demands that our life-style give credibility to this announcement. This requires a witness to the process of being personally transformed by the love and power of God. Third, we are invited to extend God's love and power by our actions so that the kingdom may be realized to a greater extent in history. From the the~ology of mission, then, it is possible to delineate the essential features of a life of service. And, to the extent a sense of mission becomes a personal reality for us, we can experience a reason for being "sent" and an urgency to respond to the kingdom-vision. Both a growing consciousness of the meaning of mission and the de-velopment of multiple forms of ministry are demanding that a second look be given to the evangelical vows. These factors, among others, are forcing religious to face the question of how the vows commit them to ministry. The need to understand the vowed life in relation to ministry is especially felt by those actively engaged in combating social injustice. The call to work for justice, equality and peace is demanding an articulation of the vows which is consonant with the social mission of the Church. By the same token, religious are wondering whether new aspects of the vows might not be emerging as they seek to confront the issues of justice, peace and equality. In either case, an understanding of the vowed life in the context of mission and ministry is deemed extremely important at this point of time. In fact,. a more adequate theology of religious life cannot be expected until an examination of the vows in .relation to ministry is undertaken. Apostolic religious have a heed to deepen their insights into the vows as a renewal of their baptismal commitment to service, to conceive of themselves as a community with a "commission" that shares the Church's mission re-sponsibility, and to think of religious profession as the public acceptance of ¯ this mandate to mission. The reflections which follow are intended to in-crease our understanding of the role of the vows in ministry, whether that ministry occurs within the Christian community itself or in society at large. Another Look at the Vows Religious have traditionally expressed their response to the call of dis-cipleship through the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Until Vatican II, a certain clarity of understanding and expectation accompanied the evangelical life. But all too often in the past, the expression of the vows was equated with certain kinds of behavior, such as using material goods, abstaining from genital sexuality, and listening to the superior. With the renewal of religious life, however, the interpretation of the vows began to shift. Developments in theology, psychology and the social sciences forced Ministry Rooted in the Vows / 323 traditional notions of the vows to be placed under severe scrutiny. For more than a decade now, serious questioning and confusion have surfaced over the relevance of the vowed life to contemporary society. The ambiguity which surrounds the present living of the vowed life is multifaceted. Un-certainty has emerged as to whether the vows themselves constitute one's religious consecration. Objection has been voiced over the traditional vocabulary still employed for the vows. Doubt has also arisen regarding their very number, with the attendant suggestion that a single, more com-prehensive term be used to designate the commitment to religious life. The complexity of the situation is brought to even sharper focus when divergent interpretations are includedin the picture. Some perspective can be gained, however, when we recall that the internal thrust of the early years of renewal, with its intensely personalistic and communal concerns, perme-ated most attempts to rethink the vows. In retrospect we can appreciate the emphasis which had to be placed on calling forth individual religious to fuller personhood and responsibility. We also realize that community life demanded that interpersonal relationships be fostered and that new struc-tures of authority and government be adopted. But religious have now reached the point of desiring that their vows be perceived as integrally related to mission, as giving expression to their call to minister in Jesus' name. While much study remains to be done on the relation of vowsto the personal and communal aspects of our life, consideration must presently be given to the strongly sensed need to relate the vows more concretely to the apostolic or service dimension of religious life. The desire to seek ways of living the vows which will best express the call to mission can be recognized from the type of question being asked: What contribution can the vows make toward a more effective realization of the mission of Jesus in the world today? In what way do the vows enable religious to be effective ministers of the gospel, particularly in the area of social justice? It may be asked, why the current trend to relate the vows to mini~stry? Why do religious feel challenged to examine the vows as a source from which true ministry can flow? It i.s significant, I believe, that the renewed interest in the vows occurs at a time when religious have already given considerable attention to the spiritual resources needed for ministry. They have opted, for the most part, for a more intense personal spirituality. In an effort to reaffirm the importance of a deep prayer life, they are actively pursuing the charismatic movement, directed retreats, continued spiritual direction, and so forth. In line with this interest in spirituality, attention now focuses on the vows as spiritual resources which can be brought to bear on a life of service. As the thirst for spirituality extends itself to the vows, it represents a search for both a depth-dimension to life and a greater sense of integration. This depth-dimension can be characterized as a rootedness or centeredness which will serve to ground our apostolic ser-vice. The vows hold out the promise ofeffecting a sense of rootedness since 324 / Review for Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 they encapsule basic orientations arid values which, if explicated and claimed as one's own, can provide roots o.r centering. Besides seeking deeper roots for service, religious are taking a fresh look at the vows out of a need to experience a greater degree of integration. They are led to wonder in what sense the vows can be considered an integrative force. Faced with a frequent sense of disharmony and discrepancy in ministry, they are led to inquire about the ability of the vows to "make whole." In other words, can the vows act as a unifier between the vision proposed by ministry and the reality actually achieved? In a world where it is ex-ceedingly difficult to experience any synthesis or integration, religious feel that the vowed life deserves to be reappraised for its integrating impact on their lives. Assumed in the quest for integration, however, is the underlying assumption that the vows cannot be viewed as external to service. Any authentic living of the vows will consist of ministering to the needs of others, especially those who are victims of injustice and oppression. We turn now to consider the spiritual resources offered by the vows when ministry is conceived as the presence of God's love and power in the world. Ministry as Presence One way to look at ministry is to regard it as presence. As the word is used here, presence is synonymous with the term sacrament taken in its broadest meaning. As an expression of mission, the object of ministry is to be a sign of God's transforming love and power. One who ministers is seen to be a symbol through which the God-life received in Jesus is embodied. The form which this kind of ministry takes is that of leading others to experience the divine element in their own lives and of bringing this to fuller expression. Ministry as sacramental, then, is concerned with fostering a response to the transforming love and power of God at work in the world. As a participation in the mission of Jesus, ministry partakes of the very mystery which marked the mission and ministry of Jesus himself. In this regard, St. John's gospel offers a clarification of the nature of this mission, and consequently, contributes towards an understanding of ministry as presence. The chief work of Jesus, as presented by the fourth evangelist, lies essentially in revealing the Father's love and power: "To have seen me is to have seen the Father" (Jn 14:9). The concept of ministry espoused here centers on Jesus being the presence of God in the world. Important for us, however, is the promise which accompanies this revelation for those who believe: ". to perform the same work as I do myself" (Jn 14:12). As the perfect image of the Father, Jesus gives his Spirit so that we may enjoy a similar relationship to God, and thus share his likeness of being a revelation of God in the world. Despite our limitations, we have been commissioned to be sacraments of the transforming love and power of God. This is the great mystery of ministry--a mystery which the vows help to disclose. Still further reinforcement for viewing ministry as presence is found in the fourth Ministry Rooted in the Vows / 395 gospel with the recorded statement of Jesus: ". I consecrate myself for their sakesnow, that they may be consecrated in truth" (Jn 17:19). Central to this Johannine emphasis is his notion of truth, which means to "make holy." Jesus himself is the truth, the holiness of God visibly manifested. His mission is to effect a greater possession of the truth which he is. Judged in this light, discipleship becomes a mandate to bear the message of the Father's love in our life. To be consecrated in truth, therefore, implies a process whereby the love and power of God can become enfleshed in us~a process which designates our apostolic mission: to make visible the presence of God in the world. From this perspective, ministry rests on the conviction that our life itself, which is a primary form of presence, is meant to be shared with those around us. It summons us to be vehicles of God's transforming love and power. Above all else, then, a ministry of presence asks that we witness to life in its transcendent dimension. The religious consecration of perpetual chastity, in particular, conveys a presence which elicits belief in the mystery of God's transforming love and power. This becomes possible when being unmarried for the sake of the kingdom is understood for what it actually encompasses. As St. Paul indicates, an unmarried woman "can devote herself to the Lord's affairs." His reason for extolling virginity, however, stems from the fact that she can give her "undivided attention to the Lord" (1 Co 7:32-35). All too often this passage has been interpreted solely in terms of the availability which religious possess for apostolic activity. But suggested by this Pauline directive is a relation of intimacyma relation characteristic of those who have allowed the love and power of God to come to fruition in their lives. Seen in this light, chastity commits re-ligious to deepen their own relationship to the Lord, and to undertake the task of concretizing this love in their relations with others. The goal of vowed chastity is judged to be concomitant with the witness called for in ministry--a witness to the mystery of God's transforming love and power. To remain celibate for the sake of the kingdom is itself a sign, and one which inserts religious into the very heart of mystery. It signifies a mystery not only to those we serve but it also continues to be an enigma even for those who have embraced it. The vow of chastity provides a way of saying concretely with our life something of the mystery which must be. accepted by all persons, namely, we are made to live in and for mystery, particularly its eschatological aspect--the final destiny which brings this mystery to fulfillment. Its witness might well be to offer others the opportunity to question their lives, what is the meaning of their lives, their goal. Quite simply, this becomes possible when religious cause others to wonder why. To be a catalyst for eliciting these questions requires that our life-style palpably express a personal consecration to the mystery of God's trans-forming love and power. Consequently, a ministry of presence is concerned with the values and attitudes which we embody in our relationships with 326 / Review for Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 others. Granted this, the challenge facing religious is whether people around us can even glimpse the mystery of God's transforming power from the way we live. both as individuals and as communities. It must be asked, too, whether we facilitate the possibility of others arriving at a fuller sense of themselves as vessels of God's presence in the world. Since a ministry of presence centers on personal relationships, it places a high priority on the kind of.person we are rather than on any works we may perform. To what extent, then, does the vowed life enable this focus of our personhood to be reflected in our service? One instance worth noting is the way the vows help religious to go beyond the "performance principle." In a culture which tends to judge persons according to the efficiency with which they execute tasks, it is extremely difficult to maintain the primacy of personhood. Vowed chastity can foster the possibility of our being person-oriented. By refusing to be defined by our work or achievements, we can offer a chal-lenge to the pragmatic strain underlying our culture. When we identify ourselves in terms of our relationships, we should be in a better position to view others in terms of who they are rather than what they accomplish. To strike a happy balance between a life of presence and a task-oriented one is no easy achievement. In the interests of reality, the vows should at least prevent our service from being dominated by the standard of efficiency-- despite the fact that our service must indeed be efficient and competent. In connection with a work-ethic, a certain "market-orientation" can easily creep into the ministry of religious. Such marketable elements as success, relevance, prestige, and income should not form the criteria for apostolic service. Neither a choice of ministry nor a judgment regarding its effectiveness should be made on the basis of popularity, remuneration, low-risk factors, or other marketable values. In this regard, both the vows of poverty and obedience, as steps taken in faith, have a great deal to do with ministry. They offer a direction and a challenge to the choices we make and to the attitudes we espouse. The recent association of vowed poverty with work, the fact that religious are "subject to the common law of labor," serves to illustrate how a market-orientation might become operative for us. Since Vatican II, as we know, poverty has shifted from limiting the use of possessions to the consent of the superior to earning one's own living and aiding the poor with one's resources. Because of this expectation that they be self-supporting, religious might find themselves choosing an area of service based on remuneration. Also, in view of the growing elderly population in religious communities, they might feel pressured into ac-cepting a form of ministry which would contribute to the financial support of the community. Whatever the reasons, religious must at least recognize the subtle temptation posed by the exhortation to earn one's own living. Vowed obedience, which is concerned with the choices we make, demands a prayerful discernment regarding our motives for service. It asks that our choices proceed from values clearly based in the gospel. When we seek the Ministry Rooted in the Vows / 327 Spirit's direction for engagement in ministry, obedience makes it incumbent upon us to see that apostolic choices are not subjected to market values. The vowed life, then, is meant to root ministry in its transcendent and relational dimensions. And the concept of personal presence allows us to perceive the dynamic relationship which exists between ministry and the vows. While ministry refers primarily to the presence or sacramental em-bodiment of God's love and power in the world, it must also bear the marks of suffering love. To ~vitness to God's transforming presence requires that we undergo the sufferings inherent to bringing the kingdom of-God to a fuller realization. Ministry as Suffering Love Suffe.ring love is the h'allmark of Christian ministry. This kind of love demands some explanation due to the recent emphasis on personalism and fulfillment in religious life. Clarification is also needed because the word suffering is ordinarily thought in terms of pain of mind or body, or as bearing the consequences of some illness or wrongdoing. At times it even conjures up a kind of self-sacrifice typical of the past which is now seen as destructive to personal growth and holiness. As the term is used here, suffering refers to the capacity to be acted upon, to be changed or moved by another. Suffering love means that we allow persons and events to enter our life so as to shape the response we make. It implies a vulnerability which results from permitting our actions to be defined by what the°other requires. When our ministry takes its shape from the needs around us, it opens the door to true empathy and compassion in serving others. Person~il conflictl, adjustment, and denial will necessarily flow from this kind of loving, thereby contradicting a common misunderstanding that love always results in personal satisfaction. Suffering love is none other than the reverse side of self-giving love. Both aspects of love constitute the true nature of personalism. Otherwise, we have a pseudo-personalism which calls for the giving of our personal being but does not allow usto be transformed by our relations with others. For ministry, suffering love means that interdepen-denc~ and reciprocity will mark the experience of truly serving others. Those WhO minister must have the capacity both to receive and to give, the willingness to be shaped as well as to create. Suffering love can best be understood in the context of the mission of Jesus. Although we tend to equate Jesus' sufferings solely with the events surrounding the crucifixion, the gospels reveal that his sufferings resulted from the demands which love made upon him. His identification with the poor and outcasts, his contention with evil in its many forms, and his assistance to the sick and infirm are but a few examples of how Jesus allowed persons and events to elicit the kind of response needed. In a very real sense, then, his response was shaped by his ministry in that he allowed himself to be moved by the other, to take in the truth of each situation. As 328 / Review for Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 a consequence, his suffering love became the sign of his vocation to es-tablish the kingdom, of his love for the Father and for all persons. The suffering involved in taking in the needs of others and responding ac-cordingly had i~ndeed the power to communicate love and to effect a new bond or communion with those to whom he ministered. Ultimately, it can be said that Jesus~ sufferings resulted from fidelity to the mission he had received. The vulnerability entailed in his being faithful exemplifies an actiye suffering rather than a patient submission to fate. In other words, Jesus suffered because of what he stood for, because of his message and deeds. For us, too, the witness entailed in ministry will be the personal vulnerability of suffering love. In this sense, the vows, particularly obe-dience, have implications for ministry. Of the three vows, obedience seems to exert little influence on our day-to-day service. Often it is relegated to community life or to situations which involve a change of ministry. It is possible, however, to view the vow of obedience from a much broader p.erspective, namely, as a participation in Jesus' vocation to suffering love. This notion finds support in The Epistle to the Hebrews where we find obedience and suffering linked together. Speaking of Jesus, the author notes: "Although he was Son, he learned to obey through suffering.'" (5:8). As the word "learned" indicates, Jesus" obedience was chara~:terized by personal growth, and this process of growth extended over his lifetime. Also connoted by growth in obedience through suffering is an active re-ception of all that his ministry entailed as well as an intensely personal struggle. As the temptations suggest, Jesus was no stranger to the human longing for control and power over his own destiny in that he wrestled with the possibility of adopting a messianic role which would effect a more "successful" ministry. The obedience of religious, like that of Jesus, consists in being faithful to our mission of service. It rests on a vision of faith which sees persons and events as indicators of the kind of response we ought to make in a given situation. To labor with Christ today requires that we undergo a similar e.xperience of suffering love, with its active reception of struggle and mis-understanding. Listening to the direction of the Spirit and enduring the t~nsions which are part and parcel of ministry are avenues which will open tis up to growth in faithful obedience. Because of the long-suffering in-volved in learning obedience, sporadic attempts will be less than adequate. Only a constant adherence to one's mission of service will suffice as a witness to this dimension of suffering love. As we engage in ministry, moreover, we can expect to deal with the temptation to dull the kingdom-yision. Perhaps one of the surest signs of participating in the mission of Jesus is that we experience a sense of being "stretched" beyond ourselves. If we are truly ministering we can expect the frustration and tension which accompanies all service, namely, the tension between the vision and the actuality, between the yet-to-be-fulfilled aspect of the kingdom and its Ministry Rooted in the Vows / 329 present degree of actualization. Because of our basic yearning for com-pletion and satisfaction, we find it difficult to live with brokenness, un-finished business, to be forever simply "on the way." At times we are tempted to adopt a "messianic complex," thereby relating to the world around us in god-like fashion. In so doing, we would seek to take things into our own hands, to manage and control their outcome, and to set up our own standards for judging the effectiveness of our actions. The vows help to remind us that we have been called to work for the extension of God's'reign of love, and that it is.God who gives the increase. Quite pointedly, suffering love brings us face-to-face with the deepest mystery of ministry, that of being servants of the kingdom. Because the ministry of suffering love requires a critical evaluation of our vulnerability and creative receptivity, the vow of poverty has an important role to play. Specifically, vowed poverty asks that we be open with respect to the form or expression which our ministry takes. It calls us out of any sense of self-sufficiency which might accompany a competency achieved. A sense of self-sufficiency in ministry can only prove to be distracting. Far too much energy can be expended in effortsto protect positions of real or imagined importance. This proclivity for being self-sufficient is most clearly evidenced in the resentment of newcomers for the threat they pose to our replace-ment. When. driven by a fear of loss, whether in status or in replacement, we begin to.operate at a low-risk level. When grasped by a sense of pos-sessiveness, we undertake only those activities which are considered safe, those which ensure prestige or eliminate competition. Vowed poverty, therefore, enjoins us to assess those sources of security which we may have erected for ourselves. It asks that subtle forms of self-worship such as success and prestige be unmasked for what they truly are. Because pos-sessiveness impedes the kind of vulnerability demanded by suffering love, religious poverty asks that we assume a posture of tentativeness with re-spect to the form which our ministry takes. Such tentativeness presupposes a willingness to let go of the security of the past in order to move into the future. In some cases, the risk involved in remaining flexible will result in a call to a new form of ministry or to a modified response in our present ministry. In any case, a radical trust and dependence upon the loving power of God is being called fourth in us as we search for the particular expression our ministry should assume. The vulnerability required~by suffering love also finds nourishment in vowed chastity. The "mystical" dimension of chast!ty, with its faith-decision to embrace the non-rational or mysterious aspect of life, exacts an acceptance of the fact that life can be neither totally controlled nor ultimately possessed. Of its very nature, vowed chastity leads to risk, to the unpredictable, and to the unknown. It beckons us to love with an openness which prevents intrusions and other forms of in-conveniences from being regarded as impingements upon our "projected plans" for service. In its "social" dimension, vowed chastity is also an 330 / Review for Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 important asset for ministry. To the extent we have personally embraced a non-possessive stance towards life, we can expect to be non-threatening persons. Those in our presence should not find it necessary to draw upon their defenses, to play games or to put on false facades. By a simple and vulnerable life-style, religious can become disarming persons, those who grant others the freedom to be who they truly are. Consequently an at-mosphere can be created which maximizes the acceptance and contribution of personal gifts and talents, thus paving the road to ministry becoming a mutual venture between those who serve and those who are served. Ministry Rooted in Freedom Both views of ministry being addressed here--ministry as presence and ministry as suffering love--will necessarily engage us in the struggle to attain a greater degree of Christian freedom. And Jesus, as the paradigm of this freedom, offers us the model. When we meditate on the gospels we find that he ministered in a way that freed others, that empowered and enabled them. For example, Mary Magdalene and the Samaritan woman were en-abled to accept the seeds of new life which had come within their reach. In such cases, Jesus used his power to empower others. If we are t6 engage in a life-giving ministry, we must be freed from those obstacles which hinder this kind of service from occurring. The vowed life, understood in the sense of personal liberation, can be said to foster the freedom needed for ministry. First of all, how does the vow of poverty free us to serve in a life-giving manner? As we know, evangelical poverty does not center on either economic status or material deprivation. For apostolic religious, the vitality of one's service, with its attendant signs of peace and joy, has always been intrinsically linked to evangelical poverty. Poverty implies a freedom from ourselves (detachment) and a single-heartedness (attach-ment) for the service of God's kingdom. Stated in other words, poverty aims at a self-emptying so that we can devote everything that we are and have to others. By a voluntary limitation of possessions and other forms of self-sufficiency, a self-emptying ensues which places us in a situation of being poor, namely, of being ultimately dependent upon God's love and power. Inner freedom, which is a goal of vowed poverty, comes from placing our- trust in God rather than in our own resources. Its specific apostolic witness consists in having chosen to have less than we could .have attained. In so doing, we can demonstrate our belief that the kingdom of God is not dependent upon success in the areas of prestige, possessions or power. Vowed poverty, it is hoped, should also free religious to give a fuller response to Jesus" injunction: "You have received without paying; you must give without charge" (Mt 10:8). As we come to a greater awareness of our God-given gifts, we should be enabled to give of ourselves, in par-ticular, to share our talents, education, time and psychic energy. The freedom for ministry which vowed chastity promotes is thai of Ministry Rooted in the Vows / 331 non-possessiveness. In vowing chastity, we promise to eradicate the strong natural desire to restrict our love and concern to those claiming a priority through family or friendship. At times, we are even called to love without reciprocity. In such cases, we are asked to love those persons not in a position to respond to the love we offer, the fearful, the lonely, and thee voiceless minority in society. In a positive sense, then, vowed chastity facilitates the freedom needed to develop multirelationships, to move be-yond our personal propensity for exclusive and reciprocal relationships. Because all relationships are fragile, but specifically those demanded by vowed chastity, a freedom is needed to sustain them and keep them from deteriorating into avenues of self-aggrandizement. If our ministry is not to turn into a forum where unfulfilled personal needs are ventilated, we must be in touch with our own drives and needs. In fact, only when such personal ¯ needs as the desire to be the center of attention or the need to exercise control over the lives of others have been acknowledged, can we bracket them in order to address the needs of others. The basis for freedom in ministry also lies in vowed obedience. Often ministry is not experienced as life-giving because of our insensitivity to the gifts which others possess. All too easily we become oblivious to the po-tential of others and succumb to our own myopic view. Religious obe-dience, on the other hand, implies a freedom to experience the world around us so that persons and events can mediate the kind of response called for-in ministry. In this way, our ministry will be able to align itself more closely in both form and content to the spiritual, social and political needs of the people we serve. Vowed obedience, a pledge to carry out the mission of Jesus in a public manner, requires that our decisions be aug-mented by a faith-vision. As the gospels indicate, Jesus never did his "own thing," but sought to do his Father's will. In a special way, obedience can prevent us from acting out of impulse, mood or selfishness if we bring our choices to the authority which resides in the community for ratification. In so doing, obedience will direct the choices we make and free us to under-take with hope and courage the service which faith identifies with the will of God. Reciprocal Relation of Ministry and Vows Ministry and religious vows can be said to exert a reciprocal influence on each other. Engagement in ministry offers a challenge to the vowed life, and likewise, the vows provide for a deeper immersion into ministry. One way this reciprocal relation of vow and ministry is being experienced today is through the call to stewardship. As a matter of justice, Christians are being asked to exercise responsible stewardship regarding the resources of the world. The concept of stewardship, which is based on the idea that the world's resources do not belong absolutely to any individual, group, nation, or generation holds that resources should be viewed as gifts received and 332 / Review for Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 entrusted to our use and care. As such, it calls for a sharing which stems from a consciousness of the common good and a concern that the poor can participate in these available resources. Although the notion of stewardship is directed mainly to the resources of food and energy, it can be extended to include a much broader sphere. Stewardship and its consequent sharing can be applied to all the gifts of life which have been entrusted to us, whether they be talents, time, or psychic energy. Certainly, a life-style which incorporates the right use of material resources as well as a voluntary limitation of material goods is a need in today's world. The concept of stewardship, then, can find a valuable source of support in vowed poverty. The question is: will religious place the "sharing and sparing" aspects of their life in relation to the wider social issue of justice? Put in other words, how can our sharing and sparing be increased to bring about a more sig-nificant social witness? Just as the social demands of ministry can contribute to a greater under-standing of the vowed life, so too, a lived experience of the vows can enhance our vision of ministry. Involvement in ministry, as we have noted, immerses us in the paradox of discipleship. And like any paradox, the tension involved is difficult to maintain. Although not a condition for dis-cipleship, nevertheless, the vows are gifts given to realize this end. In fact, the values symbolized in the commitment of the vows are those which are basic to ministry itself. They designate a life committed to the kingdom, and hence, call for a transformation from our old self, with its attitudes, ways of thinking and acting. When the vows are perceived in terms of the trans-formation required by discipleship, they can then be translated into a life-style consonant with the call of ministry. A truly powerful means of witnessing to God's transforming power in the world is offered to those called to love as celibates for the sake of the kingdom, to live in a simple and sharing fashion, and to be obedient to finding ways of serving others. Obedience in the Contemporary World Alan W. Jones Father Jones is an Episcopal priest, a director of the Center for Christian Spirituality; 175 9th Ave.; New York, NY 10011. His paper was delivered before a meeting of the Episcopal religious Order of the Holy Cross. l was beset with an absurdity in attempting to deal with the subject of obedience. For one thing, I am not particularly obedient, and yet I am going to attempt to tell religious what the structure of their obedience ought to be, vis-a-vis the world and the coming realities. What rescues me from these absurdities is the fact that what I am really doing is telling you religious what I want you to be for me, for the sake of the Church, for the sake of the world. Underneath my prescriptive approach there is, in reality, a cry for help. You religious, my fellow Christians, are desperately important to me. Forgive me, then, if I begin with an apparent insult used to describe religious life. "Monks are like bacteria. Bacteria live in communities, but by their increase in numbers they produce a by-product (as acid in milk) which ¯ inhibits their increase and eventually kills them. Now community living is a most economical way of living, and religion is the greatest money-spinner on earth; so monasteries get rich, and if the riches are not allowed to flow on to the poor, the community begins to stagnate and becomes, like a bacterial colony, a prey to its own by-product.''~ ICiaran O'Sabhaois, "Community in the Early Irish Church," in Cistercian Studies, Vol. X, 1975:1, p. 67. 333 334 / Review for Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 Monks are like bacteria. All forms of community life have their dan-gers~ not merely the danger of becoming rich (that might seem remote today), but also the danger of becoming inward, self-regarding, and self-sustaining. I want to share with you some thoughts on modern monasticism, centering on the question of religious obedience. I will argue that Christian obedience is at the heart of Christian liberation and that obedience in the religious life is a symbol, for the sake of the Church, of the freedom we are all to enjoy as sons and daughters of God. Obedience is a Matter of Surrender: Saying "Yes!" to God To put it simply: obedience is a matter of surrender, submission, abandonment to Someone or Something. It is, first and foremost, a question of yielding, of saying "Yes!." It is, therefore, related closely to questions concerning our sense of identity (who we are) and the object of our worship (God, or the gods). That is to say, who we are will depend on the object of our surrender. When you "have finally said "Yes!" to Someone or Some-thing, then who you really are begins to emerge. So obedience is tied up with both problems of identity and objects of worship. It is also bound up with the search for intimacy, for union. Obedience is a matter of love. It is, therefore, of vital importance that we Christians be extremely sensitive and careful in matters of obedience. To say yes to the wrong things is to embark on a course of action which will infect the total life. Like the bacterial colony, the religious community in surrendering to anything less than God begins to suffocate, become paralyzed, and will eventually die. Christian obedience is right worship. Misplaced obedience is idolatry. And idolatry is the path of death. Our theme, then, is an enormously heavy and complex one which involves the very core of our being. Awareness, identity, intimacy, and worship: all these things are involved in our under-standing of obedience and will affect the way the Christian community is structured and organized. Obedience is the Means of Heightening Awareness I want to begin by looking at the structures of Christian obedience as such with no peculiar reference to those called to religious life. Christian obedience (listening to, being under, being formed by the Word) is the means of heightening Christian awareness, which in turn undermines our former sense of identity and turns who we thought we were upside down. The pattern is, obedience (i.e., listening), awareness--transformation of identity. Our mission in the world is determined by who we are and not only that, who we think we are. Our "novitiate" is the beginning at least of the undermining of our self-image and the reforging of a new identity. There are tremendous dangers because there are countless people who would like to tell us who we are. There are many, many forms, some very subtle, of psychological and spiritual tyrannies. The evil of misplaced religion in Obedience in the Contemporary Worm / 335 general is its tendency to tell people who they are and what to do. This is the tendency of those who talk about obedience. To be Obedient is to Listen to Someone: Christian obedience is to listen to the Word of God and to be formed by the Word that has been heard. This Word comes to us in the communal, convivial experience of scripture, of the eucharist, and of the community. It is a common obedience: not a private obedience. All other forms of obedience are derivative--religious obedience, obedience to the superiors, to bishops, to those in authority. There are peculiar dangers, however, for those who are committed tO a life of the discipline of prayer. Prayer continually relativizes our obedience. That is to say, prayer is always a movement towards a higher allegiance, a deeper obedience, a more intense "Yes!." As such, it puts a question mark beside all our lesser obediences. Taking as our model the religious, he is, ex professo, the person who prays and is therefore explicitly a symbol of the highest obedience. It is not that other Christians are not called to this obedience; it is that the monk symbolizes in a palpable way my obedience, the obedience evoked in all Christians. That is why I have need of the monk, why I have need of you, my brothers and sisters, to be true to your vow of obedience which is rooted in contemplation. Prayer and contemplation (how comforting they sound!), however, can seem to be subversive activities of the human spirit. They threaten our shallow allegiances, our easy "Yes!" to the merely penulti-mate things, to the things of this present age which are passing away. This is why the "no~,itiate" has to be reasonably rigorous because the monastic life brings with it the kind of "consciousness-raising" which only those who have been tested can tolerate. The pattern of monastic life, if it is not to degenerate into a sickening enslavement, is geared towards height-ened awareness: of God, of others, and of self; and heightened awareness always threatens and undermines our self-understanding. New insights challenge our present sense of identity. To be unaware of God, of others, and of ourselves is to deny any growth in identity and, in the end, such a denial turns everything sour, like the activity of bacteria in milk. To be unaware is to be unfree, to be enslaved. To be aware is to live with the mystery and terror of an ever-growing and developing identity. In critical and conflict situations th~ lesger obediences come into' play and we lapse into idolatry. The religious is peculiarly prone either to sur-render himself to the order, the community, the society, or to be trapped in the illusions of his own self-will. The .choice, for us too, seems to be slavery to the System or slavery to the unredeemed ego. We live in a time of conflict and where there is conflict, awareness is diminished. In a crisis, the pressure is there for us to caricature ourselves as well as our enemies. We may develop a strong sense of identity, but it is not based on awareness but on illusion, on a lesser obedience. This kind of caricaturing has be-deviled the movement towards genuine renewal. The labels we pin on our 336 / Review for Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 brothers and sisters often reflect a low sense of awareness with a strong sense of identity.2 Obedience is a Matter of Identity Much of the discussion concerning "the state of the Church" and the monastic vows has centered on external things. We have tended to be technological rather than scientific. "It is technology--the technique of doing thingsnrather than science--the art of understanding things--that prevails.''3 One of the functions of the monastic vow of obedience vis-h-vis the modern world is to challenge us With this higher obedience, to stretch our self-understanding to the limit, to be a sign of contradiction against our impoverishment and diminishment as human beings. Monastic obedience challenges me to believe that there is more of me than I have dreamed: so much more. To do this, the monk's identity must be secure in the highest obedience. This involves a common life capable always of reforming itself, capable always of daring to raise and face ultimate questions. The monastic rule is the charter of freedom for those men and women who,for the sake of the worM, live constantly on the edge of the future. In theological terms, the monastic call is to be the people of the eschaton, for the sake of others. This requires a peculiar resilience which, in the end, cannot be a matter of personal worth or inner strength. It is a matter of faith. The monk or the nun, insofar as he or she is "successful," is an example of the triumph of grace over nature! The "bad" religious, the "bad" priest, is one who manages to combine a low sense of awareness with a strong sense of belonging. It is manifest in the classic monastic sin of acedia, "the sickness that destroyeth in the noonday." Dante talks somewhere of "the sullen, lazy smoke within the heart." The religious, the priest, in short, has missed the focus of his obedience; his awareness is diminished, and his identity, false. The highest obedience of which the contemplative life is the highest manifestation means that we give penultimate significance to everything and yet acknowledge that it is through these penultimate things that the Ultimate comes to us. This is freedom: hold to Christ and, for the rest, be totally uncommitted! We are obedient to superiors, to bishops, to the com-munity, for the.sake of the Church. These lesser obediences are the means by which, in a world of time and space, of partial insight, and distorted vision, we express our higher obedience. It is a constant rhythm of re-pentance, of metanoia, of turning, of critical self-examination. Benedict Clarkson writes, To some extent, we are all frightened to question our religious beliefs, because we are fearful that such questioning will take away from our lives all truth and meaning. Yet ~See Adam Curie's Mystics and Militants, Tavistock Publications, Ltd. (London, 1972). 31bid., p. 7. Obedience in the Contemporary World / 3:37 if our religious convictions are to become mature and intelligent, there must be, in this sphere as in all others of our lives, a critical self-examination. It is necessary for growth in faith. The more certain we are about our religious convictions, the freer we shall be to test them . The alternative to not dotibting our faith, not questioning our vocation, is immaturity. Research done by G. Allport showed that those who accepted their religion and their vocation too unrefiectingly and too uncritically tended to react in an unequally critical way to Iheir fellowmen and to political issues. When one's religion is unquestioned, one's values become institutionalized, exclusive and self-centered, and this can hinder growth in contemplation which is simple gaze.4 Obedience is a Matter of Saying "Yes!" to Others and to Ourselves The '~Yes!" we make to God in Christ makes possible our acceptance of ourselves and others, and fosters growth. Obedience, the saying of yes to the wholly Other who is God is a means of self-actualization. Maslow outlines twelve observable characteristics of people who are growing as human beings? Two of them are of particular interest here: an increase in problem centering and an increased identification with the human species. "Problem centering" is an unfortunate phrase because it suggests the kind of person who is always concerned about his problems. In fact it is meant to suggest quite the opposite. "Problem centered people" are those who have a mission, a problem outside of themselves. "They seem to see every-thing sub specie aeternitatis, in the widest frame of reference, and this imparts a certain bigness, a lack of pettiness or care for trivialities. It gives them a serenity and a freedom from worry over immediate concerns, and this makes their lives easier both for themselves and for all associated with " them.' '~ One hopes that this is a characteristic of Christian spirituality and a result springing from our common obedience. Maslow's second point is equally important: "increased identification with the human species." Obe-dience to Christ in common life liberates us and enables us freely to love our brothers and sisters. Maslow's word for this is GemeinschaftsgeJ~hl, which is this feeling for community, not only in the larger sense, but also the feeling that exists between two people. It is the sense of being at one with others. Pope Paul VI wrote, "The Church urges monks to be present to man-kind in a more profound way, namely in the heart of Christ. It expects them to share the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of this age."7 This is a marvelous rationale for the existence of religious in the moder~ world. Obedience becomes the way in which religious express this Gemein-schaftsgef~ hl. By virtue of their profession, religious orders contribute to 4"The Rule of St. Benedict and the Concept of Self-Actualization,'" in Cistercian Studies, Vol. X., 1975: 1, p. 24-25. 5Ibid., p. 24. ~lbid., p. 28. 7Quoted, ibid., p. 30. 338 / Review for Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 the life of the world simply by being intensely present. The religious in his obedience to common life helps to keep human life human by the giving of hospitality. This hospitality is the ministry of presence. It is the creation of what Henri Nouwen calls "a free and friendly space.''8 The modern world is crying out for such space and you are the ones called to create it. The relentless reaffirmation of your obedience in liturgy, in order, in common life, creates this space and gives you, ahd countless others like you, the space to live and breathe. I know monks and nuns too well to idolize them, but the monastic, warts and all, points away from the success-oriented, utilitarian culture which is destroying me and tells me there is more, much more. The needs of the modern world demand more of the monk or nun, of the priest, of the Christian, than ever before. We can no longer hide our identity in community, in status, if we are to create a free and friendly space. The idea th~it the Christian life embodies a fixed tradition which is beyond question must go, along with a concept of religious obedience involving blind submission to a superior. This, however, is not the danger confronting the Church today. Nowwe need signs of a transcendent humanism. It is desperately needed and that is why I have hopes for a revival of the re-ligious life. Obedience is an Effective Sign of Self-Transcendence The ideal Christian community is modeled on self-giving obedience in the Trinity. God, ultimately, is the obedient One whose love is manifested in self-emptying. This trinitarian love which we are to embody is totally dependent and totally independent. In God there is no pathology of identity. Unlike us, he knows who he is. This trinitarian identity points to the mystery of being human. "My being me will enable you to be you; your beingyou will enable me to be me; not me without you; not you without me; perfect identity, perfect freedom.''9 This trinitarian pattern of identity revealed in self-giving is manifested in Christian obedience. It is a love which not only creates a free and friendly space, but also shapes and orders things. Obedience is a matter of order, too~for the sake of the world. Obedience is the key to the kind of co-herence and co-inherence without which it is impossible for a community or a people to survive in any meaningful way. The Christian life is a pioneer experiment in community living which provides the rest of humanity with models for the future. You religious hold out to me the promise of integrity. That is what love does. When someone really loves me, he holds out to me the promise of that integrity I feel that I have lost. Is this too much to lay on you? No, not if we remind ourselves that the key to our being and to our 8See Reaching Out, Doubleday (N.Y., 1975), p. 50. 9David Jenkins in The Passiontide Lectures (unpublished) at Lincoln Theological College, England, 1975. Obedience in the Contemporary World / 339 identity is liturgical. Worship is that which gives human life its focus, its purpose, its significance. We live by those things which offer us self-transcendence. The Christian is a sign of self-transcendence and, as such, is liturgically oriented, Worship is directly related to obedience, awareness, identity. Christian Obedience is a Matter of Right Worship The theme of worship as an obedient "Yes!" of surrender has been beautifully portrayed in Peter Shaffer's play, Equus.~° The play concerns a psychiatrist's struggle to "cure" a seventeen-year-old boy who had gouged out the eyes of six horses. The main theme is the mystery which pervades our understanding of man, a mystery that ultimately claims our obedience, demands our yes. When confronted by the boy and his particular pain and horror, the psychiatrist is confronted with his own mystery. For him a human being, to be human, has to have an object of worship, a focus of obedience. He knows himself to be a contemplative but only by way of being a voyeur. Classical Greece is his passion, but then only halfheart-edly, through glossy pictures and planned tours. He longs to be able to say to a companion: "Look! Life is only comprehensible through a thousand local gods. And not just ten old dead ones with names like Zeus--no, but living geniuses of Place and Person! And not just Greece but modern En-gland! Spirits of certain trees, certain curves of brick wall, certain chip shops, if you like, slate roofs--just as of certain frowns in people and slouches. I'd say to them--' Worship as many as you can see--and more will appear'!''1~ If we could see, life is full of wonder, is fraught with mystery. The negative side of Christian obedience, that is, saying no resolutely and often to other allegiances, provides the liberating detachment that worship and love demand. The more you contemplate, sit still, and see, the more the gods appear, present in your brothers and sisters, in glance and gesture: the gods of self-transcendence that give human life its significance. The psychiatrist's dilemma is that he can see these gods, he does make the connection, but this vision does not conform to what "normal" people call "normal." While there is a good aspect to the word "normal," it not only means the smile in a child's eyes, it 'qs also the dead stare in a million adults. It both sustains and kills~like a god. It is the Ordinary made beautiful: it is also the Average made lethal.''v' The Christian is a sign of ilbnormality, in contradiction to what the world calls normal. Christian obedience places the unnerving question mark be-side everything in the secular world. It reminds the psychiatrist that he ~°Equus: Shrivings, Athenaeum (N.Y., 1974). ~ffbid., p. 61. Vffbid., p. 63. ~140 / Review f or Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 cannot comprehend the reality of a horse, let alone the mind of a child! The horse, Equus, stares at the doctor, "Do you really imagine you can account for Me? Totally, infallibly, inevitably account for Me? . . . Poor Doctor Dysart.''13 To "cure" the boy, to make him "normal," the psychiatrist has to take away his passion, his obedience, his object of worship. To save him there has to be a lobotomy of the soul. The boy worships horses, idolatrously and even demonically, but at least he worships something, he has made the great "Yes!." Every three weeks, at midnight, he would strip naked and gallop into the night on the back of his sweating and steaming god. It is this that unnerves the doctor and makes him hesitate to take away the boy's pain. Doctor Dysart tries to explain to his friend, the magistrate: "Look. to go through life and call it Yours--your life--you first have to get your own pain. Pain that's unique to you. You can't just dip into the common bin and say 'That's enough!' . . . He's done that. All right, he's sick. He's full of misery and fear. He was dangerous, and could be again, though I doubt it. But that boy has known a passion more ferocious than I have felt any second o~" my life. And let me tell you something: I envy it. ¯. Don't you see? That's the Accusation! That's what his stare has been saying to me all this time. 'At least I galloped! When did you?' ,,14 Without worship, without obedience, human life is impoverished and diminished. The Christian may risk being a little or even totally mad in terms of this world, but his "Yes!," his surrender, is a sign that he is willing to gallop with the Holy Spirit. Even the possessed boy lying prostrate ¯ before his slave-god, the Mighty Horse, points to a passion, an obedience, a commitment we can scarcely imagine. "I sit looking at pages of centaurs trampling the soil of Argos---and outside my window he is trying to become one, in a Hampshire field! For, me, this points to the heart of Christian obedience in the modern world. The commitment of the Christian, no matter how much he fails, is an effective sign of the seriousness of the gospel, of its radical passion, its ultimacy, its finality. I need you to be--simply be--for my sake, as reminder of all those things in life which tell me that I am more than I think I am. Some may be disappointed with me for not being more specific regarding Christian obedience. To tell the truth, I simply cannot prescribe set patterns of obedience for anyone else. I am convinced, however, that once the primary allegiance is at least seen, then nurtured and developed day by day, all these other things fall into place. A loving look at God, steadily and daily, helps me to seek the good of the whole community, to "obey" as an act of love--to say "Yes!" to my brothers and sisters because you too are struggling to make the great "Yes!" to God. talbid., p. 74. l~lbid., p. 80. ~51bid., p. 81. Obedience in the Contemporary World / 341 Obedience is unavoidable. Enslavement to one god or another is in-. evitable. Like love, obedience is part of that which constitutes, forms, shapes us as human beings. Augustine says, in effect, "Love by all means, but take care what you love." I would add: You must obey, but take care what you obey. Only the gospel offers that service which is perfect freedom. The obedience of the Christian serves the wider community by wit-nessing to both the revolutionary character of Christian obedience and the provisional character of all those other things which demand our allegiance. The Christian is a trafficker in mystery. The so-called "unnatural" life of the monk invites me to dig deeper into the abyss within myself. Christian Obedience is a Movement in the Holy Spirit Two recent books, both by religious, give a positive rationale for Chris-tian obedience which to me is the most important of the three vows. Henri Nouwen does it indirectly in outlining three movements in the spiritual life.I~ The first movement is from loneliness to solitude where a suffocating loneliness is transfigured by one'~ "Yes!" into a receptive solitude. The second movement is from hostility to hospitality. Obedience again is the key to our being free enough to create a "free and friendly space" for others. The final movement is from illusion to prayer. This, in ~eality, is the hardest area of obedience. It is at this deep point thatChristian community is forged. The marks, then, of our obedience are solitude, conviviality, and con templation. The second book is by the Mirfield father,~7 Harry Williams, called Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience.~8 He writes, "Fundamentally, obedi-ence consists of discovering what you most truly and deeply are, or, better, what you have it in you to be, and of being loyal to the insight you have thus received. Such loyalty,., may sometimes, perhaps of.ten, involve a degree of submission to some external auth~ority or other. But its root is not submission to anything external, it is being true to yourself."'~9 Williams uses the example of the creative artist as the most eloquent instance of obedience. It is saying "Yes!" to the vision. Obedience, then, is obedience to one's true. self, and who I am, in the end, is a matter of faith. Williams offers "a test we can apply to anything which demands our obedience. Is the authority demanding obedience only external, nothing more than the imposition upon myself of an alien will. ? The external authority . . . may turn out to be an apparatus, inevitably (since human beings are fallible) no more than a rough and ready 160p. cit. ~TReference is to another Anglican religious order, the Community of the Resurrection [editor|. ~SMitchell Beazley, London, 1975. ~Slbid., p. 83. 349 / Review for Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 apparatus, to enable people to be obedient to themselves by making pos-sible that give and take between the self and others which man needs because he is a social animal."z° Is the higher obedience what matters in the end because we can only be true to ourselves insofar as we are true to that which is greater than ourselves? "My 'me' is God, nor do I know my selfhood save in him," wrote St. Catherine of Genoa.21 For the real me to emerge there has to be a free surrender to the transcendent. It is in obe-dience that I know that there is more to me than my self-regarding ego. Christian obedience is the denial of anthropological reductionism. I am more than my moods, my emotions, my preferences. Obedience is, Finally, a Matter of Love Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, these three remain, and the greatest of them is obedience. Christian obedience is the only form of surrender which secures our true liberty. It is, therefore, vital that we keep our obedience Christian, because obedience unfocused and unexamined is the harbinger of demonic tyranny. I call upon you, my brothers and sisters, to be signs of a pioneering, obedient humanity in the decades ahead. The Church, the world, needs men and women who enflesh the final obedience, who, by their very profession, are those who create the open, free, and friendly space for the dying, poor and cramped children of the earth. Christian obedience in the modern world is finally a matter of love--a wild, mad kind of love in a world gone mad. It brings with it a self-authenticating authority which affirms the beautiful and strange dogma of freedom in surrender, of resurrection in death, of joy in self-offering. Perhaps I may be forgiven, so close to our Bicentennial, to twist the words of that unpleasant patriot, Patrick Henry: "Give me liberty or give me death!" To Christians in the modern world, I say, "Give me liberty and give me death!" This is the life-bearing power which comes to those who have died, who have been buried with Christ, and raised with him to life everlasting. We follow the One who was obedient, the One who said "Yes!." "The Son of God, Christ Jesus, proclaimed among you by us ¯ . . was never a blend of yes and no. With him, it was, and is, yes. He is the yes pronounced upon God's promises, every one of them. That is why, when we give glory to God, it is through Christ Jesus that we say 'Amen' " (2 Co 1:19-20). Finally, this self-emptying yes is the prelude to being filled. Christian obedience is a miracle of grace. Like the priest in Bernanos' Diary of a Country Priest, we are saved in surrender. He discovered the miracle of the empty hands, the wonder of being able to give to others what we ourselves do not possess. The yes Of our emptiness and of our agony is God's oppor-tunity, the supreme source of the healing and redeeming power of love. ~°lbid., p. 93-4. 21Quoted by Williams, ibid., p. 98. The Annual Dialogue With the Major Superior Richard P. Vaughan, S.J. Father Vaughan, as a former provincial in his region, has had ample experience with the annual dialogue. Presently he is engaged.in counseling and psychotherapy with priests and sisters, and teaches psychology at Loyola-Marymount University; 7101 W. 80th St.; Los Angeles, CA 90045. A yearly dialogue with the provincial or major superior is an accepted practice among most religious. How this dialogue is conducted and the attitude of the participants frequently determines its value both to the provincial and the individual member. It can be a formality, made out of a sense of duty, and consequently with little fruit, or it can be a most useful means of bringing about spiritual and apostolic renewal within both an individual and a congregation. Changing Role of the Provincial During the past decade the nature° of the provincial's position has changed. Previously the provincial was primarily the chief administrative officer of a unit called a province; today he or she is expected to demon-strate greater leadership in both temporal and spiritual affairs, in addition to handling province business. The emphasis is more on the welfare of individual members and communities and less upon paper work and in-stitutions. In many instances a large portion of the administration has been delegated to others so as to give the provincial more time to devote to the members and to programs which affect their lives. Vatican II has called upon provincials to exercise leadership in bringing 343 344 / Review for Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 about a renewal within their congregations.1 If provincials are to be effec-tive in responding to this call, they must understand the present state of their provinces. Such understanding can best come through a personal knowledge of the individual members and where they stand in their own lives and on issues and problems confronting the congregation. The major superior who knows each member in a personal way is certainly in a better position to decide on measures to improve the state of a province. Aim of the Dialogue Not infrequently the annual dialogue is the sole opportunity a provincial has to meet with and gain an understanding of each member of his province. For this reason it is most important that the interview be conducted in such a way as to meet both the needs of the provincial and those of the individual member. Effective leadership and the welfare of the province often depend upon its success. In addition to helping the major superior govern the province in a per-sonal manner, the dialogue also serves as an opportunity for each member to receive something in the way of guidance and direction. For those who do not have a spiritual director, this may be one's only occasion to evaluate his or her progress in the apostolic and spiritual life, and to plan strategies for improvement. And, after participating in many similar interviews throughout the province, the provincial is in a unique position to offer counsel according to the spirit of his or her congregation. Finally, the annual dialogue can be most useful in effecting renewal within a local community. Information gathered from all the members of a ¯ given community allows the provincial to understand that community in a unique way and affords him the opportunity to deal with any difficulty that may be brought to his attention either through the local superior or through his meetings with the members of the community. The Kind of Information Needed What kind of knowledge does the provincial or major superior need so as to exercise the leadership expected of him today? First of all, he should know each member of the province on a personal basis, or at least a significant portion of the membership if the province is large. He needs to know how each feels about himself and his life: how he gets along in the local community; how he relates to others in the congregation and outside of it and how he thinks he is doing in his apostolic work. Most of all, the provincial needs to know how each member relates to God, the level of his faith and commitment, and the depth of his spiritual life. The accumulation of such data from interviews with most of the members in the province allows the major superior to make an accurate estimate of where the prov- 1The Documents of Vatican H. Walter M. Abbott, S.J. (Ed.). America Press, 1966, pp. 469-470. The Annual Dialogue With the Major Superior / 345 ince stands and then settle upon the directions his leadership should take. Without this knowledge he may well decide upon a course of action which the members are incapable of following. Moreover, this type of information is essential for any guidance he might offer individuals and local commu-nities as a consequence of the visitation. Approaches The approach taken by a member often determines whether the major superior finds the dialogue profitable. As previously mentioned, some come to him out of a sense of duty. They chat about inconsequentials in a friendly manner, air a complaint or two, assure the provincial that everything is going well, and depart, all in a matter of a few minutes. Obviously such an approach is of little value to either participant, since the purpose of the dialogue is never realized. The provincial comes to no better understanding of the member as a person and a religious under vows, and the member receives no guidance. The member who wishes to help the provincial fulfill his leadership role and at the same time profit from his guidance can take either of two ap-proaches: he can attempt to be an objective historian or he can be an involved autobiographer,z If he chooses to be an historian, he will certainly offer the provincial valuable data which can be used in governing, but the provincial will most probably never come to know him on a personal basis. On the other hand, if he chooses to be an autobiographer, he offers the provincial needed information both about the province and about himself, and at the same time, he affords the provincial the opportunity to know him as a person and as a Christian under vows, following the charism and spirit of his community. Historian The historian centers his attention on past events which he tries to describe in an accurate and objective way. He makes every effort not to allow personal reflections and involvement to color these events. The member who takes the historical approach usually reports a number of significant--and sometimes not so significant--happenings in his life and that of his community since the last dialogue. Because he distances himself from them in his narrative, the provincial often does not come to a better understanding of him as a person. Rather he gets the impression that the member is standing outside of himself as he relates what has happened in his apostolic work, his i:ommunity life and his prayer. There is little emotional involvement. He may even give the impression that any problem he presents is not his own but someone else's. In such an approach, it sometimes happens that the dialogue becomes a monologue with the member moving rapidly from one topic to the next 2Egan, Gerard, Face to Face. Brooks/Cole, Monterey, CA, 1973, pp. 45-46. 346 / Review for Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 and giving the superior little or no time to react to what has been said until the end--and by that time so many topics have been covered that the superior has either forgotten them or does not know where to begin. Should the superior try to break into the flow of the narrative, he meets with evident signs of displeasure. The message comes across loud and clear: "Take account of what I have to say about the community and our work but keep your distance from me." While such a dialogue does help in later decision making, at least to a degree, it does not contribute to that pool of information the provincial needs if he is to understand where the majority of the members of the congregation stand in their personal and spiritual lives, which is often an important factoi" in future planning. Autobiographer At the other end of the continuum of those engaged in dialogue is the approach of the autobiographer. Here the member gives an account of his own personal experiences and spiritual odyssey. Frequently he does not give an historical narrative in logical sequence or a series of difficulties according to priorities, but rather tries to describe himself as he is now through what has happened during the past year. The focus of attention is on himself rather than on past events. He attempts to have the superior understand who he is at this moment as a person, a Christian, a religious with vows, and a member of a congregation with its own charism and spirit. He relates facts about himself, chosen principally to achieve this end. If he presents a problem or difficulty, he indicates how he personally is reacting to it. He states clearly his own feelings and attitudes, even though the problem involves something outside of himself, such as a complaint about the way a superior is handling another member of the community. He may pass over points which on the surface appear important but, as he sees them, add nothing to the picture he is trying to paint of himself. In the process of talking about himself, the member will most probably also offer observations about the local community, the province and the congrega-tion, all of which will be a help to the major superior both in exercising leadership in the province and in directing the individual involved in the dialogue. The autobiographical approach means lowering defenses and exposing oneself as one actually is at the moment. Such a process calls for humility and risk-taking. In self-disclosure one is never sure what he will discover about himself or how the listener will react to what he hears. Sources of Anxiety Built into the psyche of each of us is a reluctance to talk freely about personal matters, especially to one we would not consider a close friend. As we approach the annual dialogue with the major superior, some knowledge about the sources of this reluctance can be helpful in handling our un-easiness and anxiety. The Annual Dialogue With the Major Superior / 347 Most of us reject some part of ourselves. We tend to block out of consciousness or to hide what we dislike about ourselves. The prospect of having to confront and talk about these unaccepted personal characteristics makes us uneasy. ,The thought of letting down the mask and revealing ourselves just as we are causes embarrassment. As a consequence, most, to some degree, have to struggle .to be fully open and forthright as they progress through the diaioguel A certain amount of embarrassment is simply a part of the human condition, but if it reaches the state where talking about ourselves becomes most~difficult, then we should ask the question: "Am I living behind a mask and playing a role much of the time so as to hide what I am both from myself and from others?" If the answer is affirmative, then We would do well to indicate this feeling to the provincial and discuss it with him. Private Self We all have a private and a public "self.'" The private self is the one we keep to ourselves, or perhaps reveal to one or two close friends: the public self we show to others. In the annual dialogue, we are asked to manifest the private self---at least to some degree. A reluctance to do so is natural. Our relationship with God, how we feel about ourselves and others in the community and, even more so, our own limitations are highly personal concerns. They are hardly topics that we are apt to discuss in a social gathering. It can be helpful to reflect upon the position of the major superior ¯ and how he will use what is discussed to fulfill the ends of his office. It is well, too, to bear in mind that what is discussed actually remains a part of the private self since it must be treated as confidential matter. The superior is not free to divulge it to any other person. In our culture, seeking help from another is often considered a sign of weakness.3 We should be able to solve our own problems and not depend upon others. The mature person should be able to stand on his own two feet, handle his own affairs. If he has a difficulty, he should look for its causes and then seek a solution. If there is no evident solution, he should wait it out, suffering in silence. This attitude is especially prevalent among men. The contemporary masculine image calls for a man to be strong, independent, and reserved in expressing his feelings to others. All of these factors militate against speaking with ease about oneself to a major superior in the hope of getting his guidance. It is not uncommon for a religious to say to himself: "I have been able to handle my difficulties in the past by myself. Why bother the superior now?" As a consequence he passes over matters that should be discussed and, in this event, one of the purposes of the dialogue is lost. As much as we like to think that we are not dependent on others, however, if we stop to reflect, it will become apparent that each of us is 3Jourard, Sidney M., The Transparent Self. Van Nostrand, New York, 1971, p. 133. 34~1 / Review for Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 dependent upon a number of people. It all goes with being "social ani-mals." We need and depend upon those with whom we live and work. Seeking direction from a concerned person is not a sign of weakness but wisdom. It acknowledges that we all need counsel, that no one is totally self-sufficient. The dialogue can sometimes produce a feeling of closeness toward the superior. For some, such a feeling can be threatening. In the past, they have managed to keep a distance between themselves and others. When some-one tries to get to know them on a deeper level, they become uncomfortable and move back from the developing relationship. As such a person engages in the annual dialogue with the superior, the pressure of this feeling can deter frankness and openness. It may even demand an almost heroic cour-age on his part not to yield to the temptation to be absent at the time of the visitation. Fear of Rejection On the other side of the coin is the fear of rejection.4 The individual is never sure how the superior will react to what he has to say. There is always the possibility that he or she will be judgmental and condemning. The superior may listen with genuine concern and with a desire to help but when the dialogue is over there is a lingering question in the member's mind: "Does he respect me as much as he did before?" If the member's level of self-esteem is low, this nagging doubt can be most painful. Most major superiors have the duty of approving candidates for pro-fession and ordination, and, in some congregations, for positions of au-thority. An awareness of this fact can limit open discussion on the part of the member, for an individual usually will not reveal anything about himself which will endanger his advancement. It is not uncommon, then, for one to give the superior what he thinks the superior wants to hear, and, of course, the dialogue is reduced to game-playing. If the annual dialogue is to achieve its purpose, it is up to the superior to assure the individual that what he says will not be used against him in any way, and then be scrupulous in effec-tuating this assurance. Insight and Change Often the annual dialogue with our provincial can be a way of com-municating with ourselves, getting in touch with how we really feel. It can be a source of new knowledge and insight. As we talk about ourselves, we become more aware of our attitudes, our values, how we feel about a variety of issues and problems.5 For some this opportunity is welcomed enthusiastically; for others it is dreaded--for on such a journey we never know what we will discover. If it brings forth affirming information, self- 4Egan, ibid., pp. 55-56. 5ldern, pp. 53-54. The Annual Dialogue With the Major Superior / 349 esteem is enhanced; if it reveals previously unknown negative qualities, we are forced to look at something that we may find difficult to accept. Not infrequently new self-knowledge calls for change within ourselves and in our lives. Change is never easy. It can place demands on us that we are unwilling to meet, at least at this particular time. As we prepare for the annual dialogue, most of us are aware that the outcome may call for reform. It is this prospect that causes us sometimes to approach the dialogue as an ordeal rather than an opportunity for personal and spiritual growth. Yet, if properly made, the annual dialogue with the major superior can be a means of helping that superior fulfill his role as the leader of the congregation in that region and, at the same time, an opportunity for the member to receive valuable guidance. Whether these aims are attained frequently depends upon the approach taken by the participants, as well as by their openness. Understanding each member in the province on a per-sonal level allows the provincial to determine the state of the province and then to formulate directions which will lead to spiritual renewal and greater apostolic effectiveness for the province, the local community and the in-dividual who has engaged in the dialogue. A Conversation at Final Profession We talked-- First, he ~poke to me: a Word in the a Word in the a Word in the a Word in the Then, he ~poke to me: a Word in the a Word in the a Word in. the a Word in the Love of my family, Pain of growing up, Laughter among childhood friends, Tears at leaving home. Hope of the man 1'11 be, Fear of the silence I've felt, Strength of my brothers and friends, Weakness of the people I serve. Finally, he spoke to me: a Word in the Flesh of a man called Christ, a Word in the Heart touching, challenging, changing, a Word in the Call to live like Him, a Word in the Answer of death and life. Standingspeechless before God, 1 live: all of my days. Thomas J. Burke, O.SS.T. Trinity House 949 Gorsuch Ave. Baltimore, MD 21218 The Charism of the Community: Does It Really Make a Difference? Charles E, Bouchard, O.P. Brother Bouchard is a member of St. Rose Priory, the Dominican Community of Aquinas Institute; 2570 Asbury Rd.; Dubuque, IA 52001. His last article, "Journey of Faith . . . appeared in the July, 1977 issue (p. 592). The whole question of what a commu.nity's charism means was brought to my attention one day while I was teaching a group of high school juniors. I was trying to convince them that the Dominicans had a particular character, a way of doing things, and that consequently their education in a Dominican high school would be in some way different from that in a Jesuit or a Benedictine high school. They were slightly less than convinced. Even though I knew that the spirit of my order was special and different from the Jesuit spirit, it was very difficult to convey that mixture of feelings, experiences and training that made me a Dominican. Then I began to wonder if indeed it really made any difference. Should we attempt to dif-ferentiate ourselves from other religious communities in our ministries? Was our "charism" really worth dwelling upon? My formation placed great emphasis on what is unique to Dominicans: what we are about, who we are, why we exist. It seemed to me that it would be wasteful to put all that aside when I entered the classroom, but I didn't know how I could convey what had been impressed upon me in formation and what had initially led me to commit myself to the Dominican ideal. The document on the renewal of religious life calls members of religious communities to a "constant return to the sources of the whole of Christian life and to the primitive inspiration of the institutes, and their adaptation to 35o The Charism of the Community / 351 the changed conditions of our times" (Perfectae Caritatis, 2). Religious, like all Christians, must constantly re-evaluate their lives in the light of the gospel. They must also identify their particular charism if they are to be effective in their ministry. Perhaps a look at the New Testament roots of these charisms can help us more clearly discern our role today and our mandate for the future. What Are Charisms? The word charism comes from a Greek word meaning "a favor, an expression of kindness or a gift; a special manifestation of the divine presence." A charism is a gift, an ability, a talent, an inclination to be of service in a particular way. John Carroll Futrell, in an excellent article which appeared a few years ago in The Way, "Discovering the Founder's Charism," says that a charism is "simply a graced way of seeing and of following Jesus for the service of the whole Church, which can cease to exist if and when this vision and this service cease to be a true good for the Church.''1 These charisms are gifts of the Spirit to assure the growt.h of Christ's body despite our sinful and incomplete natures. They cannot be earned or demanded of God, but are nevertheless everywhere present and are often readily recognizable by the community. Jesus hinted at this when he said, "By their fruits you shall know them." The first gifts to the early Church were made known at Pentecost in a passage familiar to all of us: And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like that of a strong driving wind, which filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues like flames of fire dispersed among them and resting on each one. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to talk in other tongues and the Spirit gave them utterartce. Ac 2:2-5 (emphasis added). Later, Peter tries to explain the phenomenon and quotes the old Tes-tament: "I foresaw that the presence of the Lord would be with me al-ways." Three things are apparent in this event: first, the Spirit is given to all (~'each one"); secondly, the Spirit empowered them to do something ("gave them utterance"); and thirdly, as Peter makes clear, it is a sign. of a continuing event, the abiding presence of the Lord. Later, St. Paul expounds on the gifts of the Spirit that were first made present at Pentecost with the symbolic flames when he writes to the Church in Rome: Just as each of our bodies has several parts and each part has a separate function, so all of us, in union with Christ, form one body, and as parts of it we belong to each other. Our gifts differ according to the grace given to us. If your gift is prophecy, then 1John Carroll Futrell, "Discovering the Founder's Charism," The Way Supplement 14 (Autumn 1971): p. 63. 359 / Review for Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 use it as your faith suggests; if administration, then use it for administration; if teaching, then use it for teaching. Let the preachers deliver sermons, the almsgivers give freely, the officials be diligent, and those who do works of mercy do them cheerfully. Rm 12:4-8. While Paul speaks here about very specific gifts which were evident in the early Church, we can obviously extend this to our time. We see these and many more gifts manifested today. Hans Kfing lists three major categories of charisms: l) those of preaching (which include teaching); 2) those of service; 3) those of leadership,z Just as Jesus Christ in his physical body on earth preached, taught, fed the hungry, healed, and forgave, the Church is called upon from its be-ginnings, and is empowe.red by the Spirit which came initially at Pentecost and continues to be present, to continue those works which Jesus did. What Does Jesus' Life on Earth Call Us to Do? An examination of the New Testament reveals Jesus ministering in diverse ways. His whole life was an example for us and the Church to follow. Jesus healed. Perhaps we could cite the healing of the lepers as just one example of his healing (Lk 5:12ff). One healing incident stands out as representative of Jesus' attitude toward those who came to him: A leper comes and says, 'qf you want to, you can cure me." Jesus responds: ~'Of course I want to! Be healed!" (Mk 1:40). Here we find a warm example of Jesus' willingness to cure and relieve suffering. The Church continues that work today in health care and in charismatic and sacramental healing. Jesus preached and taught. Besides the numerous examples we could glean from the parables which served to reveal the Father to those who followed him, Jesus revealed the New Covenant through his preaching of the beatitudes (Mr 5: lff). ~'Rejoice and be glad for your reward will be great in'heaven" signified an entirely new message: there was no need to despair because of present circumstances; a far greater destiny had been won for man by Christ. Preaching remains a primary mission of the Church, both in the in-stitutionalized sense and in the witness to which we are all called. We here consider preaching and teaching together because of their essential simi-larity. Teaching and preaching do not seem to have been distinguished as we know them !oday until after the sixteenth century when a secular society be.gan to emerge. In teaching, Jesus sought to expand the message he preached through his use of parables and his occasional use of more dramatic actions such as the cleansing of the temple. Although preaching is now normally considered to be the proclamation of God's word by those specifically commissioned ZHans K~ing, The Church. (New York: Doubleday and Co., Image Books, 1976), p. 242. The Charism of the Community / 353 to do so, it is very closely related to Christian witness, which is the vocation of every Christian. Preaching, if we consider it in its broadest sense, need not be limited to a solely liturgical setting. Christians, in teaching and witnessing to their faith through Christian lives, are constantly called upon to proclaim the message of salvation. Jesus prayed. Besides the obvious example of his instruction of the Lord's prayer which gave the apostles a new view of God as Father and enabled them to address him as such in prayer, Jesus showed us the im-portance of solitary and petitionary prayer in his agony in the garden (Mk 14:33) and in his temptations in the desert. The Church has followed this call to prayer through its contemplative religious communities, through the Liturgy of the Hours, and through its many exhortations to prayer in private and in a liturgical setting. The Prayer of the Faithful in the Liturgy of the Eucharist is a good example of this emphasis. Finally, Jesus fed the hungry. Sensitive to the crowds that had been following him without food, Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes and thus provided for this material need (Mk 6:37ff). The Wedding Feast at Cana provides a similar example of his concern for the needs of those with whom he associated. Jesus' visits to the homes of Zacchaeus and Mary Magdalene give us examples of his concern for the human need for com-panignship and affirmation. The Church, as the Body of Christ extended in time and space, con-tinues all these works today. Spreading the Good News, it imitates and follows Christ as it heals, preaches, teaches, feeds and prays. Special abilities (charisma) are given in each of these areas to the members of the Body, and since each is indispensable to the whole, we have an essential unity. Some feed; others teach (study); some have special care for prayer or healing. Religious communities are usually dedicated to one or other of these specific tasks, and we can easily think of at least one religious com-munity that is primarily concerned with each of these duties of the Church. The Alexian Brothers, for example, are specially dedicated to health care, and in that way carry on Christ's work of healing and extend his concern for the sick. Charisms and Religious Life Today, our identity as religious is in question. We have come through a traumatic period during which most of the formhl structures which had supported and signified our lives have melted away, leaving us, at best, with the job of reconstructing our purpose and place in the world, and, at worst, with little idea of which way to turn. Confusion has resulted for older members of our communities who can no longer find the life they once lived; new members entering often find a diffuse selection of life-styles and interpretations to choose from and no longer have a sure external formula after which to pattern their lives. 354 / Review for Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 I believe, however, that the matter of the place and function of religious life in the world today is somewhat simplified if we recall the idea of charism and the unity of the body of Christ. These charisms are present in the Church, are its lifeblood, and are God's assurance that the Church will be able to continue its work and be a vehicle of salvation. If we see each religious community as a communal realization of one of these charisms, we can see much more clearly what the goal and purpose of that religious community is and what direction.it should take today. Although all of us have the gospel as primary goal, it is important for us to attempt to isolate our community's charism and determine to what extent it is an expression of one of these works of Christ and to what degree it affects our ministry. If Benedictines, for example, can be considered to be primarily an extension of Christ's work of prayer, isn't it reasonable tO assume that a Benedictine school will have a different thrust in spirit than one would expect to find in a Jesuit school whose charism may be more apostolic or a Dominican school where study and "truth" are high values among the religious faculty? If we believe that the Spirit of our founder remains valid and vital, I think we need to evaluate to what extent we live that spirit in our work. In fact, although we must remember the essential unity of the Body of which we are all parts, I think we would be doing the Church a great disservice by losing sight of the particular gifts which our communities seek to foster. The color and diversity that must be a part of the universal Church are greatly enhanced by a realization of the varied ministries and gifts that are present within it. If the charism of the Benedictines is one of prayer and work for the sake of the gospel, then that spirit should be cultivated and held high as one Christian ideal among many others. Religious communities can be of great service to the Church by living their calls to the full and providing many strong examples for others to emulate. None of these orders offers the complete spirit of Christianity, but all together, with the thousands of personalities and talents they represent, symbolize the many-faceted but unified body of Christ. Isolating a community's charism is only half the problem, however. I may be well aware of what it means to be a Dominican, that my call is to preaching and a communal life centered around contemplation and apos-tolate, but how do I communicate that to a group of high school students or to the parish I serve? How do I offer the charismatic elements of my life to the Church at large? How do I convey the vitality that I, as a Benedictine monk or nun, derive from Ora et Labora? How do I express all that the Jesuit motto, Ad majorem Dei gloriam, means to me as a Jesuit? This is a question that is not easily answered, but I would propose a few practical suggestions: 1) First of all, it is necessary to discover one's charism. What was my community founded to do? What was the founder's original intention? How The Charism of the Community / 355 does that translate into the United States in the twentieth century? Are there some parts of my community's charism that no longer remain valid today? (Again, Futrell's article is particularly helpful here.) 2) How does this original insight affect what I do today? If the Dominicans, for example, were founded to combat error in the thirteenth century, is there something in this for me as a high school or college teacher today? Certainly I'm not going to adopt an inquisitorial teaching method. But might the Dominican pursuit of truth lead me to a particularly inquiring stance with regard to my teaching? 3) Am I in my religious community because my talents, interests and personality mesh with the thrust of my community? If so, it is likely that just my personality says volumes about what my religious community is all about. Often the peaceful feeling of prayerfulness that one finds in a mon-astery is due primarily to the fact that most of the monks exude that peace and prayerfulness. Not many extremely boisterous, apostolicaily oriented people would find monastic life to their liking. Similarly, Dominicans are often seen as academic and erudite. One who despises the discipline of study would probably not find the Dominican life palatable. 4) Besides the natural aspects of my personality, how do ! attempt to cultivate consciously the elements of my community's calling into my life? I may be naturally talkative and curious, but those characteristics alone don't make me a Dominican. Discipline in study and a search for truth through prayer and contemplation must accompany any personality char-acteristics that may incline me toward Dominican life initially. The purpose of such an examination and re-emphasis of our purpose and' character is not to separate or divide us. It is simply a recognition that many different parts are necessary to the body of Christ, and that they must work together well. We are in an age of intense self-awareness when every advertisement, book and program compels us to develop ourselves fully and to eliminate, as one author puts it, our "erroneous zones," or those parts of us which function least effectively, to the detriment of our whole selves. Religious communities should do no less. We must take what is strongest in our traditions and build on that, remembering our inter-dependence and ultimate membership in Christ's body. John Futrell states the need well when he says: "What religious communities are called to do in the renewal of their spirit and the adaptation of their life to the signs of the times is really to re-found themselves. They are called to a re-founding because they must communally discern the radically new ways of incar-nating this charism in life and action to which the Holy Spirit, speaking in events, calls them in the world today."''~ Religious charisms do make a difference. They are signs of the presence of the Spirit in our midst and of the rich variety with which he equips the Body of Christ for life and mission. They mutually reinforce one another, aFutrell, idem, p. 70. $56 / Review for Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 and, together, make the Church both a powerful force for good and a home for an endless variety of people. Religious communities don't do anything different from the rest of the Church, but they should be leaders and ¯ examples. Clearly, if we are part of a religious community that is involved in one of these works which Christ wished to be continued, we should constantly renew our efforts to identify and intensify those works. If we can isolate our community's particular calling, identify in our-selves those inherent traits that suit us to that community and then try to develop our natural talents along the lines of the community's identity, I believe we will have gone far toward unifying and strengthening our com-munity's witness. Throughout history one of the primary tasks of religious life has been that of witness--witness to one of those works of Christ which I pointed out earlier. Whether as a Little Brother of the Poor feeding, as a School Sister of Notre Dame teaching, as a Dominican preaching, as a Benedictine praying, or as a Sister of Mercy healing, we witness to the love of Christ and to the abiding presence of the Spirit in the world. The very fact that we exist to preach, teach, pray, heal and feed can be an invaluable sign to the world that Christ is still with us. But signs must be clear and easily readable. By examining our lives and our callings we can clarify that sign which our ministry and lives are and make them point more effectively to the Kingdom which we have been promised and which has already begun. Now Available As Reprint An apostolic Spirituality for the Ministry of Social Justice by Max Oliva, S.J. Price: $.50 per copy, plus postage. Address: Review for Religious Rm 428 3601 Lindell Bivd, St. Louis, Missouri 63108 Impassioned Presence: Religious Life and Leisure Janie Gustafson, C.S.J. As have so many religious, Sister Janie has reverted to her given name. When last her work appeared in these pages, "The God of Brokenness" (March, 1977, p. 178), she bore the name "'Jean Annette." This article is a chapter from her most recent book, to be released by Harper and Row in May. She mentions of the book: "Celibate passion is a deep-seated life force that courses within each of us, whether we are male or female, lay or clergy, married or single, young or old. It is a passion that longs for intimacy yet leads us to discover our essential aloneness." The title of the book is Celibate Passion. To burn for and to be grounded in the reality of God is the most important thing we can do with our lives. But even this is not enough. Once we have caught fire and have found our deepest center, then we must call forth the birthing of God in others. We must be midwives of new life; we must do something creative with our relationship to God. To be fully religious, we must share him with those around us. This insight has been one of the traditional justifications for choosing a celibate or solitary life-style. Celibacy supposedly gives us more freedom to pursue a career or to give ourselves in creative service. But this is only partly true. Instead of fre.eing us for greater creativity, celibacy often be-comes a synonym for addiction to work. How easily we drown our lives in too much verbiage and paper work, and limit our relationships to the stimulation of one small part of our anatomies. We spend so much of our time reproducing the past or maintaining the status quo that we neglect to develop the multi-dimensional, psycho-physical-spiritual beings we are. In the book of Genesis, when God directs Adam and Eve to be fruitful, 357 3511 / Review for Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 multiply, and fill the earth, he is referring to more than biological repro-duction. Our vocation is to be co-creators with God, to fill the earth with unique and unrepeatable forms of life. To do this, we must awaken our-selves to new levels of consciousness and experience. Such awakenings~, however, always require time. Thus, I find that implicit in the call to wholeness (which is exactly what religious life is all about) is the call to leisure. I stress leisure as opposed to work because it implies attitudes which are essential to creativity. In the ancient creation stories and myths, divine creativity is never the same as work. Work is purposeful activity, a duty marked by drudgery, a mechanical reproduction of something already existing. Divine creativity, as presented in Genesis, is so leisurely that it seems to be play. God savors, applauds, and rejoices in creating unique and beautiful things. And he does this, as is stated in the books of Ecclesiasticus and Proverbs, only after eons and eons. Before the beginning of the created universe, there was neither activity nor rest. God alone was there. Alone and yet not alone; one and yet three. And there was leisure: an intense, intimate relationship of presence and reciprocity. It is not difficult to understand why we have lost sight of the importance of leisure for creativity. Inherent in our Protestant Ethic is an emphasis on work which has gradually evolved into its ove~:valuation and a very limited concept of what it means. The utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham has persuaded us that our greatest motivation for work is pleasure, which can only be measured by the utility, or usefulness, of the work. We have learned to equate usefulness with happiness, and the amount of work we do with virtue. In today's society, we are measured by the job we hold and by how many luxuries of the culture we can purchase. Utilitarianism has so saturated even our religious concepts that it is almost impossible for us to be leisurely. Somewhere in our cerebral memory banks, we know that idle hands are potentially evil, and that we are slothful if we prefer to "be" instead of to "do." To be "good" is to work hard and to work always. We suspect options that smack of a Bohemian pursuit of pleasure and we feel guilty when we are not engaged in anything. To relieve ourselves of this guilt, we make leisure work-oriented and centered around the values of progress and production. Our leisure must have a purposi~, even if it is merely to rejuvenate our minds and revitalize our bodies. Thus, many of us in religious life are simply modern-day re-incarnations of Sisyphus, a worker chained to his function, never pausing from fruitless toil and never reaping the rewards of labor. We can only become human, I am convinced, by taking time for leisure and by acquiring the attitudes of leisure. The call to be religious is a call to leisure in all of its most self-actualizing expressions. Aristotle, in his Politics, says that leisure is so important that it is the center about which every.thing revolves. When we become more creative and playful, we be- Impassioned Presence: Religious Life and Leisure / :359 come more like God. As Robert Neale says, "the maturation of the indi-vidual presents the opportunity of growing from playlessness to full play and., to 'fully play' in the adult is religion.''1 "Full play," which "uses ¯ all the potentials offered at the particular developmental stages of the individual's physical, psychological and social growth,'' is the same as what Mortimer Adler calls "leisure work" or Abraham Maslow terms "self-actualization." And this type of play is always an experience of the "holy,''3 which results in wisdom. Ironically enough, when we experience the "holy," the wisdom we perceive often seems more like foolishness (1 Co 1:27). Leisure leads us to a wisdom which seems crazy. It is this.madness which characterizes King David as he danced before the Ark of the Covenant, and St. Paul, who became a fool for Christ. True leisure in relationship to the holy produces what the Greeks call eutrapelia, a nimbleness of mind which enables us to play. It is a wise balance between too much laughter and too much seriousness. The seventh day of creation, then, is not a rest after a week of hard work; it is a festive celebration of new life and love. It is a time of uselessness, a time "where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord.''4 Usually, the only time we really play is when we are children. This is why I find it significant that several ancient religions have myths of infant gods who create from their play. Dionysius, Hermes, Apollo, and Heracles are all world-creating children. The Christian Savior is the child of Bethlehem. Children seem to know what leisure is. A child enters readily into the spirit of play, imagination, and creativity: A child can waste time, and love every minute of it. A child can see things for the first time, and can be delighted with beauty. Children express wholeness, Carl Jung tells us, because they do not get lost in the one-sidedness of adulthood. A child is thus a "symbol of the union of opposites: a mediator, bringer of healing, ¯. one who makes whole."5 Perhaps this is why Jesus insists that we must become like children to enter the kingdom of God. We know very little about the childhood of Jesus. But we can get clues of what it was like from Luke's report that "the child Jesus grew in wisdom and grace" (Lk 2:40). Luke could have told us that Jesus grew in carpentry skills, but instead he uses wisdom and grace, two words associated with leisure. During those thirty years I think Jesus came to realize that, to be a person of God, one must take time to really see, to marvel at the mystery of being, and to penetrate the essence of things. It is only by being there, ~Robert Neale, In Praise of Play (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 82. 21bid., p. 84. 31bid., p. 97. 4Abraham Heschel, The Sabbath (New York: World, 1951), p. 1. 5Carl Gustav Jung, Psyche and Symbol, ed. by Violet S. de Laszlo (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1958), p. 128. 360 / Review for Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 in the presence of God, that one can grow in wisdom, discernment, and vision. The gospel tells us that when Jesus called the apostles they left behind their work to follow him (see Mk 1:16-21). We could hardly say that the apostles never worked from that day onward. What I think is meant is that when they came to know Jesus, their attitudes changed. They left behind their pragmatic, workaday attitudes and learnt from him to be still, to suffer with others, and to appreciate the small things in life. Jesus taught them to see the birds of the air, the lilies of the field, the widow with her mite, and the little children at their feet. He taught them to think creatively, to expand their thoughts beyond traditional logic. God, he told them, is everywhere and in everyone: the saint as well as the sinner, the Samaritan as well as the Jew, the woman as well as the man. And he taught them prayer, not that of rote memory or constant petition, but that of simply being in the presence of God in silent adoration. I have often wondered why Jesus referred to himself as a shepherd. He never tended sheep; instead, he was a carpenter. In the context of leisure, his identification as shepherd becomes understandable. The carpenter symbol has always been equated with hard work, usefulness, efficiency, productivity, and common sense. All good qualities, but qualities that can easily become lost in attitudes of pragmatism. The shepherd-symbol, how-ever, has always denoted a person of vision, someone who knows wisdom and leisure. The shepherd symbolizes the responsible adult who has recaptured the essence of childhood. He or she embodies a sense of the ineffable, an awareness of the grandeur of creation, a radical amazement at all of reality. In various myths, the shepherd sees the sacred in the ordinary and thus is the first to discover the abandoned prince or the newly born offspring of the gods. It is certainly not strange that a group of shepherds first discerned the signs of Jesus' birth. Nor is it strange that so many leaders of God's people--Abraham, Joseph, Moses, and David--were also shepherds. Lei-sure produces the vision necessary for good shepherding and wise lead-ership. In taking time to stop and be still for a while, to forget our thoughts and plans, to listen to the sounds of the universe within and around us, we reach new levels of awareness. Our minds are suddenly absorbed by the beauty of particulars, whether immense or infinitesimal. Common things which once seemed boring now loom before us as exquisite works of art, capturing our interest and engaging our curiousity. The frying pan we are washing suddenly becomes a marvelous sculpture; the rose in the garden becomes like no other flower we have ever seen. Uniqueness intoxicates us; we yearn to discover more of the mysteries that surround us. In each particular we contemplate the universal. The world seems more profound, more all-embracing, and more wondrous than we have ever before realized. We are Impassioned Presence: Religious Life and Leisure / 361 awed by a deepened sense that being itself is something penetrable and comprehensible, but at the same time unfathomable, everflowing, and inexhaustible. I have found that the contemplative awareness found in leisure may remain on a purely natural level, or it may soar to the heights of religious experience. This awareness ushers us simultaneously into our full human potentialities and into the silent ever-loving presence of God. For this reason, the ancient Greeks considered the contemplative life as the highest form of existence. In contemplation we become most like God the creator and the lover, and thus, as Aristotle believed, achieve perfect happiness. This contemplation is not an intricately contrived state of altered con-sciousness, but the "relaxed and useless, focused attention of the whole mind on reality, a simple intuitive gaze born of wonder and love."'6 In leisure, we learn with T. S. Eliot to regain our childlike eyes and "'to know the place for the first time.''7 We look and we reverence. We are delighted once again and rejoice continuously in new loves and new ad-ventures. We give recklessly of our undivided attention and once again "resume our childhood love affair with single, concrete objects: with one coffee table, with one backyard, with one human face.''a We learn to love with no purpose; to face life without manipulation or exploitation. With no expectation whatsoever, we come, we are silent, and we take a long, undistracted look. Our prayer ceases to be an obligation Or duty. God and the soul "have fruition of each other in the deepest silence.''9 God becomes the heart of our being, the center of our lives, the priority of our day. We take time and make time, perhaps consciously at first, but then uncon-sciously, until at last we realize this is the way it must always be. The wisdom of leisure is the knowledge, of firsthand experience: a sa-pientia of communion, a tasting of the right things. More than contem-plation of the beautiful, it is a vital union which obliterates all barriers and joins the lover and beloved as one. It is an experienced knowledge in which the separateness of the ego begins to fade, and we enter rapturously into the object we are contemplating. Such union leads to a new creation on both the natural and the religious levels (see 2 Co .5:17). So absorbing is this ex-perience that we often lose our sense of time. Everything, past, present, and future, becomes here and now. Slowly, we learn to live wholly in each moment. Everything, in this frame of mind, is a gift to be celebrated. We are inundated with a new zest for life. We are so joyfully caught up in the 6Fr. William McNamara, "The Meaning of Festivity," Desert Call (Special Anniversary Issue, May, 1971), p. 50. ~T. S. Eliot, "'Little Gidding," Four Quartets (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1943), p. 59. 8Walter Kerr, The Decline of Pleasure (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962), p. 207. aTeresa of Avila, Interior Castle, trans, by E. Allison Peers (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1961), p. 223. 369 / Review for Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 moment that we learn more and more the ability of present. Everything is thus made holy. Living in the present moment teaches us a certain dependency and trust. There is more to life than what we put into it; the future is not always determined by our own efforts or plans. One of the saddest consequences of the growth of technology is that to a great extent we are no longer dependent on the seasons and the sun, the amount of rainfall or the fertility of the soil. No longer are we ,forced by nature to wait until the right time of growth or maturation. It was not until I spent a year in the wilderness of Nova Scotia that I made time in my life for nature and waiting. The garden was not just a garden, but a miracle of new life; the forest was not just a forest, but an eco-system made up of individual trees and fascinating animals. Dogs were no longer dogs, but creatures who taught me about the exuberance of living and the humor of God. I learned that I had to wait until the chickens decided to lay their eggs before I could gather them. To go to the nearest town, I sometimes had to wait until a fallen tree had been rolled aside or the muddy road had dried up. This natural experience of waiting led to an intense awareness of the sacred. As the natural ground exploded into its harvest, so too my ground ignited with the divine fire. God was not only real but present. In Nova Scotia I also learned of an ancient Jewish custom which changed my understanding of leisure. This custom regards the Sabbath as a time of presence. On the preceding night, a vigil is held to heighten our awareness and to usher in the Sabbath in a revered way. The Sabbath thus is neither a dutiful time of worship nor a day of rest. Instead, it becomes a day of true leisure, the celebration of reciprocity: we come to God and God comes to us. Shekinah, the divine indwelling, comes in a special way seeking human love. God chooses to linger with his creation and to have intercourse with it. "'When that day comes, it is Yahweh who speaks, you will call me, 'my husband'." (Ho 2: 18). There is a celibate part of us that is in some way engaged to eternity, to holiness, to the God of all creativity. This part of us anticipates the footsteps of God's coming, sees the wonderful in the ordihary signs of his advent, and savors every glimpse of his being. When we come to recognize this celibate part of ourselves, I think we will spontaneously make special room in our lives for prolonged vigils and sacred days. These times will be so sacred that they can be gloriously celebrated, revered, and con-sequently, wasted. By entering into this leisurely dimension of celibacy, I believe we will be better able to respond passionately to the whole of life. We will learn to be present to both the comedy and the tragedy, with both laughter and tears. We will become more real, more intensely saddened and more hilariously joyous, because of our faith that all these experiences are Impassioned Presence: Religious Life and Leisure / 363 reconciled in God's presence. I think the absence of this faith is one reason why Jesus got so angry with the Pharisees. "We played the pipe for you, and you wouldn't dance; we sang dirges and you wouldn't be mourners" (Mt 11: 17). They did not believe enough in God to let life seep into their bones and profoundly move them. Jesus himself knew happiness and tears, gentleness and anger, harshness and compassion. What sustained and supported him in both p6sitive and negative situations was his faith in God's presence. He could believe with Job that even in the darkest of nights he would again know laughter and the cries of joy (Jb 8:21). I sense in Jesus a conscious feeling not only of the rhythm of these alternating opposites but of their intrinsic harmony, their essential place in the eternal order. To respond to this divine order is, I believe, the essence of religious obedience. It is an interior and exterior sense of harmony, of being in step with the music, of doing the right things at the right time. Whenever I experience this harmony, I am filled with peace. I am one with God, and this makes my heart light. My spirit soars; it y~arns to express its delight. "You have made known the way of life to me; you fill me with gladness through your presence" (Ps 16:11). Lightheartedness, with its spirit of play, is often expressed in dance. Dancing has always been an excellent symbol of leisure, for it embodies all of the characteristics which also lead to creativity. To dance means to immerse our whole selves in the present moment. We focus our attention on the other, whether that other be a partner or the music or a particular rhythm, and we become one with the movement. Dancing has been re-garded by many people as a waste of time, for when we are dancing, we cannot do anything else. But that is precisely the point. And that is why dancing has always been an expression of divine worship and.why I wish we would dance more in our liturgical services. As Van der Leeuw writes: "The dance, by its very nature, is ecstatic. It makes us beside ourself, lifts us above life and the world, and lets our whole earthly existence perish in the maelstrom.''1° For the ancient Hebrews, dance was an expression not only of joy but of intense praise. Only by wasting time, in losing oneself in the Beloved, can one really come to praise. The essence of real worship is the useless, selfless affirmation of the Other. Thus, when the Hebrews worshipped Yahweh, they put their whole hearts and souls into it. The book of Exodus speaks of timbrels and dancing (15:20-21); Judith writes of garlands and palm branches in the hands of all (15:12-14); the First Book of Samuel tells of dances to the sound of music and joyous cries (18:6). "David and all the House of Israel danced before Yahweh with all their might, singing to the accompaniment of lyres, harps, tambourines, castinets, and cymbals . David danced whirling round before Yahweh . leaping and., displaying ~°Gerardus Van der Leeuw, Sacred and Profane Beauty: The Holy in Art, trans, by David E. Green (New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1963), p. 29. 364 / Review for Religious, Volume 37, 1978/3 himself as any buffoon" (2 S 6:5, 17, 20). The Scriptures repe~atedly invite us to praise God in a way that is more than verbal (see Jdt 16:1-2; Ps 149:2-3). The New Testament accounts are no different. Everywhere Jesus goes, he makes people lighthearted. "The blind see again, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life" (Lk 7:22). Through the ages, Christians have repeatedly come back to this concept of leisure as it relates to religious life. Sixth-century Christian art portrays the resurrection of Jesus as a dance in which he draws the redeemed upward toward heaven. Christ, as the firstborn of the dead, is the leader in the eschatology of freedom, and the Church, as his bride, dances along. Ac-cording to these paintings, to dance is to see God. Dante, probably more than any other Christian writer, sees the entire universe laugh with delight in God's presence. He writes 6f innumerable dances.~1 Heaven is filled with "the dancing and great festival of the singing and flashing of light with light, joyous and benign.'w' Everything for Dante whirls around the Center in perfect harmony and ecstatic rapture. The traditional association of leisure with religious life, in my opinion, expresses a profound wisdom. Only when people began to equate creativity with work instead of with leisure, did our concepts of prayer and heaven become passive and uninteresting. Time spent in mutual loving presence between God and ourselves can never be static or never become boring. In being called to be religious, it is important to remember that we are also called to leisure. This call--which contains a lifetime of creative attitudes and expressions--embraces both activity and passivity, play and work, contemplation and apostolic service. Abraham Heschel puts it thus: ~'Ev-ery instant is an act of creation. A moment is not a terminal but a flash, a signal of be.ginning. Time is perpetual innovation, a synonym for con-tinuous creation.''~3 To become fully human, fully religious, I believe we must embrace everything with an impassioned presence. l~Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans, by H. R. Huse (New York: Rinehart, 1958). Dante.writes of the dance of the fiery spirits (Paradise VII:4, p. 359), of the lofty Seraphim (Paradise VII1:25, p. 365), of the blazing stars---who seem "to be ladies not ending a dance but silently waiting and listening until they have heard the new measure" (Paradise X: 75-80, p. 376), and of the Principalities and Archangels (Paradise XXVIII: 124-125, p. 458). ~Zlbid., Paradise XI1:22-24, p. 383. ~aHeschel, op. cir., p. 100. Poverty and the Space Around Us Charles A. Law, S.J. Father Law has been missioned for twenty years to Nepal, having originally entered the Chicago Province of the Society of Jesus. His present address is: St. Xavier's School; Jawalakhel; G.P.O. Box 50' Kathmandu, Nepal. 'In| this article I would like to share with you some personal reflections on how the practice of religious poverty helps to develop a sense of God. Many nowadays develop the meaning of poverty in relation to our apostolate. Poverty for them has its meaning in helping Christ's poor. Some develop this idea further by equating poverty with a

Issue 22.2 of the Review for Religious, 1963. ; EVODE BEAUCAMP, O.F.M. Sin and the Bible Throughout1 the New Testament the work of Christ is presented as a victory over sin. To speak of sin in this connection is to evoke an agelong experience which is highly complex and which can not be neglected if one wishes to comprehend the matter in all its extent and fullness. The word sin is a familiar one to us; yet it is no older than the Greek of the Septuagint. Before the Sep-tuagint there can not be found in the sacred text a single word exactly corresponding to it. The Alexandrian trans-lator has included under this single word the varying nuances of a number of terms; through this word he has thereby evoked all the forms which were taken through the course of centuries by the resistance of Israel to the salvific activity of God. There can be no question of giving here a study of sin in the Bible; for that is a problem entirely too large. We shall simply mark out the essential lines in order that we might have a better understanding of the problem of sin and that as a consequence we may be able to provide a catechetical presentation of sin that will be more richly nourished by the vitality of the Bible. The God of the Bible ancl the Problem o] Good anti Evil Like all the surroundin~ peoples, Israel united into one word evil and unhappiness on the one hand, goodness and happiness on the other. The first of these words is simultaneously disorder, deceit, emptiness, and death; the second is virtue, fullness of life, and peace. Every deed carries within itsel~ its own consequences: evil in-volves unhappiness while goodness implies happiness: Do no evil, and evil will not overtake you; avoid wickedness, and it will turn aside from you. Sow not in the furrows of in-justice, lest you harvest it sevenfold (Sir 7:1-3). Moreover, one finds in the Bible different ways of ex-pressing the same proverb: This article is translated with permission from the magazine Catdchistes, n. 49 (January 1, 1962), pp. 5-19. The magazine is pub-lished by Procure des Frhres; 78, rue de Shvres; Paris 7, France. 4. 4. Evode Beaucamp O.F.M., a Scripture scholar, lives at Via di Decima Kin. I; Rome, Italy. VOLUME 22, 1965 129 4. 4. ÷ Erode Beaucnmp, O.I~.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 130 Those who conceive malice bring forth emptiness; they give birth to failure (Jb 15:35). They sowed the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind (Hos 8:7). What is original in the Bible is the teaching that good-ness, physical as well as moral, has only one source: God. "O Lord," cries the Psalmist, "thou art my welfare; there is none beside thee." And for Amos the two expressions "to seek God" and "to seek the good" are perfectly identi-cal; both the one and the other offer the secret of life (Amos 5:4-14). The successful issue of human existence is found on the way which Yahweh points out and only there: For this reason will all go well with us, because we obeyed the voice of our God (Jer 42:6). You must keep his commands., that you may prosper, and your children after you, and that you may live long . (Dt 4:40). You must do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord that you may prosper (Dr 6:18; see also 12:25 and 28). The Law given by Yahweh to His people is the way of happiness: "You must keep my laws and ordinances, by the observance of which man shall find life (Lv 18:5).'° This is a point which is important to remember when the idea of the Law is presented; the love of the Jews for the Torah is incomprehensible if it is not realized that Yah-weh is legislator precisely insofar as He is father, bene-factor, shepherd, and defender of His people. Moreover, this throws light on the well-known problem of reward. The Bible does not say that happiness is received as a recompense for goodness but that happiness is the fruit of goodness and that it is to be found at the end of the way. Evil is not treated in the same way as is goodness; the God of the Bible never attributes to Himself a paternir.y with regard to evil. For the Psalmists, evil is the absence of God; and it is towards Him that one must turn to be freed from it. Nevertheless, it is in relationship to God that evil is defined: evil is the reverse of what He wills, of the course of :action that He teaches. As the author of Chapters Three and Four of Genesis has carefully sho~qn, the evils which weigh on humanity are not imputable to the Creator; the responsibility falls on man who has at-tempted to find his happiness outside of God, to flee his dependence on Yahweh by himself possessing the key of good and evil. Man has set himself on the desperate route that leads far from Paradise: Woe to them that have wandered away from reel (Hos O Lord, thou hope of Israel, all who forsake you shall be put to shame; those who prove faithless to you in the land shall be brought to confusion, because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living water (Jer 17:13). Let us remark in passing that the God of the Bible never reproaches man for his thirst for greatness and happiness; what is reproached is the attempt to satisfy this outside of God. Unlikei the gods of Surher and Baby-lon, Yahweh has the intention of giving His creature the fullness of life and happiness, but He teaches that this must be done by Him: If my people would but listen to me, if Israel would only walk in my ways, I would quickly humble their foes . he would be fed with the finest of the wheat; and with honey from the rock would I satisfy you (Ps 81:13-14, 16). Although man punishes himself by separating himself from God (see Jb 22:3 ft.), the Bible, nevertheless, does not hesitate to show us Yahweh personally intervening to punish with all the power of His anger. It is He who hardens the pharaoh, as it is He who brings evil upon His unfaithful people: I am watching over them for evil and not for good (Jet 44:27). I will set my eye upon them for evil, and not for good (Amos It is curious to observe how the inspired writers can com-plain both that Yahweh hides His face and remains dis-tant from His chosen ones (Ps 88:14) and that He turns His face against them (Jer 44:11): "The face of the Lord has scattered them; he no longer regards them" (Lain 4:16). And some of the sacred writers are heard to cry out: Will you never take your eye off me, nor let me alone till I swallow my saliva? (Jb 7:19). Turn your gaze away from me, that I may be glad (Ps 39:13). Yahweh never ceases to assert His exclusive right to bestow good on His chosen ones even when they turn away from Him to their own loss. In the evils which then beset them, there can always, be detected the avenging pursuit of a cheated love: So I will be unto them like a lion; or like a leopard by the road I will lurk. I will rend them like a bear robbed of its cubs; and I will tear off the covering of their heart (Hos 13:7-8). Pursued by the love he has denied, the sinner sees him-self abandoned by all: "Thou has put friend and com-panion far from me" (Ps 88:18). He is abandoned even by the earth which bears and nourishes him: I am bringing upon them a disaster which they shall not be able to escape (Jet 11:11). I will rend and be gone; I will carry off, with none to rescue (Hos 5:14). Sin VOLUME 22, 1963 13! + + + Evode Beaucamp, O.F.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Behold, I am going to make a groaning under you (Amos 2:13). Unlike the Egyptian god Aten, Yahweh is not indif. ferent when He distributes life and happiness. His gifts are always made from a personal and jealous love. Hence He can not but react vigorously when man prefers deceit, nothingness, and ruin to His love. The blows which He deals as well as His tragic silence can lead the wanderer back to the road of return: I withdraw to my own place, until they realize their guilt and seek my face, searching for me in their distress (Hos 5:15). And yet it is necessary that this appeal be heard and followed: It was I that gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities . it was I that withheld from you the rain, three months before the harvest . I laid waste your gardens and your vineyards . I sent a pestilence like that of Egypt among you . But you did not return to me (Amos 4:6-10). When sin is presented as disobedience to the Law of God, it is necessary to realize that this Law is the path marked out by God and leading to life and happiness; to disobey it is to wish to conduct one's life by oneself and to run towards one's own ruin. The God whose love has been scorned will not be content to let us leave; He will inexorably bar the way that leads to peace just as formerly He posted the cherubim with their swords of fire to pre-vent Adam and his descendants from access to the Para-dise that had been lost: They are a people who err in their hearts, and do not know my ways. So that I swore in my anger that they should not enter into my rest (Ps 95:10-11). The Special Demands o[ the Covenant The Bible is not satisfied with presenting man in con-frontation with God; for the Bible the heart of the matter is the elect one in confrontation with the God who has chosen him. The peace dreamt of by the Jews of old, peace between the members of. one community, peace with the external world and the earth where men liv~.~- this peace is the fruit of the covenant of Sinai (see Lv 26:3-13; Dt 11:13-15). From the viewpoint of the history of religions, one of the most original characteristics of this alliance is the tact that the initiative belongs exclusively to God and not at all to the people; it is Yahweh who has chosen Israel and not Israel who has chosen Yahweh. From the beginning to the end of the Bible, Yahweh repeatedly emphasizes the absolute liberty of His choice, a liberty that gives Him the right to demand obedience without reserve or mur-mur. The elect one should adjust his conduct to the direc- tives given by his God; he must seek that "which is right in the eyes of Yahweh"; he must "march perfectly before Him" without "swerving" from the way "either to the right or the left." Hence.the existence of Israel was constitute~ by the acceptance of these demands;~and these;demands were unceasingly renewed nor were they ever fully completed at any given moment of history. The more Israel, through a better understanding of the obligations of the covenant, wished to submit to them, the larger the number of them grew. In its always unsatisfied thirst to stay perfectly close to the divine will, the chosen people never ceased to develop the principles at the base of the Mosaic legis-lation of the Decalogue (Ex 20:3-17; Dt 5:6-21) and of the code of the covenant (Ex 20:22-26) into the different priestly codes and the enormous growths of the rabbinical tradition. Since there existed this demand for a perfection never perfectly attained ("You must be holy; for I, the Lord your God, am holy" fLy 19:2]; "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" [Mt 5:48]), an exhaustive list of sins is nowhere to be found in the Bible; prophets, Psalmists, and wise men give us but certain ones among many. In every epoch and in all circumstances, the obli-gations of the covenant remain unlimited; the human party of the covenant never succeeds in rising to the level of the demands of the divine party. Basically, the sin of later Judaism will be to pretend to arrest this movement of divine improvement by attempting to imprison the divine will within the walls of a definitive and rigid tra-dition. There is no need to emphasize that the same dan-ger lies in wait for every spiritual life, that there will always be a tendency to substitute for the unlimited de-mands of Christian perfection a code of limited rules which each person can hope some day to fulfill com-pletely. The covenant not only implies the demands of a bond faithfully maintained between God and His people, but it also includes the demands of a union between the in-dividual members of this people. Yahweh expects that His people should practice among themselves the justice and mercy which He has bestowed on them. The pious Israelite must never forget to share his joy with the stranger, the orphan, the widow; for, as Deuteronomy puts it: "You must remember that you were once a slave yourself in Egypt" (Dt 16:12). For the same reason it is forbidden to retain one's brother in the state of slavery (Lv 25:55; Dt 15:15); nor ought one to treat a stranger with scorn (Lv 19:34; Dt 24:17). In this principle can be seen the first outline of the thought of the Master: "Love each other as I have loved you." ÷ ÷ ÷ Sin VOLUME 22, 1963 4. + Evode Beaucamp, O.F.M. REVIL~V FOR RELIGIOUS Hence it is that along with the infidelities of the people towards God, the absence of social justice appears as the chief accusation directed by Yahweh against Israel. From the beginning of prophetism (for example, with Elijah), the struggle is waged on two fronts: opposition to the introduction of foreign cults and the respect for the rights of the weak (Naboth's vineyard, 1 K 21). As the Lord Himself emphasized, the entire legislation of Israel re. volves around this double commandment: to love God with one's whole heart and one's neighbor as oneself. The same is to be found in the warnings of the prophets, the Psalmists, and the wise men: You have been told, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you'. Only. to do l'ustice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly wtth your God (Mi 6:8; see also Jer 7:5-11). It will not be useless to insist somewhat on this capital point; since we have too great a tendency to distinguish sins against God and sins against neighbor, it is necessary to show how every sin against God leads to injustice with regard to neighbor and how every sin against one's neigh-bor is a blow struck against the rights of God. The first chapters of Genesis in the Yahwist and priestly redac-tions already present evil under this double dimension. The murder of an innocent person follows the act by which Adam made himself independent of his Creator, while the union of the sons of gods with the daughters of men (probably an allusion to sacred prostitution) in-volves the unleashing of violence upon the earth. In a more general way, the Bible unites under the single He. brew word resha' the idea of both impiety and evil-doing, The person who so acts is frequently referred to through-out the Psaher; he is a person who intends to do without God and to live his life entirely by himself and who, in consequence, makes use of force, deceit, and lies: The fool says in his heart: There is no God. Such men are corrupt; they do abominable deeds; there is not one who does good (Ps 14:1; see also Ps 9; 10; 12; 52; 62; and so forth). His adversary and his victim is the just man, the man who expects salvation and justification from God alone and who therefore does not seek to take the law in his own hands nor do himself justice at the expense of others. The life of David furnishes an excellent illustration of these two cases of the evil man and the just man. Sens-ing that Yahweh would give to him the crown of Saul, David steadfastly refused to touch the sacred person of the king; for he intended to owe his royalty: to Yahweh alone and he did not wish to do things wrongly. Accord-ingly, through terrible execution or a no less terrible curse, he decisively disassociated himself from all those who wished to hasten the event by doing violence to Saul or his son or the general of his army (2 S 1:15; ~:28 ft.; 4:10 ft.). In contrast to the dynasties of, usurpers, the dynasty of David was not in its origin tainted by blood (2 K 2:5). But in the affair of Uriah, the king of Jerusalem took a completely opposite c#ur.se; here he acted,asian impious and evil person. Nathan" recalled to the guilty monarch everything that Yahweh had done for him and pointed out to him how He was still ready to do more. But David had lacked confidence; he had chosen to take care of him-sell and this he did at the expense of one of his own subjects. There is, then, no rejection of God which does not eventually turn into injustice, just as there is no in-justice which is not a disregard of the power of the God of :the covenant. For a Christian, to sin is not only to disobey the eternal laws of the Creator; it is also a refusal of the covenant and a scorning of the love of the Father of all. Human Resistance and God's Final Victory The covenant supposes a history; it is at the center of a plan that develops by stages. At each of these stages man tries to block the plan, but his actions do not prevent God from having the final word. It is interesting to follow step by step the resistances of those who were the bene-ficiaries of the covenant, for in them are to be found all the possible forms which man's refusal of God's offer can take. 1. The choice of the elect from the midst of a humanity immersed in sin. Because the human race had turned from Him and had obstinately buried itself in evil, Yah-weh drew forth from it Israel in the desire to make of it a people who would follow His directives. Hence the election of Abraham is presented in the Yahwist tradition of Genesis as the last effort made by Yahweh to prevent His creation from going to perdition apart from Him. This evil had begun when Adam, in his desire for in-dependence, had lost Paradise. Nevertheless, Yahweh did not abandon this fugitive from Him; He gave him the hope of a future victory over the evil in which he had immersed himself; He had even covered the nakedness that the guilty couple had become aware of. To the first couple, punished by their pride, there succeeded a gen-eration of murderers: Cain and his descendants. Once more Yahweh intervened to prevent fallen humanity from disappearing, from the earth under the inexorable blows of the curse of blood. The union of the sons of the gods with the daughters of men provoked such a release of violence that Yahweh decided on the complete de-struction of His work. Nevertheless, He saved from the catastrophe a just man with whom He concluded a cove- 4- 4- 4- VOLUME 22, 1963 4, 4, 4, Erode Beaucamp, O.F.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 136 nant. This was not yet the last act of the drama; the last scene of the beginnings of the human race is the episode of the tower of Babel, the dispersion of the sons of Adam after their aborted attempt to construct a tower that would reach to heaven. Nevertheless, the efforts of Yahweh to arrest man in his vertiginous descent into the abyss were not in vain; for, after the episode of the tower of Babel, a new history begins: the vocation of Abraham, the epic of the patri-archs, the covenant of Sinai. To the first scene of a uni-versal invasion of evil, there succeeds that of the increas-ingly solicitous enterprise of God with regard to a people whom He would choose for His own. Under different forms the same idea is found almost everywhere in the Old Testament. To explain the fact that Israel had taken the place of the Canaanites, the legal texts, for example, tell us that the latter were chased from their land because they had done "what was evil in the eyes of Yahweh"; He had determined to give their land to a people who would agree to live according to His will. But misfortune would come to this people if they ever dared to imitate the conduct of their predeces-sors; He would not hesitate to deprive them of the land. The falling back into the world of sin from which Yah-weh had drawn them led Judah to its ruin, as Jeremiah and Ezekiel emphatically pointed out. The sin of the elect is in fact a return to the sin of the nations after having been freed from it. Each election is pictured as a rupture: Leave your country, your relatives, and your father's house (Gn 12:1), Forget your people and your father's house (Ps 45:11). The call of God implies an ascent towards Him by the practice of what is "right in His eyes" and by a renuncia-tion of "what is evil in his eyes." This initial break must continue throughout the course of time; this requires a constant effort at disencumbrance, for the surrounding world never ceases to exert pressure on the elect to make them fall back under its law. This is the drama of every vocation, not only to religious life but to Christianity self. 2. Resistance to the hand that guides. After He had led the people from Egypt, Yahweh made them cross the desert before bringing them to the Promised Land. The desert is the sign of temptation, a testing of faith. In other words, Yahweh would not give the land of Canaart to the Hebrews unless they abandoned themselves to Him without reserve by remaining faithful to the memory of the marvelous act of liberation by which they left Egypt. But hunger, thirst, and fatigue quickly overcame the faith of the former slaves of the pharaohs. They soon forgot the extraordinary epic of the Exodus; they mur-mured and rebelled against Moses and Aaron; they be-came enraged at seeing themselves in a venture which seemed to be pointless; and they dreamed nostalgically of the onions of Egypt. They refused to march forward on the grounds that the:.P~-omised Land W~s~'fi0t good enough and because the enterprise was to their minds a doomed one (Nm 14). This lack of confidence induced the people of Moses to attempt to assure themselves of the protection of their God by placing Him at their service and by forcing His hand as they wished. This is what the Bible calls "tempt-ing God." Instead of Yahweh "tempting" and trying the people in order to make them proceed according to His will, it was Israel who tempted its God, attempting to bring Him into the service of human caprice. Hence when Moses delayed coming down from the mountain and Yahweh made them wait for His answer, the He-brews made the golden calf, a material representation of their God which would allow them to control Him and to"make Him advance according to their desires at the head of their army. This recalcitrant attitude of the elect blocked the entire matter of the election and prevented their entering the rest of God (Ps 95:11). The intercession of Moses effected a compromise: the rebellious generation died in the desert and only their children possessed the right to the heritage of the God of the covenant. 3. Profanation of God's gift. The covenant gift of the land of Canaan should have created the indissoluble bonds of a steadfast love between Israel and God. Unfortunately, Israel, once it was secure and satisfied, was quick to forget: I led them to pasture; with food came satiety, and with satiety pride; and with pride came forgetfulness of me (Hos 13:6; see also Dt 32:15). The riches of the land of Canaan, instead of constantly recalling to the people the solicitude of Yahweh, drove Him from their mind and nurtured in them the illusion of being able to escape the jealous influence of their God. With the products of their land, they attempted to buy protection abroad; this was a seeking after "lovers"--the famous theme of prostitution. Often this theme is con- [used with the closely related one of adultery. The idea of prostitution certainly includes the notion of unfaith-fulness, but it is wider than that; it is not only the betrayal of love, it is also the profanation of the gifts of love: But you trusted in your beauty, and played the harlot on your reputation; you lavished your harlotries on everyone who passed by. You took off your garments, and made yourself gaily decked shrines, on which you played the harlot. You took also your splendid ornaments of gold and silver, which I had given 4- 4- VOLUME 22, 196;1 4. 4" Erode Beaucamp, O.F.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 138 you, and made yourself images of men, with which you played the harlot. And you took your embroidered robes, and wrapped them in these. My oil and my incense you set before them; my bread which I had given you-~the choice flour, oil, and honey with which I had fed you--you set before them as a soothing odor (Ez 16:15-19). The Chosen People made use of what Yahweh had given them in order to curry the favor of the baals or to buy alliances with the peoples that surrounded them. Resistance to the hand that Ied them or profanation of the gift received represent two aspects of the rebellion of the children of God. However, none of the stages of the history of salvation exists in an absolutely pure state. Hence it is that throughout the length of our Christian life sin can put on the form of a refusal to proceed in the desert and of a prostitution when one, for his own pur-poses and independently of God, makes use of the gift which he has received from His love. The Old Testament leaves us with a vision of a check-mate: God is not able to regain the human race which from the beginning had plunged itself into sin and sepa-rated itself from Him. Unless God would make a new heart for men, they would never be able to rise up to the level of the divine demands. Even the Law which Yahweh had given His elect in an attempt to free them from the surrounding evil came in the end only to increase sin (Rom 7:7-25). The cross of Christ and the gift of the Spirit are necessary in order that we might escape the in. fernal cycle. It is then that there appears that new man according to the heart of God whom the prophets Jere-miah and Ezekiel had predicted: I will give you a new heart, and will put within you a new spirit; I will remove the heart of stone out of your flesh, and will give you a heart of flesh; and I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances (Ez 36:26-27). There is no need to emphasize that one must not present the Law of Christ which alone can make us pleasing to God without adding that this Law is impractical if Christ Himself does not communicate to us His power so that we might fulfill the demands of the Law. Fundamental Aspects o[ the Discord Between God and Man Throughout the Old Testament the resistance of man to the work of God is presented under three clearly dis-tinguished aspects; it is essential to guard against con-fusing these three when the idea of sin in the Bible is analyzed. 1. Opposition to the work of divine justice. The prin-cipal adversary of divine justice is an individual whom the Hebrew language terms rasha', a term which is usu-ally translated by the word impious or wicked. This rasha' enters into association with the "makers of iniq-uity," "the proud," "the mockers," and the "men of blood." His weapons are cunning, lies, violence; he is constantly thinking of i~i~l~'ity"in his he;irt~ li'~ Sets traps for the innocent; his hands are soiled with blood and he is given to drink. His opposition to justice is shown in two ways: it is, first of all, undisguised hostility towards God who is thought to be too distant to'react against it; and, secondly, it is a merciless war against the just whose violated rights the God of the covenant is pledged to de-fend. For practical purposes, the rasha' and his satellites coincide with the adversaries of the covenant; for the justice they oppose is at the center of the preoccupation of the parties of the covenant. They appear from the very beginning of the human race, but more ~usually they ap-pear as the enemies of the Chosen People; in every case they constantly menace the stability of the work of God in the cosmos and in history. Gradually the distinction between the just and the impious is found within the nation itself; it is at this time that the realization of a qualitative Israel necessitates a distinction between the faithful and those who are traitors and apostates. None of the faithful aligns himself with the: rasha': Drag me not away with the wicked, with those who do wron.g, who speak of peace to their neighbors though evil is in their hearts (Ps 28:3). On the occasion of the demands of the wicked, the just man frequently prays for justice from God; this im-plies that he is the victim not the accomplice of the wicked. If the good man wishes to be heard by Yahweh, he must disassociate himself as completely as possible from the perverse machinations of the artisans of evil: "I hate the assembly of evil~toers, and with the wicked I will not sit down" (Ps 26:5). It is only on this condition that he can cry out: "Judge me"; "Do me justice" (Ps 26:1; 43:1). In the matter of justice, then, the Old Testament knows only negative confessions (Ps 5; 26; 139; Jb 31) like those that the dead recite for their justification be-fore the tribunal of Osiris. There is no avowal of an atti-tude of present opposition to justice, an attitude that the God of the covenant would have to punish; only past sins are confessed the consequences of which are already or about to be felt. This is evidently insufficient for Chris-tians. We not only have to present to the Father our past errors but also a heart which even now is evil and which we ask Him to transform. There can be no doubt that ÷ ÷ ÷ Sin VOLUME 22, 1963 139 ÷ .I. ÷ Erode Beaucamp, O~F.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS such a prayer supposes a pure intention, and this is the profound significance of our negative confessions. Man can not pray to God while desiring evil; nevertheless, pure intentions do not effect that we see exactly what God wants nor even that we feel the power to accomplish it. Our pure intentions require from us only that we aban-don ourselves,to Him in order that we might see and will the perfection which He expects from us: For I do not the good that I wish, but the evil I do not wish, that I perform . Unhappy man that I aml Who will deliver me from the body of this death? (Rom 7:19 and 24). 2. A state of rupture with God. The three Hebrew roots which are ordinarily translated by such words as sin, transgression, iniquity, fault, and so forth express, though each with different nuances, the idea of a state of rupture with the God of the covenant: The Lord's hand is not .too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear; but your iniquities have been a barrier between you and your God. And your sins have hidden his face, so that he could not hear you (Is 59:1-2). This state is a present situation the cause of which is a definite past act; hence one goes from the awareness of the rupture to an appreciation of its origin: "I have sinned." This is equivalent to saying that if God aban-dons me to my lot, I can blame only myself; it is my own fault: O Lord, the great and revered God, who keeps loving faith with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned . To us, O Lord, pertains confusion of face . but to the Lord our God pertain compassion and forgiveness (Dn 9: 4-5, 8-9). The awareness of sin, then, is the awareness of being abandoned by God through one's own fault; the sinner is like a child experiencing the feeling of no longer being loved by his mother; he feels himself cut off from the one who is his source of life: My anger shall blaze against them, and I will forsake them~ and withhold my favor from them; they shall become a thing to be consumed, and many evils and troubles shall befall them, so that they will say at that time: Is it not because God is not in our midst that these evils have befallen us? (Dt 31:17). By the fact of sin--and this holds true for the relations between man and man as well as for the relations be-tween God and man--the Protector finds Himself re-leaged of His obligation 'towards His proteges; in particu-lar He is no longer bound to see justice done them and He can consider them as His enemies: We look for redress, but it comes not; for salvation, but it remains f~r from us. For many are our sins before you, and our faults bear witness against us (Is 59:11-12). Abandoned by his God and even pursued by His ill will, the sinner is sooner or later doomed to death. In the case of an individual he will use up his strength in a dis-ease that is without hope; in the case of a country it will perish under the blows of epidemics, famines, and wars. For sin breaks not only~th@,~bbnds betwe~en,~n~fi and his God; it also isolates man frbm society and even from the earth, since peace with God is the condition of peace with one's fellow men and with the entire world. In his dereliction and total loneliness, the sinner possesses only one resource: to throw himself into the arms of the One he has offended. On the whole, the Old Testament attaches more im-portance: to this state of rupture than to the nature of the acts which provoke it. Contrary to the confessions of Babylon which attempted to exorcise evil by interminable lists of all possible sins, the Bible generally reduces its inventory to the simple assertion: '~I have sinned." For the Bible, it is God, not sin, that is of interest; it is God that is considered. A sense of sin that is not a sense of God and does not suppose the experience of a valued intimacy is a false sense of sin which can lead to the greatest catastrophes as the history of Luther and Jansen-ism have shown. 3. Impurity, the state of incompatibility with the divine presence. The notions of purity an~l impurity are among the most common and primitive ones in the his-tory of religions. In them is found everywhere the same confusion between taboos of a ritual nature and ethical prescriptions in the proper sense. Sexual pollutions, for example, whether licit or illicit, make one impure, just as the shedding of blood, whether justly or unjustly, profanes the earth. And the contagious nature which is attributed to such impurity makes the notion even more difficult for the modern mind. There has been a mis-understanding of the place which the Bible gives to such a primitive category of thought in later books like Leviti-cus; many see in this a reaction to the effort made by the prophets to form the moral conscience of Israel. But presented in this way, the problem is wrongly placed. Impurity is on a completely different level than that of sin, the rupture with God. It is not concerned with the difficulties and blocks that can lessen the rela-tions of man with God but with that which appears in-compatible with the maintenance of the divine presence in the midst of the country: Because the Lord your God moves within your camp to rescue you and to put your enemies at your mercy, your camp must be clean, so that he may not see anything indecent with you, and turn away from you (Dr 23:14). If the Bible attaches a great importance to this notion sin VOLUM£ 22, 1963 141 ÷ ÷ ÷ E~ode Benuc~mp, O.F.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 142 of impurity, it is because for it the question is not re-ducible to the simple fact of not offending God; it is the much more profound matter of living with Him in His presence. The sense of purity is the awareness of the holiness which election requires, a holiness that must ex-tend to everything which conditions the existence of the elect: I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy; for I am holy; so you must not defile yourselves with any kind of insect that crawls on the earth. For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God, and so you must be holy; for I am holy (Lv 11:44-45). You must be holy to me; for I, the Lord, am holy, and have separated you from other peoples to be mine (Lv 90:26). As long as Israel remained a political and sociological reality, the community of life between Yahweh and His people had necessarily to preserve a character that was both interior and exterior, implying demands both of a physical and a moral order. This combination should not, then, be surprising. It is necessary to wait for the Gospel in order that the problem of purity be elevated to a properly spiritual level, for then the kingdom of God becomes an interior reality which is not involved in the social and material conditions of the life of the elect: "It is what pr6ceeds from a man that makes him impure" (Mk 7:20). All cases of impurity, however diverse, have this in common that they create a cultic incompatibility and make the approach to the divine dangerous. But it is dif-ficult to find how this incompatibility flows from a single principle; this is a world of different and heterogeneous elements which it would be a waste of time to attempt to unify. So, for example, one type of impurity consisted of any attempt to violate a reality that was initially sacred: harvesting, the gathering of fruits, marriage, and so ford~. But impurity was likewise involved when a being was possessed by foreign divinities; the sinner fell into this category when, being rejected by his god, he became the prey of demons. Finally, every act is impure which lessens the essential integrity of a being, especially a consecrated one: the loss of blood or of seminal fluid, the cutting of the hair of a Nazirite, the cutting of a stone intended for an altar, the putting to work of an animal destined to carry a sacred object, and so forth. All this is common to the ancient world; and the Bible in this matter originates nothing, though it should be noted that matters such as sicknesses, curses, various ca-lamities, blood crying for vengeance, cadavers awaiting burial figure here as simply malefic rather than being at-tributed to foreign divinities or demons. Furthermore, it seems to us that a global impression emerges from all this chaos: a being cannot support the presence of God if its existence is diminished or threatened either by an acci-dental loss of substance or by subjection to some other power. Not being fully himself, man in such a case cannot offer himself to his God. If this interpretation is correct, then the need for purity calls out for the idea of the In-carnation, for the Priest without stain who can enter the sanctuary of the God of the covenant; this is the perfect man who has attained the fullness of his stature: "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." Before the majesty of the King-God who was revealed to his eyes, Isaiah becomes frightenedly aware not of his sin but of his impurity: Woe to me, for I am lost; I am a man of unclean lips. and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts (Is 6:5). It is not sin but impurity which impedes the vision of God: "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God." Whatever may have been for primitive man the deep roots of the notes of impurity, the idea should not be suppressed but moralized and spiritualized. From this an-cient notion, two elements should be kept for the profit of our own Christian life: first, our Christian life is truly a life with God, and it supposes a full realization of our stature as the "new man" according to Christ and a full posses-sion of ourselves that withholds nothing from the in-fluence of God; secondly, every lessening of our personal vitality is a lessening of the vitality of the community; every lessening of our charity detracts from the global charity of the Church, and it tarnishes her purity, since impurity by its nature is contagious, always passing from individuals to the collectivity. Solutions to the Discord Between God and Man 1. The judgment of the wicked. A victorious judgment of the God of the covenant will put an end to the opposi-tion of the wicked man. This judgment, however, is never purely negative. The wicked man is a dangerous individ-ual, and his downfall affects the salvation of the just: The righteous shall rejoice that he has seen vengeance; he shall wash his footsteps in the blood of the wicked. And men shall say: There certainly is a reward for the just; there cer-tainly is a God who judges on earth (Ps 58:10-11). As we have seen, the wicked man is generally con-sidered as unable to be converted; this is why his disap-pearance appears as the only solution to the evil of which the just man is a victim; the world will regain its peace only when God has caused this evil to fall on its authors. Gradually, however, other conceptions of the matter came into existence. Jeremiah and especially Ezekiel envisage ÷ ÷ ÷ VOLUME 22° 1963 ÷ Evode Beaucamp, O.F.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS the case of a wicked man who abandons his wickedness to practice "judgment and justice": As I live, says the oracle of Yahweh, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather in this that the wicked man turn from his way and live. Turn, O turn, from your evil waysl Why should you die, O house of Israeli (Ez 33:11). This view of the conversion of the wicked is a direct preparation for the Gospel. Christ will proclaim that He has come not for the just but for the wicked---the publi-cans and adulterers who without conversion would fall beneath the blows of the avenging anger of God. The great revolution of the Gospel is the distinction between evil and evil men; in the Our Father it is from evil that we ask to be freed and not from our enemies, as was done in the Psalms. As long as a man has not drawn his last breath, he is never to be identified with evil and we must always hope for his eventual conversion. The venge-ance of the just is no longer the extermination of the wicked but their penance and reparation. 2. The pardon of the sin. The one who has culpably lost communion with God can only hope for the gratui-tous act of clemency and pity Which the One offended can grant or not grant when pardon is asked of Him. In the rupture man took the initiative, but the initiative in the matter of reconciliation belongs exclusively to God. More than in any other case there apears here the impos-sibility of forcing His hand. Sin, the rupture of relations between God and man, is an intolerable weight from which the sinner cannot free himself by his own effort; it is a weight that only the One offended is in a position to lift: For, day and night, your hand lay heavy upon me . I said: I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the guilt of my sin (Ps 32:4-5). The Babylonians, in order to have greater certainty of their restoration to favor, frequently attempted to have another friendly divinity intervene with the angered god. In the Bible, as is evident, man is without the possibility of such a mediation. He must directly approach the God he has offended and throw himself at His feet while de-claring "I have sinned"; he must rely entirely on God's mercy. It is clear that such an act implies conversion; it is the return of the prodigal son to his Father's house. While the Bible does not permit the sinner to avoid encountering the God he has angered, still it does not leave him without arguments by which he can plead his case. He can, for example, invoke the glory of the God of the covenant whose name he still continues to bear: What will the nations think of Yahweh if He continues to leave his people defenseless? (Ps 79; 80; Ez 32:11-14). He can also invoke His justice: In abandoning His own, does not Yahweh yield to His enemies? (Ps 41). Finally, he can appeal to the shortness of life--life which a pro-lUonngfoedrt uabnsaetnelcye, owf eG coadn m naokte ds eelmayp thye aren du ,s epngsne~le sths e(Pses 9a0rg).u-ments which still retaiii,:th~ir~, validity for, oi~i~ prayer as Christians. We have already pointed out that the penitent does not dwell upon an analysis of his culpable act but keeps his eyes on the God the lack of whom he suffers and in whom he sees his only hope; the simple fact of the rupture is al-ready virtually the presence of death and it constitutes for the sinner the deepest kind of punishment than which nothing greater is to be feared. The penitent calls on the judgment and justice of Yahweh as a grace the right to which he has lost by sin. He awaits the moment of pardon which will reestablish him in the friendship of His God so that once again he will be protected in the midst of a hostile world: The anger of the Lord must I bear--for I have sinned against him--until he shall take up my case and do me justice (Mi 7:9). Once pardon h.as been granted, the remembrance of the sin disappears in the remembrance of the victorious love of Yahweh, a love which is capable of overpowering all offenses and which in its profundity and total gratuitous-ness leaves the soul of man in confusion (Ps 103); here already there is almost found the felix culpa of St. Au-gustine. Moreover, the world which the divine mercy re-constructs is always more beautiful than the one de-stroyed by sin. To illustrate this law, it is sufficient to reflect on the messianic prophecies which for the most part are prophecies of pardon (Ps 85; Is 40-55; 60; Ez 34; and so forth). 3. Purification of Defilement. Having been excluded from worship, the defiled man must purify himself be-fore coming into the presence of God.'It is a co.mmon idea among all the ancient religions that the gods have given men ritual materials and formulas that are capable of purifying them, their temples, and their country. In particular, there are appropriate rites that permit the expulsion from the impure being of the evil spirits and demons who have taken possession of him; thus, for ex-ample, spells and curses which had victimized a person were made to pass on to the body of animals wh~ch.~:were then driven far away or burned. In the Bible this liturgi-cal transfer has left only a few traces, the most notable ex-ample of which is that of the scapegoat of the D~y of Atonement (Lv 16). This animal, loaded with the sins of Israel, was not offered to Yahweh but driven far aw~iy to Azazel. 4, 4, VOLUME 22, 1963 ÷ ÷ ÷ Erode Beau~arap, O.F.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 146 In place of this image of a transfer, the Bible has pre-ferred that of cleansing through ablutions and sprinkling with blood and water. This symbol is simultaneously negative and positive: at the same time as it removes the uncleanliness, the water restores all the freshness of life. This is also, as it seems to me, the function of the blood in the atonement rite and in the sin sacrifices. But we shall not delay here on this difficuh and debated point; we will content ourselves with giving our own personal opinion. Blood seems to have as its effect the protection of the things and persons which it covers; it protects them from the various evils which are the sequel of sin just as the blood of the paschal lamb did at the Exodus (Ex 12:1-15). But to this negative effect there is added a posi-tive action; for blood is life, and it is by reason of the life that is in it that Yahweh has given it as an effector of atonement (Lv 17:10-12). Thanks to it, persons, cult ob-jects, and the country that is the abode of Yahweh find their fullness of life, their first integrity which impurity had caused to be lost. The application of this Biblical rite to our Christian life is not difficult. The sin of a Christian can be con-sidered as a stain that not only changes our personal re-lations with God but also diminishes the vital potentiali-ties of the Church and impairs her charity. Reparation, therefore, is a social duty just as it was in ancient Israel. God has given us the Blood of Christ as an inexhaustible source of love so that we can preserve for the Church the immaculate appearance which her divine Spouse initially bestowed on her: He wished to summon into his presence the Church in all her beauty, with no stain, wrinkle, or any disfigurement; she. was to be holy and spotless (Eph 5:27). Conclusion By way of conclusion, let us synthesize the results of our inquiry. In order that the notion of sin preserve all the force that the Bible gives it, it must include three ele-ments: deterioration of the order of creation; rupture with God, the source of life; and impurity which hinders all commerce with the divine. All this is what is repre-sented by the word sin at the time of the New Testament~ it is all this that Christ has come to restore, heal, and purify. Under these three aspects, sin is a flight from God, the only source of life and happiness; it represents the contrary of all the effort God has made throughout his-tory to draw us to Him; it is a return back to a past from which He has drawn us; it is our refusal to allow ourselves to be led by Him blindly; it is our squandering of the gifts we have received. To depart from God is to depart from other men and finally to find oneself alone in a hostile world: And it has brought you. w " as reconciled . ,_ o ~;. ¯ - uom~ wron~ ;-,- - "-' holiness a~a t__ )vu mrough dying, ;,,~.:_ . 6 ~-o.ugn now (Col 1:2'1_~)."ee ~rom reproa~c h. .or ~Ta~'e,'~'~vt~uas op~rensve nbcoedy) ia Sin VOLUME 22, 1963 PAUL W. O'BRIEN, S.J. The Weekly Confession of Fervent Religious ÷ ÷ Paul W. O'Brien, S.J., is the rector of the Pontifical Semi-nary in Dalat, Viet-nam. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 148 The word "fervent" in the title is not meant to frighten away those good religious for whom the article is actually written, but who usually hesitate to think of themselves as fervent. It is used rather to indicate the limited perspective of the article, a perspective however which we trust is representative of religious and hehce applicable to many. It is not unusual to find religious who have a problem with their weekly confession--a problem that seems to arise not from their being tepid but rather from their being fervent. They are serious about their religious life. They would rather do anything than deliberately offend God in the smallest thing. And yet they find a certain uneasiness, tedium, even difficulty with their weekly con-fession. Time and again they have consulted the classical authors to find ways of refreshing this exercise, but usu. ally with only transitory success. The considerations pro-posed in these manuals, while excellent and fundamental and helpful to a certain point, do not really fit. For the religious we have in mind does not come to his weekly confession as an enemy of God; he does not come with mortal sins; he has no need of being "reconciled" to the Church, much less of having divine life "restored" to his soul. His confession is not one of obligation, and con:;e-quently there is nothing that he is obliged to confess (supposing always that to ensure the validity of his con-fession, he mentions his past forgiven sins, at least in a general way). In fact he rarely (more likely never) brings unforgiven sins to the confessional. For to say nothing of the many ways that venial sins can be forgiven out-side the sacrament, his daily communion is constantly purifying his soul, and his habit of immediately turning to God in loving sorrow for any fault committed, plus the. contrition that he excites before confession, brings him to the confession with really no unforgiven matter. Clearly the basic considerations of the purgative way, which may once have applied to him, and whose grateful memory will always remain with him, are not sufficient. There is need of a ditter~ent perspective~a .,shifting of emphasis, if his confession ~is" to produce the,, fruit ex-pected by the Church. ' ¯ ~. ~ For the Church is greatly concerned about these fre-quent confessions. When som~ younger members of the clergy were diminishing esteem for the frequent confes-sion of venial sins, claiming that it was useless, consumed too much time of busy pastors, and was actually un-known in the early Church, Pope Plus XII spoke out clearly and strongly against them (Mystici Corporis 87): Equally disastrou~s in its effects is the false contention that tile frequent confession of venial sins is not a practice to be greatly esteemed. Therefore those among the young clergy who are diminishing esteem for frequent confession are to know that the enterprise upon which they have embarked is alien to the Spirit of Christ and most detrimental to the Mys-tical Body of our Savior. For a constant and speedy ad-vancement in the path of virtue, we highly recommend the practice of frequent confession, introduced by the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit; for by this means we grow in a true knowledge of ourselves and in Christian hu-mility, bad habits are uprooted, spiritual negligence and apathy are prevented, the conscience is purified and the will strengthened, salutary spiritual direction is obtained, and grace is increased by the efficacy of the sacrament itself. In the following lines it is not my purpose to touch on all the above advantages nor to give a form to confession nor to enter into the aspect of spiritual direction in the confessional. I wish merely to redistribute the emphasis of certain aspects and thus perhaps help towards a solu-tion of our problem. Sacrament of Loving Sorrow One of the areas that calls for reappraisal and a pos-sible reshifting of emphasis concerns our habitual way of looking on the sacrament. There is danger that a way of speaking will induce a way of thinking. Because of our ordinary practice of speaking of the sacrament of pen-ance as "confession," we may develop a wrong emphasis. Now I am not advocating a change in our traditional terminology, but we must be careful lest our way of speaking throw everything out of focus. For the actual "confession" of sins, in the type of confession we are dealing with, is one of the least important elements of the sacrament. And yet it is frequently the main source of trouble for the fervent religious: "What to say?" Such a preoccupation is understandable when there is ques-tion of the integrity of an obligatory confession of mortal sins, but how completely out of place it is in our con- 4- 4- 4- Weekly onlession VOLUME 22, 1963 ]49 P. W. O'B~i~, $.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS fessions. I wonder if our exact catechetical training, given chiefly in view of a form of obligatory confession, is not unduly transferred to confessions of devotion. At any rate, it is not rare to find the problem of confession be-coming more acute as the religious becomes more fer-vent, the problem of "what to say" becoming so empha-sized as to bring on uneasiness. But even when we think more exactly in terms of the "sacrament of penance," we must still be on our guard. The very word "penance" can become a source of mis-understanding. The Latin word paenitentia of which our English "penance" is a translation, has been well-chosen and in its real meaning of "sorrow with purpose of amendment" is quite appropriate. But in English we do not think that way. For us "penance" is associated with fasting and disciplines; and even though we have been taught that true interior penance consists in sorrow for our sins, this is not our habitual association with the word "penance." Would that the translating fathers had given us something like "sacrament of sorrow." It would have helped us put the emphasis where it belongs. The emphasis then in this "sacrament of sorrow" should be on sorrow; but a sorrow that is a free and meritorius act. This should immediately put us on our guard against certain counterfeits. It is a free act; hence always in my power. I can make it on Monday; I can make it on Friday. I can make it when I am depressed; I can make it when I am as dry as a stick. Evidently its value does not and cannot depend on emotional inten-sity (which is not in my power). It is a movement of the will detesting sin because of my conviction (intellectua! appreciation) that God's will is above all. Its efficacy measured not by the accompanying emotion or affection. (if there is any) but by the strength derived from my conviction. Now for the fervent religious this conviction has become habitual. It is constantly operative in his daily life as is evidenced by his care in avoiding all that is against God's will. But it can well be that this con-viction has.become so settled in his life that it sets up no emotional resonance. He must not be surprised then when he finds that his sorrow in the confessional reta~ins the same strong voluntary but unemotional tendency that characterizes his daily life. He detests sin and all his failings because he truly loves God and has made will the supreme norm of his life. Here the question of motive enters. It is this that sets the tone to our sorrow and our confession. The faithful religious does not come to God in fear but in love,~,as to his Father. The Little Flower puts it simply: I have long believed that the Lord is more tender than a mother. I know that a mother is always ready to forgive trivial, involuntary misbehavior on the part of her child . Children are always in trouble, falling down, getting themselves dirty, breaking thing~but all this does not shake their parent's love for them. We come to God as His dearest children, sharing His very life, coming with th.e loving sorrow .of asofi; to be reassured that all, all has b&fi forgiven;' to i:eceive the embrace of the Father. Sacrament ol Purification One of the perspectives of the sacrament that opens up a rich vein of thought and deserves to be emphasized by the faithful religious is the aspect of purification-- purification not in the sense of liberation from the guilt of actual sins and faults--but rather a deeper purifica-tion that penetrates to the roots of those faults, to the habitual tendencies which cause them, and to the reli-quiae peccati which are their results. The sacrament be-comes (if you will pardon the expression) a sort of radio-therapy of our deep wickedness. We expose our wounds, visible or not, with a certain reasoned eagerness and joy to the curative influence of the sacrament. We are not so much preoccupied about our past actual faults. We have sorrowed over them and know that they have been wiped out through God's mercy. It is rather the deep of our soul, the roots of the faults, which give promise of bring-ing forth again their fruit of death--it is these roots which disturb us. And here precisely is where the "grace of the sacrament" comes into play--a grace which the Council of Florence describes as a grace of purification, a grace of healing: "Through penance we are spiritually healed" (DB 695). This grace reaches beyond the actual sins, forgiven by the absolution, to reach deep into our nature into the causes of those sins. This purifying influence acts not only on the soul but also on the body. I believe we may find an analogy in the effects of the sacrament of extreme unction which is usually considered as the complement of penance. Its influence in strengthening soul and body during serious sickness should give us some clue to the purifying action of penance. For we may well believe that the effects of this sacrament are but the "finishing touches" to a proc-ess begun and carried on through other sacraments throughout one's life. All the sacraments, even Holy Eucharist, have a purifying influence on the whole per-son, body and soul. Now one of the effects of the sacra-ment of extreme unction is to weaken the effects of con-cupiscence, to restore some part of our original integrity which was lost through Adam's sin. St. Thomas explains our inability to avoid all indeliberate venial sins by concupiscence together with the slowness of our percep- + + + Weekly Con]ession 151 ÷ ÷ ÷ P. W. O'Bden, $.L REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS tion of good, the changeableness of our will, and the frequency of temptation (S. T. 1, q 109, a 8). Now in re-ducing concupiscence, extreme unction restores order to man's strivings, subordinating the sensitive to the spirit-ual and the spiritual to God; it helps put a man in true possession of himself, so that he is able to dominate not only those positive urges of soul and body that escape control but also the oppressive weight of dead inertia by which the sensitive life impedes the striving of the will toward God. From this precious purifying and strengthening action of extreme unction, we may gather some idea of what takes place in the sacrament of pen-ance, not precisely in view of a serious sickness but look-ing rather to the progressive purification of our soul as it weakens concupiscence, counteracts sluggishness, or-ders our passions, and restores us to spiritual liberty. Awareness of Sinfulness Now it is precisely this grace of purification that draws religious to the sacrament of penance. (Perhaps I should say "drives," for there is no question of an emotional attraction, but rather the compelling force of a reasoned conviction based on faith.) It is this that explains the daily confessions of so many saints--St. Catherine of Siena, St. Ignatius, St. Francis Xavier, St. Peter Claver, St. Charles Borromeo, St. A1phonsus Liguori. Surely they were not deliberately sinning nor were they scrupulous. But they understood better the holiness of God. St. Francis Borgia was accustomed to confess twice a day, once in the morning before saying Mass and again in the evening before retiring. By this I do not mean that daily confession, where possible, is a goal to be aimed at. It may be helpful regularly for some persons, or for others at particular times of special grace or difficulty. This is a problem to be determined with one's confessor. I merely mention these examples to illustrate one of the great motives of frequent confession--the desire for pu-rity. This desire of the saints for purity is shared by ,~11 faithful souls according to their grace. For as the reli-gious strives to lead his life more generously, avoiding as far as he can all deliberate failings, he participates more abundantly in God's light. The effect is twofold: he be-gins to understand more clearly who God is, and in the same measure he becomes more aware of his wretched-ness. He finds himself in an attitude of soul similar to that of Eliphaz, one of Job's friends, who tells .us that his hair stood on end when in vision a spirit passed be-fore him. "I heard the voice as it were of a gentle wind: Shall man be justified in comparison with God, or shall a man be more pure than his Maker? Behold. in his angels he found wickedness." (Jb 4:15 ft.). Isaiah re-cords a similar state of soul, the result of his great vision of the holiness of God. "Woe is me because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people that hath unclean lips and I have seen with my eyes the King, the Lord of hosts" (Is 6:l-5)~The religious~in~tlle light of God s hohness becomes painfully consc,ous, I will not say of "sin," but of sinfulness. He longs to bring his sins to the confessional, but what sins? Here precisely is the trouble. The sins that are clear have long since been sub-mitted to the sacrament in sorrow. He knows that they are forgiven and blotted from the sight of God. But the daily failings? Truly they are not deliberate sins. He would rather do anything than displease God. He cannot pin down his failings. And yet he is painfully conscious of a mass of selfishness, insincerity, sensuality, but deep in the soul where he cannot reach. He realizes that this wickedness penetrates all that he does, but it is not in acts where it can be grasped. And he also realizes that this is not an illusion; the wickedness is really there. This creates a problem for him--a problem that per-haps increases with the fidelity of the soul--and which often accounts for much of the difficulty experienced in approaching the sacrament. It seems such hypocrisy to have nothing to say. And yet no matter how long the ex-amination of conscience is prolonged, nothing more spe-cific is discovered. He has only wasted precious time that could have been more profitably spent on deepening his loving sorrow. Nor is this due simply to negligence of the soul. Perhaps most natures do not have the per-spicacity to analyze and draw out into the clear these deep tendencies of the soul. The light that is given them is not so sharp. Nor need it be; for its purpose of hu-miliation and purification is equally accomplished by the confused and painful acceptance of what the soul perceives confusedly. According to One's Light Fortunately, in this type of confession, the accusation is one of the least important parts. Hence very little time should be spent on the actual examination of conscience. The daily examination of conscience faithfully made will guarantee the religious against negligence, and a quick glance will usually reveal where he has displeased God. Hence if within a few minutes nothing specific is dis-covered, he should stop his inquiry and be satisfied with a general accusation: "I accuse myself of all the sins of my past life, especially for my sins of pride, sensuality, or against some commandment." Father Saint-Jure, S.J., gives this directive: Those (venial sins) which we should seek out and confess Weekly ¢onlesslon VOLUME Z2o '1'963 153 4. 4. 4. P. W. O'Brien, $.1. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]54 with more c~ire are those which weigh most heavily on us, and those which cause us more embarrassment and shame, pro-vided that we are able to confess them with honesty a~d de-cency; likewise those which ~hinder us most from attaining the perfection to which God calls us, or which are contrary to the virtue to. which we are particularly devoting our efforts for that week or month. And since among venial sins there are some which arise from mere weakness, which escape us as by surprise, and others from malice, which we commtt with full knowledge, coldly, understanding what we are doing and with full consent, of these latter none should be omitted in con-fession. As for the others, one should leave them to the mercy of God, and confess them in general, all-inclusive terms: If the soul is sufficiently. . .pure so that it commits only these sins of weakness, let zt ~ndzcate some of them" (On the Knowledge and Love of our Lord Jesus Christ, Bk 3, c 10, ~9). Hence we may give as a practical rule: I may accuse myself of whatever God gives me the light to see as dis-pleasing to Him (no matter how trivial it may seem in itselD. If I see specific failings clearly, it is well to accuse myself at least of some of them; if I see them only.in a confused way, as tendencies, I should be content to ac-knowledge them in this general way (paying particular attention to one or another of them for a few weeks at a time)--adding, however, a general accusation of past forgiven sins to insure the validity of the confession. This awareness of sinfulness and inability to reach it through our own efforts is often given by spiritual writers as a reason for God's intervention through the passive purification of the soul. We read of "dark nights of the soul" in which God's purifying action goes deep where the active effort of the soul cannot penetrate, purifying the roots of our evil inclinations, attacking the basic self-ishness of the soul. This, type of purification is usually associated with trials in prayer that fall to the lot of con-templatives. We know, however, that God's purifying action can take many forms, that his apostles are often purified through the trials inherent in their apostolate. Surely a most powerful means of purification and one which is often overlooked is the very sacrament of purifi-cation instituted by Christ, which accomplishes in the soul much the same work as the "dark nights" and apos-tolic trials: namely, the progressive submission of our lower nature to the higher and the higher to God, the liberation of our soul from the weight of its wicked in-clinations and its consequent gradual transformation in God. Building up the Body oI Christ As the religious grows in his vocation, he should grow also in a sense of his solidarity with the Churcli, the Mystical Body. He begins to see his sin and sinfulness in their social aspect. While clearly realizing that his sin is his own, for which he alone is responsible, he is more aware of the consequences of his sin on the organism of which he is a member--and this apart from the harmful effects that may come through bad example, coopera-tion, and so forth. He understands that the life that is in him is a shared lif~e; ~w, eakened with 'his'.~weakness, strengthened with his strength. It.is true that our liturgy today does not give such prominence to the social aspect of penance as in the old days when the penitent, after a period of public penance, was restored on Holy Thurs-day to the family life of the Church so that he might share the Paschal Bread of life with the other members of his family, the Church. Nor is there question of our religious being "restored" to the Church. But he begins to feel deeply his corporate responsibility, He is ashamed of the sinfulness that he brings to the immaculate Spouse of Christ. Aware of the lessening of love, as sin drains this Body anemic, he strives to replenish the blood ;stream with his love. He understands the general disappearance in the world of a sense of sin and rushes with his loving sorrow to make amends. If he be a priest whose mission it is to destroy sin in the world, he finds an added joy both in receiving and administering the sacrament. He offers God a soul in which He may work more purity, and thus "build up the Body of Christ" (Eph 4.9). And with this consciousness of his unity in the Mystical Body, a new dimension is added to his examination Of con-science, or rather a more acute awareness of his already existing obligation: his duty of charity; his responsibility for the spread of God's kingdom; his sins of omission through cowardice, selfishness, love of ease; the primacy of love. Meeting with the Three One beautiful but rarely stressed aspect of this sacra-ment is our meeting with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. While it is true that the glorified humanity of Jesus is the instrument of all our grace, it is still the Word of God who takes away sin. "Who can forgive sin but God alone?" (Lk 5:21), Every sacramental absolution is then the action of Jesus, the great high priest, acting through His representative, a man chosen from amongst sinners. And in receiving that absolution, I come in vital contact with Jesus. Here He bestows on me the grace of redemption. Jt is for this that He came into the world, as He prolongs into my soul the efficacy of His redemp-tive sacrifice. -The life that He gives, He won in His blood. It is this that causes such joy in heaven, more than over the ninety-nine just, this prolongation of the rich mysteries of His death and glorification, for me a new 4- 4- 4- Weekly Conlession VOLUMF 22, 1963 155 + ÷ ÷ P. W. O'Brien, SJ. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 156 baptism, as plunged into His death, I rise to a new or richer life. But often we are inclined to forget the part of the Father and the Holy Spirit. If there is pardon in the sacrament and grace of purification, it is because the Father loves us beyond all telling. "God [the Father] so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son." (Jn 3:16). In the pardon of the Son, I meet the love of the Father. And if there is life in the sacrament, it is because the Father, in giving His Son, gives us also the Holy Spirit who pours forth the charity of God into our hearts (Rom 5:5), this Spirit who cleanses, who burns away the impurities of our soul in the fire that He is. All this is brought out strikingly in the very institution of this sacrament of peace. It is as though the glorified Christ can hardly wait to begin pouring out the effects of His loving sacrifice. The very eve of Easter Sunday, He must come to His frightened Apostles in the upper room to give them power to forgive sin, First He shows them His wounds, the price of the sacrament, and the proof that it is really the glorified Christ in His human-ity. And then: " 'Peace be to you. As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.' When He had said this, He breathed upon them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained' " (Jn 20:21- 23). The Father is there, prolonging in Jesus and through Jesus in the apostles, the love that fathered the redemp-tion. The Son is there, in His glorified humanity, com-municating the fruits of His redemptive offering. But first the Spirit must be given, for it is in the Spirit that the soul is led through the Son to the Father. What happiness for the faithful soul is this meeting in the sacrament with the ThreeI ]oy to the Heart of ]esus But if there is joy to the soul on meeting the Three, there is joy in the Three as They enrich the soul. For the eagerness of the soul to meet its God can never begin to match the love of God that goes out to meet the soul. "I have come that they may have life and have it more abundantly" (Jn I0:10). The entire life of Jesus, with all its sufferings, has been aimed precisely at moments such as these, when meeting with the soul, He can com-municate the graces won on Calvary. If love that is frus-trated and refused can be such a torment, Love that gives and is received can be immeasurable joy. It is this joy that is ours to give to Jesus as we open our hearts in sorrow to His purifying love. JACQUES LECLERCQ The Priest Today In a preceding article? on active lay people, I men-tioned the confusion of priests when they ask themselves what their purpose is since now in meetings of fill kinds lay persons make meditations and in general ~ssume a spiritual role. And yet. The Presence o] the Priest And yet the laity cling to the presence of the priest. It seems that something essential is missing if a priest is not present--this priest who does nothingl Things now are entirely different from what they used to be. For one thing, previously there were no meet-ings that resemble the ones of today. Formerly when the priest .took his part by preaching a sermon, the faithful listened and then left. Or at the time when study clubs began to be organized, the priest presided and directed, trying with more or less success to make the various mem-bers speak; and frequently he was the only one to do any speaking. Today, however, he is neither presiding officer nor director. He is rather a chaplain; he assists--in Italy he is called the assistente ecclesiastico [the ecclesiastical assistant]. At times one may have the impression that everything happens without him, but in reality there is nothing that happens without him. Everything happens with him; but this "with him" is something other than "under his direction." All of this is disconcerting for those who are accustomed to the authoritarian conceptions of former times. The priest does nothing, and yet he is indispensable. When lay persons form a spiritual group of some kind, one of their first concerns is always to have a chaplain; for without a chaplain it would seem that the group is unable to suc-ceed. Is there any way in which we can point out pre-cisely what it is that the priest provides? x In La revue nouvelle, a Belgian periodical, during 1962,. Canon Leclercq published a number of articles on the laity in the Church today. The present article is translated with permission from La revue nouvelle, September 15, 1962, pp. 171-84. 4. 4. 4. Canon Jacques Le- ¢lercq fives at 102, rue de Li/~ge; Beau-lays, Belgium. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS lacqu~s Le¢l~rcq REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 158 The matter is a real puzzle, and it is being investigated from almost every angle. It is not a question of the sacra-merits. As is evident, it is the priest who distributes these. But the Christian life, as it is conceived today, is some-thing other than the sacraments. It is based on the sacra-ments; it is nourished by them; yet Catholic Action meet-ings, or meetings of workers or of managers, of students, of scotits and their leaders, have a purpose entirely other than that of receiving the sacraments; they are not even spoken of. Nor is it expected that the priest give an in-struction or a sermon. It is only expected that he be there, participating in the meeting with the rest. It would seem that from the Christian viewpoint some-thing is lacking to lay persons when they are left to them-selves., And yet it is a question of their own life, for it is they who must put into practice what they discuss. But at the same time it is a question of their own life insofar as it is Christian. From this point of view, it is necessary to have a priest in the midst of them. And I think that this expression "in the midst of them" is the exact one. A French priest, who works among the working class, has made the following remark on this point: I think that the people need a founder, someone who ~'will unite them in the charity of Christ. Lay persons can do some things, but they cannot be centers. Hence they need Someone who will be a religious center, a kind of church, for them. They do not only need Christians who are the presence of the Church, but they need above all a church in the sense of the Church realized in this community; they need someone who unites them and who is the head in the sense of being a father, not someone who commands but one who assembles and who is first ("T~moignage de M. Lelubre" in Etudes sur ,le sacre-merit de l'ordre [Paris: Cerf, 1957], p. 432). When this is reflected on, one sees very clearly the ap-pearance of the reality that is the Church. Christ continues His presence and His action by the Church. The Church is the people of God; and the people of God is constituted first of all by lay persons. In order to avoid giving the impression of tending towards laicism --which consists of excluding the clergy--let me say at once that the Church is both lay persons and priests, all of them together. But priests--all of them, even the bishops and the pope---exist for the laity, for the service of the laity. When it is said that they exist for the laity-- the pope himself is entitled the servant of 'the servants of God---this means that the people of God is essentially the laity, that it is to them that the divine life flows and that it is through them above all that it manifests itself. If the Church, according to the words of Scripture, is like a lamp that one lights and puts on a lampstand, this is the laity--Christian life in the family and in daily occupa-tions, The clergy, priests, religious are at the service of this. The result of their work is not that an elite may en-close itself within monasteries in order to live in God, nor even that Christian people in more or less great numbers may gather in churches to. ce,lebrate divine~worship; rather the result of their "dork is that through Christians Christ lives and acts in families and in the world. Priests and religious must sanctify themselves per-sona! ly in order to create a climate of holiness in the Church; but the result of the Church's holiness must be found in homes and in the world. When we use the word "world" [citd] here, we are envisaging professional, politi-cal, and social activities--all that can be called public life. It is to this that the life of Christ in the Church tends. Hence the Church is above all the laity; and it is through the laity that she first manifests her dynamism. But it is priests who form the laity in a Christian way. Priests :are men of the Church and men of God. '.Their function is to represent the Church; they exist only for this. ~ The lay person must be entirely Christian and at the same time something else besides; this shows forth the character of the Incarnation, that reality which is found only in Christianity. The Incarnation consists in this that the work and supernatural action of God is accomplished in and through nature. It has been frequently remarked that the supernatural is above the natural, but not contrary to the natural; it does not. suppress nature but elevates it; it transforms the natural, but it takes the natural into account. It constructs from, above; this can never be repeated too often if one wishes to comprehend what Christianity is. The kingdom of God, then, must be built up among men by taking due account of their nature. The Spirit of God transforms this nature to its depths; this is mani-fested exteriorly by the intention that animates action and by the choice which is made among various actions; .never-theless, these actions retain their .human character, and this must be remembered by those who are concerned with them. The Priest is Leaven Christ compared the kingdom of God to leaven that makes the dough rise; good bread can not be made with-out yeast. But yeast alone is not sufficient to make bread. Flour is needed, and the baker must be careful to secure good flour. It is necessary to knead the bread carefully. It must be baked in a good oven at the right temperature and for the right length of time and so forth. If the 4. 4. 4. The Priest Today VOLUME 22, 139 Jacques l.eclercq REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 160 kingdom of God is like the leaven in bread, one can say that the priest is the depositary of this leaven; but it the laity who are like the bakers who must be occupied with all the conditions for the preparation of the bread. Moreover, it is they who must make use of the yeast. If the priest remains alone with his leaven, there will never be any bread; and if the bakers do not have the yeast, once again there will be no bread. Both are neces-sary. Now let us transpose all this into the entirety of life. The laity found homes and give life to the world. This obliges them to think of many things that in themselves are independent of the kingdom of God. It is to be noted that I have said "in themselves," for nothing is a stranger to the kingdom of God when one places it in the entirety of life. For example, parents must be concerned with the health of their children, their nourishment, their cloth-ing, their studies. The kingdom of God takes part in all this as a kind of preoccupation that orientates this activ-ity ir,.~ a certain measure, but only in a certain measure. And the same is the case with employers, workers, farmers, students, and so forth. But the priest is the man of God. He recalls the king-dom of God by his mere presence; one can say, by his existence, for he has no other purpose for existing. Theo-retically it should be sufficient that a priest be present for one to think of the kingdom of God. The word "theo-retically" is used because men are not perfect, and both priests and the laity are men. Nevertheless, this is the way reality is, and it is this that the laity perceive even when they cannot express it; it is this that leads them, when they are concerned with the kingdom or the way in which God should penetrate their life, to unite themselves around a priest. In brief, all the matters which.form the tissue of the llfe of the laity.are of importance for the kingdom of God; but they are not the kingdom of God. If, when they wish to discuss the repercussion of the kingdom of God on these matters, people gather together without a priest, the discussion easily slips over into the purely human condi-tions of activity; the presence of a priest, however, centers it upon the kingdom. Hence the laity need to have a priest present in their life. This also explains the desire of families to have times a visit from a priest. This is especially true in towns; but it differs from one locality to another, for we are discussing here the case of fervent Christians who desire that their faith influence their lives. In places where such Christians do not exist, the matter is quite different and needs to be discussed further. But to return to our subject, the visit of a priest to families is not a matter of giving a sermon or even of speaking principally about religion. It is a presence. Christian families enjoy having a priest in their homes. They want the priest to know them, their children, and their way of life. And this contributes to the general at-mosphere which reigns iri.~th~. home; th~"~ '6hversation spontaneously takes a vein different from the conversa-tion that is had with colleagues or with friends. And the fact that the priest is involved in their life permits all kinds of questions to be directed to him. The problem of the visit of a priest to families arouses a great many questions which can not be treated here, for they deserve an article to themselves. For the present, let us limit ourselves to pointing out these aspirations of good Christians. We are concerned with good Christians. As we pointed out previously, the Church cannot reach bad Christians or non-Christians except through the laity. The laity must be active or the Church will not take hold of the world; in the terms of the Gospel, she will be a light under a basket or leaven apart from the dough. But these active laity need the priest. Left to themselves, they are liable to be routed even in their interior life. In order that they may be united under the standard of Christ and that they may attack in an orderly way the problems of their interior life and of their Christian action in the world, the priest must be in the midst of them. In conclusion, let us note that in the Church at the beginning of this century the priest was occupied with a good many other things which were often profane; by reason of a tradition which dies away only slowly, many priests today are still taken up to a large extent by ad-ministrative and other activities which the laity would be better occupied with. The result is that priests are ab-sorbed by activities which are not suited to them; at the same time they are unavailable for groups of active Christians or they find it impossible to visi~ families. In any case, this new role of the priest is so important that there can be no Church without him. And the activ-ities that correspond to this role are so numerous and pressing that good priests are crowded with such activ-ities. And there is even the complaint that there are not enough priests. And yet what we have discussed so far is but one of the activities of a priest. Spiritual Action The action of leaven can not be seen; this results in difficulty for some because man has a body and is highly dependent on it. Man needs to see, and yet the soul and action on souls cannot be seen. ÷ ÷ ÷ The Priest Today VOLUME 22, ~.963 161 lacques Leclercq REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS There are, first of all, the older priests of whom we have already spoken; for these the pastoral ministry is ex-pressed by material activities and they can not conceive any other type. Moreover, they do not conceive of any other priestly intervention than the authoritarian form of formal congregational meetings composed of a sermon and a greeting. Today, all this has become secondary, if indeed it has not been completely abandoned. Formerly when the priest spoke authoritatively, he gave directions in many matters (politics, for instance) which touched religion only very indirectly. At the present time, there is a growing agreement that priests are not to in-terest themselves in the temporal. However, many priests formerly were interested in nothing else. To the extent that this remains true, one can understand that they have the impression of no longer knowing what to do. This outmoded spirit dies out only slowly; in semi-naries as well as in houses of study of religious orders clerical formation likewise becomes transformed only slowly. One even finds young priests who think that, when they are with the laity, their role should be one of teaching and that they alone should do the talking. They find themselves ill at ease when persons are not disposed to listen to them first of all. Others still think that they must do everything themselves~determine the place, day, and hour of the meetings and issue the announcements. Again they feel discomforted when a group of active Christians organize everything without them and then come to invite them. We are living in an age of transformation. The older attitude with its way of doing things is gradually giving way. But some priests still retain the older attitudes and do not conceive the possibility of allowing the laity to act. On the other hand, many of the laity retain a purely passive conception of their role; not only do they leave everything to the priest, but they will do nothing if they are asked to take over a work. "Adult" lay persons (of whom I have been speaking) and priests adapted to such are still but few in number. Nevertheless, when one compares today with the be-ginning of the century, the transformation is unmistak-able. The essential thing is that this evolution continue and that the priest should more and more return to. the spiritual; that is, to the domain that belongs to him. But is "return" the correct word? He should rather aspire to it. But man is material, and the older conception gives satisfaction to a kind of unconscious materialism. Collaboration Formerly, one spoke only of authority and obedience. The faithful should obey, and nothing else was asked of them. Today, however, as we have seen, they are asked to think and to act for themselves. The meetings of active Christians have as their purpose a united program to enable the realization of the Christian ideal in the actual circumstances of life. Accordingly, the pri~est.is, no longer '~oncerned only with teaching; he listens and he invites the faithful to make their own personal contribution. This can be seen even in the matter of worship; the Mass has ceased to be a sacrifice offered by the priest alone at an altar distant from the people and in front of a congregation uncon-cerned with what he is doing, Now the Mass has become the community sacrifice offered by the priest an'd the faithful together, the priest being the spokesman of the community, the representative of the Church and of Christ, the celebrant of a sacrifice which belongs to the entire community. This is a profoundly changed state of affairs. Priests and laity act together. The Church is a single body and all of its members are active. This is a true resurrection. And by this very fact the priest has been strikingly ennobled, for he is no longer limited to being the shep-herd of a passive flock but has become instead the ani-mator of an active community. This change is to be found on all levels of the Church. The last and highest is that at the very center of the ChurCh, the See of Rome. Vati-can Council II gives witness to this transformation; and it is clear how John XXIII envisages the matter. His man-ner is not one like this: "Let the bishops say what they want, I shall do only what I want"; rather, his attitude is this: "I am deeply concerned to know the opinions of the bishops in order that I may take their advice into account." No one can derive from this the impression that pontifical power has thereby been lessened; but every-one does get the impression that the. Church forms one living body, animated by a movement of the whole. The role of the clergy is essential for the Church. When Catholicism is compared with Protestantism and with Orthodoxy, this role of the clergy is one of the most striking characteristics of the Church. Perhaps this ex-plains the retreat of the laity after the Reformation which placed the clergy in the background and in many cases even suppressed the priesthood and the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Now, however, the Church has recovered from this crisis; Christian life is now developing in its com-plete totality. Henceforth the Church will no longer be divided into the active Church composed of the clergy and the passive Church composed of the laity. The Church is a body ÷ ÷ ÷ The Priest Today VOLUME 22, 1963 ]63 ÷ ÷ ÷ Jacqo, es REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS I6,t of priests and laity together, living together, thinking together, acting together. As Cardinal Suhard put it: "The true achiever of evangelization is not the simple faithful nor the priest by himself; it is the Christian com-munity." The laity are fulfilling their role; the priest turn is free to be himself. Spiritual Counselor The direction of conscience has enjoyed a large place in the modern Church; it has been one of the principal instruments in the formation of a Christian elite. Never-theless, it has been especially concerned with women. When one reads the letters of the great spiritual directors, it is seen that they have been addressed almost exclusively to women. These women belonged to the higher levels of society. Today, however, as a result of the general spread of education and of the rise of active Christians, those who are concerned with the spiritual life are becoming more numerous and are to be found at all levels; they are found among workers and in the country as well as among the intellectuals. If it is necessary to practice direction of souls as it was formerly conceived, the clergy will be un-able to cope with it. But here once more, does not the spirit of collabora-tion profoundly transform conditions? Christians gather together with a priest to reflect on their Christian life; together they confront most of the questions that were formerly treated by individual conferences between the director and his spiritual child. In these conferences those seeking direction used to speak to their director not only of their interior life but of everything that con-cerned themselves. They asked their director's advice with regard to their relations with their husbands, with their children, and with their friends. They discussed the amount of freedom to be given their children, the amount of money to be given them, their clothes, companions, activities. Now all this is discussed in groups and in a way that is far more effective. Formerly, the person seeking direction would describe a situation to the director and he would decide the matter. The one consulting would act as though the director were omniscient, and he in turn would decide everything as though in fact he were. It was even taught as a received doctrine that the word of the director, was the word of God, that the director had the required graces of state, and that one should obey him blindly. Now it is realized that this was a false mystique, foreign to the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation; neverthe-less, it formed a coherent system. Christians concerned with the exigencies o[ morality would consult their con[essor on the matter o[ all their reading. No priest, however, can be acquainted with everything that is being published. The con[essor, i[ he believed himsel[ obliged to answer--and [ormerly the majority believed themsel~ces so obliged h~d~0 answer by guessing or had to make use o[ a systematic severity in order to avoid all risk o[ danger . And thereby/ other dangers were [allen into. From another viewpoint, there were husbands who op-posed the idea o[ their wives having a director o[ con-science on the grounds that they did not want between themselves and their wives a secret authority which the latter obeyed absolutely. Moreover, the women who con-suhed a director were usually women who were not mar-ried or who were unhappily married. This meant that spiritual direction had mixed in with it a purely human desire [or masculine support, and this in a proportion that is difficult to determine. All this has passed, and we have arrived at a much sounder state o[ affairs. All the matters that we have men-tioned are taken up today in groups. In [amily groups there are discussed today the problems o[ conjugal intimacy, o[ prayer in common, and the prayer o[ each o[ the spouses. In all kinds o[ groups, there is discussion o[ diversions, o[ entertainments, o[ reading, o[ the time to be given to recreation and to apostolic work, and o[ the problems o[ pro[essional li[e. Since the dil~erent kinds o[ groups are highly diversified, the questions that are confronted also differ greatly; nevertheless, the great part of matters that were [ormerly treated by individual direction is now considered by groups, each member con-tributing the results o[ his own experience; the priest has only to contribute his own element. The result is that while the number o[ Christians de-sirous o[ a Christian life that will dominate their entire existence is growing, the number of those who want direction o[ conscience in the individualistic sense of former times is diminishing. Even the phrase "spiritual director" is vanishing; the expression tod~y is that of "spiritual counselor." Everything is simplified; every-thing is developed in an atmosphere of collaboration that befits adult li[e. Hence, [or example, when a [amily group discusses the liberty to be given to children o[ different ages or the amount of money to be given them, solutions are reached that are more balanced and more realistic than those [ormerly obtained when the one consulting was limited to accepting the word of a director who was a stranger to the li[e o[ the [amily. Some Christians, however, still have recourse to a spiritual director after the older method, but they are The Pr~st ToOa~y VOLUME 22, 1963 165 ]~que, Leclegcq REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS in general those who are slow to be caught up by the strong current that is sweeping through the Church and reanimating Christian life. Unfortunately they are still numerous, for a great many Christians as well as a great many priests remain immobilized in older conceptions. The movement that stresses the laity touches only a cer-tain sector and certain levels of the population. There are even entire regions where it is unknown. We are seeking here to emphasize the signs of this renewal, for we are sure that it is in this renewal that the future of the Church lies. That which is merely a prolongation of the past will fall as the world progresses. Undoubtedly, there will always remain certain ele-ments of the old direction of conscience, certain needs (more or less occasional) that will require personal, in-dividual contacts. In most of these cases confession will be sufficient. It is impossible to predict what will eventu-ally happen, but it is clear that everything is being sim-plified as the Christian animation of life grows. The Word Today much consideration is given to the ministry of the word; this again is a reaction against the past. Formerly, it was taken for granted that society was Christian. Children were instructed in religion, but no attention was paid to adults. Certain traditions, peri-odically restated by councils, obliged to a preaching directed to the instruction of the people; but actual practice had stifled the rule. One has only to recall what the state was of the ministry of the word. Now the word lives again; the most significant sign of this rebirth is undoubtedly retreats. The development of the spiritual life of active Christians has been accom-panied by the multiplication of retreats and periods of recollection. These have become so numerous that or~e can speak accurately in this connection in terms of a spiritual explosion. Retreats and days of recollection are organized in every walk of life: workers, business men, engineers, physicians, young persons of every category. Every time a group with a spiritual character is founded, retreats are organized. At the very time I am writing these lines, I have before me the bulletin of the Association of House-keepers for Priests, an organization that exists in France and Belgium; they, too, organize retreats and days of recollection. Moreover, undifferentiated retreats are also multiplying; these are directed towards all Christians and include without distinction both men and women, priests and laity. Once more we can note that formerly there were some retreat houses maintained by the Jesuits who pioneered them and by convents of women imbued by the Jesuit spirit; there was also a small number of persons who went to these houses for retreats. Today it is an immense move-ment. There are parishes which have retreat leagues com-posed of persons who make a retreat each- y.ear. In certain regions these leagues are systematically organized; in cer-tain dioceses of The Netherlands they are a regular insti-tution of every parish. And I am not speaking now of women, for women retreatants are even more numerous. Hence it is not a matter for astonishment that retreat houses are constantly being opened everywhere and that there are always too few of them. Rooms must generally be reserved in advance; and it can happen that a retreat must be canceled for lack of an available retreat house. But there is also need for priests. Preaching is par excellence a priestly duty. At the present moment the number of priests conducting retreats is legion. Formerly retreats were largely reserved to certain religious orders; but now many diocesan priests (pastors, chaplains, teach-ers) give them. Nevertheless, the number of retreat masters is still not sut~ciently large. As a general rule, it is very easy to find retreatants; retreat houses are more difficult to find; but hardest of all to find are priests. At the beginning of these articles, I recalled those who asked what was left for a priest to do now that there are active lay persons; the answer is that priests are needed for things that are genuinely priestlyl The Christian people have a hunger and thirst for the word of God, and those who can dispense it to them are not numerous enough. This is a matter of the priestly ministry par excellence. The tendency of today's priest is to occupy himself by preference in such ministries, for he feels himself the apostle of Christ in the strongest sense of that term; and he prefers to leave to lay persons the care of administra-tion. I have known a pastor who had to build a church; he appointed a committee of lay persons to raise the money while he himself conducted retreats. Perhaps the building of the church progressed a little more slowly than it would have had he devoted all his time to raising money, but he was at work shaping souls. All this also supposes a transformation in the clergy; for the majority of older priests, administrators of parishes, teachers of profane subjects, have been completely held back from conducting retreats. If they left this matter to religious, this was not without good reason. Today the importance of religious has not diminished, but retreat masters now come from every ecclesiastical sector. The Priest Today VOLUME 22, 167 $acques Leclercq REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 168 Collaboration Once More Together with divine worship, preaching is un-doubtedly the chief priestly activity; and yet even here there is to be found an interchange of priests and laity. Retreats differ greatly. In some the retreatants are plunged into an absolute silence; the director gives them talks throughout the entire day. In this case the renewal of Christian life is marked by the radical character of the retreat--more contemplative, more silent than could have been borne before. But there are also retreats where with-out any lessened preoccupation with the spiritual an hour a day is reserved for an exchange of views; in this period each one can present his problems as he discerns them in the particular situation in which he finds himself. Persons of an older form of mind find it indiscreet to expose one's state of soul to the whole world. Formerly in a retreat one listened to the director who was the only one to speak; then purely profane recreation pe-riods were had, and the retreatants who desired it could consult the retreat master personally and individually. Often retreatants would bring up the same questions; the retreat master would always give the same answer. In general, the matters discussed were such that there was no compelling reason to keep them secret; hence it often happened that the retreatants told each other what the re-treat master had told them. Today all this is treated in a community session; every-one profits by it, and it produces a community spirit in the group. The retreatants feels themselves engaged in a common work. The divine life in us, our work for the service of God, are problems that interest all Of us to-gether. We no longer go to heaven alone; we go there with our brethren; indeed it is impossible to go there alone, for we depend on those who surround us. The king-dom of God is a community enterprise to which we belong and which we ought to undertake together. Even a re-treat is a community enterprise. In addition to this, it is now customary to have lay persons speak during a retreat. Retreats are par excellence a priestly work; nevertheless, it does happen that a layman is invited to speak of an aspect ofthe Christian life which he knows. One of my friends was invited by a teacher to speak to his students during the retreat at the end of their studies; the subject was the role of the Christian in the world; after the talk the teacher told him: "It does them much more good to hear all this from a layman." Likewise lay persons are invited to speak in seminaries. In a Canadian magazine I found a letter from Rome con-cerned with the matter expressed by Cardinal Sali~ge as "making use of the layman." The correspondent described how some theological students in Rome had invited a father of a family to speak to them of his Christian life. ¯. Montreal, Rome, Toulouse, and now this article which is to appear in Brussels and Buenos Aires--the problems are everywhere the same. Lay persons are eve~:ywher~e.;,~so also are,priests. They are together, shoulder to'~hourder. We cannot do without the one more than the other. What About the Others? The reader will have noticed that the lay persons dis-cussed here are the active la!ty who have grown into Christian maturity. What has been said is concerned only with the activity of a priest in relationship to such laymen. But what about the others--who compose the vast major-ity of men? Clearly, the groups of which we have spoken, the aware-ness of the exigencies of Christian life, and the giving of retreats are giving to Christians a shape and a form very different from that which they previously had. As we have already remarked, we are seeing a new Christian people appearing. But if these Christians remain among them-selves and if the clergy is concerned only with them, what changes will there be in the world as a whole? Whatever else may be said about this problem, it is true that they will always be there in the world. They are not isolated from the world: they are shopkeepers with a neighborhood store; they are factory workers and en-gineers; they are white-collared workers; they are physi-cians and druggists. They are everywhere. They come to-gether to arouse their Christian awareness; but afterwards they disperse and return to the mass. This is a slow work which one can judge only over long intervals. One can see, for example, that the position of Catholic literature in the world is today far different from what it was a hundred years ago. The same can be said for the position of Catholics in philosophy, in art, in politics. This is true, someone may say; but this is only a matter of a few leaders. To this I would answer that the remark is true; but every leader supposes a body of followers. If Catholic writers and artists today show both a talent and a conformity to the aspirations of the times which were not shown a hundred years ago, then this has happened be-cause the environment must have changed. And it is the same if Catholic philosophers are able to speak to the men of today. Such persons are perhaps the flower of Christianity; but the flower supposes the stem, and the stem in turn supposes the root. If I am the root, I need not be humiliated by the 4. 4. 4. The Priest Today VOLUME 2Z, ~.963 169 ÷ ÷ ÷ Jacques Leclercq REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS fact that I am not seen; it is owing to me that the flower can charm the eye. The position of the Church in the world is, then, pro-roundly changed. And in the examples given above, it will be noted that this transformation has been achieved by lay persons. Writers like Claudel, Chesterton, Bernanos, Ger-trud yon le Fort have undoubtedly done more to attract men to Catholicism than any theologian and perhaps more even than any priest. But they have been in relation with a priest. In short, the role of the priest is exercised on the interior of the Church, on those who are united in the Church; it is these latter who thereupon go out to speak to the world. At times the complaint is heard ~that Christians barri-cade themselves within a ghetto, living by themselves without contact with the outside. The complaint is well founded; if they dose themselves up with each other, the salt will not be able to give its flavor. And it is true that there is a dangerous exclusivism, a fear of leaving a Christian background. This fear is a debilitating thing, for of all the emotions fear is the one that is most debasing. The spreading of ideas, and especially the Christian spreading of ideas, is done by the osmosis of personal con-tact; it is to be noted, however, that this notion of per-sonal contact is a wide one extending to the books that are read and the films that are seen. The action of Chris-tianity proceeds from the fact that the Christian environ-ment reflects Christ. A great many who were born and raised Christian turn from Christianity because they do not find Christ in the Christianity which has been pre-sented to them. What they need is for active Christians to give them an exact image of Christianity. Others, also educated as Christians, turn from Christianity when they perceive the demands it makes on them. The Church loses nothing when such quit her, for they discredit her in the measure that they are believed to represent her. This is the case with cei'tain governments which declare them-selves Catholic. This, then, is a question of the large numbers of Chris-tians who are lukewarm and indifferent. But there is an-other group, larger still, those who are not Christian:; at all. Among these the seed must be sown. Here, too, the role of the priest is essential. Father Vinatur in the text cited above remarked that the priest is a founder. It is true; Christianity is founded only by a priest. This is seen from the very beginning; in the Acts of the Apostles there is related the ministry of St. Paul; he is seen taking up his residence in a city, making some converts, and then leaving when Christianity has been set up and a member of the community--the priest--has been established as head. This is a permanent condition of things. Active lay persons can prepare the soil; they can arouse sympa-thetic interest; but a Christian community is.formed only when a priest comes. This.i~ true on all, levels of the Church. When Catholid Action was constituted with its appeal to assume a genuinely religious activity, it was priests who took the initiative in the matter. So also when the family movement was founded to concern itself with the Christian life of married persons, it was begun by priests. Lay persons came afterwards; in a certain sense, they ended by doing everything. But the priest remains, and he will never be able to be dispensed with. This, then, is the design of the new Church, animated by a Christian life which has not been known since early times, a Church of Christians all sharing in the life and action of Christ. This Church is but sketched in the reality before us at the present time; but this sketch is the image of what is being formed. The confidence which we can have for the future comes from the fact that Christ is living in this Church in a way that He has not since her early centuries. ÷ ÷ The Priest Today VOLUME 22, 196,~ 171 LADISLAS M. ORSY, S.J. From Meditation to Contemplation ÷ ÷ ÷ Ladislas M. Orsy, S.J., is professor of canon law at the Gregorian Univer-sity; Piazza della Pilotta, 4; Rome, Italy. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS The aim of this article is both practical and doctrinal: it is to give practical help for the difficult period of tran-sition from meditation to contemplation and to show the theological background of the change that takes place in the soul. Meditation in these pages means prayer with the help of concepts, images, and more or less enforced acts of will. Contemplation means silence before God, prayer in which the soul is transformed under God's powerful ac-tion. In meditation the accent is on activity, in contem-plation on passivity. In meditation the soul tries to reach God by thoughts, feelings, and desires; in contemplation God has reached the soul and works on it without thoughts, feelings, or desires. In meditation the soul fights its way towards God; in contemplation it should stand before God in poverty. Passivity and poverty are then the foundations for a new type of activity and for new riches that have their source in God's powerful ac-tion. Such a deep change in prayer affects the whole man: it is a change in personality. It is not without difficulties; Saint Teresa remarks that there is no time in the spirit-ual life when it is so easy to give up prayer altogether as the time when contemplation begins. God's Work in the Soul God is eternally present in the soul: it is His presence that gives it life and being, it is His presence that sancti-fies it. He is not only present, He is working in the soul, infusing light and love into our mind and love into our will power. His final aim is to take possession of our person so that we should be united to Him and be His adopted children for an eternity. God is eternally present in the soul. He was there since the moment of our creation; but at the moment of our baptism He came again, not in majesty but as a good friend, and made our soul His own dwelling house where He likes to remain. He brought sanctity and holiness with Him and transformed the soul. As when fire is made in a cold and dark r0on~ ~th~ place be~ome~ ~¢arm and full of light, so when God comes into the soul it is filled with warmth and light. It is clothed with immortality, it belongs to God's family, in a way it becomes divine. The new life the soul receives is called sanctifying grace, the new light in the mind faith, and the infused love in the will power hope and charity. They are all fruits of the presence of God; should He leave the soul, there would be dark and cold again. God works in the soul. There is not one moment of rest for Him. He is supremely good and happy, and He wants to share His rich goodness and happiness with others. Consequently, His sanctifying presence is in fact a work of continuous sanctification. Light and love are given to mind and will in abundance: light that we may see and better understand things divine,-.love that we may go towards God at a better pace. This action of God is peaceful and quiet: He does not like noise and agitation. It is this action that ought to be the source of all our thoughts and deeds; unless they proceed from God they will be empty and they will not bear any fruit for eternal life. God's aim is to take possession of our person. He is not satisfied with partial sanctification of His family. He wants to bring them into the very centre of His own life where the Father and the Son and the Spirit are one and where They know and love each other without end. To say that one does not want to be more than an ordinary good Christian (meaning by it that one does not want to be perfect) is to betray a lack of generosity and to show a great ignorance of God's intention who wants all His children to grow continuously and reach their full maturity in Christ. The extent of the necessary trans-formation is indicated by the distance (which each one easily realizes for himself) between God's purity and our impurity, between His charity and our own obscurity. Nevertheless, it is this complete transformation that is God's aim and nothing less. He has the means to achieve it: by the gentle action of His love in this world and by Purgatory in the other. No person who wants to see God can escape this cleansing process; and those who are generous will want to get through it soon, if possible, in this life. Such desire is not a presumption: it is no more than conforming our will to God's will. 4. 4. 4. Meditation to Contemplation VOLUME 22, 196~ 173 4. 4. 4. L. M.'Or~y, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]74 Meditation When God comes into the soul of man and wants to sanctify him, He encounters a great obstacle which is man's fallen nature with all that it entails: sin, attach-ment to worldly things, false judgments, and selbwill as hard as steel. Purification is necessary. It is mainly done by God, but man has his part in it as well. Meditation is one of the first steps in this cleansing process. Man has heard the voice of God and wants to obey Him and be near Him. But man's mind is not clear and clean enough to perceive the light that comes from God living in his soul, his will is not sensitive enough follow the inspirations of grace. It is literally embedded in mortal and perishing things, it is ruled not by God but by the senses. Training is necessary for both mind and will in order to lift them from the visible into the in-visible, from the tangible into the intangible, from the sensitive into the spiritual. Part of this training is what we call meditation. The mind has to be trained. It should be a training in divine truth so that our thoughts, ideas, judgments correspond to those of God and thus that the two minds be united as far as possible into one. This training is done by the soul in an active and discursive way when it meditates on the words of our Lord, on the mysteries of His life, on the Church. What the person does is to fill his mind with God's thoughts instead of his own. He is really trying to m~ike his mind a better instrument for the perception of God's inspirations, an instrument more adapted to receive God's light. It is a tuning-up or warm-ing- up process. The mind is bathed in the divine truth so that it may become divine. This is done in an active way, by reasoning, by considering the call of Christ our Lord or God's beauty in nature, or by imagining the Holy Family. Man is working his way towards God. The will has to be trained as well. The attraction of things eternal is fine and delicate, and our selfish will does not easily notice it. In order to become more sensi-tive to the action of grace, the selfishness of our nature and of our will in particular ought to be broken by con-tinuous exercise in mortification. The aim is that our will should become soft and flexible, attached to nothing, so that it may follow the will of God in everything. To attain that aim, one has to work hard and in an active way. One has to do penance, one has to give up many things, many of his likings, one has to be humble; and there is no dispensation from this work. Since the mind and will are active, activity predomi-nates at this stage of the spiritual life. But sometimes it may happen that a longing awakens in the soul after God Himself, a desire to meet the living God without any human speech, image, or idea. Words and pictures are created things; they do not satisfy the soul that has been created to see God face to face. The desire to meet God without passing through created images all the time may be a sign of better things to come. Transition Thoughts, perception, and feelings are all created things. If we are called to union with God, there must be a moment when they have to disappear since no hu-man person can be satisfied with looking at the picture of somebody he loves when personal contact is possible. Besides~ those acts may fulfill their purpose in the puri-fication of mind and will. Their nature being limited, their efficacy is limited too. I can penetrate the mind of God to a certain extent by meditating on the Gospel; I can follow the will of God to a great extent by trying to do what I think the best. But neither my meditations nor my good deeds have the power to cleanse my soul so well that I may truly say that God has taken possession of me and that I am no more than an instrument in His hand. The true cleansing is reserved to God. It is He who transforms the soul by infusing light and love into it in a more than ordinary measure; it is that light and love that sanctify and purify the whole man. 1. External Signs. The first sign to indicate that a per-son might have a "vocation" to contemplative prayer is that he does not find any more "taste" in meditation: he does not enjoy it any more in the best and spiritual sense of the word. Before, he was able to collect a great va-riety of fruit in his meditation: words and images paci-fied his soul and helped him to formulate good resolu-tions. Now he finds that his meditation is more like a dried-up fountain which does not contain fresh water. But not to have any "taste" in meditation is a purely negative sign: it might well be the indication of careless-ness or of drifting towards the world. Hence, a more posivite sign is needed to confirm that it is God who brought about the change. The positive sign will be a deep longing in the soul for God and a sincere desire to follow Christ our Lord in everything and to be con-formed to His image. A sincere desire that is manifest in deeds. The loss of "taste" in meditation and the longing for God are always coupled with a turning away from this created world. This loss of interest in created things, even if they are very good in themselves, is the third sign; and it is a natural consequence of what has taken place: 4. 4. Meditation to Contemplation VOLUME 22, 1963 ]75 ÷ 4. 4- when the soul is not satisfied any more with created con-cepts in its prayer, it cannot be satisfied with created things either. The change may be astonishing for the person concerned: he used to enjoy music and art, litera-ture and human company, and now he notices that they all leave him dry and empty. When all these signs are found together, loss of "taste" in meditation after it has been practiced for a fairly long time (which may vary from person to person), longing for God in solitude (the longing being confirmed by solid virtues in practice), and the consequent loss of good and legitimate pleasure in created things, then the person concerned may have the vocation to a simpler form of prayer. If these signs are not there, any attempt to leave be-hind meditation and practice another form of prayer, namely the prayer of simplicity, may be poisonous for the soul; it may weaken its spiritual life and it may even ruin the soul altogether. 2. An Explanation. The signs just described are ex-ternal, but what is happening internally in the soul? What is it that brought the change about? The answer is that gradually and in a hidden way God is taking possession of the soul and its facilities. As mind and will have been purified to a reasonable degree, though by no means perfectly, God's work on them~be-comes more intense. Light and love are being given in a larger measure than ever before, and the hand of God begins to shape the new man, the new creature of St. Paul, out of the old. It is as if the hand of God had touched the soul from behind and in the dark. The soul recognised the touch instinctively but could not see the person. It turned away from all creatures, whether con-cepts, images in prayer, or works of art, and conceived a longing for its Maker and Creator. Hence the loss of "taste" in meditation, longing for God, and the feeling of emptiness in the presence of created objects. God comes near enough to awaken a deep desire in the soul but not near enough to let the soul perceive something of God's beauty. It follows that for a while (and it may be a very long while) one may remain in the dark: all consolation from this world is lost, but no sen-sible consolation from the other world is coming. Per-haps it would be truer to say that though the heart is pure enough to feel the obscure touch of God, as yet it: is not able to receive the light in its fullness because of the many impurities that it still has. The result is darkness; and if one does not know what is happening it is easy to lose confidence and even to give up prayer altogether. In truth, it is a time of grace for the soul. 3. Some Practical Advice. If the signs for contempla-tion are there, it would not be wise to force oneself to make meditations in a strict and methodical form. One cannot turn the clock back, not even in the spiritual life. The time of predominantly active prayer, is over; now one has to learn how to~follow~the lead The first step towards more passivity should be the simplification of prayer. Intellectual considerations dur-ing prayer time should be left out as much as possible. Their place should be taken by simple acts of faith, hope, and love, which are the beginning of any prayer and the fruit of the best of prayers. The soul should .learn how to come back to the same idea again and again and find peace, joy, and "taste" in it. Also there should be a tend-ency towards greater receptivity, but with prudence and wisdom. God likes to take His time; He likes to build slowly and gradually. Our duty is to follow the move-ments of His grace: we should not try to go any faster than He wants us to go nor should we lag behind. The adaptation to this new way of life in which it is God who holds the initiative is bound to be a long process. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is a change in our personality. It is bound to affect everything in our life, our way of thinking, working, and our relations with other persons. A likeness to Christ our Lord is being formed in us. After the initial difficulties a long period of peaceful development may ensue. Prayer will be a mixture of ac-tivity and passivity; but if the soul is faithful, it may reach the stage in which the main rule is passivity. A passivity that leads to a readiness to do the will of God and to a very practical love of God and our neighbour. One final remark is necess

Issue 16.4 of the Review for Religious, 1957. ; A. M. D. G. Review for Reh ious JULY 15, 1957 St. ~John of the Cross . Sister'Mary St. Rose R~vitalizing Our Spiritual Life . Harold F. Cohe. Departure After Temporary Profession . . .Joseph F. Gallen AIIocution Concerning Tertianship . pope plus- Book Reviews Questions and Answers Roman Documents VOLUME 16 NUMBER 4 RI::VII::W FOR R LIGIOUS VOLUM/~ 16 JULY, 1957 NUMBER 4 CONT£NTS ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS: DOCTOR OF DIVINE LOVE-- Sister Mary St. Rose, S.N.D . 193 REVITALIZING OUR SPIRITUAL LIFE-- Harold F. Cohen, S.J . 211 DEPARTURE FROM RELIGION ON THE EXPIRATION OF A TEMPORARY PROFESSION--Joseph F. Gallen, S.J . 215 FONTI FIFE . 223 SURVEY OF ROMAN DOCUMENTS~R. F. Smith, S.J . 224 ALLOCUTION CONCERNING TERTIANSHIP-- Pope Pius XII . 236 OUR CONTRIBUTORS . 240 BOOK REVIEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS-- Editor: Bernard A. Hausmann, S.J. West Baden College West Baden Springs, Indiana . 241 REVIEW OF CATHOLIC CHURCH MUSIC . 249 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: 19. Bows at Benediction . 250 20. Recourse Against Exclusion from Profession . 250 21. Seasonal Prefaces . 251 22. Ordinary Confessor and Cases Reserved in the Institute . 251 23. Occasional Confessor and Jurisdiction for One Other Woman. 252 24. Occasional Confessor Only for Professed and Novices . 252 25. Transfer to Another Monastery . 253 26. Using School Section of Minor Cloister for Community During Vacations . 254 27. Restoration of Solemn Vows in Monasteiies of Nuns . 255 28. Mass To Be Said on a Ferial Day . 256 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, July, 1957. Vol. 16, No. 4. Published bimonthly by The Queen's Work, 3115 South Grand Blvd., St. Louis 18, Mo. Edited by the Jesuit Fathers of St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approval. Second class mail privilege authorized at St. Louis, Mo. Editorial Board: Augustine G. Ellard, S.J.; Gerald Kelly, S.J.; Henry Willmering, S.J. Literary Editor: Robert F. Weiss, S.J. Copyright, 1957, by The Queen's Work. Subscription price in U.S.A. and Canada: 3 dollars a year; 50 cents a copy. Printed in U.S.A. Please send all renewals and new subscriptions to: Review for Religious, 3115 South Grand Boulevard, St. Louis 18, Missouri. St. dbhn ot: the Cross Doctor ot: Divine Love Sister Mary St. Rose, S.N.D. THE name of St. John of the Cross sometimes elicits a strange reaction: a gentle, modest man.who sincerely pre-ferred oblivion-to power, solitude to lecture hall, and peace to self-justification or defense of the major work of his life, he seems to cause a kind of recoil; perhaps an awe-inspiring viril-ity beneath the disarming serenity, is sensed even after the lapse of almost four hundred years; perhaps to too many he is the Doctor of the Nothing rather than the Doctor of Divine Love. Born Juan de Yepes in the little village of Fontiveros, just thirty miles north of Avila, in 1542, of relatively poor artisans, he was moved at seven years of age, after the death of'his father, to Medina del Campo, where his mother had better pros- . pects of supporting her small family. John early showed such aptitude for study rather than for crafts that he became the prot~g~ of Don Antonio Alvarez de Toledo and, while work-ing in the hospital of his patron, studied till he was nineteen at the Jesuit college in Medina. At twenty, he entered the Order of Carmel, was professed a year later, and studied arts and theology for three yea~s in Salamanca, where one of the four leading universities of the time was located. Ordained in 1567, he met St.'_Teresa_in the same year and was persuaded to abandon his desire to become a Carthusian in favor of help-ing initiate a restoration of the primitive Carmelite rule. Together with the rather impractical but fervent Fra~ Antonio and his five clocks, he planted in a miserable hut in Duruelo the seedling which eventually developed into the Dis-calced Carmelites. Eight happy years of peaceful spiritual and intellectual maturing were followed by a year as professor in the Discalced College of the University of Alcala and by five years in Avila, where as confessor of the hundred nuns of the 193 SISTER MARY ST. ROSE Review for Religious Incarnation, to which St. Teresa had been forced to return as prioress, he wrought a miracle of reformation. But the peaceful years were over; the. Mitigated Carmelites, increasingly embittered by the success of the reform, forcibly seized John on December 3, 1577, and, when their efforts to induce him to abandon the reform were fruitless, flogged and imprisoned him, first at Avila and later--after a confirma-tion of the sentence by the General, Tostado--at Toledo. In a six by ten, windowless cell, during eight and a half months of .bread, water, and fish, with almost daily floggings and no change of clothing, he etched in his own soul the masterpiece of cooperation with God's grace of which we get echoes in his-poems, begun even during his imprisonment, finished and de-veloped later into those unique commentaries which have earned for him the supreme doctorate of the Church itself in the science of mystical theology. Escaping from his prison on August 15, i578, he went south into Andalusia, stopped at Beas, where the lovable Anne of Jesus was prioress, and where he began for 'the devoted nuns his oral commentary on .the "Spiritual Canticle." At Monte Calvario, where he spent eight months recuperating, he began the .4scent o[ Mount Carmel and the Dark Night, finish-ing them, as well as the S/~ir.itual Canticle and the Living Flame o[ Love, during six years as prior in Granada. This was a relatively quiet interlude before the final storm. By a Bull of Gregory XIII in 1580, the Discalced had been separated from the Calced, and the ambitious Doria had been made general of the former. John was' his vicar-general till the chapter of 1591, in which he opposed the revocation of the'Teresian constitutions and other drastic alterations. Sent after the chapter to La Pefiuela as a simple friar and a virtual exile, he experienced the cruel trial of defamation to such an extent that his friends feared that he, even as his old associate. Gracian, would be expelled in disgrace from the order. But the purification was to be of another kind. He fell ill of fever 194 July, 1957 ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS and erysipelas and was sent for medical attention to Ubeda, where the prior had an old score~a pievious reprimand--to settle with him; fobd, medicin.e, visitors, all were denied John or given grudgingly till the intervention of the provincial brought relief--but too late. At midnight on December 14, 1591, John diedl true to his name and like ihe God-man he had so loved~ unknown, suffering, disgraced, abandoned. Guide to the Highest Sanctity To those of us who, inspired at first perhaps by curiosity. about this reputed mystic of mystics, persist in cultivating his friendship, he reveals himself as one of the most human and tender of saints, a corisummate psychologist, a master theo-logian, an uncompromisi.ng guide to the highest sanctity. To prove this assertion from his works would be a relatively easy but decidedly lengthy task. My aim is more modest but still sufficiently ambitious, perhaps even presumptuous: to show from his most logically constructed work, the Ascent of Mount Carmel and its sequel, even its integral part, the D'ark Night, how he responds to the age-old longing of a soul in love with God for a sure road and a swift road to the embrace of the Divine Lover. But first to consult a recent Baedeker for a panoramic view: The end of man is the vision of God-~or, perhaps more ac-curately, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.~ . . . It is easier to intoxicate people's minds with a desire for contemplation than it is to persuade them of what is required before that gift can be received. ¯ . . Briefly it may be said that the gift of contemplation will always be given to. those who make themselves poor enough in spirit and pure enough in hear~ to receive it. Let me hasten to add, in line with the masteri of the spiritual life, that this poverty of spirit and purity of heart call for detachment but not violent asceticism . But if physical austerities are relativel~ of little importance, what is of fundamental importance is the mortification of self; that is to say, the eli~nination of self-will, self-interest, self-centered think-ing, wishing, and imagining. May I suggest that contemplation-- often conceived of in too intellectualist terms--is nothing else but the realization of God's presence and of our utter dependence on Him. The contemplative is simply one. who sees the divine-human situation as it is. Hence the contemplative state is essentially pas- 195 SISTER MARY ST. ROSE Review for Religious sive; that is, an alert passivity by which we are, in varying degrees of clarity, aware of God--both as transcendent above His creation and immanent within it . The impediments are whatever concentrates our thoughts on the ego--vices, obviously; but also self-centered virtues. Self-for-getting love is of course the key--that agape of the New Testament. This does not mean an anxious striving after God, but letting Him work His wil! in us; imitating God's love for us by a correspondent compassion toward our neighbor, loving the unlovable . When a man can from his heart realize that the only thing that makes sense is that he shall submit to God's invasion of his own little world, on the principle that if God's kingdom is to come then 'my kingdom must go, he will then be as near to the state of contemplation as makes no difference.~ The Nature of Infused Contemplation Now this is the theory, succinctly put by a modern theo-logian. Before we clothe this skeletal outline with living flesh, it may be advisable to take sides in the controversy about the precise nature of infused contemplation, for itis fatally easy to read one's own views into St. John's words. Without at-tempting to justify my choice, I turn. from the position main-tained by Father Reginald Garrigou-LaGrange, O.P., to that of Father Elmer O'Brien, S.J., and Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D. The former puts the matter neatly: I can find no positive reason for asserting that God's sanctify-ing presence must, in the laws of grace, eventually rise above the threshold of spiritual consciousness (except, of course, if one holds for a materialistic concept of grace), and on the other hand the burden of witness in the Christian tradition is against it.'-' The latter, in a passage worth quoting at length for its clarity and charity, has this to say: We have seen how, from the teaching of St. John of the Cross, it follows that the activity of the contemplative gifts of the Holy Ghost may be either hidden or experimental. Both forms are proper actuations of these gifts, which proceed from one and the same principle but are distinct as regards the effect they produce in the subject which receives them. Sometimes they are perceived, some- 1 Graham, Aelred, O.S.B, and others, "Infused Contemplation as the Nor-mal Development of the Life of Grace and the Virtues," Proceedings of the Ninth ~l'nnual Convention (Catholic Theological Society of America, 1954). 203-205. ¯ 2 Ibid., 221. 196 July, 1957 ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS times not, but the soul is always really a~ted upon b~, the gifts and hence there is real infusion. The speculative theologian, who is not directly considering the different form~ which this divine action may take in different souls and at different periods of the spiritual life, will easily give the name of infused contemplation to every form of contemplation in which the action of the gifts intervenes. The Teresian mystical teaching, on the other hand, which distinguishes two modes of divine action, will give the name of acquired to the contemplation resulting from the hidden action which assists the soul's activity, and reserve the name infused for the contemplation in which God makes Himself pei'ceived. Hence the term infused contemplation takes on a different meaning in.the different schools of spirituality.~ With this background and with the prospect of an ex-perienced, intrepid, compassionate guide, we are ready to put on our seven-league boots and take the hand of St. John. He charmingly suggests this procedure in his St~iritua/ Canticle." "And, to the end that this thirsty soul may come to find her Spouse and be united with Him through union of love in this life, so far as she may, and allay her thirst with this drop that can be tasted of Him in this life, it will be well, since the soul asks this of her Spouse, that we should take her hand on His behalf and answer her by showing her the surest place where He is hidden, so that she may surely find Him there with the perfection and pleasure that is possible in this life, and thus may not begin to roam about vainly in the tracks of her companions.''~ With little more than a thread of comments as road signs, I shall let St. John speak for himself. And first, his motive, purpose, and outline of the journey as given in ./lscent o/: Mount Carmel." "It is sad to see many souls to whom God gives both favor and capacity for making progress, remaining in an elementary a Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D., St. John o/ the Cross (Newman Book-shop, Maryland, 1946). 95. 4 Peers, E. Allison, tVorks of St. John of the Cross (Burns, Oates and Wash-bourne Ltd., 1934). All the quotations throughout the remainder of the article are taken from this two volume work. Because of the extent of the quoted mat-ter, quotation marks rather than reduced type will be used from this point to the end. 197 SISTER MARY ST, ROSZ Review for Religious stage of communion with God, .for want of will, or knowledge, or becatise there is none who will lead them in the right path or teach them how to get away from these beginnings. ",Wherefore, to the end that all, whether beginners or proficients, may know how to commit themselves to God's guid-ance, when His Majesty desires to lead them onward, we shall give instruction and counsel, by His help, so that they may be able to understand His will, or, at the least, allow Him to lead them . "For a soul to attain to the state of perfection, it has ordinarily first to _pass through two principal kinds of night, which spiritual persons call purgations or purifications of the soul; and here we call them nights, for in both of them the soul journeys, as it were, by .night, in darkness. "The first '~ight or purgation is of the sensual part of the soul, which . . . will be treated in the first part of this book. And the second is of the spiritual part; of this . . . we shall treat likewise, in the second and the third part, with respect to the activity of the soul; and in the fourth part, with respect to its passivity. "And this first night pertains to beginners, occurring at the time when God begins to bring them into the state of con-templation; in this night the spirit likewise has a part, as we shall say in due course. And the second night or purification pertains to those Who are already proficient, occurring at the time w'-h~n God desires to set them in the state of union with God. And this latter night is a more obscure and dark ~and terrible purgation, as we shall say afterwards." Night of the Senses Good pedagogue that he is, St. John believes not in goad.s but in stimulants for the arduous uphill climb; speaking of the yearnings of love which' are the effects of generosity, he con-tinues: 198 Ju~, 1957 ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS ~ "In order to conquer all the desires and to deny itself the pleasures which it has in everything, and for v)hich its love and affection are wont to enkindle the will that it may enjoy them, it would be necessary to experience another and a greater enkindling by another and a better love, which is that of its Spouse; to the end that, having its pleasure set upon Him and deriving from Him ~ts strength, it should have courage and constancy to deny itself all other things with ease." In earnest he begins the stripping of all impediments from the sensitive appetites: "He that loves a creature becomes as low as is that ~reature, and, in some ways, lower; for love not only makes the lover equal to the object of his love, but even subjects him to it. Wherefore in the same way it comes to pass that the soul that loves anything else becomes incapable of pure union with God and transformation in him. All the being of Creation, then, compared with the infinite ~Being of God, is nothing. And therefore the soul that sets its affections upon the being of creation is likewise nothing in the eyes of God, and 'less than nothing; for, as we have said, love makes equality and similitude, and even sets the lover below .the object of his love . The soul that. is ravished by the graces and beauties of the creatures has only supreme misery and unattractiveness in the eyes of God. Any soul that makes" account of all its knowledge and ability in order to come to union with the wisdom of God is supremely ignorant in the eyes of God and will remain far removed from that wisdom. [In summary,] as long as the soul rejects not all things, it has no capacity to receive the spirit of God in pure transformation . . . [for the philo-sophical reason that] as in natural generation no. form can be introduced unless the preceding, contrary form is first expelled from the subject, which form, while present, is an impediment to the other by reason of the contrariety which the two have between each other; even so, for as long as the soul is sub- 199 SISTER MARY ST." ROSE Review for Religious jected to the sensual spirit, the spirit which is pure and spiritual cannot enter it." But to prevent the appalling error of Stoicism, he care-fully distinguishes involuntary movements of the appetites from voluntary: "It is true that all the desires are not equally hurtful, nor do they equally embarrass the soul . . . for the natural desires hinder the soul little, or not at' all, from attaining to union, when they are not consented to nor pass beyond the first move-ments-- that is, all those wherein the rational will has had no part, whether at first Or afterward--and to take away these-- that is, to mortify them wholly in this life--is impossible . "The other voluntary desires, whether they be of mortal sin, which are the gravest, or of venial sin, which are less grave, or whether they be only of imperfections, which are the least grave of all, must be driven away every one, and the soul must be fre~ t:rom them all, howsoever small they be, it~ it is to come to this complete union; and the reason is that the state of this. divine union consists in the soul's transformation, accord-ing to the will, in the will of God, so that there may be naught in the soul that is contrary to the will of God, but that, in all and through all, its movement may be that of the will of God alone . "Although a person .who suffers them (natural desires which are not voluntary, and . . . thoughts that go not beyond the first movements, and other temptations to which the soul is not consenting) may believe that the passion and disturbance which they then cause him are defiling and blinding him, it is not so; rather they are bringing him the opposite advantages. For, insofar as he resists them, he gains fortitude, purity, light, and consolation, and many blessings, even as our Lord said to St. Paul that virtue was made perfect in weakness." When our eagerness to start is hardly to be restrained, he gives us the road map at last. How strongly suggestive it is of 200 July, 1957 ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS the tantum quantum "of St. Ignatius; indeed, that simple but infinitely challenging Ignatian norm permeates all the detailed directions by which St. John implements the ltscent's 'famous Chapter Thirteen. "First, let him have an habitual desire to imitate ~hrist in everything that he does, conforming himself to His life; upon which life he must meditate so that he may know how to imitate it, and to behave in all things as Christ would behave. "Secondly, in order that he may' be able to do this well, every pleasure that presents itself to the senses, if it be not ¯ purely for the honor and glory of God, must be renounced and completely rejected for the love of Jesus Christ, who in this lifd had no other pleasure, neither desired such, than to do the will of His Father, which He called His meat and drink . "For the mortifying and calming of the four natural pas-sions, which are joy, hope, fear, and grief, from the concord and pacification of which come these blessings, and others like-wise, the counsels which follow are of'the gr~test help, and of great merit, and' the source of great virtues." .~ Night of the Spirit Then follow the famous counsels for which all the world remembers St. John and which he concludes with the singing words, a refrain to haunt one's soul: "When thou thinkest upon anything, Thou ceasest to cast thyself upon the All. For, in order to pass from the all to the All, Thou has to deny thyself wholly in all. And, when thou comest to possess it wholly, Thou must possess it without desiring anything. For, if thou wilt have anything in all, Thou hast not thy treasure purely in God." Turning now his attention to the spirit of man, St, John shows that the.intellect is purified by faith; the memory, by 201 Si~TER M.~Y ST. ROSE Review for Religious hope; the will, by ~harity. He begins with the definition, the necessity, and the danger of not living by faith; then, be-cause of .the special difficulties of this stage of the venture, he presents a clear view of the goal. "Faith, Say the theologians, is a habit of the soul,, certain and obscure. And the reason for its being an obscure habit is that it makes us believe truths revealed by God Himself, which transcend all natural light, and exceed all human under-standing, beyond all proportion . In the same way [as a partially blind man], a soul may lean upon any knowledge of its own, or any feeling or experience of God; yet, however great this may be, it is very little and far different from what God i.s; and, in going along this road, a soul is easily led astray or forced to halt, because it will not remain in faith like one that is blind, and faith is its true guide . And thus a soul is greatly impeded from reaching this high estate of union with God when it clings to any understanding or feeling or imagina-tion or appearance or will or manner of its own, or to any other act or to anything of its own, and cannot detach and strip itself of these . "Here I treat only of this permanent and total union ac-cording to the substance of the soul and its faculties with re-spect to the obscure habit of union: for with respect to the act, we shall explain later, with the divine favor, how there is no permanent i~nion in the faculties, in this'life, but a transitory union only . When fhe soul rids itself totally of that which is repugnant to the divine will "and conforms not with it, it is transformed in God through love. God cbnlmunicates Himself most'to that soul tliat has progressed farthest in love, namely, that has its will in closest conformity with the ~vill of God. And the soul that has attained~ complete conformity and likeness of will is totally uni~:ed and transf6rmed, in God super-naturally . But the. soul that attains not to such a measure of purity as is in conformity with its capacity never attains 202 July, 1957 ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS true peace and satisfaction, since it has not attained to the possession of that detachment ~and emptiness in its faculties which is required for simple union." Returning. to his concern for the cleansing of the under-standing by faith, he breaks into a cry of anguish over those who will never take seriously our Saviour's counsel to deny themselves utterly and, hence, will never reach the gbal in this life. I quote only the concluding words of a long passage: '~Herein they become spiritually enemies of the cross of Christ; for true spirituality' seeks for~ God's sake that which is distasteful rather than that which is delectable; and inclines itself rather to sufl:ering than to. consolation; and desires to go without all blessings for God'g sake rather th~n to enjoy sweet' communications', knowing that" this is to follow Christ and to deny oneself, and that the other is perchance to seek oneself in. God, which is clean contrary, to lox~e.'~' All kinds of knowledge other than faith are relatively use-~ less: "The farther the soul progresses. !n spirituality,, the .re. ore it ceases from the operation of the faculties in particular acts, for it becomes more and more occupiedin one act. that.is gen-eral and pure;.and thus the faculties that were journeying to a place whither the soul has arri;ced cease to Work, even as the feet stop and cease ~o move when their journey'is over . And, as such so~uls know not the mystery of this new experience, the idea comes to them that they are being idle and doing noth-ing; and thus they allow themselves not to be quiet, but endeavor to meditate and reason. Herice they are filled with aridity and affliction, because they seek ~to~ find sweetness where it is no longer to be found.' . St. John ~hen gi~es the signg by; which We may know whethe~r we have' reached this point in our progress, signs too frequently, reproduced for me to quote them here." Then, after examining one by on'd'the various natural' and supernatural kinds' of kriowl- 203" SISTER MARY ST. ROSE Review for Religious edge which the soul may receive and from which it should detach itself, he comes at last to the intuition of naked truth, aboutJwhich he becomes almost lyrical: "And these lofty manifestations of knowledge can only come to the soul that attains to union with God, for they are themselves that union; and to receive them is equivalent to a certain contact with the Divinity which the soul experiences, and thus it is God Himself who is perceived and tasted therein. And, although He cannot be experienced manifestly and clearly, as in glory, this touch of knowledge and delight is nevertheless so sublime and profound that it penetrates the substance of the soul . . . for such kinds of knowl.edge savor of the Divine Essence and of eternal life . And I say not that the soul should behave in the same negative manner with regard to these apprehensions as with regard to the rest, for . . . they are a part of the union, towards which we are directing the soul; to which end we are teaching it to detach and stril5 itself of all other apprehensions. And the means by which God will do this must be humility and suffering for love of God with resignation as regards all reward; for these favors are not granted to the soul which still cherishes attachments, inas-much as they are granted through a very special love of God toward the soul which loves Him likewise with great detachment." To the purification of the memory, St. John gives detailed attention, concludes with a powerful paragraph, and then focuses the major portion of Book III of the ~sc~'nt on the will. Purgation of Memory and Will "Hence, the more the soul dispossesses the memory of forms and things which may be recalled by it, which are not God,. the more will it set its memory upon God, and the emptier will its memory become, so that i~ may hope for Him who shall fill it. What must be done, the:,, that the soul may live in the perfect and pure hope of God is that, whensoever these distinct images, forms, and notions come to it, it must not re~t in them, but must turn immediately to God, voiding the memory of them entirely, with 2O4 July, 1957 ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS loving-affectioh. It must neither think of these things nor don-sider them beyond the degree which is necessary for the under-standing and performing of its obligations, if they have any con-cern with these. And this it must do without setting any affection or inclination upon them, so that they may produce no effects in the soul . "We should have accomplished nothing by the purgation of the understanding in order to ground it in the virtue of faith, and by the purgation of the memory in order to ground it in hope, if we purged not the will also according to the third virtue, which is charity, whereby the works that are done in faith live and have great merit, and without it are of no worth . The st~:ength of the soul consists in its faculties, passions, and desires, all of which are governed by the will. Now when these faculties, passions, and desires are directed by. the will toward God, and turned away from all .that is not God, then the strength of the soul is kept for God, and thus the soul is able to love God with all its stiength. And, to the end that the soul may do this, we shall here treat of the purgation from the will of all its unruly affections . These affections and passions are four, namely: joy, hope, grief, and fenr." Apparently St. John intended to give instructions concern-ing each of these passions in their impact on the will and every good to which the will of man is attracted. He did not complete the project; yet even the truncated treatise is a masterpiece of analysis of all the subterfuges by which we seek ourselves instead of God.__:_ The general truth W]~l~--which he prefaced his treatment will serve as a summary: "This truth is that the will must never rejoice save only in that which is to the honor and gloi:y of God; and that the greatest honor we can show to Him is that of serving Him according to evangelical perfection; and anything that has naught to do with this is of no value and profit to man." 205 SISTER MARY ST. ROSE Review for Religious The Dark Night St. John abruptly ended the Ascent, having completed only half of what he had promised, the t~o purgations "with respect to the activity of the soul," of the sensual part and of the spiritual part of the "soul. The two purgations "with respect to its passivity" he reserved for treatment in his Dark Night, a work considered his especially original .contribution to~ my~stical theol-ogy. In it he tharks clearly the point of departure, th~ neces-sity, thd general conspectus, and the signs that the soul is ready f6r this'last and most trying part of its ascent tO" perfect uniofi with God. "Into this dark night souls begin to enter when God draws them'forth from the state of beginners--w~hich is the state of those that meditate upon the spiritual roadmand begins to set them in the state of progressives--which is that of,those who are already contemplatives--to the end that, after passing through it, they may arrive at the state of the perfect, which is that of divine union of the soul with God . ¯ "However greatly the soul itself labors, it~ ~annot actively purify itself so as to be in the least degree prepared for the divine union of perfection of love, if God takes not its hand and purges it not in that dark fire, in the way and manner that we have to describe. "The night of senseis common and comes to many; these are the beginners; and of this night we shall first speak. The night of the spirit is the portion of very ~few, and thes~e are they that are already practise.d and profi.cient,~ of whom we shall treat hereafter . "For the making of this distinction ['between aridities from the night of the sensual desires and from sins and imperfec-tions] I find that there are three principal'signs. The first is whether, when 'a soul finds no pleasure or consolation in the things of God, ~it also fails to find it in any thing" created; for, as God sets the soul in this dark night to' the end that He may 206 July, 1957 ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS quench and ~purge its sensual desire, ~He allows it not to find attraction or sweetness in anything whatsoever. . . The sec-ond sign whereby a man may believehimself to be experiencing the said purgation is. that ordinarily the memory is centered upon God, with painful care and solicitude, thinking that it is not serving God, but is backsliding, because it finds itself without sweetness in the. things of God, . . The third sign . . is that the soul can no longer meditat~e or reflect in its sense of the imagination, as it was wont, however much it may endeavor to do so." St. John assures us that if we follow the procedure he suggests in the Dark Night we shall surely receive the prom-ised fruits, which to any one who has not experienced them sound" like cold comfort. "What they must do is merely to leave'the soul free and disencumbered and at rest from all knowledge and thought, troubling not themselves, in that state, about what they shall think or meditate, but Contenting themselves with no more than a peaceful and loving a~tentiveness toward God, and in being without anxiety', without the ability and without desire to .have experience of Him or to perceive Him . "This is the first and principal benefit caused by this arid and dark night of contemplation: the knowledge of oneself and of one's misery . And the smallness of this self-satis-faction, together with the soul's affliction at not serving God, is considered and esteemed by God as greater than all the con-solations which the soul formerly experienced and the works which it wrought, however great they were, inasmuch as they were the occasion of many imperfections and ignorances." For fear we should consider ourselves aimost at our jour-ney's end, St. John disillusions us gently but firmly, tells the nature of the dark night of the spirit through ~ which we must grope, its effects, and its distinctive characteristic, and at last reveals to us th~ consummation of our~ quest. 2O7 SISTER MARY ST. ROSE Review for Religious "These proficients have two kinds of imperfection: the one kind is habitual; the other actual. The habitual imperfec-tions are the imperfect habits and affections which tfave re-mained all the time in the spirit, and are like roots, to which the purgation of sense has been unable to penetrate. The dif-ference between the purgation of these and that of this other kind is the difference between the root and the branch, or be-tween the removing of a stain which is fresh and one which is old and of long standing. For, as we said, the purgation of sense is only the entrance and beginning of contemplation leading to the purgation of the spirit, which, as we have like-wise said, serves rather to accommodate sense to spirit than to unite spirit with God. But there still remain in the spirit the stains of the old man, although the. spirit thinks not that this is so, neither can it perceive them; if these stains be iaot re-moved with the soap and strong lye of the purgation of this night, the spirit will be unable to come to the purity of divine union . "This dark night is an inflowing of God into the soul, which purges it from its ignorances and imperfections, habitual, natural, and spiritual, and which is called by contemplatives in-fused contemplation, or mystical theology. Herein God secretly teaches the soul and instructs it in perfection of love, Without its doing anything, or understanding of what manner .is this infused contemplation . "And when the "soul is indeed assailed by this divine light, its pain, which results from its impurity, is immense; because, when this pur~ light assails' the soul, in order to expel its im-purity, the soul feels itself to be so impure and miserable that it believes God to be against it, and thinks that it has set itself up against God . The second Way in which the soul suffers pain is by reason of its weakness . . . for sense and spirit,-as if beneath some immense and dark load, are in such great .pain and agony th. at the soul would find advantage and relief in 208 July, 1957 ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS death . The third kind of suffering .~. results from the fact that two other extremes meet here in one, namely, the Divine and the human . As a ~result of this, the soul feels itself to be perishing and melting away, in the presence and sight of its miseries, by a cruel spiritual death . The fourth kind of pain is caused in the soul by another excellence of this dark contemplation, which .is its majesty and greatness, from which arises in the soul a consciousness of the other extreme which is in itself, namely, that of the deepest poverty and wretchedness: this is one of the "chiefest pains that it suffers in this purgation . "For spiritual things in the soul have this characteristic, when they are most purely spirit.ual, that, when they are trials, the soul believes that it will never escape from them, ~and that all ~its blessings are ndw over, as has been seen in the passages quoted; and when they are spiritual blessings, the soul believes in the same way that its troubles are now ove.r, and that bless-ings will never fail it . "In the midst of these dark afflictions, the soul feels itself to be keenly and acutdy wounded in strong divine love, and to havea certain realization and foretaste of God . It some-times comes to pass that this mystical and loving theology, as well as enkindling the will, strikes and illumines the other faculty also--that of the understanding--with a certain divine light and k-fiowledge, so delectably and delicately that it aids the will to conceive a marvelous fervor, and, without any action of its own, there burns in it this divine fire of love, in living flames, so that it now appears to the soul a living fire by reason of the living understanding which is given to it . Thus the pres-ence of God is felt, now after one manner, now after another. ¯ . . That dark love cleaves to the soul, causing it a most watch-ful care and an inward solicitude concerning that which it must do, or must not do, for His sake, in order to please Him. It will consider and ask itself a thousand times if it has given Him 209 SISTER MARY ST. ROSE cause to be offended; and all this it will do with much greater care and solicitude than before . For here all the desires and energies and faculties of the soul are recollected from all things else, and its effort and strength are employed in pleasing God alone . After this manner, b'y this mystical theology and secret love, the soul continues to rise above all things .and above itself, and to mount upward to God. For love is like fire, which ever rises upward with the desire to be absorbed in the center of its sphere." But prose is a poor vehicle now. Even St. John stops trying to finish the Dark Niyht. To the Spiritual Canticle or the Living Flame of Love we must turn for the epitha-lamium of God. and the soul: "My love is as the hills, The lonely valleys clad with forest trees, The rushing, sounding rills, Strange isles in distant seas, Lover-like whisperings, murmurs of the breeze. "My love is hush-of-night, Is dawn's first breathings in the heaven above, Still music veiled from sight, Calm that can echoes move, The feast that brings new strdngthmthe feast of love." and "O living flame of love That, burning, dost assail My inmost soul with tenderness untold, Since thou dost freely move Deign to consume the veil Which sunders this sweet converse that we hold." Revit:alizing Our Spiri!:ual Lit:e I-larold I::. Cohen, S.J. WE MUST be struck, at least occasionally, by the difference between ourselves and what our religious institutes would have us be, and by the difference between ourselves and those of our brothers in Christ whom the Church holds up as models of sanctity, and finally, by the difference in the fruit produced by our saints and that produced by ourselves. Per-haps in our more serious moments we ask ourselves the reason for this. We may answer that God gives more grace to some than to others and let it go at that. But then we are not being honest with ourselves, for whatever the measure of God's grace, our own correspondence to that grace can give us serious concern. The answer is not difficult to state--it is difficult to admit. The reason we lack sanctity and fruitfulness in the apostolate is that we are not united with God. We are not the men of prayer, recollection, and study,that God wants us to be. We try to ser~,e two masters, God and the world. We turn, as if mag-netized, to the distraction of-TV, radio, sports, movies, and magazines--and we have to admit that these things withdraw us from silence and recollection in God. We all know, of course, that these things are not only not sinful, but a moderate use of them is helpful to us. But in seeking a solution to our own-lack of high spirituality and consequent weak apostolate, we certainly should give serious consideration to just how moderately we use them. For if we find that instead of being men of faith who have cut ourselves away from creatures by poverty and. self-denial, exuding the fragrance of Christ to all we come in contact with, we are men given over to our own ease and comfort, with more interest in picture magazines than hungry, poorly housed human beings; that we who profess as our purpos~ in life the salvation of souls are more interested in watching a 211 HAROLD F. COHEN Review for Religious game on TV than hearing confessions, more interested in cock-tail parties than visiting the sick~if we find these thi,ngs, we must admit that we lack .moderation in our use of legitimate diversions, and that now, no longer, a means, they have become an end in themselves. Once we realize that we are not united with Goc~, and that at least one of the causes is our effusio ad exteriora, we might again ask ourselves, "Why?" Have we lost the secret of sanc-tity of the saints? Or are we living in an age that necessar!ly precludes doing great things for Christ? Certainly we started off seeking union with God in the beginning of our religious life--the trouble is that having learned our lessons in the noviti-ate, we have let our vivid ideals grow dull with the passage of time. A new set of ideals has replaced them subconsciously, the ideal of the "good" priest or religious: faithful (more or less) to spiritual exercises, at least in the beginriing of his change-over, he none the less .frequently enjoys himself at the entertainments of externs; and he over-emphasizes the "breaks" affor_ded by his institute, freely partaking of '~the good things of this world," push-ing far to the back of his mind the crucified Christ. " Of course he loves Christ; he can even tolerate the idea of a crucified Master, but His cross is fast becoming to him, as to the world of which he is a part, something hard to understand. Nights are not a time of prayer, study, and apostolic labo~, but for "neces~'ary" relaxation. The hungry souls waiting for the bread he alone can give them are still waiting. _ How can we get back to our novitiate ideals of prayer, self-sacrifice, and' hard work for God? How can we get back to them in a practical way? Here a litany of meang opens before us. I will suggest only one, but one that'is the means of re-vitalizing our spiritual life. It is a return to serious prayer. "He who abides in Me and I in him, he it is that b:ears much fruit. For without Me you can do nothing" (John 15:4). If we daily share the intimacy of our divine Friend, His pres-ence can't help but have its effect on us. But if we are to 212 July, 1957 REVITALIZING OUR SPIRITUAL LIFE share this,intimacy, our prayer must be serious¯ We often-- or perhaps less--put in our daily time of prayer; yet few would dare call themselves men of prayer. We are not making con-tact. The vitalizing grace of the Vine is not flowing into the ¯ branches, and consequently we bear little fruit. The juncture, the point of union, is closed up. To establish the contact with Christ. our thirsting souls need, we have to make prayer our primary interest. Once we truly are making a serious effort in prayer, God will show us what changes have to be made in our lives, and He will give us the grace to make them. When we respond to these graces, our prayer takes on its deepest meaning: "Thy will be done," His will for our own shedding of self to put on the generosity of Christ, to put afide comforts to dedicate ourselves to the salvation of the souls He died for. Once. we are in this state of self-dedication, God usually eases with His consolations the difficulties of prayer. For after all, as Father Boylan s6 well points out in his Difficulties in Mental Prayer, our main difficulty in prayer is that we are afraid to come face to face with God because we are not doing His will in some way or another. For our prayer to reach this full flowering, we have to do the spade work of daily effort. And here is the crisis, for our wills are weak. It is.a decision we must all make--to give up the pleasures of long nights to get up in the morning and down on our knees--or to live in a lethargy that can look only with concern to the day of accounting before the divine Shepherd, who sees His sheep dying of hunger because we would not feed them. Once the decision to pray seriously is made, we have to take the means to make our decision effec-tive: the preparation of points the night before, and hardest of all, the excluding of all the distracting thoughts that crowd into our minds at night and in the morning. (With regard to points, choosing a good book is a problem; the Gospels; the Psalms, and the Imitation are good stand-bys. New matter 213 HAROLD F., COHEN isn't necessary every day, for the same over a period of time often supplies all the spiritual food we need. Sometimes a book isn't at all necessary for determining the actual matter of the meditation, "for we simply can jot down a few thoughts that occur to us and fill in the remaining time by reading.) " In the moining we have to have the grim determination to stick at it despite the difficulty and not to consent to any dis-tractions. The final point is a check-up afterwards to see how it has gone, why thdse points helped, why I did or didn't do well, etc. We often neglect this; so it is good to recall that those wiser than we have suggested--or prescribed--it and that it is the means to progress in prayer. Before concluding, I would like to make three pertinent remarks. (1) A daily reading from the Gospels, if only one or two incidents, at the beginning of spiritual reading or points will be helpful in bringing about contact in prayer, bringing before us as it does Jesus in all His attractiveness. (2) There is no subject like the Passion of Christ to stir up our love and gratitude and zeal. (3) Some make no progress in prayer be-cause they have gotten all they can out of meditation and affective prayer. They need that simpler form of prayer, called by spiritual writers the prayer of simplicity. This prayer is described by Tanquerey in The Spiritual Life, and more at length by Lehodey, o.C.S.O., in Tke I~ays of Prayer and Pou-lain, s.J., in Tke Graces of Interior Prayer. The time has come" for the~e souls to slow down their rowing and start letting out their sails. To conclude, then, our weak interior life and poor apos-tolate are~ due mainly to a lack of serious prayer. Once we begin to pray in earnest and grow in friendship with Christ, He will give us the graces to lead a life united to Him and to pass on our love and enthusiasm to others. It is one of the promises of His Heart to make tepid souls fervent. What better time to remind Him of His promise than in our daily prayer? 214 Depart:ure From Religion on t:he I::xpira!:ion ot: a Temporary Prot:esslon ,Joseph F. Galleh, S.,J. 1. Definition. On the expiration of any temporary profession, e. g., of one, two, or three years, a religious is free to leave his institute; and the institute, for just and reasonable causes, may exclude the religious from making any further profession, i. e., a renewal of temporary vows or perpetual profession. An exclu-sion is not a dismissal. Dismissal in canon law is verified only by an expulsion during the. time of the vows. An exclusion is an expulsion at the expiration of the vows. Therefore, the canoni-ca~ norms on dismissal do not apply to an exclusion. In its nature, an exclusion is not so much an expulsion of a member but rather a refusal to admit to further profession and a judgment and decision that a subject in a probationary period of the reli-gious life does not possess a vocation at least for the particular institute) 2. Leaving. The religious has no canonical or moral obligation to remain. The code explicitly asserts his canonical freedom to leave (cc. 575, § I; 637). He is also morally free to leave, since no law of God commands him to remain in a life of counsel on the expiration of his vows. A moral obligation would arise only accidentally and in cases that are not very practical, i. e., if one had vowed to remain in religion or intended to leave because of a sinful motive.: Furthermore, in practically all these cases there would be a sufficient reason for a dispe~nsation or commutation of the private vow; find in the instance of the 1Cl¢. Bastien, Directoire Canonique, n. 607, 1-2; Goyeneche, De Religiosis, 194, note 10; D'Arnbrosio, /ll~ollinaris, 4-1931-124. zCf. Goyeneche, Commentarium Pro Religiosis, 5-1924-86-93; Schaefer, De Religidsis, n. 1519; Geser, Canon Law Governing Communities o/ Sisters, n. 1072. 215 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review for Religion, s sinful motive, there would rarely be lacking also morally good and, at least in some cases, even compelling motives for such a religious to leave. The religious is not obliged to obt~iin the consent or approval of his superior of his intention to leave, but prudence would practically always demand that he consult his superiors or a prudent confessor concerning so important a decision. 3. Exclusion. (a) Competent superior. Canon 637 leaves to the constitutions the determination of the superior competent for exclusion. The constitutions of lay congregations .usually assign this right to the superior general with the consultive vote of his council, but a few demand the deliberative vote. A small number of constitutions give this power to the provincial or higher superiors either alone or with the consultive or, less fresluently, the deliberative vote of the council. If the consti-tutions contain no determination, the competent higher superior is the one who has the right to admit to the profession from which the religious is excluded. Since exclusion is merely the denial or correlative of admission to profession and admission require~ at least a consultive vote (c. 575, ~ 2), it would be more in conformity with the code for this higher superior to consult his council. Such consultation is not strictly obligatory, since canon 637 treats exclusion separately from admission and does not .impose any vote of a council. The same principle applies in a monastery of nuns to the superioress and the vote of her council or chapter when the matter of exclusion is not determined in the constitutions. No particular process is prescribed by the code for the decision oi~ exclusion. Since exclusion is merely the .negation of admission to profession, it is part .of the delibera-tions or decision on admissibn to the profession in question. A few authors state the eviden~ fact that canon 637 does not reserve exclusion to a higher superior and conclude that the constitu-tions may.assign this right to a local superior. Howev.er, this is not the practice of constitutions nor does it seem to be in con-formity with the evident nature of an exclusion, which is a re- 216 July, 1957 DEPARTURE AFTER TEMPORARY PROFESSION fusal of admission. Canon law reserves admission to profession to higher superiors (c. 543). (b) Sufficient reasons for exclusion. Evidently the sufficient reasons are those that render the, subject either certainly finsuited or only dubiously suited for admission to the profession in. ques-tion. It is permissible but not obligatory to grant a renewal or prolongation of. temporary vows in the latter case provided there is solid hope that certain suitability will be attained by the renewal or prolongation. The doctrine of many authors that the judg-ment of the sufficiency of the reasons for exclusibn is left to the conscience of the competent higher supe. rior is evident from the fact and law that the judgment of the suitability for a profession appertains to the competent higher superior (c. 543). The code expresses this principle of suitability in canon 637 by demanding merely just and reasonable, not serious'or grave, reasons for an exclfision. In judging the sufficieficy of the ~easons, the general good of the institute is to be considered above" that of" ~he indi-vidual. The following are the particular sufficient reasons usually listed by authors by way of example: the lack of a religious vocation or of a firm and constant vocation; serious doubts as to the general suitability of the subjecf for the religious life; inepti-tui: ie for the work of the institute, even if fully known to ~uperiors before profession, whether the ineptitude arises from~ a lack of general ability, intelligence, ol appl;c.ation, from ~i defect of pru-dent jtidgment, laziness, negligerice; or from culpable or inculp-able causes; if it is. foreseen'that th~ subject will be only a' very mediocre religious, will be tepid, careless in the spiritual life, or worldly; those who are habitually negligenh careless, or tepid in religious observance, even though not in gerious matters, and wh6 have refused to correct their conduct; those who cause serious discord in the community; those who will find community life very. difficult and will make it difficult for others; and when it-is foreseen that the subject will be rather harmful than ~usefu! to the institute. An exclusion without a just and reasonable motive 2~17 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review for Religious is a sin against charity and the law of the Church but it is not unjust nor invalid. In the very few institutes that have only temporary vows or in which the prescribed temporary profession is longer than six years, it is the more probable and common opinion that after more than six years in temporary vows merely just and reason-able causes do not suffice for exclusion but serious and' culpable reasons joined with incorrigibility are necessary. The argu. ments for this opinion are that canon 642, § 2, appears to liken a tem-~ porary profession beyond six years to perpetual vows and that it seems inequitable to exclude one who has been so long in religion for merely just and reasonable causes.3 (c) Ill Health. Ill health is a sufficient motive for exclusion only if it is proved with certainty that it had been contracted and fraudulently concealed or dissimulated before the first profession of temporary vows (c. 637). The same principle is true of dismissal (c. 647, § 2, 2°). Ill health is therefore not a sufficient motive for exclusion if it was contracted after the first profes-' sion or if it was contracted before this profession but was then known to the superior or, if unknown, was not fraudulently con-cealed or dissimulated before the first profession. The fraud must be proved with certainty. It is sufficient that the fraud have been committed by anyone who had the obligation of mani-esting th~ illness, i. e., the religious, his parents, or guardians.4 Lack of ability for the duties of the institute is not a suffi-cient reason for exclusion if it is the result of an infirmity that was not fraudulently concealed or dissimulated before first profes-sion, since What is true of sickness is also to be affirmed o.f the consequences of sickness. Such a religious may be counselled and 3D'Ambrosio, 05. cit., "4-1931-124-28; Vermeersch-Creusen, l!l~itome luri~ Canonici, I, n. 795; Creusen, Religious Men and IVomen in the Code n. 331, 2; Jombart, Tra",t "e de Dro"*t Canot*'*que, I, n. 903, 6; Jone,. Commenta"'r m" m *n C'od*- cem luris Canonici, I~ n. 560; Schaefer, 01b. cit., n. 1523; Sipos, En~t~iridion luris Canonici, 333. 4 Goyeneche, De Religiosis, 194. 218 ~ July, 1957 DEPARTURE AFTER TEMPORARY PROFESSION persuaded to leave religibr[ ~oluntarily 0~'~o transfer to the class of lay brother or sister. The principle with regard to ill health is true also of ail-ments such as hysteria and neurasthenia. Superiors, without using constraint, may counsel and persuade all such persons t6 leave religion voluntarily) If they will not leave, their ailment and conduct can constitute a serious problem. If their improper or strange conduct certainly or probably has its source in the ail-ment, they may not be excluded; if the malady is certainly only a pretext for such conduct, they may be excluded. Frequently at least, they should be taken to a specialist and may be sent to an institution for the care of such patients. The case may be presented with all its circumstances to the Sacred Congregation of Religious.6 These difficult cases make evident the care and decisiveness superiors should exercise in admission to the pos-tulanc); and noviceship and in dismissing unsuitable subjects dur-ing these periods of probation. The master of novices should promptly consult higher superiors concerning even probable man-ifestations of such conc~mons. Since canon 637 permits an exclusion for ill health only if it was fraudulently concealed before first profession, a novice may not be admitted to temporary profession as an experiment and on the condition that he will be excluded at the end of tem-porary vows if his health does not improve.6 (d) Insanity. The Sacred Congregation of Religious replied on February 5, 1925, that a religious could not be excluded from an institute because of habitual and complete insanity (total lack of use of reason), whether temporary (curable) or perpetual 5 Cf. Berutti, De Religiosis, 325. o Cf. Jombart, Revue des Communaute's Reli#ieuses, 5-1929-200-201; Bastien, o1~. cit., n. 631, 6. ~ Cf. Bastien, 0~. cir., 450, note ~. SCreusen, 0p. cir., n. 331, 1; Jombart, Trait[de Droit Canonique, I, n. 903, 5; Coronata, lnstitutiones luris Canonici, I, 838, note 5; Palombo, De Dimissione Religiosorum, 202, Bastien, o~. cir., n. 607, 5; Jone, olb. cir., I, 561; Goyeneche, Quaestiones Canonicae, II, 123-24. 219 JOSEPH F, GALLEN Review for Religious (incurable), contracted after first temporary profession.:' Evi-dently such a religious may not be admitted to a renewal of tem-porary vows or to perpetual p'rofession during the tim~ of his insanity, since he is incapable of a human act. He must be re-tained by the institute and therefore may not be sent away either by exclusion or dismissal. He remains in the same juridical con-dition as at the time he lost his mind; and consequently he has the same rights and the instiLute has the same obligations to him as to any professed of temporary vows. He may be sent to an institution and even to his own family, if the family freely asks or accepts his care. He is still a member of the institute, and the expenses of his support and care are to be borne by the institute unless the family freely accepts them. An absence of more than six months outside any house of the institute do~s not demand the permission of the Holy See in such a case J" If he recovers and is found suitable, he is to be admitted to further profession. Prudence would, practically always demand a pro-longation of temporary vows, and ordinarily such a person is to be advised to leave the institute for his own goodJ~ It is more probable that the time of the temporary profession continues to run during the insanity. From the reply of the Sacred Congre-gation, however, it is also probable that the time of such profes-sion is suspend.ed during the insanity. Even in the former opin-ion, the subject is still a member of the institute and must be retained when the time of the vows has expired. 4. Manifestation of reasons. The religious is to be informed ot~ his exclusion in due time, orally or in writing, by the com-petent higher superior, either personally or through another. The latter should be at least a local superior. Kindness is to be shown to the excluded religious. The code does not oblige the compe- '~ B.ouscaren, Canon La~" Digest, I, 309-10. ¯ ~o gEVtEW FOg gEt.tGIOUS, November, 1956, 290-91. ~ Cf. Maroto, Commentarium Pro Religiosis, 6-1925-177-79; Goyeneche, Quaes-tiones Canonicae, I, 430-31; Coronata, op. cit., I, n. 639; Regatillo-Zalba, De Statibus Particularibus, n. 25 I. 220 July, 1957 DEPARTURE AFTER TEMPORARY PROFESSION tent supdrior to manifdst "tl~e.reasons for ~the exclusion to the religious. This may be done, and some authors counsel it that the religious may institute a recourse to a higher superior or the Holy See if he chooses to do so. The reasons should always be drawn up completely and accurately and retained in the files of the institute so that a replK may be given in the event of a recourse, .par'ticularly of one to the Holy See. 5. Recourse. The code says nothing about a recourse against an exclusion. The religious may institute a recourse to a higher superior or the Sacred Congregation of Religious simply because a religious may always do this against an action of a lower author-ity that he believes to be unreasonable or unjustified. There is no special right either from canon law or the nature of the matter of making a recourse against an exclusion. A recourse to the Sacred Congregation has very little hope.of, success except in the case of a clearly illeg'al exclusion,r' The Holy See evidently knows that by canon law (c. 54J) the competent superior is the judge of the suitabiliW of a subject for profession and conse- .quently of.the sufficiency of the motives for exclusion from pro-fession. It" is equally clear that motives that may not appear sufficient in. themselves are often such when viewed as a whole and joined with observation of the .subje~t. A recourse does not suspend ttie effect of the exclusion. The religious should leave the institfite and put ~ff the religious habit. He may be per-mitted to r~main in a: house of the institute and to wear the habit until i~he recourse is definitively settled. 6. Effects of a voluntary departure and of exclusion. If a re-ligious voluntarily leaves or is excluded at the expiration of a temporary profession, the vows cease. There is no need of a dis-pensation from the vows. The other effects in either case are the same as in secularization, which were explained in the RE'CIF~W FOR RELIGIOUS, September, 1956, 233-36. r2Bastien, op. tit., n. 607, 3; Jombart, Re¢aur des Communaute's Reliyieuses, 5-1929-164. 221 JOSEPH F, GALLEN Review for Religious 7. Moment at which the religious fully departs. The i,mportance of the answer to .this question is that it determines the exact mo-ment in which the religious is freed of his vows, ceases to be a religious, is bound by the diriment impediment of a previous religious profession, and rendered incapable of valid admission to the noviceship of any institute without a dispensation from the Holy See (c. 542, 1°). After such an admission, a noviceship and temporary profession must be made for the full time pre-scribed by the constitutions of the particular institute. The religious fully departs at the moment in which his external and absolute declaration of not making a further profession or the external and absolute declaration of the competent superior of not admitting him to a further profession is joined with the expiration of temporary vows.~3 There are two probable opinions on the moment of the expiration of temporary vows, caused by conflicting interpreta-tions of canon 34, § 3, 5; but either of these opinions may be followed. In the first opinion, the vows expire at any moment on the anniversary day when such a declaration is made or, if made .previously, has not been retracted: Therefore,. if the vows were made for a year, Augut 15, 1956-August 15, 1957, and such a declaration was previously made, the vows expire at midnight of August 14-15, 1957. In this opinion, the sub-ject may depart from the institute at any hour on the anniversary day, i. e., August 15, 1957. If no such declaration has been made, the vows expire at midnight of August 15-16, 1957.14 A second opinion maintains that the vows, when they are not renewed or perpetual profession is not made, never expire before midnight of the anniversary day, i. e., August 15-16, 1957. In this opinion, the subject may depart from the institute at any hour on the day after the anniversary day, i. e., August 16, 1957.1'~ la Cf. Abbo-Hannan, The Sacred Canons, I; 656; Beste, lntroductio in Codicem, 431; Cervia, De Proiessione Religiosa, 110; Coronata, op, cir., I, r~. 639; Goy-eneche, De Reli#iosis, 193; Jone, o,~. cir., I, 562; Schaefer, o,~. clt., nn. 1519-20; Regatillo-Zalba, o/~. cit., n. 250. 14 Cf. Vermeersch-Creusen. o~0. cir., I, n. 728, and the authors there cited. ~sCf. Michiels, Normae Generales Juris Canonici, II, 269, and the authors 222 July, 1957 DEPARTURE AFTER TEMPORARY PROFESSION Neither opinion demands tha't the religiotis have actually departed from the institute. In the rare absence of an explicit declaration, a departure from the institute would constitute an implicit declara-tion not to make a further profession. An external and absolute declaration is necessary. If the religious does not renew his vows or make perpetual profession for some time after the expiration, e. g., because of doubts about his vocation or illness, and later wishes to make profession, he may be admitted to the profession. A merely interior, doubtful, or hesitant declaration of not making or excluding from profession does not suffice. The absolute declaration of not making or of excluding from profession may be revoked before the vows have cergainly expired, i. e., at midnight of the anniversary day, August 15-16 in the example given ,above. Neither declaration may be revoked after the ~iows have certainly expired, even if the religious has not as yet left the institute. 8. Departure before expiration. If serious reasons so demand, superiors may permit a religious to leave a day or two before the. expiration of his vows ~rovided he puts off the religious habit and intends to observe his vows until the anni,~ersary day. Such a reason is the difficulty or embarrassment his .presence would cause as profession proximately approaches or on the profession day.~ If so required by urgent reasons, superiors, in virtue of canon 606, § 2, may permit an earlier departure, e. g., two or three weeks. If a much earlier departure is judged necessary, application should be made for an indult of secularization. FONTI VIVE In March, 1957, Fonti Vive, a quarterly Review of Passion Spir-ituality, began its third year of publication in Caravate (Varese), Italy. The varied articles on theological, liturgical, biblical, and mystical sub-jects seek to promote the understanding, contemplation, and the living out in our lives of Christ's Passion. Those readers of gEVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS who are able to read Italian will be interested in this new publication devoted to Passion spirituality. The editor is Reverend Costante Brovetto, C.P., S.T.D. .there cited. ~6 Creusen, op. cir., n. 331, 3. 223 Survey ot: Roman Document:s R. F. SmiEh, S.J. IN THIS article a survey will be given of those docu-ments which appeared in the Acta Al~Ostolicae ,Sedis (AAS) from January 1, 1957, to March 31, 1957. It should be noted that all page references in the present article are to the 1957 AAS (volume 49}, even when th~o document discussed may bear a date from 1956. Christmas Message of 1956 The Holy Father's Christmas message of 1956 (AAS, pp. 5-22) was easily the outstanding doclament published, in AAS during the period surveyed. The document is a long one of some seven thousand words; it is interesting to note that a large part of the message was not actually spoken b~; the Holy Fafher on Christmas Eve, but was merely published in the official text of the message. In the introduction to his message the Holy Father empha-sizes the contradictidn to be found in the twentieth century: On the one hand there is the confident hope, of modern man that he, as author of the second technical revolution~ c~n bring a life of fullness and plenty to all; and on the other hand there is the bitter fact of the long, long years of grief, ruiri, and fear that the modern world has just endured. His Holiness then begins the first of the three parts into which his message 'is divided by remarking't~hat' the above, con-tradiction can be resolved only by a knowledge and acceptance of human reality in all its completeness. From the crib of Bethlehem man can learn the origins/1 goodness and power given to him in paradise; but he also learns the weakness of human nature that was first manifested in the sin of Adam and Eve and that then became the heritage of all later generations. 22_4 ROMAN DOCUMENTS We know, continues the Vicar of Christ, that man's co.ntrol over nature was given him for the benefit, not the endangering, of human society; original sin has not removed man's dominion 6ver the world, but only security in the exercise of that domin-ion. Neither has original sin destroyed man's capacity to shape history, though it is no less c.ertain that after original sin human life is a mixture of confidence and misery, of security and un-certainty, of life and death. At the crib, however, we also learn that Christ is our Redeemer, come to restore man to his divine sonship and to bestow the grace whereby the disorder produced by original sin and by later personal sins can be overcome at least in the interior of man, if not always exteriorly. The Christian then possesses all the elements necessary to overcome the contra-diction of the twentieth cent~ury in his interior life; this, how-ever, gives him no right to excuse himself from contributing to the external solution of .that contradiction. To make such a contribution, the Pontiff adds, the Chris-tian must have a Clear idea of what modern man thinks of sin. Because modern man does not ddmit sin, he attributes the per-verse inclinations of man to a kind of sickness and functional weakness which of themselves are curable. Modern man~the~ awaits the day when a perfecting of human knowledge will allow him to heal all such moral sicknesses. This technological solution to the problem of moral evil completely overlooks the truth that man is a subject of free action--good or bad--and leads to innumerable evil results: softness in education; indul-gence to crime; aversion to even just punishment; the a~tempt to solve social problems not through the consciende and respon-sibility of individuals, but by the' attainment of a greater knowl-edge of the mechanics of social structures. In the second part of his message Piu~ XII says that one of. the bases of the twentiet,h-century[ contradiction onsists in the hope to create a completely_ new society without reference to 225 R. F. SMITH Review for Religious the history that has shaped man. This attitude is the 'result of that technological realism which admits no limits to human power, subjects every reality to a method of technique, and places unlimited confidence in technological know-how. For technological man, the entire world is but a laboratory wherein he treats social life like a machine which he dismantles and then attempts to reconstruct according to his own pre-conceived pattern. It is here that technological man encounters the insur-mountable obstacle of history. For social life has been created slowly through the contributions of many generations; and it is only upon those contributions that new progress can be built. The dynamics of reform must always respect the traditions of society which safeguard human security without destroying the free and personal action of any part of society. The third part of the Christmas message is the one that most drew the world's attention to the Pope's speech. Thd Holy .Father begins this part by noting that while liberty, per-sonal responsibility, social order, and genuine progress are truly human values, they are in their origin religious and divine values. This religious foundation, however, is today being replaced by economic and political explanations which deny all absolute values. The Holy Father then turns to consider l~ractical ways by which world peace can be achieved. First of all, he says, it is necessary that all men of good will unite together against their common enemy who seeks to impose on all peoples an intolerable form of life. Today's situation, says the Vicar of Christ, is clear to all. There can no longer be any doubts about the purposes and methods that lie behind armed tanks, when.these crash through border frontiers and force a people into a life they abhor. No doubt of purposes, or methods can remain, when possibilities of mediation and negotiation a~e dis-regarded and threats are made to use atomic power for the gaining of specific demands, whether or not these demands are justified. 226- July, 1957 ROMAN DOCUMENTS In the present circumstances it is ~ossible to have the case where, after all efforts to avoid it have been useless, war for the purpose of effective self-defense and with the hope of favorable results cannot be considered as illicit. Hence, if in a case of extreme need a. government chosen by free elections decides on defensive precautions and puts into execution the means necessary for. this, such an action is not immoral; and a Catholic citizen cannot appeal to his own conscience to refuse his services or to fail in the duties assigned by law. The Pontiff then considers the United Nations, the first time that he has spoken of this organization at great length. The United Nations, he remarks, intends to secure absolute values in the co-existence of peoples. Still, the recent past has shown that the false realism of self-interest and power has influ-enced not a few of the members of the United Nations, so that cases of destroying the peace have been treated quite differ-ently. It is reasonable to expect that the authority of the United Nations should be felt, at least through its observers, in all those places where"the essential values of man are in extreme danger. It is desirable that nations who refuse the admission of observers and thereby show that their. concept of national sovereignty threatens the very foundations of the United Na-tions should not be permitted the exercise of their rights as members of that organization. Moreover, the United Nations should have the right and the power to prevent every military intervention of one nation into another and to assume through a sufficient police force the safeguarding of order in a nation so threatened. The Holy Father adds that he refers to these defects only because he wishes to strengthen the authority of the United Nations, for i,t is only through such an organization' that the promise to reduce armaments and to renounce the production and use of certain kinds of weapons can be exchanged between nations ~lnder a strict obligation of international law. Like- 227 R. F. SMITH Review for Religion,s wise, only the United Nations can demand the observance of this obligation by hssuming effective control of the armaments of all nations through a systematic and permanent p'rogram of aerial observation. The Holy Father then adds that the acceptance of such armament control is the crucial point of today; in accepting such control, each nation of the world will manifest the sincerity of its will for peace. Pain, Anesthesia, and the Christian On February 24, 1957 (AAS, pp. 129-47), the Holy Father delivered a long allocution in reply to three questions concerning anesthesia which had been submitted td him by the ninth National Congress of the Italian Society of Anesthesi-ology. After an introduction in which the Holy Father gives an appreciative statement of the importance of the anesthetist in modern surgery and describes the history of anesthesia in ¯ modern times, the Pontiff takes up the first question asked of him: Is there a general moral obligation to refuse anesthetics and to accept physical pain in the spirit of faith? Putting aside the case where a Christian must endure pain rather than offend God, Pius XII points out that there is no obligation to accept all suffering and to refuse the use of anesthesia; for man, even after the fall, has the right to dominate the forces of nature and to use all its resources to avoid or. suppress physical pain. On the other hand, for the Christian, suffering is not some-thing merely negative but is associated with the highest religious and moral values; hence, suffering can be willed and sought for even when there is no moral obligation to do so. Moreover, a Christian is bound to mortify his body and to purify himself interiorly; to the extent that this cannot be achieved without physical pain, to that extent the Christian must accept such pain. Outside of that case, hbwever, it cannot .be said that a Christian has a strict obligation to accept pain. The Vicar of Christ then takes up the question from the viewpoint of Christian perfection: Should a Christian accept 228 ROMAN DOCUMENTS physical pain in order that h~ may not put himself in contradic-tion to the ideal proposed to him by his faith? While it is true, the Holy Father replies, that a Christian experiences the desire to accept and even to seek physical' pain in order to participate the more closely in the Passion of Christ, still it is necessary to interpret this tendency in a correct way. When a Christian, day after day, from mo.rning till night, fulfills the duties of his state in life and of his profession, when he keeps the commandments of God and of men, when he prays, loves his neighbor, accepts without murmuring what God sends him, then his life is surely under the sign of the cross, whether physical suffering be present or not, and whether he endures such suf-fering or avoids it by licit means. The acceptance of physical suffering is only one way, among many, of manifesting what is essential: the will to love and serve God in all things. His Holiness then considers the reasons which permit the avoidance of physical pain. All these reasons, he says, can be reduced to a single general principle: pain prevents the attain-ment of higher goods and interests. Pain may be better for a given person in a given set of circumstances; but, generally speaking, the losses which pain provokes force men to defend themselves against it. A Christian will use pain as a stimulant in his ascent towards God, but the application of this principle will always be a personal matter to be decided by the rules of Christian prudence and with the help of an experienced director of souls. In conclusion~ the Holy Father sums up his. answer to the first question under three headings: (1) Anesthesiology in its fundamental principles is not morally wrong, for it seeks to combat forces which from many points of view produce evil effects and prevent greater goods. (2) The physician who accepts anesthesiology is in contradiction neither with the nat-ural moral order nor with the specifically Christian ideal, for hd is seeking, as God Himself orders in Genesis 1:28, to submit 229 R. F. SMITH Review for Religious pain to the power of man. (3) The patient who wishes to avoid or lessen pain can, without disquiet to his conscience, use the means found by this science. Particular circumstances may im-pose another line of conduct; but the Christian ideal of renuncia-tion does not constitute an obstacle to the use of anesthesia, for that ideal can be fulfilled in other ways. The second question submitted to the Holy Father was this: Is the privation or diminution of consciousness and of the use of mail's higher faculties that is induced by narcotics com-patible with the spirit of the Gospel? In other words, does the example of Christ in abstaining from the wine offered Him before the crucifixion mean that a Christian may not accept total or partial loss of consciousness? The Pope begins by reflecting that a human being is bound to conform his actions to the requirements of the moral order; this, however, can be done only by the use of his higher faculties. This is the reason why there is a moral obli-gation not to deprive oneself of consciousness unless there is a true necessity for such deprivation. Hence, one cannot inter-fere with or suppress consciousness merely for the sake of obtaining pleasant sensations and a certain kind of euphoria. In the case of surgery, the Pontiff points out, what the surgeon primarily wishes to secure is the suppression of painful sensation, not of consciousness. Violent pain can easily provoke involuntary and reflex actions which are capable of producing undesirable complications and even fatal cardiac difficulties. The preservation then of psychic and organic equilibrium constitutes for the surgeon and the patient an important objective which only narcosis can effect. In concluding his reflections on the second question asked him, the Holy Father says that from the action of Christ on Calvary it follows that a 'man ought to accept and drink the chalice of pain whenever God desires it. But it doeg not follow that God desires this whenever and wherever suffering presents 230 July, 1957 ROMAN DOCUMENTS itself to a man. Often the acceptance of guffering is not obliga-tory nor a matter of, perfection. Regularly enough there exist serious motives for easing pain and suffering. J~n such cases one can avoid pain without in any way compromising the doctrine of the Gospel. The third question proposed .to the Vicar of Christ was' composed of two parts: (1) Is the use of narcotics licit in the case of .the dying, supposing that such use is medically indi-cated? . (2) May narcotics be used in cases where the' lessening of pain will probably be accompanied by a shortening of life? In reply the Holy Father asserts fhat neither reason nor rdvelation teaches that the dying, more than others, have a moral obligation to accept pain or to refuse to avoid it. Since, how'ever, pain contributes to the expiation of personal sin and to the acquisition of greater merit, the dying have special motives for accepting pain, because their time of merit is draw-ing to a close. These motives, however, must be understood correctly. Growth in.the lo~¢e of God and abandonment to His will do not proceed from the sufferings which a person accepts, but from the intention of the will supported by grace. In the case of many dying persons this intention can be strengthened if their suffering is lessened, for pain aggravates their physical weakness and hence diminishes their moral strength, while the suppression of pain secures organic and psychic relaxation, facilitates prayer, and makes possible a more generous gift of self. If the dying consent to suffering as a means of expiation and a source of merit, then one should not force anesthesia on them. Nor is it always opportune to suggest to the dying the ascetical considerations of expiation and merit mentiQned above, and it should .always be remembered that pain may even be the occasion of new faults. With regard to depriving a dying person of consciousness, one should recall that Christ died in full consciousndss and that the Church's prayers for the dying presuppose that the dying 231 R. F. SMITH Review for Religious person is conscious. Hence, men should not of their own initiative deprive a dying person of consciousness, unless serious motives for such action are present. A dying person, continues the P~ntiff, may not permit or demand anesthesia if thereby he puts himself in a state where he cannot fulfill g~ave obligations which are incumbent on him, such as the making of a will or of going to confession. If in such cases the dying person dema~ads narcosis for which sound medical reasons are present, a physician should not administer it without first inviting the patient to fulfill his duties. If the sick person refuses to do so and continues to demand narcosis, the physician may administer it without being guilty of formal collaboration in the fault committed by the dying man. But if the dying person has performed all his duties and has received the last sacraments, if there are medical reasons for anesthesia, if the correct doses are given., if the intensity and duration of the anesthesia is carefully watched, and if the patient consents, then anesthesia is morally permissible. As to the licitness of using narcotics which will probably shorten life, the Pope warns that in such cases all direct euthan-asia, that is, the administration of narcotics to provoke or hasten death, is illicit, for such action directly disposes of human life. Bt~t when narcotic.s are administered only to avoid intolerable pain for the patient, th~ administration of narcosis is licit if it produces two distinct effects: the cessation of pain on the one hand and on the other the shortening of life. However, there must also be a reasonable proportion between the two effects and it should be ascertained if means other than the depriving of consciousness could achieve the desired result. The Holy Father concludes his allocution by recalling to the minds of his" listeners the infinitely higher and more beau-tiful life to which man is called and which i~ perceptible even here below in those into whom Christ pours His" redemptive 232 Jldy, 1957 ROMAN. DOCUMENTS love, which alone definitively triumphs over both suffering and death. Miscellaneous Matters On February 1, 1957 (AAS," pp. 91-95), the Sacred Con-gregation of Rites issued a decree introducing a number of modifications into the rites of Holy Week as. set forth in a pre-ceding decree of November 16, 1955. Several documents of early 1957 dealt with saints or with processes of canonization. By an apostolic letter (AAS, pp. 61-62) the Roman Pontiff designated the sainted martyrs Clau-dius, Nicostratus, Symphorianus, Castorius, and Simplicius the special patrons of all stone and marble workers. On January 22, 1957 (AAS, pp. 169-71), the Sacred Congregation of Rites approved the two miracles necessary for the beatification of the Venerable Servant of God Mire Marie de la Providence, foundress of the Helpersof the Holy Souls (1825-71). The same congregation (AAS, pp. 40-42; 82-85; 85-87; 88-90) also approved the introduction of the causes of the following servants of God: Mary Lichtenegger (1906-23); Stephen of Adoain, priest and professed Capuchin (1808-80); Sister Frances of the Wounds of Jesus (1860-99); and Joseph Mafianet y Vires, priest and founder of the Sons of the Holy Family and of the Daughters of the Holy Family of Nazareth (1833-1901). On January 13, 1957 (AAS, pp. 43-44) the Sacred Peni-tentiary attached an indulgence of a thousand days to a prayer for C.hristian families composed by the Holy Father on the feast of Christ the King, October 31, 1954. On February 9, 1957 (AAS, pp. 100-101), an indulgence was attached to the recita-tion of the prayer of the Holy Father for religious vocations; the text of the prayer and the details of the indulgence were given in the May, 1957, issue of REVIE~V FOR RELIGIOUS (p. 165). Several shorter addresses of the Holy Father were published in AAS during the first three months .of 1957. Speaking on 233 R. F. SMITH Review for Religious December 16, 1956 (AAS, pp. 68-72), to the second Eucha-ristic Congress of Bolivia, Plus XII said that the Eucharist is the principal means of knowing Jesus Christ, of penetrating oneself with the greatness of His mission, and of feeling the impulse to continue that mission through the priesthood. In a written message to the third general assembly of the Internal tional Federation of Catholic Youth the Pope urged the group to grow in love and' respect for the Church and to deepen their spiritual lives as the necesshry condition for any fruitful apostolate. When he spoke to the council of the International Federation of Catholic Men, the Vicar of Christ pointed out to them that the visible unity of Christians intensely living their faith is in itself a massive apostolate and a vast testimony that obliges all men of good will to salutary reflection. The Holy Father took the occasion of the Italian Mother's Day (AAS, pp. 72-76) to speak on the duty of all adults to secure for all children the possibility of a full physical and moral development. The Association of Catholic Teachers of Bavaria was told by the Pope (AAS, pp. 63-65) that it is against one of the fundamental human rights to force parents to confide their children to a school whose ~eachers are indifferent or even hostile to the religious convictions of the home. In an address to a group of teachers and students from the newly formed Catholic University in Mexico, the Holy Father remarked that their institution was to be a true Catholic University, dedicated to the training of well-educated and outstanding sons of the Church who can constitute the leaders of their country. Five documents issuing from the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Universities (AAS, pp. 95-96; 97; 97-98; 172- 73; 173-74) give continued evidence of the growth of intel-lectual activity in the Church. The documents provided for the canonical establishment of the following: a higher institute of pedagogy in the faculty of philosophy of the Pontifical Salesian Athenaeum; a philosophical institute in the faculty of 234 July, 1957 ROMAN DOCUMENTS theology of Angers; a faculty of philosophy in the Pontifical University of Salamanca; a second Catholic University in Brazil; and a faculty of medicine in the Catholic University of Peru. o A set of questions was published (AAS, pp. 150~63) for the use of military vicars in making their triennial reports to the Sacred Congregation of the Consistory. A decree and a set of norms were issued (AAS, pp. 163-69) for the establish-ingo of ecclesiastical tribunals in the Philippine Islands to deal with matrimonial cases of nullity. On January 21, 1957 (AAS, p. 77), the Holy Office answered in the affirmative the ques-tion whether affinity, contracted before baptism, is an impedi-ment for marriages entered upon after the baptism of only one of the parties. The Holy Office (AAS, p. 34) also warned ordinaries and clergy that the Institute of the Apostles of the Infinite Love and the institute Magnificat are not recognized by the Church and are forbidden to the faithful. Norms for the abso-lution of secular "and regular priests in Hungary whose nom-inations to ecclesiastical offices and benefices were not in accord-ance with canon law were published by the Sacred Congregation of the Council (AAS, pp. 38-39). Finally, .the Holy Office by a decree of January 30, 1957 (AAS, pp. 77-78), placed on the Index of Forbidden Books the two following works of Miguel de Unamuno: Del senti~niento trelgico de la vida and La agonia del Cristianisrno, at the same time warning the faithful that other books of the same author contain a a number of matters contrary to faith and morals. (Both of the books mentioned above have been translated into English under the following titles: The Tragic Sense of Life [New York: Dover, 1954]; and The Agony of Christianity [New York: Brewer, 1928]). With this the survey of AAS for January through March of 1957 is concluded; succeeding articles will continue the survey with later issues of AAS. 235 AIIocufion Concerning TerfiansFfip Pope Pius XII Introductory Note According to the the plan of St. Ignatius .Loyola for the training of his sons for the priesthood, there is a short introductory stage called the first probation in which the candidate becomes acquainted with the religious life and superiors with him. Following this intro-duction is the regular novitiate which, together with the first proba-tion, is to l~ist at least two full years and which is also called the second probation. Next come the long years of study and work in the juniorate, philosophy, regency or teaching, aad theology. St. Ignatius realized that such a course could and often would cool the fervor of the novitiate and dim the-spiritual vision of his sons. Consequently, he piescribed at the end of the whole course of forma-tion another period of spiritual discipline which was to last a tea-month year and is called the third probation or, more commonly, the tertianship. During this year the fervor of the earlier years is rekindled and the appreciation of and-attachment to the Society olc Jesus deepened by an intense study of the constitutions. In rather recent years a number of other religious communi-ties have introduced a tertianship period of varying lengths of time. Some other communities are considering whether to require a tertianship of their members. Fr., Larraona of the Sacred Con-gregation for Religious has said that "Rome views with favor the so-called 'third year of probation' " because it "has incalculabl~ advantages" but it "is not in any way imposed by the Sacred Con-gregation" (gEvIEw FOP. RELIGIOUS, November, 1954, 302). In an allocution to the Jesuit instructors (masters) of tertians, March 25, 1956 (AAS) 48(1956)269-72), Pope Pius XII dwells on the purpose and program of a tertianship and the importance and in-fluence of the instructor on his tertians. Moreover, he ~rges the preservation of the tertianship against those who propose arguments against it which reflect a spirit which on at least two other occasions he has labelled the "heresy of action" (cf. apostolic letter on the centenary of the Apostleship of Prayer, June 16, 1944~English ver- 236 AL.LOCUTION ~ONCERNING TERTIANSHIP sion in the Messenger o/ the Sacred Heart, 79(Dec.,1944) 13; exhorta-tion on the priesthood, Menti Nostrae, Sept. 23, 1950, paragraph 60). Because it was thought that the Holy Father's allocution on the ter-tianship would be ot: interest to those already requiring a tertianship as well as to those considering whether to have one, the following translation is given.--James I. O'Connor, s.J. The Allocution Beloved sons now present before Us, members of the curia of the Society of Jesus, and you, especially, instructors of the third probation, summoned to Rome by the very wise zeal of your Father General, who is very dear to Us, We know that your request is so reasonable and restrained that it would suffice for you to receive from Us the apostolic blessing in a public audience. And yet, although pressed at the present time with so great a host of occupations and cares, We still wish to go aside for a little while with you so that opening Our paternal heart, We may give testimony of Our singular good will to your whole illustrious order and especially to you, instructors, to whom has been committed an office requiring great understand-ing and' prudence. You certainly are a most select section of tl~e Society of Jesus, especially since you have been chosen and numbered among those of your members having special authority: "those who possess authority" (cf. Epit. Inst., S.J., p. V, cap. II, n. 340). For you discharge an office of the greatest importance since it pertains to that class of matters which your institute lists as "substantials of the second order" (Ibid., Proem., tit. V, n. 22). That it should be so is very easy~to understand. For this is the highest and final touch to the work and labor extended over a long period of time in forming souls in the ways of religion and piety. If We may so speak, this is another way whereby the spear is returned to the forge before it is used in apostolic warfare. It is during this interval that the young person is exercised in the "school of affection" to develop thor-oughly the special gifts of his soul. Finally, then, he is urged 237 Pxus XII Review for Religious on to very arduous undertakings, namely, to "a greater abne-gation of himself and, as 'far as possible, to continual mortifica-tion in all things" (Exam., cap. IV, n. [1031, p. 59), so that "when they have advanced in these, they mhy the better help on other souls to perfection to the glory of God and our Lord" (Const. cure Dec/ar., p. V, cap. II, n. I). I. This was your 'founder's ingenious and sagacious pur-pose which has been continuously reduced to practice with great progress in the religious life and which was later more and more accepted and imitated by other institutes.as well. Nevertheless, because four centuries have elapsed since this plan dawned upon his mind and was brought into effect, it can happen that to some people of our time it appears less fitting for various rea-sons, e.g., because people of today are prone to act more promptly and hastily or because the needs of the 'apostolate are more demanding than in times past. Ours is the completely opposite opinion, for the great need of our time is an interior religious life distinguished by constancy, soundness, and strength, most especially because the service and good of souls demand better-trained apostles. As a result, the period of tertianship should be considered really sacred, divinely inspired, and fully and justly worthy of every effort to preserve it. For this reason We exhort you to see to it that, when the course of studies has been completed, each and every one without any exception be given this whole year devoted to intense meditation in houses set aside for this purpose, in which, as far as possible, the tests and probations of the novitiate be again undergone and the prescriptions and rules observed to the letter. II. Nevertheless, in the whole ascetical training of the ter-tianship We desire that you direct singular care to the matter of special importance, namely, that you devote mind and effort to obtaining a thorough kr~owledge of your institute and to im-bibing the spirit with which it is imbued (Epit., p. V, c. III, n. 435). Moreover, the very resplendent character of this form 238 July, 1957 ALLOCUTION CONCERNING TERTIANSHIP of religious life is manifest in the golden book of the Spiritual Exercises which time and again We have highly praised. See to it that. your tertians more and more understand, search into, relish, esteem, and love everything contained in those pages: the notes, additional directions, meditations, contemplations, rules. In each matter let them carefully discern what is the underlying reason, its aim, and why it is found in this or that place. Exercise vigilant care that, when the tertianship is com-pleted, they are thoroughly convinced that the Ignatian way and plan must be fully preserved and that nothing which clearly per-tains to its nature is ever to be removed from it. This observ-ance and reverence Will have this special effect, that such prudent safeguards will continue their effectiveness in accomplishing won-ders as they have done in the past, provided, of course, there is no let-up by an inconstant will or a breakdown of moral fibre. III. Finally, dearly beloved instructors,.spare no labor, spare no effort, strive earnestly and pour out prayers to God that what is especially sought in this important period may have a most favorable outcome. For young religious, after they have been set free from. so many years of study, easily fall into the danger of neglecting spiritual matters or of holding them in little esteem because the fires enkindled earlier die down. But if they betake themselves again into the solitude of this retreat and give them-selves over to voluntary bodily chastisement, they not only will regain their early moral strength but will also acquire new strength, increased and steadfast, which will serve them profitably ~ven in the subsequent years of their life. Great will be their incen-tive to the study of devout prayer, to the austerity of life and the restraint of the senses which, with eyes full of wonderment, they behold in you. Your. words, at once a source of light and of fire, will illumine their minds and impart to their souls the sparks of divine flame. For their journey along safe paths you will be guides, clearly and conspicuously prudent, safe and trustworthy, keeping them by warning and exhortation from running after 239 P~us XII doctrines which pertain to Catholic dogma, morality, asceticism, and sociology but which by their alluring novel ideas show a certain false and insidious nature. By means of your characteristic active charity and your lov-able zeal you will discover how to ward off tedium, if it should arise, from your fellow-members, returned from a freer form of life, and how to curb what may be immoderate apostolic ardor in those who now experience in caring for the salvation of souls the sweet consolations of heavenly grace. It seemed to Us fitting to address to you in this audience these words, few and hasty because of the limitations of time. From all parts of the world you have assembled here and soon, when your meetings have come to an end, you will return, .each to his own province. Take with you the special apostolic bless-ing We lovingly impart to you in the present auspicious year in which with public joy you observe the solemn celebration of the glorious passing of your lawgiver and father. 'And let this be the outstanding fruit of this celebration that the spirit by which you are called by God fo lay hold on the religious life may more and more breathe upon you in greater intensity and ardor. How-ever, these desirable and magnificent gains will deriye their most providential increase from you especially, instructors, and your activity. Finally, may God, the bestower of gifts, bless all of you and each of your tertians. May He bless and bestow plenteous heavenly solace on your most praiseworthy Father General; on the members associated with him in the curia as well as on the whole Society of Jesus to which We are bound by ever sweeter and closer bonds of paternal charity and high esteem. OUR CONTRIBUTORS SfSTER MARY ST. ROSE teaches at Summit Country Day School, 2161 Grandin Road, Cincinnati 8, Ohio. HAROLD F. COHEN is studying at the Colegio Maximo de San Francisco Javier, Ofia (Burgos), Spain. JOSEPH F. GALLEN is profes~sor of canon law at Woodstock College, Woodstock, Maryland. R. F. SMITH is a member of the faculty of St; Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas. JAMES I. O'CON-NOR is professor of .canon law at West Baden College,. West Baden Springs, Indiana. 240 t oo1 Reviews [Material for this department should be sent to Book Review Editor, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, West Baden College, West Baden Springs, Indiana.] FAITH AND PREJUDICE AND OTHER UNPUBLISHED SER-MONS OF CARDINAL NEWMAN. Edited by the Birmingham Oratory. Pp. 128. Sheed and Ward, New York 3, New ~York. 1956. $2.50. Faith and Prejudice is a short book containing some hitherto unpublished sermons of Cardinal Newman. It is only the third volume to be published of the sermons Newman preached as a Catholic, and it follows the first two after a gap of seventy~ years. The first seven sermons of the book were preached in the year 1848, three years after Newman joined the Catholic Church. Their style has much of the beautiful simplicity noted ia Newman's youth. The Sunday gospel is the subject matter of these sermons. They are addressed to the congregations of an ordiaary city parish. New-man is especially adept at taking a single thought and dwelling on it with warmth and unction. In the first sermon, for example, his thought could 13e crystallized into the sentence: The omnipotence of God is the reason for our faith and hope. Yet Newman takes this somewhat'cold statement ot: fact, so clothes it in familiar examples from the life of Christ, that it becomes no longer a mere theological thesis but rather a living person asking, "Why, then, are you fearful?" For a man of such tremendous learning Newman shows a remark-able ability to understand the circumstances of everyday life in which his hearers had to live out their Catholicism. His application of theory is both concrete and practical. Thus, in a sermon preached on tl~e first Sunday ofLent, 1848, he points out the need for. the modern age to find its penance in a mortification of the reason and the will. His application of this idea to curiosity is perhaps even more perti-nent to our own day, one hundred years and more after Newman spoke these words: "What a deal of time is lost, to say nothing else, in this day by curiosity, about things which in no ways concern us. I am not speaking' against interest in the news of the day altogether, for' the course of the world must ever be interesting to a Christian from its bearing upon the fortunes of the Church, but I speak of vain curios- 241 BOOK REVIEWS Review for Religious ity, love of sc~indal,, love of idle tales, curious prying into the private histo# of people, curibsity about trials and offences, and personal matters, nay often what is much worse than this, curiosity into sin. What strange diseased curiosity is sometimes felt about the history of murders and the malefactors themselves! Worse still, it is shock-ing to say, but there is so much evil curiosity to know about deeds of darkness, of which the Apostle' says that it is shameful to speak. ¯ . . Hen'ce this is the way in which we are called upon, with this Lent we now begin, to mortify ourselves[ Let u's mortify our curiosity" (p. 71). Perhaps the most interesting sermon is that preached in 1873 at the opening of a diocesan seminary. The growth of unbelief is the subject, and it must have had a powerful impact on Newman. With a keen eye for what the future would bring, he shows the difficulties which the weakening of Protestantism entails for the Catholic Church. It weakens or removes a common ally in the battle against those God-less men who would destroy Christianity. The preacher also recog-nizes what problems would arise from the growing strength of the Catholic Church in a Protestant country, problems of suspicion, fear, and prejudice. He exhorts the semin'arians to the practice of the presence of God as a powerful means of overcoming an age of un-belief. To this they must add a sound, accurate, complete knowledge of Catholic theology; with these weapons the future priests will be strong for the combat. As a whole; these sermons reflect Newman's confidence in prayer and faith and obedience more than do his university sermons which are pitched on a higher intellectual plane~ The present volume is. a welcome addition to Newman's published works. It is a book whose true worth will only be fully appreciated after repeated thoughtful reading. --J. DOtC~,LD" H,~YES,. S.J. PRINCIPLES OF SACRAMENTAL THEOLOGY. By Bernard Leeming~ S.J. Pp, 690. The Newman Press, Westminster, Mary-land. 1956. $6.75. Father Leeming's book, a treatise on the sacraments in ~general, is written for everyone~whether expert theologian, teacher of religion, or competent layman--who is interested in theology for its own. sake. The author, a vetera'n professor of dogmatic theology /it Heythrop College,. England, has made every effort to be scientific ~iithout being 242 July, 1957 BOOK REVIEWS too technical for the non-theologian. He has spared no pains to facilitate the work of the reader. A detailed table of contents is presented at the outset; the volume is equipped with an impressive index in which each entry carries a symbol to signify the type of reference made; there is a thirty-page bibliography of general titles and of titles, pertinent .to each of the six general sections of the book. These general sections are entitled: The Sacraments and Grace; The Sacraments and the Character; Sacramental Causality; The Institution of the Sacraments; The Sacramental Economy. The sections are further divided into chapters, and the substance of most chapters is presented in a ~oncise "Principle" which summarizes the doctrine defended. These principles are stated and 'defended as regards the sacraments in general, Above all, Father Leeming's treatment is distinguished by its clarity; that is, matters of faith upon.which there can be no possibility of debate are cldarly stated and clearly differentiated from matters in which free discussion is allowed, and the vie.wpoints which Father Leeming defends as more p_robable are presented with notification of the precise value of the opinion proposed. Father Leeming's method is traditional, yet modern. He at-tempts to combine the scholastic method (sketching the whole history of thd question and the various opinions proposed, presenting the declarations of the .Church, stating a thesis and advancing reasons for it, and answering objections) with a modern, critico-historical ap-proach. The treatment is therefore complete; that is~ the author attempts to treat all pertinent questions, and to present all pertinent evidence --from scriptural and patristic sources, from the councils of the Church, and from the writings of orthodox and" heterodox scholars, andient and modern--in full translation, critically presented and care-fully annotated. The exhaustive historical analyses do not leave the impression that the book ig merely reportorial. Though the research is encyclo-pedic and ~scholarly; the author's oi'iginal handling of the anaterial is equally appealing. Father Leeming is of. the opinion that the key to the meaning of the sacraments is found in their connection with the Mystical Body of Christ; and in the section dealing with sacra-mental causality, he develops the :notion that "the effect of the sacraments . . . is to make those, who through them communicate 243 BOOK REVIEWS Review for Religious with Christ, special cells in the organism of His body." In developing this statement, he suggests a reformulation of the definition of a sacra-ment: "an effective sign of a particular form of union ~vith the Mystical Body, the Church, instituted by Jesus Chiist, which gives grace t'o those who receive it rightly." This viewpoint is also the key to the unity of the book itself, for it is applied to each of the sacraments, it is developed in the areas in which theological discussion is permitted, and it pervades the interpretation of the official sacramental doctrines of the Church. --JAMES J. DAGENAIs,°S.J. THE MASS IN TRANSITION. By Gerald Ellard, S.J. Pp. 387. The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee 1, Wisconsin. 1956. $6.00. The value of this book is that it is not limited to a presentation of the author's personal views on liturgical reform. Because of its liberal use of official and semi-official documents bearing on liturgical modifications, Father Ellard's present contribution is dispassionfite and to a high degree objective. As a result, one reads with a sense of security that more rhetorical but less solid works on the subject fail to convey. This is not to say that Father Ellard frowns on liturgical reform or that he is indifferent to it. His stated purpos~e in taking what must have been considerable pains to assemble selections from the two hundred or so documents upon which his observations are based is to advance "toward maturity and toward clarity" current ideas on the modification of the Mass. The theme that runs through mist of the book is taken from the ll.ledialor Dei of Pope Pius XII: that the worship of the Eucharist should be the fountain-head of genuine Christian devotion. The various chapters are concerned with the aspects of liturgical modifica-tion that tend to promote this goal. With a short history of de-velopment in the Mass from apostolic times as a background, the succeeding chapters discuss the efforts made, the results achieved, and the difficulties encountered by the Holy See and by lesser interested groups in promoting lay participation in the Eucharistic Sacrifice. chapter each is devoted to the reform of the Breviary and to the recent tendency of many non-Catholic sects to ~lpproach closer to the Catholic form of worship. 244 July, 1957 BOOK REVIEWS While the extensive use 0f documents does not always make for easy .reading, their very bulk and wide range produce an effect that more than justifies the reader's efforts. Through them one experi-ences the tremendous energy which in the past fifty years has set the liturgical reform in motion; and he is assured that this energy and determination, especially as found in the Holy See and the hierarchy, will succeed in fully restoring the Mass to the people in spite of all the difficulties involved. For the reader with a more professional interest in the liturgy Father Ellard's book gathers into one place a rich collection of up-to-date source material. --PAUL F. CONEY, THE SALVATION OF THE UNBELIEVER." By Riccardo Lombardi, S.J. Translated by Dorothy M. White. Pp. 376. The Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland. 1956. $5.00. Father Lombardi's crusading zeal for "a better world" in accord-ance with the social teachings of the papal encyclicals has occasioned much favorable comment in the Catholic press as well as in non- Catholic news journals like Time magazine. His work as professor of ~heology deserves equally favorable comment, and the proof of this is this volume. The book ig written' for all who are Catholic eno~agh to realize that being Catholic means being apostolic and who are educated enough to follow a skillful teacher through 362 pages of reasoning that is pleasingly adorned with quotations from Scrip-ture, St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante, and papal encyclicals. Specifically, this important volume is for high school or higher units of the Catho-lic Students' Mission Crusade, missionary congregations of religious, and for all Catholics who work or pray especially for our non-Catholic contemporaries, the seventeen million Jews, three hundred and twenty million heretics and schismatics, eleven hundred millior~ heathen or unbelievers in the Judaeo-Christian revelation. Father Lombardi studies honestfy and feelingly and with great charity the chances for salvation for this vast multitude as well for the about fifty billion (Ct6ca~/o Tribune, Nov. 25, 1955) human beings who have so far been inhabitants of this earth. On the one hand, by far the majority of this enormous number are not counted in the "little flock" of Christ. On the other hand are the clear words of Holy Scripture, "God our Savior . . . wishes all men to be saved" (I Tim. 2:3, 4). "But my just one lives by faith" (Heb. 10:38). "Without faith it is. impossible to please God. For. he who comes to God must believe thht God exists and is rewarder to those who 245 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS Review for Religio'us seek him" (Heb. 11:6). Father Lombardi's study of the problem presented to us by these words and by the all but infinite multitude of unbelievers is consoling to our hope, convincing to our reason, arousing to our zeal. The volume would have profitted by a study of Hinduism in at least as much detail as the author gives to the three other very widespread but very much less intellectually organi~zed non-Christian religions which he studies specifically, Confucianism, BuddhiSm,' Islam~ Hinduism's pre-Homeric Vedas and pre-Socratic Upanishads are re-markable (and vastly voluminousI records of the anitna humana naturaliter Ghristiana.in its quest for God.' The prayer of the: Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad (1, 3, 28), '.'From untruth lead me to truth, from darkness lead me'to light, from death lead me to immortali:y!" is perhaps the greatest prayer outside.the sacred world of the Judaeo- Christian revelation, yet so "naturally Christian" is~ the prayer that it might well have been written by Cardinal Newman in his Anglican d.ays as a note to his Anglican hymn "Le.ad, Kindly Light!" If Father Lombardi issues a ndw edition of his volume, the writings which B.dlgi~n Jesuit scholar missioharies Johanns a~nd Dandoy have published on Hinduism can help l~im show his readers still more reason for l~ope .and for zeal than even this admirable edition does. ---' PAUL DENT, S.J. BOOK ANNOUNCE~AENTS THE BRUCE PUBLISHING CO., 400 N. Broadway, Milwaukee 1, Wiscoiisin. Mother of Fair Love. By Augustine Schroe~ler. Translated by Veronica Kir~land. The medium that the author of this latest life of the Blessed Virgin has chosen ~is the psychological novel. It is a happy choice for it enables her to paint a very vivid picture of our Lady. The book is carefully written anduses tO the full all that scholarship' in various fields has to offer one who would .paint a true-to-life poi'trait of God's most favored creature. Pp. 195. $3.50. An Introduction to' Philosophy. By Daniel J. Suliivan.To master the fundamentals of any subject is usually quite difficult. This is especially true of philosophy and particularly so for those who 246 July, 1957 "~OOK ANNOUNCEMENTS have no scientific background. This book was written with such im dividuals in mind. You will find in it a history of philosophy and a clear exposition of the problems that philosophy labors to solve. The book was the March selection of the Thomas More Book Club. Pp. 288. $3.75. The Catholic Priest in the Modern World, by James A. M~gner, is a very careful analysis of the many problems which 'the priest, and particularly the pastor of a parish, must solve. Pastors, ctirates, and seminarians who read the book will find th;~ time spent on it well spent. There is an adequate index. Pp. 286~ $4.75. Ho!y Week Manual for Servers. By Revo Waiter J. Schmitz, S,S. A copy of this book in the hands of each server should do much to add to the dignity and smooth performance of the compli, cared Holy Week services. Pp. 60. $0.50. Fundamental Marriage Counseling. A Catholic Viewpoint. By John R. Cavanagh, M.D. This is a very complete book on all aspects of marriage counseling and the many problems the counselor has to solve. There are 531 'pages of text, a bibliography of 31 pages, an 8 page glossaryl and a 25 page index. $&00. FIDES PUBLISHERS, 7~44 E. 79th St., Chicago 19, ~llinois. In Father of the Family, by Eugene S. Geissler, we have a con-tribution to sociology. The author, himself the father of ten, writes about the family from the father's point of view interestingly and seriously. The book is recommended ~eading for fathers and mothers of families both actual and prospective. Pp. 157. $2.95. FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS, New York 58, New York. ; Spiritual and Intellectual Elements in the Formation of Sistei~s. Edited by Sister Ritamary, C.H.M. This is the second volume which has grown out of the six regional meetings of the Sister Formation Conference, 1955-56, The first volume bore the" title-The Mind of the Church in the Formation of Sisters and was reviewed in these pages in September, 1956 (pp. 273-74). Part I of the present volume deals with the viewpoin~ of keynote speakers and priest panelists 6n tl'ie spiritual and intellectual elements in the formationof sisters; Part II considers the viewpoint of religious sisters themselves; Part III summarizes replies and comments to questionnaires, while Part.IV deals with communications and commentaries. The reader is im-pressed by the energy and zeal with which the sisters themselves have 247 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS Review for Religious attacked their problems¯ Such zeal and energy cannot but lead to a happy solution. Pp. 261. $3.00. GRAIL PUBLICATIONS, St. Meinrad, Indiana. Pope Pius XII and Theological Studies. Edited by A. Yzermans. In addition to the encyclical letter //umani Generis, there are five addresses of the reigning Holy Father and an introductory essay on "Pius XII and TheologiCal Novelty" by the editor. Pp. 100. $0.50. THE NEWMAN PRESS, Westminister, Maryland. Methods of Mental Prayer. By Cardinal Lercaro. Translated by T. F. Lindsay. As the title indicates, this book is concerned exclusively with methods of mental prayer. It presents all of the better-known methods and does so objectively. The important thing in mental prayer is, of course, prayer; the method is secondary, yet still important. For if a method does not help you to pray, that method is not for you. You should choose another. With the aid of this .book the choice of a different method becomes easy since so many are listed and described in detail. The book, however, is not recommended for indiscriminate reading by novices, who might easily become confused and overwhelmed by the wealth of material offered. It should prove very helpful to the mature religious and to priests. Pp. 308. $5.75. The Gospel to Every Creature. By Bishop Leon-Joseph Suenens. Translated by' Louise Gavan Duffy. Catholics admire the missionary spirit which sends individuals to the ends of the earth to save souls. Many of them, however, do not realize that they too must be mis-sionaries even though they cannot travel to fields afar;~ tha't they too must labor to bring others to their true home in the Catholic Church. You will find a complete discussion of the missionary vocation as it applies to every individual in the pages of this book. Pp. 163. $3.00. The Angels and Their Mission According to the Fathers of tl~e Church. By Jean Danielou, S.J. Translated by. David Heimann. Devotion to the angels is traditional for Catholics, and for the ma-jority a reality, at least so we hope. It would help if Catholics were reminded more frequently of the role angels play in their lives. They are not so reminded by the books in English that they read. I know oi: only one, and that one was published more than thirty years ago. So the present volume is surely timely and will help to fill a great need. Pp, 118. $2.75. 248 July, 1957 BOOK ANNOUI~CEMENTS Christ, Our Lady and the Church. A Study in Eirenic Theology. By Yves M-J. Congar, O.P. Translated by Henry St. John, O.P. Eirenic theology may be described as that branch of. theology which endeavors to bring back to the unity of one faith our Protestant neighbors. It does so by finding the common ground we share with them, ana!ysing the divergences, and pointing out errors and mis-placed emphasis wherever it may exist. Since the greatest divergence between our Protestant brethren and the Church concerns precisely the Catholic doctrine on the nature of the Church and the place of our Lady in it, this book deals with these topics. Pp. 103. $2.75. Problems in Theology. Vol. I. The Sacraments. By John McCarthy, D.D., D.C.L. This book is a compilation of material that appeared in the section "Notes and Queries" of The Irish Ecclesiastical Record during the past fifteen years. The author and publishers promise a second volume to deal with principles and precepts. There is no index. Pp. 433. $6.75. Problems in Canon Law. By William Conway, D.D., D.C.L. In this volume Father Conway, who has long answered the canonical difficulties of the readers of 7'he Irish Ecclesiastical Record, has col-lected and classified a great many of the practical problems he has received. The publishers announce that this is the first volume of a new series on practical problems in theology and canon law. There is an eight page index. Pp. 345. $5.50. REVIEWOF CATHOLIC CHURCH MUSIC The appearance of a new Catholic periodical is always noteworthy, especially of one devoted to music. The Caecilia appearing in Feb-ruary, 1957, is marked "Volume 85, Number 1"; 13ut it is the first issue of the venerable magazine under the new management of the Society of St. Caecilia, recently revitalized through the efforts of Reverend Francis Schmitt. Father Schmitt has achieved a noteworthy place in the ranks of American Catholic church musicians through his inspiring work with the Boystown choir, with his annual choirmasters' workshop, and now, with the restoration of the Caecilian Society. The "new" Caecilia appears as a quartqrly review devoted to the liturgical music apostolate. Besides editor Schmitt and "editor emeri-tus" Dom Ermin Vitry, O.S.B., the con.tr~butmg editors include: Theodore Marier, Reverend Richard Schule~, James Welch, Reverend Francis Brunner, C.Ss.R., Paul Koch, and R~verend Francis Guentner, S.J. Under such management the journal gives promise of outspoken but scholarly criticism as well as appreciation of current efforts in liturgical music. The address is: Box 1012, Omaha I, Nebraska. 249 Ques!:ions and Answers [The following answers are given by Father Joseph F. Gallen, S.J., professor of canon law. at Woodstock College, Woodstock, Maryland.] --19-- What bows does the priest make at Benediction of the Moit Blessed Sacrament? The priest makes a moderate.bow of the body before rising to put in incense(S. R. C., 4179, 6) and at Veneremur cern'ui and a pro-found bow of the head immediately before and after incensing (S. R. C., 3086, 3) and at Oremus. A moderate bow of the body is a bow of the head accompanied by a slight inclination of the shoulders (S. R. C., 4179, 1). A profound bow of the body is never made while kneel-ing. Cf. J. O'Connell, Benedictionale, 4-5; The Celebration' of Ma~s, 298; De Amicis, Caeremoniale Parochorum, 79-80. 20 Has a religious who has been excluded from renovation of tem-porary vows or from making perpetual profession the right of sus-pensive recourse to the Holy See against the exclusion? No. The contrary impression arises from a confusion of exclia-sion with dismissal. The two are not the same. A dismissal in canon law is verified only by an expulsion during the time of the vows; an exclusion is an expulsion at the expiration of the vows. It is also merely the refusal of admission to a further profession. Therefore, the canonical prescriptions on dismissal do n

Issue 13.2 of the Review for Religious, 1954. ; Review for Religious MARCH 15, 1954 Foreign Missions for Communities Charles H. Helmsing -Voca÷ional Ideal . Joseph P. Fisher Life Conformed to Mary . Louis J. Puh~ External Grace and Religious . ~John J. Stochl Annunciation Thoughts . . ~ . Paul Dent Are You a Jellyfish? . Bruno M. Hagspiel ' Controversy on Obedience . Richard W. Rousseau Benediction . Pete~" Goodman Secular Institutes . Francis N. Korth Questions and Answers News and Views Book Reviews VOLUMe. XIII NUMBER 2 RI VII W FOR RI::LIGIOUS VOLUME XIII MARCH, 1954 NUMBER 2 CONTENTS A FOREIGN MISSION FOR EVERY AMERICAN COMMUNITY?m Most Reverend Charles H. Helmsing, S.T.D. 57 NEWS AND VIEWS . 61 VOCATIONAL IDEAL--Joseph P. Fisher, S.J . 64 OUR CONTRIBUTORS . 68 LIFE CONFORMED TO THE IMAGE OF MARY-~ Louis J. Puhl, S.J . 69 BACK NUMBERS WANTED . 72 EXTERNAL GRACE AND THE' RELIGIOUS LIFE-- John J. Stochl, S.J . 73 ANNUNCIATION THOUGHTS--Paul Dent, S.J . 77 ARE YOU A JELLYFiSH?mBruno M. Hagspiel, S.V.D . 79 A RECENT CONTROVERSY ON OBEDIENCE-- Richard W. Rousseau, S.J . 87 BENEDICTION--Brother Peter Goodman, C.S.C . 93 BOOK REVIEWS . 95 BOOK NOTICES . 97 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS . 97 ABOUT SECULAR INSTITUTES--Fra.r, eis N. Korth, S.J . 105 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS-- 7. Percentage of Income to Mother House . 109 8. What Is Meant by a First Councilor? . 109 9. Power of Superior General in Novitiate . ll0 10. Gift Money for Mass Stipends . ll0 II. May MiStress of Novices be Provincial Councilor.;' . ll0 12. Veil before Blessed Sacrament . Ill 13. Visits Required for Gaining Indulgences . Ill 14. Visitation at Mother House . Ill 15. Information on Chapter of Faults . ll2 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, March, 1954, Vol. XIII, No. 2. Published bi-monthly : January, March, May, July, September, and November at the College Press, 606 Harrison Street, Topeka, Kansas, by St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approbatiori. Entered as second class matter January 15. 1942, at the Post Office, under, the act of March 3, 1879. Editorial Board: Augustine G. Ellard, S.J., Adam C. Ellis, S.J., Gerald Kelly, S.J., Francis N. Korth, S.J. Copyright. 1954, by Adam C. Ellis, S.J. Permission is hereby granted for quota-tions of reasonable length, provided due credit be given this review and the author. Subscription price:" 3 dollars a year: 50 c~nts a copy. Printed in U. S. A. before writincj to us, please consult notice on inside back cover. A Foreign Mission t:or F:very American Community? Most Reverend Charles H. Helmsing, S.T.D. THESE reflections stem from an unheralded visit of a native Fili-pino bishop. Weary and disappointed, he told of his unfruit-ful visits to eight mother houses. Responsible for more than a million Catholics, he has a total of sixty-seven priests to care for them. He has only five Catholic schools taught by religious and a total of forty-eight sisters. He came to me with a missionary priest and a zealous local pastor. ¯ It was the latterwho launched the dis-cussions leading to these paragraphs. The writer had interrupted Matins for the new year of grace: "Regern uentururn Dorninurn uenite adorernus"--"Come let us adore the Lgrd, the King who is to come." It is his prayerful hope that when these reflections are rdeditated upon by harassed general and provincial superiors, they may mean the coming of the King of kings to. many souls in the field afar. Most religious communities are familiar with the Missionary Plan of Cooperation, known in the family of Mission Directors as M.P.C.1 Briefly, M.P.C. means that the parish gives prayers and alms and the visiting missionary gives missionary knowledge, mo-tivation, and zeal. In other words, the missionary receives material and spiritual assistance, and the parish receives an increase of apos- IThe Missionary Plan of Cooperation is a method of soliciting funds for specific mission-sending societies or missions. On application to the Diocesan Director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, a society with personnel in the missions or a missionary bishop is assigned a group of parishes in the diocese. Then, on dates agreed upon with the local pastors, the mission procurator or bishop preaches at all the Sunday Masses, indoctrinates the faithful in reference to his particular mission, its activities, progress, and needs, and finally makes a financial appeal. This appeal for funds is in addition to the membership offerings of the faithful and the Mission Sunday offerings to the general fund of the Society for the Propa-gation of the Faith. Under the Plan, the Director of the Pontifical Society as-signs a missionary to every parish of the diocese annually. This missionary, by recounting the particulars of his own work, arouses an interest in all mission work. Thus, while the Society for the Propagation of the Faith helps mission-sending societies over and above the general funds that are apportioned by the Holy Father, the missionary who participates in the Plan cooperates by engendering in the faith-ful a spirit of Catholicity and apostolicity. Without a doubt, the Plan accounts, at least in part, for the tremendous growth in mission interest and mission support during the past decade. Diocesan Directors have one big regret: that they have not more parishes to assign. 57 CHARLES H. HELMSING tolicity. While this Missionary Plan of Cooperation is relatively new and still far from.perfect in operation, by contrast with the old method of soliciting mission aid it represents vast returns from little effort--mutually, I mean, for the begging missionary and for our Catholic parishes. In the old days before the Plan, even when alms were substantial, very often the neediest missions were not the re-cipients. Good parishes were satisfied with giving a mere pittance, and the whimsical giving was frequently based on the natu'ral mutual likes or dislikes of pastors and visiting missionaries. Worse still, through specious reasoning about their own needs, ~heir debt, etc., most parishes refused to give at all. Now under the Missionary Plan of Cooperation all parishes give and all receive some benefits of increased apostolicity. Best of all, the whole procedure is orderly and under obedience to the bishop of the dioceke and the religious superior of the soliciting community. There is the merit and bles-sing of obedience as well as of charity. Every Director of The Society for the Propagation of the Faith in the United States has witnessed the disappointment of visiting foreign bishops wffen they return from religious houses where they have solicited personnel. Usually, they have been dismissed with a polite but firm refusal: "We cannot take care of ou~r present obliga-tons; how can we think of opening a foreign mission?" Indeed, it is rare for any community seriously to consider the possibility of undertaking foreign mission work. Consequently, the thought arises: could not the generals and provincials of our religious communities of priests, brothers, and sisters collaborate in giving a regular supp.ly of personnel to the world-wide missions of the Church? Under such a plan every community could anticipate its turn to establish a foreign mission by budgeting its personnel and' resources. ,Just as mission-sending societies apply to participate in the Missionary Plan of Cooperation for the sake of funds, so missionary bishops could apply for partici-pation in this receiving of religious and priestly workers. The practical' collaboration of major religious superiors in such a project is, of course, not without its difficulties. Initially, in each diocese the Director of The Society for the Propagation of the Faith with the approval of his ordinary might urge every community in the diocese2 to have a mission overseas. For diocesan communities, 2provided, of course, that neither its constitutions nor the specific purposes of the institute exclude foreign mission work. 58 ¯ March, 1954 A FOREIGN MISSION ? the bishop himself would be the proper person to plant the idea: for interdiocesan communities, the urging of the Director would be merely a pious wish which he can hope will be relayed to the mother house. As a second step, the Diocesan Director might suggest that any community desirous of collaborating should consult the Mission Secretariat or missionary communities of its acquaintance to ascer-tain where American religious are badly needed, and in general to clarify its thinking relative to undertaking foreign mission work. Ultimately, with a definite idea of assuming a new apostolate, the community will apply to the Apostolic Delegation in Washing-ton or directly to Rome. It will be amazed how enthusiastically its offer will be received and how overjoyed some missionary bishop will be. It should be noted at this point that every American commun-ity that opened a foreign mission has been immediately blessed with an unexpected supply of vocations. Every experienced Mission Di-rector throughout the nation can vouch for this. Experience further shows that very often native vocations immediately supplement the meager mission personnel so that the harassed-mother house need send very few trained religious in the future. Pope Pius XI insisted on the formation of native communities, aware as he was of the ne-cessity of "like being apostles to like." However, the international character of most of our religious communities pr6vides a rule adapt-able to all nations under all conditions. In a few years' time, a native province can be set up with the native religious more stable by the fact that they are .brothers and sisters of a world-wide com-munity. By way of example the writer recalls with joy how one provincial of a teaching community, sorely pressed by requests of bishops and pastors; gave of her best sisters to establish a mission in Japan. The next class of postulants d0ubl.ed that of the previous year (and the increase has been maintained) : a new spirit of mis-sionary zeal permeates the entire community; and best of all, there are already six native professed in the Japanese mission, with nov- . ices and postulants giving promise of a future Japanese Province. While these beflections would apply to any mission field throughout the world (we cannot forget that-.there are still 1,I0i3,- 000,000 pagans), they seem to have an urgency for practi6ally all countries of Latin America, and especially for Hawaii and the Phil-ippines. Indeed, Hawaii is not a foreign mission, since.it is part of 59 CHARLES H. I"~LMSING our great nation; and the Philippines, while independent, are cer-tainly a sister republic. It is startling to think, for instance, that since 1898 ,only three American communities of women have'estab-lished themselves in the Philippines, while the Philippines have adopted American customs and even our language for all official matters. It is terrifying to think that since 1898 approximately 16 per cent of the Philippines have been lost to the Church. The pastor who accompanied the begging bishop on his unher-alded visit suggests a practical plan to meet unexpected objections here at home. He said, "Suppose I would obtain a lay teacher and persuade five other pastors to hire a lay teacher in addition to those they have at present in order that six sisters might be released for a foreign mission. Would you back up this proposition?" I said that I certainly would, and I am convinced that the attitude of this good pastor is that of many of our pastors throughou~ the United States. I am prompted to suggest a fervent meditation on the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Only those in authority over our reli-gious communities are in a position to make the decision. We in the United States are blessed beyond measure. Great as our needs are for priests and religious, certainly our sending out of a half-dozen or even a dozen religious from each of our provincial houses could be termed scarcely more than giving the crumbs that fall from our table. Without a doubt, our shortage of vocations is due to the fact that we are not pruning our vines in order to transplant the shoots that will be the beginning of new vines in the other and more impoverished corners, of the vineyard of the Lord. True it is that we have special communities especially dedicated to mission work, and they are "doing a wonderful job." But they cannot cope with the p,roblem alone. The problem with very many communities is identical with that touching our laity. ¯ The Mis-sionary Plan of Cooperation is one means, together with member-ship. in iThe.:S.od~ty.fqr the Propagat.ign. of .the Faith, that has proved effective in rousing our.la.ity to apostolic zeal.We ay.e. con-fide~ t that .a sim.i!~" organized.effort to bring more communities.into active missionary work. will re-enkindle in more of our religious a true apostolic spirit and a truly Catholic interest in everything that touches in any way the growth and vitality of the Mystical Body of Christ. 60 News Views Marian-Year Proiecf To his inspiring article on missionary zeal Bishop Helmsing ap-pended the following note that should be of special interest: "This article was written just before receipt of the Directives of the Sacred Congregation of ~Religious that during the Marian Year each reli-gious family undertake some special work of charity and zeal. Since the Sovereign Pontiff has characterized the missions as the greatest charity in the world, it is our hope that the foregoing paragraphs may help superiors decide on their contribution for the Marian Year." A Good Superior? In To Gouern is to Loue Father Ronsin offers young superiors the consoling thoughtthat to assist them in their office they have at their disposal not only the merits and prayers but also the accumu-lated experience of the superiors who have gone before them. These words may contain a bit of poetic exaggeration, yet they suggest another project that might have great practical value. During their terms of office most superiors must learn from their own personal experience, certain things that are very helpful in gov-erning a religious community. These lessons may concern some-thing apparently new--something not in the books, as they say-- or they may concern experiences that throw new light on something already known. If all those who are or have been religious superiors were to meet and to pool all these helpful personal experiences, the result would truly be an accumulated experience of immense value to present and future superiors. It is hardly.feasible to try to arrange a meeting at whic,h superi-ors could pool .these helpful experiences. But, with proper coopera-tion, it would be feasible to gather these experier~ces together in the form of writing. .Suppose each religious who is or was a superior would write down in an informal way the helpful lessons he or she has lea'rned during his or her term of office and would send the re-suits to us. We could.compile these experiences into a set of sug: gestions for superio.rs, that might be very practi.cal. Some superiors' might have very. little to write; others might have much. The amount would make no difference. The main thing that we should like to do is to create some interest in what seems to be a useful project. 61 NEWS AND VIEWS Review for Religious We might add that subjects are not excluded from this invita-tion. In fact, they are explicitly included. The subjects' experience of what it means to be governed well is every bit ~s valuable to superiors as their own experiende of what seems to make for good government. This project merits consideration and cooperation. But it should be emphasized that we are asking for constructive suggestions and not for negative criticism. Moreover. we should like suggestions based on actual experience of their helpfulness. Finally, we should prefer that any material sent to us would be signed, unless of course the nature of the communication would demand that it be anony-mous. At any rate,' whether the communications are signed or un-signed, we would comr~ile the material in such a way that those who contribute the suggestions are not recognized. American Founders' Series We seem to be in a "project" mood. Here is another. In the United States and Canada there are many native religious insti-tutes- institutes, that is, that were founded in these countries. The lives of the men and women who founded these various institutes would make interesting reading. In fact, during the last decade or two many book-length biographies of such founders have appeared. Obviously, however, we are interested in articles, not books. We should like very much to publish a series of articles containing the biographical sketches of these founders. Articles in the REVIEW are necessarily limited in length; but we could use biographical sketches up to five or six thousand words. In such sketches we should like to have not merely the main facts of the founder's life but especially an attempt to present the character of the founder and the spirit with which he tried to animate his institute. In such a series there would be danger of a certain sameness; but this danger could be kept to a minimum if the biographers would make a special effort to give the distinctive characteristics of the founder and the distinctive features of the institute he founded. Although we are thinking primarily of institutes that originated in Canada or the United States, we do not wish to exclude other in-stitutes from this project. Some of the older orders and congrega-tions, though founded in other countries, were extended to the "New World" by men and women who were, so to speak, second founders. Biographical sketches of these religious pioneers should also be included ,in our series. 62 March, 19~ Suggestions made in these pages are not usually accorded an overwhelming response; and we do not expect to find our mailbox suddenly crowded with founders' biographies. Nevertheless, lest the unexpected should happen and we should receive more than one sketch of the same founder, it seems advisable that any superior gen-eral who might be interested in this project would designate some-one to write the founder's biography. This is not essential, but it might make for efficiency. For Contributors The thought of possible articles necessarily reminds us of manu-scripts. Unfortunately we do not have a fully prepared style man-ual. But we can offer some suggestions to possible contributors that might solve problems for them and relieve us of an unnecessary bur-den. 1) Every manuscript submitted to us should be neatly typed, double spaced, with at least an inch of margin on each side of the page. lit is difficult to make editorial notations on a crowded page. 2) Quotations should also be double spaced. We mention this particularly because; in many of the manuscripts sent to us, long quotations are always single spaced. We know not how this custom originated; but we do know from experience that it can be an edi-tor's nightmare. 3) Rules for capitalization are difficult to formulate and more difficult to apply; and this is especially true iri a journal devoted to religious topics. We have found that consistency in this matter is an almost impossible goal. Perhaps in some future issue we may publish a list of words to serve as a model. For the present, how-ever, we offer contributors this one practical suggestion: be uerg re-serued in the use ot: capitals. 4) On points of style, spelling, capitalization, and so forth, we usually follow Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and A Manual of Stqle (University of Chicago Press). We would appreciate it if contributors would do likewise. Painting of Our Lady We are informed that a new painting of the Immaculate Heart of Mary has been .completed in time for the Marian Year. The painting is a companion picture to the Ibarraran Sacred Heart ,Jesus which has been used. in a national non-profit picture-distribu- ¯. (Continued on Page 86~.' ¯ 63 Vocat:ional Ideal Joseph P. Fisher, S.J. OFTEN enough to older religious the spiritual life looks simple enough but to beginners and ev, en those advancing it seems frequently anything but simple. They are frequently on the lookout for some formula or other which will make the spiritual life easily and comprehensively grasped. It is not uncommon that one approach after another is tried and found wanting. And it is not unheard of that some remain confused f6r years in regard to the theory of the spiritual Iife and some even wonder whether the diffi-culty can be resolved:. All this uncertainty, of course, affects to some extent the living of the spiritual life. Anything, therefore, that can help in the problem will be welcome. I shall propose a few thoughts suggested by Father :Lindworsky's Ps~tchologg of Asceticism. To start with an illustration. Sister Bona wants to purchase a pair of shoes for tired feet. She goes to the shoestore to be fitted and right away she is handed a pair of shoes and told they ought to fit her. She tries them on and finds them far too small. Curious as to why the salesman was under the impression they would fit, she questions him. He replies that he had measured the feet of hun-dreds of sisters. He then figured out the average size of the sisters' feet and had shoes made to that size. But he acknowledges that thus far not once has he found that the average shoe fitted any particular sister. Thus it is to some ext~nt with patte'rns of the spiritual life pre-sented in many books. No one kind of religious is had in mind. The pattern is apparently meant to fit an active religious, a contem-plative religious, a young religious, an old religious, religious men, religiouswomen, lay religious, clerical religious, each and every reli-gmus. It must be acknowledged that in a certain sense this method of procedure is excusable and at times even necessary. And those~who have a sufficiency of knowledge, and experience can easily make proper adaptations; for the large principles of the spiritual life re-main the same for all. But some try very hard to fit themselves with-out adjustment into this, so to speak, average pattern and find them- :selves spiritually very uncomfortable. It may be said, then, that there are two approaches to the spir-itual life indicated above--what may be called the "abstract" ap- VOCATIONAL IDEAL proach and whatmay be Called the "concrete" approach. The "ab-stract" approach comes about very logically~ Theology teaches us that when our first parents fell in the garden of Eden, besides losing sanctifying grace and certain gifts not due to their nature, they be-came subject to various concupiscences. Hence there arose a warfare in their nature, their lower passions often rebelling against reason. And, although in tbernsel~)es the mind and will of men were not vitiated, nevertheless, because of the condition in which these facul-ties operated,' the mind was, in effect, darkened and the will weak-ened. Hence it can be said that the original integrity in man was broken and the harmony consequent upon the integrity was dis-turbed. Therefore a man was subject to many vices--a whole cata-log of them, beginning with the seven capital sins and descending to the slightest act of unreason. If man was to approach the former high state of his nature, he would have to root out these vices and struggle back up the long ladder of the virtues. Even after Christ redeemed man and restored grace, there still remained the necessity of struggling against the vices and putting on the virtues. The old man of sin had to be destroyed and the new man of grace had to be brought, with labor, into being. And so catalogs of vices and lists of virtues were drawn up and the aspirant to holiness was encouraged to work away at them. The idea was, of course, to build up a new man in Christ by the death of all the vices and the flourishing of all the virtues. Not much attention was paid to just what vices a par-ticular individual should eradicate (although some did speak of a predominant passion) or what virtues he should put on. Since for perfection he had to be without all the vices and in possession of all the virtues, he bad to struggle manfully with the complete lists. Such is what one might call the "abstract" view of the spiritual life. The "concrete" approach may be presented this way. What is man's part in his sanctification? To do God's will. And what is the will of God for any religious? To live out his own vocation as perfectly as possible. This sounds most obvious and exceedingly simple. Like many obvious and simple truths, however, this one is overlooked. I am sure that many spiritual directors have found re-ligious, and sincere religious, who are trying to live the vocation of other religious and not their own. They read of or hear of some "way" of the spiritual life and decide that that is the way God has called them t6, "considering.hardly at all how it fits in with the plan , of their o'wn particular religious calling. Agood many religious are JOSEPH P. FISHER Reoieto for Religious and have been captivated by the idea of being a "Victim soul." This is a fine ideal if properly adjusted to one's own vocation. But any-thing in the ideal which makes impossible or difficult the. living of their own vocation has to be modified. They should be "victims" according to their own vocational-ideal. An active religious reads about contemplation and decides he is going to live as a contem-plative. /ks long as th,e ideal fits in with his own vocation, fine; but, if it is at variance with the spirit of his own order or congrega-tion, it is suspect. As long as he believes his vocation is to the active order, his way of life must fit the vocational-ideal of his order. The endeavor to live out his own vocation as perfectly as pos-sible puts every religious under the obligation of understanding the spirit of his order. It is obvious that various orders and congrega-tions have different ends in mind and hence correspondingly differ-ent means. A Poor Clare is not called upon to work on the mis-sions like the Maryknoll Sisters: the Sisters of Charity are not called upon to recite the Divine Office like the Carmelites: Christian Broth-ers are not expected to work in hospitals as the Alexian Brothers are; ,lesuits are not expected to observe the seclusion and silence of Car-thusians. So each religious must endeavor to form a clear ideal of what his particular way of life asks of him. He must study and pray over his constitutions and the rules of his order; he must read and reflect on the life: of his founder: he must imbibe the spirit that animated those who have lived their lives with signal fidelity in the same calling--he must, in brief, form a "vocational-ideal" based on objective evidence revealing what should be the spirit of his life. Then the holiness of the particular religious will depend on the way he puts this vocational-ideal to work in his life. He must put on all that his vocational-ideal requires of him and cut away what stands in the way of' the living-out of the ideal. This puts before each religious very definite work to do. And most religious would undoubtedly find plenty to work on within the limits of their voca-tional- ideal without having to spend precious time and effort trying to master and put into their lives an ideal based on an abstract treat-ment of the spiritual life or, what may be worse, an ideal based on a form of life foreign to their own. The advantages of such an approach, the concrete approach, are clear. First of all it presents the religious with a definite, detailed expression of God's will---every man's means of holiness. It, ac-cordingly, .puts emphasis in the spiritual life on something solid, 66 March, 1954 VOCATIONAL IDEAL something open to no illusions. Again it presents a simple and yet comprehensive plan of man's part (as opposed to God's part) in the spiritual life for any particular religious. This makes for integral living-~a// a religious does is sanctifying, for (in the supposition) it fits in with his vocation which for him is God's will. Consequent upon such living, there should.be peace and calm, for a religious knows that he is doing the best he can do on earth--God's will. He can have hope of arriving at holiness, for he knows that God gives him the graces required to live his vocation. Several conclusions would seem to follow from the above. First of all when a religious reads a spiritual book that is not expressly pointed to his vocation or, as sometimes happens, is actually pointed away from it, he ought to make proper adjustments in accordance with his own vocational-ideal. There are many very fine spiritual books which have to be so adjusted. Even a classical work like the The Following o[ Christ bas statements which certainly do not ap-ply literally to all religious. For example, this statement may have literal application in the case of contemplatives but hardly in the case of active religious whose work is among men: "As oftenas I have been amongst men, said one, I have returned less a man." And a second conclusion would be this. Religious institutes would do well to provide their religious with commentaries and even medita-tions on their rules. Likewise it would be useful to have lives writ-ten of founders and illustrious members of the congregation. Above all the efforts of superiors and instructors should be devoted to bringing the religious to a really practical love of their own precise vocation. It is all well and good to admire the ideals of religious of other orders, but one has to live and sanctify oneself according to the ideals of one's own order. Since a religious owes the loyalty of love to his own religious family, he is in duty bound to come to know his family and cherish it as he does .no other. It follows from all this that the ideal form of mortification for all religious is the effort of will required to live their vocation pe?- fectly, that is, to put on all that their vocation requires and cut off what hinders the full living of it. It may seem at first glance as if there is not much mortification in this; but let a religious earnestly examine himself on how be conducts himself from early rising through all the exercises and work of the day till he goes to bed tired at night, and he will find plenty of scope for the effort of will that means mortification. And the strong points of this kind of morti- 67 JOSEPH P. FISHER fication are these: it is definitely willed by God and so there can be no delusion in it; and secondly it makes for a habit of mortification, continual mortification. Religious all know the necessity of morti-fication but many feel they are remiss in its practice. Even those who perform scattered acts are rarely satisfied. They feel the need of a more continual spirit of mortification. However, they realize that there is a limit to the little incidental acts they can perform. But there is no limit to the mortification involved in the plan suggested above. And, since it is all connected with the proper living of their freely chosen vocation, it appears desirable and possible. When the , penitents of John the Baptist wanted to know what they were to do to manifest fruits of ,repentance in their lives, they received these an-swers in accord with their various vocations. "And the crowds asked him, saying, 'What then are we to do?' And he answered and said to them, 'Let him who has two tunics share with him who has none; and let him who has food do likewise.' And there came pub-licans also to be baptized, and they said to him, 'Master, what are we to do?' But he said to them. 'Exact no more than what has been appointed you.' And the soldiers also asked him, saying, 'And we-- what are we to do?' And he said to them, 'Plunder no one, neither accuse anyone falsely~ and be content with your pay.' " (Luke 3: 10-14.) The spirit of this answer certainly applies to religious to-day. "Walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you were called" (Ephesians 4: 1). OUR CONTRIBUTORS MOST REVEREND CHARLES H. HELMSING is Auxiliary Bishop of St. Louis. JOSEPH P. FISHER is master of novices at Florissant, Missouri. LOUIS J. PUHL is spiritual director at the! Josephinum, Worthington, Ohio. JOHN J. STOCHL is making his theological studies at. St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas. PAUL DENT is a former missionary in Patna, India, and is now teaching Hindi at West Baden College, West Baden Springs, Indiana. BRUNO M. HAGSPIEL has had long experience in writing, lecturing, and giving retreats, and is now at Sacred Heart Mission Seminary, Girard, Pennsylvania. RICHARD W. ROUSSEAU is making his theological studies at the College of St. Albert, Louvain, Belgium. PETER GOODMAN is on the faculty of St. Joseph of Holy Cross, Juniorate of the Broth-ers of the Holy Cross, at Valatie, New York. FRANCIS N. KORTH is on the fac-ulty at St. Mary's College, St. 'Marys, Kansas. 68 Lit:e Cont:ormed to !:he Image ot: Mary Louis J. Puhl, S.J. OUR Holy Father Pius XII in the encyclical consecrating this year,to the Immaculate Mother tells us that she rejoices to see her likenes~s in her children. He asks all Christians to conform their lives to the image of the Blessed Virgin. Fortunately for us, we have a portrait of the Immaculate Heart of Mary that pictures for us her holiness and perfection. It has been drawn under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by no less skillful hand than that of our Blessed Mother herself. This she has given us in the hymn of thanks and praise she left in the Magnificat. It is a summary of the spirituality of our Blessed Mother, and a model given us by God to aid us to carry out the wish expressed by the Holy Father in his request to conform our live~ to her image. The circumstances that gave rise to this hymn of thanks will help us to appreciate its meaning. The angel of God had come to Mary and asked her consent to be the mother of the Savior. When the humble Virgin understood how she was to serve God, she joy-fully embraced His will with those words we repeat each day in the Angelus, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord! Be it done unto me according to Thy v~ord." This act of surrender to God may be called the motto of Mary's life. It gives the key to her whole spir-ituality. Having learned in her conversation with 'the angel that her aged cousin would soon be the mother of the precursor, the humble Vir-gin hastened to be of service to her in need. The Mother of God, the living temple of God, did not think it beneath her dignity to do menial service for her kinswoman. ~ She understood well that the essence of perfection is charity. When she came to the home of her cousin and greeted her with the familiar Jewish greeting, "Peace be to you," Ehzabeth, inspired by the Holy Spirit, in great joy saluted her with the very words the angel had used, "Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb." Mary, seeing that the great mystery of the Incarnation had been revealed by God to her cousin, broke forth into a song of praise of the Redeemer. The very first verse of this hymn strikes at the most fundamental principle of the spiritual life. "My soul doth magnify the Lord," 69 LOUIS .I. PUHL Review [or Religious Mary sings. What is the ultimate destiny of man that must guide all the actions of his life? The glory of God. If I do not live up to this purpose of my life, I do not lead a rational human life. So Mary, teaching us to lead a truly Christian life, glorifies God for the wonders He .has wrought in her, and for the great mystery of the Incarnation and Redemption. But God has so arranged in His infinite goodness and power that what we do for His glory is for our happiness. We were made for joy in Him in time ,and eternity. Hence the second verse of this hymn, "My spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior." Man without Christ is a hopeless, helpless debtor. Nothing remains for him but to be cast into prison till the last farthing is paid. But since he can-not pay his debt without a Savior, he must remain there forever. There is no happiness possible without Christ. Hence, if I seek my happiness in any other, I am doomed to failure. The foolish world has sought peace in power, in pleasure, in wealth, and has ended in slavery. My happiness and joy is in Christ alone. He came to teach the way to peace and happiness and la'id down His life to secure the means to it. Unless with Mary my joy is in Christ my Savior, I can have no true joy :in time or eternity. Next, our Blessed Mother teaches us the great means to praise God and to find happiness in God. "He hath regarded the humility of His handmaid, for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed." In practice, perfection must always consist in walking in the will of God, in being the humble handmaid, the servant of God. Wherever God's will is made known, in the Com-mandments, in the duties of our state, in the wish of our superiors, in the inspirations of the Holy Spirit, man the servant of God by nature is bound to obey. This humble service by Mary, she tells us, is the secret of the wonderful graces God gave her. Because she was the humble servant, God regarded her and blessed her. So abundant were these favors that came from her service that she prophesies that henceforth all generations shall call her blessed. In its way, the same will be true of us if we serve. God and His angels and saints will rejoice and call us blessed even in this life if we serve. And the day will come in eternity when Christ Himself, as He tells us, will gird Himself and minister to us ~at the table of the Lamb'. All of God's saints and the Mother of God herself will call us bles-sed through all eternity. Then follows a way to magnify the Lord and rejoice in God our 70 March, 1954 LIFE C~NFORMED TO MARY Savior. Mary begins to praise God for the present order of God's providence, for the great work of the Incarnation and the Redemp-tion. It is the work of the omnipotence of God, "He that is mighty hath done great things to me." Indeed, only an infinitely powerful God could ca.rry out the design of His wisdom and mercy to save man by clothing Himself in our human nature, coming into the world as the child of a virgin, and finally laying down His life for our salvation. Secondly, she calls the work of the Incarnation and the Redemp-tion a work of the holiness of God, "And holy is His name." God came to teach us the way of holiness, to share His own nature with us and so sanctify us, to free us from sin and clothe us in justice such as he Himself has. Finally Mary proclaims the Redemption as the great work of the mercy of God. "His mercy is from generation unto generation to them that fear Him." Wherever there is that humble reverential fear of the servant for his Lord. of the child for his Father, Mary tells us, there will be the boundless mercy of God.If we reverently serve, she teaches, we are secure in God's mercy. In the next verses we are let into the great secret of Mary's suc-cess in her spiritual life. How did she become the model of all sanc-tity? The secret is humility. How often we read and are told that the foundation of all virtue is humility. From the first to the last verse of this hymn this truth is suggested in some way. Humility simply means that I know my place and live accordingly. I know who God is, the infinite Good to whom I owe all; and I know who I am, the servant who has received all from God and must go to Him for all I need. God must reject the proud, Scripture tells us. Mary eloquently proclaims this truth and the necessity of humility. "He hath shewed might in His arm. He hath scattered the proud, in the conceit of their heart. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble." If we wish to conform to the image of Mary, we must strive for humility. The second secret of her success pointed out by Mary is an ardent "desire for perfection. "He hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent empty away." Who ever heard of any per-son attaining a difficult goal without willing it? No one acquires a strange language without wanting to do so. We cannot learn to play the piano or succeed even in a game such as golf without wanting to learn. We do not wake up some fair morning and find 71 LOUIS J. PUHL ourselves masters of Greek against our will. Hence, the insistence in spiritual writers on an earnest desire for perfection. Our Lord Him-self has said, "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after justice for they shall have their fill." If we really wish to perfect our lives, there must be a real hunger for justice. If there is, there will follow the blessing of God and all the means necessary to attain holiness. Hence, Mary says, "He hath received Israel His servant, being mind-ful of His mercy." Notice. again, it is the humble servant that re-ceives the help. TEe last verse gives a third secret of Mary's success, her great faith and trust in God. God is faithful to His promises, "'as He spoke to Abraham and his seed forever." It was this complete trust in God's fidelity in Mary that was praised by Elizabeth, "Blessed art thou because thou bast believed, because those things shall be ac-~ complished that were, spoken to thee by the Lord." Faith in God's word who has promised to help us in every need and complete trust in His omnipotent love and mercy are necessary for success on the way to God. There are many mysteries in life we cannot under-stand. We must keep our faith firm in the words of Christ and go on in boundless trust. "God is faithful who hastcalled us to the society of His Son." He can accomplish His ends by humble means. The humble Virgin, raised to the dignity of Mother of God and praised by all generations, is an eternal example of this truth. Such is the portrait of the Mother of God left us by the inspira-tion of the H01y Spirit. She lived for the glory of God, she found her joy in Christ her Savior, she was the humble servant. Her life was a,hymn of praise of the omnipotence, holiness, and mercy of her Redeemer. The fouffdations of her holiness were a deep humil-ity, a hunger and thirst for justice, and an unshakable faith and trust in God. If I am to conform my life tO the image of Mary as God asks us to do through the words of the Holy Father, I must make it according to the model God has given us in Mary. BACK NUMBERS WANTED We have urgent requests for back numbers that are needed to complete sets. You can be of great service to other religious if you happen to have duplicates of any of these numbers and' are willing to part with them. If you have such dupli-cates, kindly notify us. The requested numbers are: Complete volumes I (1942): II (1943); and III (1944). Single copies: January. 1942; May, 1942: July, 1943 (2 copies): November, 1943; September, 1945; March. 1946: and Sep-tember, 1946. 72 Ext:ernal Grace and t:he Religious Lil:e John J. Stocbl, S.J. 44 | F THOU didst know the gift of God," Christ told the Samari- ! tan woman at Jacob's well, " . . thou perhaps wouldst have asked of him." The poor sinful woman, thinking that Our Lord was speaking of ordinary drinking water, did not understand; and so the divine shepherd had to explain that the water He had to give was "a fountain of water springing up unto life everlasting." This "gift of God" that Our Lord spoke about is grace, which God bestows on men and which was merited for men by the suf-fering and death of Jesus Christ. And truly, if we did fully under-stand this gift of God, we would know the science of sancFity a.nd the secrets of the saints. It is the heart of the supernatural life. Sanctifying grace, that divine life which is infused into the soul at baptism and which is increased or restored with the reception of the other sacraments and the performance of good works, is the greatest of all created gifts to man; so great is it that it actually makes us children of God and sharers in the divine life. Actual graces are transitory supernatural helps, holy thoughts and desires, that God continually sends us, especially when we are spiritually troubled. Their purpose is to inspire us to lead'tbe supernatural life and to give us supernatural strength when we most need it. The thought of our own weakness would be a terrifying one were it not for the fact that we have God's own assurance that His grace is sufficient for us. For this reason we can say with confidence at the beginning each ,day the prayer in the office of Prime: "Lord God Almighty, who hast brought us to the beginning of this day, defend us: throughout its course by Thy power, that we may not this day fall into any sin, but that our words and thoughts and deeds may be directed to the fulfilment of what is right in Thy sight." The band of God stretched out in our support is manifested not only through these interna~ supernatural helps which He gives us to avoid sin and perform works of eternal merit, but also in countless external helps we find all bout us. Thus we can see in the creatures about us a third kind of grace, 73 JOHN J. STOCHL ° Reoieto for Religious external grace, which theologians and spiritual writers frequently acknowledge wit~ only a passing nod as they hurry on to deeper and more important problems of sanctifying or actual grace. External graces are not absolutely necessary for salvation and are not even sufficient in themselves for the performance of a salutary act. Because of this they are often neglected in spiritual conferences and instruc-tions. They rouse the soul to merely human resolves, and hence are not sufficient of themselves to win the divine reward of eternal life. They are only the preparation for internal graces which are sufficie.nt for salvation. Yet external graces are real gifts of God, special gifts that help us to holiness. And for religious who habitually live in the state of sanctifying grace and whose whole effort is aimed at in-creasing that divine 'Iife in the soul, no means to sanctity is 'to be ignored. God places various creatures around us to help us reach the goal for which we were made. These creatures are external graces and should be used as God intended, namely, as helps in working out our own salvation and sanctification, St. Francis of Assisi found that the sun, the birds, and the animals made him love God more. For St. Francis Borgia, the death of his queen and the sight of her decaying body was an external grace that started him on the path to sainthood. And St. Ignatius says in his book of the Spiritual Exer-cises that "all other things on the face of the earth were created for man's sake, and in order to aid him in the prosecution of the end for which be was created." Any influence coming from creatures outside the soul and helping us to salvation is an external grace. Such external influences arouse thoughts of good deeds and excite holy resolutions. The sermon of a priest frequently stirs up in a sinner the first thoughts of repentance; the example of a strong Catholic in the armed service has often been a source of strengtb to weaker Catholics living with him. And on at least one occasion, the music, singing, incense, and ceremony of a Benediction servic~e has led a non-Catholic to inquire into the trutbs~.of the Faith. Some external graces of their very nature draw men to a better life. The life of Christ, the Blessed Virgin, or certain saints, the Bible, and the Church itself are bound to have a good effect on all who experience them. Other outside influences will appeal only to certain people or under certain circumstances. Music, for example, or books, good example, friends, recreation, or the radio can all lead 74 March. 19:54 ¯ ~ EXTERNAL GRACE us to God. In fact anything can be an external grace--even pain, sorrow, suffering, and sin-s-if we put it to the use that God intended. As Father Matthews says in his little book, With the Help of Thy Grace: "Every creature can make us think of God the Creator and so lead us to glo,rify.the Creator in His works. But such glorification would be only natural and God wants us to do supernatural deeds in order thereby to win heaven. So just when the external grace makes us know and love God naturally, actual grace enters our soul and helps us to know and love God supernaturally." It can and frequently does happen that all three kinds of grace come to us at the same time. The sister, for example, who° makes her weekly .confession, receives an increase of sanctifying grace by the very fact that she receives the sacrament. She also knows that by receiving the sacrament she is assured of a sufficiency of actual graces during the coming week to make her good resolutions and purpose of amendment effective. But over and above this, the difficulty of the actual telling of her faults and of the saying of the penance, and the shame felt in having to mention the same little sin of criticizing, for the fifth week in a row are all external helps to avoid sin in the future. God does not force His grace on anyone; nor does He act against the natures which He created. Rather, He deals with each creature in accord with its nature. And since, as philosophy teaches us, there is nothing in the intellect which was not first in the senses, God usually enlightens the intellect or strengthens the will through the use of the sense.faculties or emotions. Exterior graces act directly on the senses and only indirectly reach the spiritual faculties. They are either the occasions of inner graces, or else accompany interior helps. They do not of themselves strengthen the will, as Tanquerey says, but they produce in us favorable impressions, which by quickening the mind and rousing the will, prepare the soul for the reception of supernatural life. But since they are connected with true inward promptings, which move the soul to amendment and advancement in the supernatural life, they are of extreme importance. And we may be sure that when we make use of the many external graces God gives us the more important interior graces will be present. Religious life of its very nature assures us of couiatless such ex-ternal graces. The fact that religious live in communities where everyone is working for the spread of Christ's Kingdom is in itself a JOHN J. STOCHL Review for Religious great grace. Moreover, the religious is separated from many sources of temptation to which~ most Other Catholics and even the diocesan clergy are constantly exposed. For the most part we are cut off from all the pushing struggle for worldly success and the esteem of men, from bad companions, harmful reading, temporal worries, from practi.cally all persons, places, and things that are generally occasions of serious sin. The daily order of a religious house assures all of sufficient time for prayer and reflection, ample spiritual direction, and easy access to books for spiritual reading. All we have-to do is to recognize these graces and make use of them. They can be found all about us, in our Rule, the religious habit, the daily order, the little pinches of poverty, and the petty irritation that frequently accompanies reli-gious obedience. The presence of the Blessed Sacrament in our house, the beauty of the liturgy, wholesome books and study are also external graces. And though these latter are available to many of the faithful, still religious have more frequent opportunity to make use of them. ~Perhaps the greatest external grace that religious have .is the con-stant companionship of others who are striving to advance in the way of perfection. Who has not felt impelled to kneel a little straighter and put more effort into his prayer when he saw his neighbor in chapel pray with external reverence?' Or what over-worked teaching sister, is not inclined to give herself even more gen-erously when she sees others facing problems greater than hers? The unfailing generosity of one or other member of the community tends to make all the members of the community more generous with their time and their talents. Even the little twinge of human respect we feel over the violation of a rule in the presence of others can-- though it sounds strange to say it--be used as an external grate to prevent further violations. And every monastery, convent, or seminary has its number of those who by their unfailing cheerful-ness or exact observance of the rules draw others closer to perfection. There is absolutely nothing in religious life that cannot be used to draw us to greater love of God. As St'. Paul says in his Epistle to the Romans, "We know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good, to such as, according to his purpose, are called to be saints" (Romahs 8:28). And surely, if any are called to be -saints it is those who have voluntarily followed Christ's counsels, who have "left house, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, 76 March, 1954 ANNUNCIATION THOUGHTS or wife, or children, or lands for my name's sake" (Matthew 19: 29). ~ God comes to us through a thousand and one doors, and the' marvel of it all is the ingenuify He uses to touch our thoughts and draw our wills to higher things. God is not only present in crea-tures, according to St. Ignatius, "in the elements giving them being, in the plants giving them growth, in animals giving them feeling, and in men giving them understanding," but He actually "works and labors for me in all created things on the face of the earth, that is. He behaves as one that labors." Annunciation Thought:s Paul Dent, S.d. MARY'S plans were upset when the angel told her she would become the mother of a child, she who had planned a life of virginity vowed to God! But she gave instant consent to God's plans when she knew they were God's plans, and her own were realized in a way more glorious and holy than she could have imag-ined- and the world was redeemed, too. I must ever be ready to imitate Mary in regard to my plans. Souls will be. saved if I in-stantly and perseveringly consent to God's plans. They are infinitely holier than any plans of which I myself can think. (Luke 1:26 f.) From God to a town in Galilee (the mostboor-ish section of the Holy Land) named Nazareth (the proverbially despised section of that boorish section) to a virgin (not to a mother of a family, a person of merit and importance) betrothed to a man (whence all her importance, such as it was, in the eyes ot~ that little world--not from herself, but from him) named doseph (Joseph? Which one of the several Josephs? Joseph, the carpenter. Oh, that fellow! I thought you meant the Joseph, the one in that big house) of thehouse of David (a ruined house now, and of no account any more) and the virgin's name was Marg (a common sort of name, not distingu~ like Irene or B~renice). Thus God chooses what the world thinks little of, God chooses one fit for nothing but ordinary jobs about the house, not a brilliant writer, executive, orator. God, chooses one lowly in all eyes, especially her own, one accordingly 77 PAUL DENT not discouraged and ,despondent, but full of confidence in God and of gratitude to God for letting her love Him, letting her love Him. I want to be like you, O Mary Immaculate, Mother of God. I want to trust God and to be grateful that He allows and enables me to love Him. Mary is kneeling in prayer, adoration, love, oblation, abandon-ment, loving attention to the presence of God. ,She is lovingly aware that God is and she is humbly pleading to be allowed to be His servant-girl. Suddenly out of nothing a man appears and calls her highly favored, full of grace. She is troubled, thinking the Divine Majesty has deigned to answer her prayer. For this is evidently an angel before her who has been sent to bring God's answer, and yet he is calling her highly favored, her who had not asked to be praised, but to be ancilla Domini. B~t the angel speaks no flattery in calling her highly favored, for that is just what she is. By God's grace she is full of the love of God and is aware that she does love God, able to bear herself the honest, humble, candid witness that she really does love God. Is she now going to be told that she is allowed to be God's servant-girl? That were indeed to be highly favored! Is this not the angel's meaning? What els~ can his words mean? O Mother of God, is it presumption for me thus to try to ex-' press to myself your thoughts? ! do not think it is, if I know--as I do know !--that your thoughts, your pure, virginal; sinless, im-maculate thoughts are inexpressibly far above my power to imagine or express them. I do not think it is presumption, if I try to put your thoughts here before me'in order to help me realize more than I do what my prayer-life must be. I am your child and you are my Mother, and "like mother, like child" must mean that I try not only to do like you, but to think like you. Guard my thoughts, holy Mother of God. Help them belike yours, so that I may be like you --lovingly aware that God is and humbly desirous to be all His. "AURELIANS" IN THE UNITED STATES A Sister Adorer of the ,l~recious Blood writes, with reference to the article "Aurelian Spirituality" in our January, 1954 number: "We regret that no men-tion is made of the fact that the houses in the States (with the exception of Belle-vue, Ohio) are independent of either the French- or E.nglisl?-speaking Unions: and each has its own novitiate', in accordance with the way we were founded." 78 Are You a ,Jellyfish? Bruno M. Hagspiel, S.V.D. THIS is a challenging question. To face it honestly requires more than a modicum of courage. Yet it should be faced because this little creature of the sea has much to teach us if we are willing to let our powers of reasoning bear with full force upon the analogies that such a study suggests. Our Lord has endowed His smallest, weakest creatures with a meaning. He has used the sparrows, the flowers of the field, the mustard seed, to teach His incomparable lessons. We are but fol-lowing His inspiration if, like eager children, we try to learn from the most inconsequential things He has made, not only how to be but how not to be. If the poet Wordsworth, sensitive to the realities underlying the natural world, speaks of "the harvest of the quiet eye," how much more should we, with an eye steadied by faith, perceive the more profound realities of the supernatural world beating upon our inner selves. Yet we are sometimes as unaware of the full import of these realities as is the jellyfish of the insistent roll of the surf. If this were not so, we should not find the glaring inconsistencies between creed and conduct that are ot:ten manifest in the lives of those professing the Catholic faith and even of those committed to the higher dedica-tion of the religious life. To clarify out, thinking on this subject we might follow the lines indicated by Msgr. (later Bishop) John S. Vaugban .in "Inconsistency, or Our .Faith and Our Practice" (in Thoughts for All Times). Msgr. Vaughan alludes to the fact that~ve are often puzzled to explain why, in spite of' the overwhelming .arguments in proof of the authenticity of the Catholic Church, so many earnest men con-' tinue to resist her claims. We seldom take the t~ouble, however, of inquiring why we who believe firmly in the stupendous truths of Revelation are so little affected by them. That a materialist with no belief in a future life to sustain him should center his interest on the acquisition of worldly goods--whether honors, pleasures, or pos-sessions- is not strange. But that we who are well aware that this life is nothing more than a preparation, a path leading to an im-mortal destiny, should attach so much importance to what we know to be empty,, yain, and unsatisfying, is far more extraordinary and 79 BRUNO M. HAGSPIEL Review for Religious constitutes a really difficult problem. "We profess belief," Msgr. Vaughan says, "and .we do in re-ality believe every dogma, and yet we seem to be ab'le to reconcile With such a profession a line of conduct diametrically opposite. What we openly'affirm with our lips we are perpetually denying by our actions; and What we emphatically assert in words to be of the most vital importance we declare by almost every act of oui lives to be of no importance at all. However rational we may be in business, in politics and in our social relations, we seem to be wholly devoid of reason as soon as we begin to deal with the spiritual and the supernatural." In illustrating his point, be eliminates all matters of mere opin-ion and suggests that we confine ourselves to points of certainty on which we-all agree. He proceeds first of all to the concept of sin. We believe, obviously, that sin is the greatest evil in the world, that even the smallest deliberate sin is a more genuine misfortune than any pos-sible loss of health or fortune, that both in itself and in its conse-quences no merely human calamity can compare with it. We know with a divine certainty that not even to save our lives or any num-ber of lives would a person be justified in committing a single de-liberate v'enial sin. This, as Msgr. Vaughan asserts, is not a pious exaggeration, but the literal truth. In our own case, our faith no doubt is securely rooted. But how is it with our conduct? Does it coincide with our belief? Our atti-tude towards venial sin will supply an answer. How do we show our horror of small sins, our realization of their baseness and of the deep ingratitude inherent in them? Does our everyday life indicate an unhesitating preference to suffer pain or calamity rather than commit a deliberate venial sin? The result of such questioning will-show whether these words of Msgr. Vaughan apply to us: "We be-lieve sin to be the greatest of evils, ,we act as though it were the least." From the negative to the positive; from the consideration of evil to the consideration of the greatest supernatural good that can come to us in this life. We recognize this good as divine grace. Through faith we know that grace is so surpassing a gift that to gain one ad-ditional degree of it is an advantage immeasurably greater than to in-crease our fortunes or any of our earthly gifts a milliontimes over. One degree of grace is incalculably better in itself, of greater profit to ourselves, and more pleasing to God than any advance in worldly 8O March, 1954 ARE YOU A JELLYFISH prosperity, social position, or political power. We ought to be willing to renounce these, together with any natural gift such as wisdom, beauty, dignity, or talent, if thereby we could purchase the slightest increase of divine grace. We know all this and we teach it to others. But do we deny it in practice? The thought of grace leads logically to the thought of eternity. We may" indeed say with Msgr. Vaughan that God has committed to our hands the fashioning of a future that will be.precisely what we make it, neither better nor worse. Granted that we are fortunate enough to reach heaven, still our position in God's kingdom will depend on our own cooperation. We know that every degree of grace carries with it a corresponding degree of eternal glory. While breath lasts, we may continue to add to the amount of acquired grace-- which means that it rests with us (i.e., on our cooperation .with God's help) whether or not throughout an everlasting life we are to know God better, love Him more, and enjoy Him more completely and profoundly. This dependence is as'inevitable as that of the oak upon the acorn. But Msgr. Vaughan reminds us that many neither act nor speak as becomes men and women who have taken these truths to heart. If someone were to follow us as we go through our daily avocations, could be conclude that we are conscious of the fact that moment by moment we are drawing the plans and laying the foundations for an interminable future? Would be believe that we are aware that every one of our thoughts and actions is stamping our lives beyond the grave with an indelible mark and helping to make or mar a career that is unending? Since we easily recognize our inconsistencies, we cannot avoid~the questions: why this disparity between belief and practice? why do we behave so unreasonably? The general answer, at least in part, suggests itself at once; it is that, though we believe, we do not re~ alize. Truths affect us only in the measure that they come home to us. Even in the natural order, such truths as the distance of the .nearest.fixed star will come home to us only after a process of com-paring and contrasting. It is similar in the supernatural world. The great truths of faith affect us little because we do not realize them. We may believe them with a faith su6icient for the fulfillment of divine precepts; but unless we realize them--that is, make of them an inner experience that will work its way into our minds and hearts and permeate our whole being--they will never have the power to 81 IM. HAGSPIEL Ret~ietv for Religious the course of life, resist temptation, and give us the courage to "~ heroes and saints. The essence of~the matter is to bring our faith to the point of setting fire to our lives--the fire that Christ came to kindle--and to draw our souls out of the lukewarmness that has the disdain of God upon it. We can do this if we ponder over the truths that tell us of an invisible world, not merely skimming the surface of life, but following it to its hidden realities. By meditation the mustard seed of the gospel will grow and the kingdom 'of God that is within us will give forth its' secrets. The valhes of life here and hereafter will fall into their proper proportions, and the tranquillity of order will keep us on a steady course. Things invisible will grow visible to the eyes of. the spirit, and we shall have the thrill of knowing that we are not asleep amid the wonders that are about us. If we need added assuran, ce, we have only to look at those who have succeeded in the one great enterprise upon which we all are em-barked. From the example of the saints, all of whom have both practised this life-giving habit of meditation and exhorted others to do so, we draw the inevitable conclusion that it is a sure, simple, direct means of acqu~iring sanctity here and everlasting glory here-after. The great theologian Suarez declares it to be morally neces-sary for all who wish to rise above mere mediocrity. St. Teresa declares it impossible for anyone to practise meditation and at the same time continue to lead a tepid and sinful life. The two are mutually exclusive. Upon this matter the Holy Spirit Himself has spoken: "Think of thy last end and thou shalt never sin." And by the voice of the prophet He laas sago: 'With desolation is the whole world laid deso-late, because there is no man who considereth in his heart." it is a relief to turn for a moment from our own inconsistencies to the thought of the saints, to expose ourselves to the radiance of their uniform consistency. Even that well-known apostle of modern unbelief in Germany, Friedrich Nietzsche, who made no effort to conceal his hatred of the saints and did not hesitate to ridicule them, paid them an undeniable tribute. Obviously,' the loving humility of their surrender to God conflicted sharply with his theory of the superman. Nevertheless, he praised them "because they lived logi-cally according to their views," and he added that, compared with the saints,~''the ordinary average Christian cuts a sorry figure; he acts like a man who cannot count up to three." 82 March, 1954 ARE YOU A JELLYFISH? The saints not only realized their belief; they summed it up in effective maxims. For Augustine, "all that is not eternal is nothing": Stanislaus was born "for greater things": and Aloysius ruthlessly applied the question, "of what value is this for eternity?" And they lived ac,cording to these maxims. They were not jellyfish. To carry out the uncompromising program of the saints requires not 0nly logic but a spirit of self-denial, rt means mortification, penance, suffering. But here again we meet an inconsistency. Christ has left no doubt as to His teaching concerning our daily crosses and what to make of them. He laid down this lesson by both word and example; yet all too often the average Christian, and religious too, spontaneously turns away from the daily cross and abhors it as if it were an evil. We not only avoid suffering, but we tend to eliminate .every inconvenience. The way of the cross is not our chosen path, even though it leads to heaven. Theoretically we know that for those who love God all things work together unto good (cf. Romans 8:28), but do we live up to this knowledge? In practice--let us hu~mbly admit it--we too often act as if we could serve God well only as long as we can live in sufficient comfort and ease, as long as we are healthy and we/l, as long as we have success in our daily work and in our plans. How we dread the very thought ~f discomfort and material loss, of illness and disease, of ill success and failure! We seem to look upon such circumstances and conditions as so many hindrances and obstacles on the road to heaven: we imagine we can-not serve God so well any more; and our spirit of equanimity, of "holy indifference," and of conformity with the will of God is gone. Is not this jellyfish-like inconsistency? This is manifest especially when we find ourselves face to face with the necessity of makingade-cision in the choice of "creatures." Contrary to our'~better theoretical understanding ahd conviction, we catch ourselves ever ~o often se-lecting not what is lastingly useful to us, but what we think is more pleasant. We really ask ourselves not "what will help me most to serve God and to give Him pleasure?" .but "what will give me the least trouble?" Perhaps the climax of our inconsistency is r~ached in regard to Christ's law of charity. Again He has taught us by word and ex-ample. We must be kind to everyone. We must love everyone as we love ourselves. He has pointed out even the measure of our love. He has indicated also even the measure of our acts of kindness, "as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to 83 BRUNO M. HAGSPlEL Reoieto for Religious" me" (Matthew 25:40). Our Lord accepts every kindness to a ~eilow human being as though it were done to Himself; but He rega.r~l.s also -every unkindness as having been done to Himself. Must qce not tremble with apprehension when we remember all the uncharitable judgments, the petty bickerings, the pointed remarks that we l~vel at those around us? If we eliminate the grosser injuries of slander and calumny, what shall we say of the endless gossiping, the influendo, the taunting tone, the disparaging glance? Can we justify these things and make them consistent with God's law of love and God's own eternal love? What answer shall those who call themselves followhrs of Christ offer in explanation of unkindness, of hardness against those who have sinned, to the pitying Christ who with a divine hatred for sin had only mercy to show to the sinner? In our littlenes~ and our bitterness~, if we would find the r~medy, we need but look at Our Lord in one of tb'e most moving scenes of His earthly life, when the adulterous woman trembles at His feet while the Pharisees drop their accusing stones and slink away. Those who have consecrated themselves to Christ by the triple bond of poverty, chastity, and obedience, have chosen the three mos( potent safeguards against the fundamental weaknesses tin, at afflict our human nature. Here too the question is of supreme necessity: are we being consistent? Much too fr.equently we see that those who by the vow of poverty have voluntarily renounced all earthly pos-sessions will none the less frequently adhere to trivial things, be it a room or cell, a habit, even a dustcloth, knickknacks, trifles of every description. Even this leaves untouched the further question of in-ner poverty, the~stripping of the sp!rit that renders it unattached to all that is not needful, unattached even to itself. As for the vow of chastity, the purpose of which is to foster that undividedness by which the soul is wedded to God as to its Spouse, there are numerous ways in which inconsistency can show itself. Fidelity demands not only the observance of celibacy but also the exclusion of all things that unnecessarily endanger purity. Never-theless, much halfheartedness is evident in this respect among reli-gious. Many give way to undue attachments, indulge in the read-ing of dangerous literature, and by careless behavior Show the incon-sistency of believing one thing and doing another. The vow of obedience, this giving up, out of love for the obe-dient Christ, the most precious thing that we have, our own will, 84 March, 1954 YOU A JELLYFISH? puts consistency strongly to the test. The surrender to a God-given superior brings with it many interactions of rights and duties that give occasion for many a difficulty. How frequently self-will in affairs, both major and trivial, comes to the surface! When assign-ments are given we often see resistance, tears as of babies, excuses, an unwillingness to accept uncongenial work, pretenses of having no time for certain errands, various subterfuges. Superiors themselves do not always escape the danger of incon-sistency. Parallel to the'it rights to obedience they have their corre-sponding duties. A superior must be all things to all in the com-munity. Even here we frequently see partiality, an unwarranted establishing of precedents, an insistence on the "holy rule" as an end in itself, to the injury of some person concerned. All these things imply a disparity between that which the lips have professed and the behavior denies. Expediency takes the place of dedication and self-will usurps the primacy of self-sacrifice. We can easily im.agine Our Lord speaking to us as He spoke to the multitudes concerning John. To them He said: "What went you out into the desert to see? A reed shaken with the wind?" We can envision Him with His eyes upon us as we look through the ranks of those who have succeeded in this business of Christian living, and we ourselves can fashion the question: what did you come here to see? a jellyfish? a backboneless, glutenous substance? a semisolid hydrozoan? ' We may be sure that when Christ commanded His apostles to cast the net into the sea and the net nearly broke from the weight of the miraculous catch, there was but little room for a jellyfish. We may be equally certain that this helpless little creature was not the one chosen to be given as food to the hungering ap~ostles when the Master awaited them on the shore after His Resurrection. Happily we have still God's gift of time. We can, in a single moment of logical thinking and courageous willing, begin to make ourselves that which we desire to be. Unless we wish it, God be praised, we need not be jellyfish. MARIAN YEAR MEDAL PROJECT To encourage the wearing of the Miraculous Med~ during the Marian Year, the Daughters of Charity, of Milwaukee, are sendxng pledge cards with medals at-tached to all who request them. The cards contain a pledge to wear the~medal through the Marian Year. For the cards and medals write to: Daughters of Charity, 809 West Greenfield Avenue, Milwaukee 4, Wisconsin. 85 NEWS AND VIEWS NEWS AND VIEWS (Continued from Page 63) tion plan. Three thousand schools and organizations utilized the plan to have three hundred thousand homes consecrated to the Sa-cred Heart. As was the case with the picture of the Sacred Heart, framed glass-covered prints of the Immaculate Heart are now avail-able at 25 cents each. The companion pictures are obtainable in lots of thirty-six from the Nu-Dell Plastics Corporation, 2250 North Pulaski Road, Chicago 39, Illinois. Saturday lns?iCu,~e for Religious From Regis College, Denver, Colorado, comes news of an insti-tute for sisters held on four Saturdays during Advent and again on four Saturdays during Lent. Regis College has been conducting this institute for the past two years. The program found most suitable has been the following: 1:30 p.m., conference; 2:10 p.m., refresh-ments and social half-hour; 2:40 p.m., conference; 3:20 p.m., Benediction. Opportunity for confession is also provided., A preliminary questionnaire showed that the sisters preferred religious to academic topics. Some of the topics treated have been these: Appreciating the Mass; Mental Hygiene; Mystical Theology for Nuns; The Spiritual Life: The Psychology and Practical Diffi-culties of Prayer; Shakespeare and Catholicism; The Supernatural Life; Suffering; The Sisters in the Modern World; The Passion of Christ. The total attendance for the series in the first year was 1150 sisters. Unanimous requests for the continuance of the institutes show that the sisters like them and find them helpful. Catholic Periodical Index The Catholic Periodical Index covering the period, June, 1952- May, 1953, is now available. This contains a cumulative Author and Subject index to a selected list of Catholic periodicals. One has to see a publication like this to get even a faint idea 0f the pains-taking scholarship required in its composition. It is invaluable for libraries and writers. All communications regarding subscriptions, editorial policy, etc., should be addressed to: The Editor, Catholic Periodical Index, Catholic University of America. Room 301- Library, Washington 17, D.C. Catechism and Eucharistic Fast It is obvious that the new legislation on the Eucharistic fast re- (Continued on Page 102) 86 A Recent Con!:roversy on Obedience Richard W. Rousseau, S.J. ASMASH hit of the recent Paris stage for over a year was a play with an all-male cast: Hochw~ilder's Sur la terre cororoe au ciel (On Earth as It Is in Heaven). Though not a strictly historical play, it deals with the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jesuit missions in Paraguay. In these missions, or reductions as they were ca/led, the Jesuits had built up a set of independent Indian cities where the Indians were learning the arts and crafts of a settled agri-cultural life, safe from the predatory, slave-making raids of certain Spanish settlers. Whether or not such a venture was by its very nature temporary and destined not to last is a moot question. In any case, it all came to a sudden and somewhat bloody end in 1767 when, heeding the trumped up charges of the discontented plantation owners, Charles III, King of Spain, ordered the reductions closed, the Indians dis-persed, and the Jesuits exiled. The play deals with those most dramatic moments of crisis when the Envoy of the King arrives with tbe message of dissolution, his imprisonment by the outraged Jesuit provincial, the arrival of the secret Jesuit messenger with orders from Rome to obey, the brief military clash, and the accidental death of the provincial. A French Dominican, H.-M. Feret, has written a short book of partly literary, partly theological criticism of the play) His literary conclusion is that the central theme'of the play is not obedience but rather the politico-ecclesiastical problem of the legitimity of the theocratic system of reductions. With that conclusion we are not concerned. The book treats of necessity, however, of obedience in itself. This section of the book has given rise to an interesting little controvers~ that we intend to examine here to see whether we can thus shed any additional light on that highly delicate problem of the Christian conscience. Fr. Feret's opinion is summed up in the fol-lowing passages: "The Christian theological explanation of obedience is relatively simple. Whether one considers the authority of the legislator who lSur la terre cororoe au ciel: le vrai drame de Hochtoalder, Contestations (Paris: Ed. du Cerf, 1953). 87 RICHARD W. ROUSSEAU ' Review for Religious develops and imposes ia law or the superior who watches over its ob-servance and applies it to concrete situations, or whether one consid-ers on the other hand the obedience of the inferior, the submission of the person who is subject to the law. we find that b:th submission and obedience, commanding and authority, have as a common, fun-damental norm th~ common good of the society or group in which takes place this commanding Or authority, this submission or obedi-ence . "That in addition obedience also concerns the personal life of the subject who obeys, if only in making clear to him how he can and must serve the common good, is quite clear: but this is only a secondary consideration. A superior does not give orders merely to intervene in the personal life as such of his subordinates, but to point out to them, and bring them to work for, the needs of the common good. In the same way, one does not obey to submit oneself to a superior, but in order to serve, by means of his orders, the common good of which he has the care.''2 Soon afterwards, dn the Jesuit journal 12tudes) Fr. Henri Hol-stein, S.J., commented thus on Fr. Feret's book: "Religious obedience is a sharing, through the habitual exercise of a spirit of faith, of the very obedience which St. Paul discerned in Christ, who became 'obedient unto death: even to the death of the cross.' . . . "[This] sharing of the obedience of Christ within the Church constitutes what we may call the objective side of Christian and reli-gious obedience. We must now show the subjective side, its place of insertion within the supernatural organism. We think that obedience flows from the theological virtue of faith, that it is inspired by a spirit of faith. Religious obedience is not, as a matter of fact, a purely sociological phenomenon, a way of acting demanded by the good order of the community .or by the efficient organization of the apostolate. 'It is essentially an attitude commanded b~j :aith.'" At this point, A.-M. Henry, O.P., one of the editors of the Dominican review of :spirituality, La Vie Spirituelle, enters the scene. In a short article4 he examines thus Ft.Holstein's pages. "Fr. Holstein is right it seems to us, in underlining the mystical side of obedience, in'presenting it as a sharing in the obedience of 21bid., pp. 48-50. 3Sept., 19~3: "Le myst~re de l'ob~issance.'" See pp. 147, 150, 152. 4"Le 'myst~re de l'oblissance'," La Vie Spirituelle. Nov., 1953. See p. 415. 88 March, 1954 CONTROVERSY ON OBEDIENCE Christ. It is. as a matter of fact, essentially that. Nevertheless, the doctrine he presents seems to us to be incomplete. We think, fur-thermore, that this criticism, in the best sense of the term, is not due simply to a question of emphasis or of a school of spirituality. We admire the obedience of the 'true sons' of the Society . But this does not prevent us from regretting the absence of two important points in the doctrine proposed by the worthy ,lesuit journal." Fr. Henry then develops two points: first, that obedience is not faith: and secondly, that obedience is not given immediately to God. A previous article of his in the Suplol~ment de La Vie Spirituelles had presented his own positive ideas on religious obedience. For his com-plete exposition of these two points both articles must be consulted. Explaining what he means when he says that obedience is not given irfimediately to God, Fr. Henry points to the fact that all gov-erning authority, civil as well as ecclesiastical, comes from God. The Church, he says, is not distinguished from other societies solely by the fact that it has hierarchical authority, but rather by its origin, its end, and its infallible teaching magisterium. Obedience' to govern-mental authority in the Church is not directed by norms that are entirely different from the norms that direct obedience to civil au-thority. All obedience is a free dependence, otherwise it is slavery. What then are the norms of this dependence? Here Fr. Henry admits the norm of Fr. Feret, but only in this context. He says that there are two necessary conditions for obedience to an order: first, that the order is not contrary to the divine positive or natural law, and sec-ondly, that it does not go b~yond the needs of the common good, which in all societies defines the power or jurisdiction of the superior. There are times when these conditions are not fulfilled, and then obedience must be refused. Here are some examples: the order of a local superior is directly contrary to that of a major superior; an or-der is given in a domain outside the power of the superior, e.g., if a Franciscan superior should order a Franciscan. to live his own spir-itual life according to the spirituality of the Societ'~ of 3esus: the weight of some orders, .their complexity and infinite detail make them tyrannical; or an order is against the natural or divine positive law. When therefore Fr. Holstein says "obedience consecrates to God not only a man's work, but the very principles of his'activities, his intellect and will," Fr. Henry answers that this can very well be 5$ept. 15, 1953, pp. 249-82: "Ob~issance commune et ob~issance rdigieuse." 89 RICHARD W. ROUSSEAU ¯ Ret~ieto for Religious understood as the complete gift of ourselves to God, which naturally includes our minds and wills (as in the Contemplation for Obtain-ing Di+ine Love of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius), but that this does not mean that we thereby somehow destroy the right and normal use of those faculties. He believes that the phrase as such, in the context of the article and lacking adequate distinctions, may lead to an understanding of obedience as a substitute for the natural and spontaneous working of the mind and will. For it can and does hap-pen that now and then men and women in religious orders thus mis-understand obedience, and see their minds and wills as mere instru-ments in the hands of the superior. Obedience is not' faith. This was Fr. Henry's first point. The Church herself, he says, is a supernatural society. To be a member of it requires supernatural admission. This supernatural society, be-sides her work of sanctifying through the sacraments, has a double function. The first 'is her teaching function. When she teaches for-mally,' she is infallible with the infallibility of God and .demands submission of the human intellect. The second is her governmental function or function of jurisdiction. Since she is a supernatural so-ciety, it follows that we could not recognize this authoritative func-tion of hers as legitimate, and therefore as representing God for us, without ultimately an act of faith. All this is, as Fr. Holstein rightly says, an imitation of the fa~ith and obedience of Christ. The object of the act of faith with regard to the governmental function of the Church is the office or the principle, that is, that the legitimate supe-rior represents God in the supernatural society which God has estab-lished. But--and this is extremely important, because it is where the expressions of certain writers can lead astray--the orders of a superior are not in themselves objects of faith, that is, they cannot command the assent of the intellect that is given only to the infalli-bility of God. When Fr. Holstein says that the submission which a religious grants to his superior is not given to a man but to the heavenly Father, whom he recognizes in the .superior--that is true, as long as one clearly distinguiShes the superior from God and the order of the superior from his office. The superior is essentially an intermediary and his orders are not infallible. Religious obedience is not based on the fact that the orders of the superior, since he repre-sents God, are infallible, but rather on the fact that since the superior has duly legitimate @uthority and is exercising it within the limits of that authority, his orders, even though objectively erroneous, are God's will for the subject and must be obeyed. 9O March, 1954 CONTROVERSY ON OBEDIENCE And so we come to the question of obedience of judgment, that Gordian knot Of religious obedience. Fr. Feret judges it rather se-verely. "Certain writers on obedience," he says, "mainly concerned with efficiency, whether ascetical or collective, have a tendency to preach a perfection of obedience that consists not only in a crushing of all self-will, which, putting aside all question of aboulia, is ac-ceptable enough, but even more, in a giving up of all personal opin-ign, or at least any opinion differing from that expressed in the su-perior's order. Now this, at le~ast if we judge by the moral the-ology of St. Thomas, runs the risk of an over-extension of obedi-ence that no good moralist could approve." Fr. Holstein does not treat explicitly of obedience of judgment, although the tone of his article supposes,it. And Fr. Henry treats it only incompletely. Fortunately, however, a pertinent article ap-peared recently in the theological review of the Diocese of Malines.~ The author, Fr. J. Brabants., a diocesan priest serving as a chaplain to nuns, had encount'ered so many theoretical difficulties concerning obedience of judgment .that he had decided to study the question more deeply. The results of his work are contained in the article, which has some penetrating observations and explanations. He treats with special clarity the case in which the subject, though willing to obey in act, finds that evidence to the contrary, forces him to recog-nize the objective unworthiness of an order. In such a case of physical impossibility of agreement by the intellect, must .we call the obedience of the subject mere obedience of execution or of the will? Would it then necessarily be excluded from the category of obedience of judgment, and therefore also from perfect obedience? This is the conclusion we must perforce come to if we demand actual conform-ity of the subject's mind with that of the superior as the essence of obedience of judgment. But is this what St. Ignatius himself taught? Fr. Brabants thus sums up St. Ignatius' formal teaching on the subject in his Letter On Obedience--teaching which must be carefully distinguished from those parts of the letter where St. Ignatius is merely being exhorta-tory or speaking" of practical means to acquire this perfection of obedience: "The complete and perfect offering of oneself is realized in the third degree of obedience by the submission of one's judgment to that of the superior in those cases in which the mind does not find itself bound bg the force of the truth . The really obedient man 6"Remarques sur l'ob~issance de jugement suivant saint Ignace," Collectanea Mech-liniensiao Nov., 1953, pp. 652-70. See especially p. 653. 91 RICHARD W. ROUSSEAU ought to bow to his superior s wishes. He approves the order re-ceived insofar at least as the will can bbnd the mind to this ap-prot~ al.'" Here St. Ignatius is teaching, first, that perfect obedience and obedience of judgment are identical; secondly, that sometimes the will, even though desiring to do so, cannot bring the intellect of the subject to agree with the superior's because the subject's intellect can in no way refuse solid, contrary arguments; thirdly, that obedience which of necessity cannot go beyond execution and will is rightly considered obedience of judgment; and fourthly, that this obedience of judgment is also perfect obedience. Obviously, however, if we give to the orders of superiors, be-cause of certain incomplete expressions concerning faith in obedience, a nature of quasi-infallibility, then actual conformity, at least by some very mysterious sort of faith, becomes essential to obedience of judgment and perfect obedience. But if, as has been explained, the motive of obedience is not the infallibility of the superior's order but his God-given function bf governmental authority, then actual in-tellectual conformity becomes accidental. We can define obedience of ju'dgment, therefore, as an inclination of the will to be so perfectly united with the will of the superior that it does all it can to bring the intellect to be in actual accord with the mind of the superior in a specific order unless reasons to the con-trary make this particular agreement impossible. We have thus examined all the authors and their articles. Re-garding the opinion of Fr. Feret, we agree with Fr. Holstein that it is inadequate. Rightfully, however, Fr. Henry points out that cer-tain aspects of Fr. Holstein's exposition need clarification, but be himself does not treat t,he question of obedience of judgment. On this last point, Fr. Brabants' article seems to us to present an illum-inating and interesting solution. We have taken the mystical notion of obedience.from Fr: Holstein, the thorough"analysis of the object and nature of obedience from Fr. Henry, and finally, from Ft. Bra-bants, the complementary considerations on the nature of obedience of judgment. And having made all the necessary distinctions and reservations, we can see in the sacrifices obedience occasions, in the graces it demands, in the faith it builds upon, in the trust in divine providence it requires, and in the identification it makes with the mystical obedience of Christ to his Father, how necessary and how noble a thing is religious obedience. 92 Benediction Brother Peter Goodman, C.S.C. IT IS INTERESTING to note during this Marian year that it was a devotion to Our Lady that was one of the forerunners of our present-day Benedidtion. It became the custom in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries for the faithful to gather together at the end of the day to sing hymns and canticles in honor of Mary. As this took place usually before her shrine in the local church, gradually another custom, that of exposing the Sacred Host for adoration (a carry over perhaps from the elevation at Mass), was added to give greater solemnity to the occasion. The use .Of a monstrance for holding the Host probably developed.from the need for such a vessel in which to carry the Host during the processions subsequent to the establishment of Corpus Christi. It has been suggested, too, that the monstrance might have originated from the practice of putting relics in glass reliquaries for veneration. As a fitting close for the service the Sacred Host was raised in blessing over the gathering. In .one of Cardinal Newman's lectures he describes the character and meaning of this rite in glowing terms, particularly the blessing. "It is our Lord's solemn benediction of His people, as when He lifted up His hands over the children, or when He blessed His chosen ones when He ascended up from Mount Olivet. As sons might come before a parent before going to bed at night, so once or twice a week the great Catholic family comes before the Eternal Father, after the bustle or the toil of the day: and He smiles upon them, and sheds upon them the light of His countenance. It is a full accomplish-ment of what the priest invoked upon the Israelites: 'The Lord bless thee and keep thee; the Lord show His face to thee, and have mercy on thee: the Lord turn His countenance to thee, and give thee peace.' " Upon reflection we might wonder why our vision of His counte-nance is not appreciably clearer, our peace not more firm and deep after we have received this blessing numberless times. Is it not be-cause we have failed to understand what is being done to "us, and failed to make full use of the power placed at our disposal? A,short paragraph in the encyclical Mediator Dei points the way 93 o . PETER GOODMAN Review for Religious to a keener appreciation of the rite of Benediction. In speaking of the blessing at the conclusion of the ceremony, our Holy Father says, i'. it is an excellent and fruitful thing that the priest, holding the Bread of Angels aloft before the bowed heads of the Christian multitude, and turning it about duly in the form of a cross, should pray the Heavenly Father kindly to turn His eyes to His Son crucified for love of us. and because of Him and through Him, Who willed to be our Redeemer and our Brother, should command supernatural gifts to flow forth to those who have been redeemed by the immaculate Blood of the Lamb." This eminently Christo-centric manner of approach is prob-ably not our usual method of praying at Benediction. We might be more inclined to bow low and feel, in imagination, the soft touch of Christ's pierced hands upon our heads and hear Him whisper, "See how much I have loved you." It requires faith, of course, to do this; faith in the Eucharistic Presence. But there are degrees in faith as there are degrees in shadow. Worldly things seen with our bodily eyes partake of the aspect of shadows'--"a, shadow's shadow, he, the Spokesman, tells us, a world of shadow!" (Ecclesiastes 12:8.) Things of the spirit, viewed with the eyes of faith, become clearer as faith deepens. To concentrate on the blessing itself, regarding it as a sort of mystical laying on of Christ's hands, does not seem to give suffi-ciently free rein to our habit of faith. Faith seeks not so much the blessing, as Him who bestows the blessing. It wants to encompass in an intuitive fashion this being who is not only human but divine. The Word was made visible to draw us upward to the love of things invisible. Christ tells us, "See, I hold you engraven on My hands and in My heart," but we are to pass through those wounds to knowledge of His Father and of the Holy Spirit. A lively faith is also acutely aware of Christ's role as Redeemer. The sacred humanity was ,broken by suffering that our human natures might be made whole by sharing in the very lif4 of the Trinity. To faith's clear vision, Christ is ever the "Lamb standing upright, yet slain" (Apoc. 5:6), the eternal Mediator between God and man. Our Lord has frequently urged us to pray in His name, to avail ourselves of His divine intercessory power. This we shall do if we pattern our sentiments at Benediction on the recommendation offered by His Holiness, Plus XII. Whet; the Sacred Host is raised above our heads in the salvific gesture of the cross, our first thought 94 March, 1954 BOOK REVIEWS will then be to beg thee Father to look upon His incarnated Son, formed by the operation of the Holy Spirit from the pure flesh of Mary. We shall remind Him to gaze upon the scars of the cruci-fixion sustained for love of us, the wounds in Christ's hands, feet, and heart. They are our means of violence with which we may rock heaven and bear away the Father's blessing. In virtue of these wounds, and of the love borne the Son by His Fa.ther, we can then with great confidence ask the Father to bless us and all the world. LISTEN, SISTER SUPERIOR. By John E. Moffaff, S.J. Pp. 208. McMul-len Books, Inc., New York: 1953. $2.75. Although one might strongly disagree with some points made by the author, yet the general impression created by Listen, Sister Supe-rior is that it is a thesaurus of practical advice, compiled by an ex-perienced director of sisters from his many years spent in giving re-treats to sisters throughout the country. Father Moffatt's creden-tials need hardly be given here because his many previous works have merited for him an enthusiastic throng of readers. As usual, the author's style is warm and engaging; his thought, uplifting and practical. As the title indicates, these spiritual chats are directed to superior's, but they are just as applicable and worth while to subjects. Often a sister in the ranks has suddenly lifted her eyes to find the hand of Divine Providence suture, oning her to lead others on the path of perfe.ction~ For many humble ones there is neither thought nor premonition that such an event could happen to them, and a wave of almost frantic helplessness overcomes them as they face their new obligations and realize their unworthiness and lack of preparation. Such persons will find this work a manual of arms in helping them to know clearly their new obligations: and the ideals presented would .soon enable the most timid to go forward with confidence, realizing with St. Paul that all things work unto good for those who love God. For the experienced sister superior each little chat might well provide matter for an examination of conscience and an inspiration in following her ideals. For the sister in the ranks this work will 95 BOOK REVIEWS ¯ Reoieto for Religious engender a greater understanding of the problems of her superior and will enable her to understand many decisions heretofore perplexing and seemingly harsh. For all, Listen, Sister Superior will pr.ovide an inspiring and refreshing review of the fundamental principles in-volved in silence, common life, poverty, rule of life, humility, jus-tice, and especially obedience.--EDWARD A. LARKIN, S.J. OBEDIENCE. Edited by A. PI~, O.P. Pp. viii ~ 289. The Newman Press, Westmins÷er, Maryland, 19S3. $3.7S. This volume contains the English version of a collection of re-ports presented by priests and sisters of various religious institutes at the 1950 conference of La Vie Spirituelle on the topic, "Obedi-ence and the Modern Nun." Although the book is primarily in-tended for religious women, more than half of the contents would be useful for all religious: and the entire book would seem to be indispensable for priests charged with the spiritual direction of re-ligious women. The loose unity characteristic of collections of this kind is offset in the present instance by an attitude and a theme which seem to have prey,ailed in most of the authors' approaches to their facet of the subject. The attitude is one of candor and honesty in facing the problem of evaluating and ordering the personalist and democratic tendencies which are certainly, if only indirectly, influencing con-temporary religious life. The theme is religious obedience as a vir-tue which involves a maximum of intelligent activity. The impact created by this contemporaneity of treatment is that of freshness rather than novelty. Suggestions and conclusions arise from a merger of the present historical condition with the vital tra-dition of Saints Basil, Benedict, Dominic, Francis, Ignatius, Thomas Aquinas, Teresa of ,Avila, John of the Cross, and Th~r~se of Lisieux. The tinique value of the book lies in this attt!mpt.to as-similate within the tradition of the Church whatever is good in modern psychology and the social drive toward personalism. Because of the variety of topics, a brief review can hardly give an accurate description of the contents of the book. Yet the flavor might at least be sampled by reading some short statements made by Henri Bissonier in histreatment of "Initiative and Obedience in Re-ligious Life." "Initiative is in full play when a subject can, and in some ways is obliged' to, give plain proof of his originality, free 4hoice and creativeness in the permissions he seeks. Obedience is in full play because the subject acts only when the permission sought 96 March, 1954 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS comes back to him as a permission granted with the validity of a command" (p. 237). "In brief, let initiative be not only tolerated by superiors but conceded, allowed, encouraged and almost, imposed. so long as a subject needs to be drawn out of that dangerous inertia which merely counterfeits obedience" (p. 238). The whole tendency of this book is to arouse a new appreciation and enthusiasm for obedience.-~ROBERT D. CROZIER, S.J. ~ BOOK NOTICES To GOVERN Is TO LOVE, by F. X, Ronsin, S.J., translated from the French by Sister Eugenia Logan, S.P., is addressed to superiors of religious women. Translations have appeared in Italian and Spanish, and others are being prepared in Polish, Dutch, and Por-tuguese. This book is a r~sum4 of a much larger work published by the ~uthor in 1947 under the title Pour Mfeux Gouoerner, which has not as yet been translated into English. It is divided into four parts: I, To Know Subjects; II, To Understand Subjects; III, To Form Subjects; IV, To Love Subjects. Although it is not easy reading, perhaps because it is a condensation, still superiors will find it well worth while to make a study of the points discussed and to ponder on them, for their benefit as well as for that of the members of the community. (New York: Society of Saint Paul, 1953. Pp. 288. $3.00.) ~ To write profoundly, correctly, simply, a~d clearly on any aspect of the Catholic teaching on grace is a genuine achievement. John V. Matthews, S.J., once did this on the subject of actual grace. More recently be has done the same thing as regards sanctifying grace. THE LIFE THAT IS GRACE gives in simple, readable chapters the profound truths pertaining to the doctrine of sanctifying grace, and presents these truths in a practical, inspirational manner. (West-minster, Md.: The Newman Press. 1953. Pp. vii q- 196. $2.50.) BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS [For the most part. these notices are purely descriptive, based on a cursory exam-ination of the books listed.] BRUCE PUBLISHING CO., 400 N. Broadway, Milwaukee 1, Wis. A Life of Mar~t, Co-Redemptrix. By Peter A. Resch, S.M. "This little work tries to set forth the life of the Blessed Mother 97 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS Review [or Religious simply and positively, amplifying the gospel story only by the in-~ terpretations which the Church seems to favor in her liturgy, in her papal pronouncements, and in her recognized commentators." Pp. 96. $1.00. CATHOLIC LITERATURE DISTRIBUTORS, 660 N. Dearborn St., Chicago 10, I11. The Wife Desired. By Leo J. Kinsella. As the title indicates, this book gives the qualities that are desired in a good wife. Ac-cording to the various chapters, the wife desired is an inspiration to her husband, has personality, is patient, is a physical being, has a sense of humor, is a companion to her husband, and is religious. This is the first book to be published by the Catholic Literature Distributors. Pp. 168. $2.50. (Paper edition, 70 cents.) THE DAUGHTERS OF ST. PAUL, Old Lake Shore Road, Derby,N.Y. Louis Martin: An Ideal Father. By Louis and Marjorie Wust. In this book the authors have given us "the first life in English of a saintly father of a sainted daughter." This life of the father of the Little Flower of Jesus "is presented in a pleasant and entertaining style." Pp. 375. $3.00. (Paper edition, $1.50.) EXPOSITION PRESS, 386 Fourth Ave., New York 16, N. Y. Living for God. By Rev. Manuel Milagro, C.M.F. "The book is designed for those who have a fair knowledge of the doc- .trine and the teachings of faith, hope, and charity; who have expe.ri-enced the bitterness of the struggle required to lead a virtuous life; but yet, who find their way more or less clouded by a feeling of anxiety." Pp. 116. $2.50. FIDES PUBLISHERS, 21 W. Superior St., Chicago 10, Ill. Wisdom Shall Enter. By Leo J. Trese. A book of modern apologetics presented in readable style. Contains an introduction, sixteen chapters, and two appendices., The chapters deal with standard apologetic themes: existence of God; man's immortality and freedom; need of religion; credentials of Christ and His Church; and so forth. The appendices treat briefly of the nature of God, and of the dictum that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation. Pp. 144. $2.75. The Apostolic Itch. By Vincent J. Giese. "A group of reflec-tions from the lay point of view, on the lay apostolate, particularly the directions it should take in the years ahead." The author is edi-torial director of Fides Publishers, which is dedicated to serying the 98 March, 19~4 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS lay apostolate. Pp. 126. $2.75. The Kingdom Is Yours. By P. Forestier, S.M. An "unpre-tentious commentary of the Gospel," as the author says in his Preface, in which "youth will be able to meet Christ, to hear His teachings directly, to gaze at leisure upon His sacred person, and to learn at first hand the virtues that make true and perfect Christians. Young men and women will realize that religion is not like other school subjects, such as science or literature, for instance. They will discover that religion enriches the whole personality--the mind, the heart, and the soul." Pp. xiii q- 189. $3.50. WILFRED FUNK, INC., 153 E. 24th St., New York 10, N;Y. Catholic Shrines in the United States and Canada. By Francis Beauchesne Thornton. "What.I have tried to do is to give the his-tory of noted places of popular pilgrimages: places where the attrac-tion of a saint, an atmosphere, or a devotion, has drawn men and women with the compelling magnetism Chartrek had for Henry Adams" (from the author's Preface). The book tells the story of one hundred and nineteen of these noted places and gives exact loca-tions, with maps and photographs. Beautifully printed and illus-trated. A distinctive contribution to the story of Catholicism in Canada and the United States. Its price, as prices range ~today, is very moderate. It should be in every Catholic home and institution. Pp. xii + 340. $4.75. GILL ~ SON, 50 Upper O'Connell St., Dublin, Ireland. Our Lady of the Smile. By Rev. St6phane doseph Piat, O.F.M. One of the memorable events in the life of the Little Flower is the apparition of Our Lady when she was a child. It was at this time that Our Lady smiled on Th6r~se. In this book Father Piat shows how the Little Flower later fostered the devotion to Our Lady of the Smile, and how this. devotion has spread since her death. Pp. x + 134. 5/6. We Catholics. By Robert Nash, S.d. This is a second volume of short essays on what might be called the everyday spirituality of Catholics. Besides the Introduction. there are twenty-six essays on practical topics and in the readable style that we have come naturally. to expect of Father Nash. Pp. viii ~- 136. 5/. Plus X. By Fr. Hieronymo Dal-Gal. ~Translated and adapted from the Italian by Thomas F. Murray, M.A. An authentic bi- 9grapby based on ot~cial records. For the sake of readability this English adaptation omits the notes and abbreviates some of the 99 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT~ Reuieu~ for Religious material contained in the original Italian. Good for both private and public reading. Pp. xv ÷ 246. 15/. THE GRAIL, St. Meinrad, Indiana. Mission [or Margaret. By Mary Fabyan Windeatt. This is a life of St. Margaret Mary, with special reference to the devotion to the Sacred Heart and the practice of Communion on the First Fri-day, told in story form. Pp. 230. $3.00. B. HERDER BOOK CO., 15 South Broadway, St. Louis 2, Mo. The Philosophy of Being. By Rt. Rev. Louis De Raeymaeker. Translated by Rev. Edmund H. Ziegelmeyer, S.J. A synthesis of metaphysics in which "the author follows the lines of thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, and makes convincing application of the doc-trines of the analogy of being and the real distinction between es-sence and existence in all contingent beings." Not a textbook: but suggestions for using' it as a textbook are furnished by the trans-lator. Pp. xii -k 360. $4.95. HOLY SHROUD GUILD, Esopus, N. Y. Self-Portrait of Christ. By Edward A. Wuenschel. C.SS.R. The author is a recognized authority on the Holy Shroud of Turin. In this book' he presents the arguments for and against the authenticity of the Shroud and concludes that it is authentic. Good photographs of the Shroud are included, as well as an excellent and detailed bibliography. Pp. 128. $1.00 (paper). P. J. KENEDY ~ SONS, 12 Barclay St., New York 8. N.Y. A Doctor at Calt~ar~t. By Pierre Barbet, M.D. Translated from the French by the Earl of Wicklow. In this book Dr. Barber, an eminent French surgeon, gathers together his many writings and lectures on the physical sufferings of Christ. His interest in this sub-ject began when be saw photographs 6f the Holy Shroud. His work is based on a careful study of the impressions on the Shroud, as well as of archaeology, history, scriptural exegesis, and so forth. Pp. 178, plus 12 pages of photographs. $3.00. The Epistles in Focus. By B. Lawler, S.J. Contains a'n explan-atory foreword and sixteen chapters. The first two chapters are in-troductory. "All the remaining chapters," says the author, "are devoted to one or two Epistles in turn. Each c,hapter contains (i) useful information, followed by (ii) a brief commentary. (i) The information is partly certain, partly conjectural: you need not take it all as 'gospel-truth,,' . . . (ii) The commen'tary makes no preten- 100 March, 1954 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS sions either to completeness or to havir;g a balanced selection of learned opinions. It is merely what I regard as necessary or useful for the ordinary reader." The book concludes with useful schematic summaries of the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles. Pp. 165. $3.00. NEWMAN PRESS, Westminster, Maryland. Faith and Prayer. By Vincent McNabb, O.P. A reprint of works formerly published by Father McNabb. Pp. ix-I- 215. $3.50. The Fulness of Sacrilice. By A. M. Crofts, O.P. A study of the Eucharist intended to "help the reader to appreciate the Sacrament and Sacrifice of the Eucharist, not.merely as a truth isolated within itself, but as the culmination of God's vast and eternal design of Re-demption, gradually unfolded down the ages of preparation, and, once fulfilled, for ever perpetuating the fulness of sacrifice in the re-deeming mystery of the Messiah."' Pp. 296. $3.00. The Trinity in Our Spiritual Life. By Dom Columba Marmion, O.S.B. The Abbot Marmion once composed a beautiful Consecra-tion to the Blessed Trinity. This book contains the Act of Conse-cration, and an explanation of each part of the Act by means of apt selections from other published works of Dora Marmion. Pp. 284. $3.50. The Scale of Perfection. By Walter Hilton. A noted English classic on perfection translated into modern English, with an intro-duction and notes by Dom Gerard Sitwell, O.S.B. The fifth volume to be published in the new Orchard Series. A book which is indis-pensable for the student of Christian asceticism and mysticism and which makes charming and unctious spiritual reading. Pp. xx-~ 316. $3.50. RADIO REPLIES PRESS, 5'00 Robert St., St. Paul 1, Minn. That Catholic Church. By Rev. Dr. Leslie Rumble, M.S.C. Edited in collaboration with the Rev. Charles Carty. A sequel and companion book to the three volumes of radio replies published pre-viously by Frs. Rumble and Carry. This volume contains 1650 replies to questions, also a detailed index. Pp. x ÷ 453.$3.50. (Paper edition, $2.50.) TEMPLEGATE, 719 E. Adams St., Springfield, Ill. Christopher's Talks to Catholic Teachers. By'David L. Green-stock. Advice to Catholic teachers covering their own preparation, religious teaching methods, the manner of dealing with various age 101 NEWS AND VIEWS Reoiew /:or Religious groups, also of dealing with the abnormal child, vocational counsel-ing, and so forth. Pp. xi + 228. $3.75. JOSEPH F. WAGNER, INC., 53 Park Place, New York 7, N.Y. Kegs to the Third Floor. By Philip E. Dion, C.M. A very practical and readabl~ .treatise on how to live the religious life well especially by imitating Christ in His obedience, His love of the poor, His love of the cross, and His love of enemies. Pp. 188. $3.25. Nr-WS AND VII:WS (Continued from Page 86) quires some changes in our catechisms. Of special interest, there-fore. is the communication of the Sacred Congregation of the Coun-cil published in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, December 16, 1953, pp. 809-810. According to this communication, the Sacred Con-gregation of the Holy Office, with the approval of the Holy Father, has ordered certain changes in nn. 335, 339, and 340, of the Catechism of Blessed Pius X. The following is an accurate sense-translation of the new version of these numbers: 335. What is required to make a good Communion? Ans. To make a good Communion, three things are required: (1) to be in the state of grace: (2) to know and to bea~ in mind who is going to be received; (3) to be fasting from midnight. 339. In what does the Eucharistic fast consist? Ans. The Eucharistic fast consists in abstaining from food or drink of any kind, with the exception of plain water. 340. May one who is not fasting euer receiue Communion? Ans. One who is not fasting may receive Communion in danger of death; also in definite circumstances determined by the Church. 340-bis. What are these de£nite circumstances determined by the Church ? Ans. They are the following: , 1) The sick may receive Holy Communion, even after taking medicines or liquids; if, because of grave inconvenience recognized as such by the confessor, they are unable to observe a complete fast. 2) Those who receive Communion at a late hour or after a long journey or after fatiguing work may take some liquid nour-ishment up to an hour before going to Communion, if they experi-ence grave inconvenience recognized as such by the confessor in ob- 102 March, 1954 NEWS AND VIEWS serving a complete fast. 3) At evening Masses, those who have abstained from solid foods for three hours and from liquid for one hour may receive Communion, 340-ter. When permission is granted to take liquids, are alcoholic drinks included? Ans, When permission is granted to take liquids, alcoholic drinks are excluded. Summer Sessions Reverend James I. O'Connor, S.J., professor of canon law at West Baden College, will ~ive a course entitled "Canon Law con-cerning Religious," at Immaculate Heart College, Los Angeles, from June 28 to July 31, inclusive. This is a general course directed to all religious women, and it will be given during the regular summer session. There is adequate housing on th~ campus for out-of-town religious. For further information address: The Dean, Immaculate Heart College, Los Feliz and Western Avenue, Los Angeles 27, California. The Institute for Religious at College Misericordia. Dallas, Pennsylvania, (a three-year summer course of twelve days in canon law and ascetical theology for sisters) will be held this year August 20-31. This is the second year in the triennial course. The course in canon law is given by the Reverend :losepb F. Gallen, S.J., that in ascetical theology by the Reverend Daniel J. M. Callahan, S.J., both of Woodstock College. The registration is restricted to higher su-periors, their councilors and officials, mistresses of novices, and those in similar positions. Applications are to be addressed to the Rev. Jo-seph F. Gallen, S.J., Woodstock College, Woodstock, Maryland. Marquette University offers an Institute on Canon Law for Re-ligious, to be held on six week ends during the 1954 summer session. The Institute will be conducted by the Reverend Adam C. Ellis, S.J., a member of the editorial board of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Although primarily intended for superiors, masters and mistresses of novices, councilors, bursars, and others charged with some direction of reli-gious communities, the institute will be open to all religious. The meetings will be held on successive Friday afternoons at 3:30-5:15, and successive Saturday mornings at 9:00-11:00. The first ses-sions will be June 18-19. Father Ellis will also give one special con-ference on "The Mind of the Church in the Government of Reli-gious," discussing such problems as adaptation, studies, physical care 103 NEWS AND VIEWS Retffew ~or Religious of the community, sleep, diet, work, and the like. Another special feature will be a question box. Registration fee for all twelve sessions will be ten dollars; for individual sessions, one dollar. For a detailed list of topics to be treated at the various sessions, as well as for regis-tration and further information write to: The Director, Summer Session, Marquette Universi.ty, Milwaukee 3, Wisconsin. C, anonizaflons, 195 I The Clergy Monthly, edited by the Jesuit Fathers at St. Mary's Theological College, Kurseong, D.H. Ry., India, has published short biographical sketches of those who have been beatified or canonized during ~he reign of Pope Plus XII. With the gracious permission of the Editor of The Clergy Monthly, we have already reprinted the biographical sketches of those canonized or beatified from 1939 to the end of the Holy Year, 1950. (See RE.VIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, VIII [1949], 3-17; IX [1950], 330-31; X [1951], 225-38.) The following are brief sketches of those canonized during 1951: St. Emily de Vialar: born, 1797; died 1856; beatified, 1939; canonized, June 24, 1951. Foundress of the Sisters of St. Joseph "of the Apparition." By 1952 her institute had become an impor-tant missionary congregation, with 2,000 members in 125 houses. St. Mary Dominic Mazzarello: born, 1837; died, 1881; beati-fied, 1938; canonized, June 24, 1951. Cofoundress, with St. John Bosco, of, the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians. Don Bosco wanted a congregation that would do for girls what his own Sales-ians were doing for boys. By 1952 there were more than 14,000 Salesian Sisters in 58 countries. St. Anthony Gianelli: born, 1789 ; died, 1846 ; beatified, 1925 ; canonized, October 21, 1951. As a diocesan 15riest he distinguished himself in educational work and in the parish ministry. In 1838 he was appointed bishop of Bobbio. He founded an institute of sisters for teaching poor children and nursing the sick-~the Daughters of Mary dell' Orto. In 1952 this institute had 1,400 members in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. St. Francis-Xaoier Biancbi: born, 1743; died 1815; beatified, 1893; canonized, October 21, 1951. A Barnabite, professor of theology, great preacher, and director of souls. The peopl~ of Naples venerated him as the Philip Neri of their city. St. lgnatius of Laconi: born, 1701: died 1781; beatified, 1940; canonized, October 21, 1951. A Sicilian Capuchin lay brother/ He i 04' March, 1954 SECULAR INSTITUTES spent most of his long life begging food for the Capuchin monastery --an occupation that gave him many opportunities to do good for souls. The last three.salnts, the Holy Father observed on the occas;on of their canonization, differed much in their external life--a bishop, a theologian, and a lay brother--but all three were great apostles. All three were remarkable for overcoming natural family affections and self-love, for being constantly united with God in the midst of manifold occupations, and for dedicating themselves ardently to the salvation and sanctification of their neighbor. Francis N. Korth, S.J. An informal two-day gathering of a number of priests interested in secular institutes was held at the Morrison Hotel in Chicago, Feb-ruary 22 and 23. Various parts of the country were represented. The meeting developed out of a questionnaire sent to interested per-sons last December. The questionnaire mentioned the possibility of a meeting of priests who might already know something about sec-ular institutes or who might be desirous of learning something about this type of institute. Those who received the questionnaire were asked to contact other priests who might be interested. Father Joseph E. Haley, C.S.C., of Notre Dame University, was chiefly re-sponsible for getting the meeting together. A small but select group of priests gathered for the opening ses-sion at ten o'clock the morning of February 22. It became imme-diately apparent that these priests had come together for a very definite purpose and that they were wholeheartedly concerned with the topic under discussion. A short introductory paper followed by discussion was the planned outline for each session. The lively, lengthy discussions that characterized each meeting amply fulfilled all expectations. The first paper treated the topic: "The Role of Secular Institutes in the Church Today." It was presented by the Reverend Raymond E. Bernard, S.J., of the Institute of Social Order at St. Louis. A number of pertinent historical items, from the eighteenth century up FRANCIS N. KORTH Reoieu., [or Religious to the present time, were noted. It was pointed out that the blend-ing of firmness and flexibility in the Prooida Mater Ecclesia wisely allowed for the growth of the new institutes under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. ~ The afternoon session of the first day was devoted to a paper and discussion on the juridical requirements of secular institutes, the initial ~teps to be taken in forming a group that might develop into a secular institute, further steps, consolidation, and final ap-proval in a diocese. Subsequent papal approval is a further possi-bility. This matter was ably presented by the Reverend Andr~ Guay, O.M.I., Director of the Catholic Center at the University of Ottawa. Guides in formulating steps of development are the docu-ments that have emanated from the Holy See and the constitutions of approved secular institutes. The first definite general purpose of a secular institute is the sanctification of its members; any apostolate that follows is an outgrowth of that. There must also be a definite specified purpose, which might be quite general, such as the purpose to undertake the various types of work the bishop may suggest, provided there is no one else to do that work. At the beginning de facto approval by the local ordinary should be obtained, and then the group will function as best it can. Great care is to be exercised in admitting applicants, since there is question of a very special vocation for life, a vocation that makes peculiar de-mands upon the individual because of the complete dedication of oneself to a practice of the evangelical counsels in the world. In a true vocation of this kind God's grace will not be wanting. After experience shows that the group can function along the lines of a possible secular institute and that it has within itself the potential ability to carry on, the bishop is to be approached again, this time for de jure recognition of the existing group as a pious as-sociation of some kind (society, sodality, or some other form). After such recognition is obtained, the succeeding period is

Issue 2.4 of the Review for Religious, 1943. ; A.M.D.G. Review i or Religious JULY 1~, 1943 ~ Shall Weo~Talk About Vocation? . ~The Edlfors Ignatius Of Antioch . -°. ¯ Augustine K~as "Chris÷ in the Refectory . w,~iam J. M,;ore Differing~Currents in the Liturgy ./ . G~rald Ellard Advice to a New Superior , A Spiritual Director Studies Du~ing Novitia÷e . . . . Adam . EII~s Si:,ruples versus Chastity . Gerald'~ Kelly Communication Book~Revlews Questions Answered Decisions of the Holy See ' " VOLUME II '- NUMBE~,4 REVIEW FOR- RELI.GIOU S VOLUME II JULY 15, 1.943 NUMBER OONTENTS SHALL WE TALK°ABOUT VOCATION?--The Editors .217 THE SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH-- Augustine Klaas, S.J . 220 HOLY CHILDHOOD CENTEiXlNIAL . 234 CHRIST IN THE REFECTORY--William J. Moore, S.J .~.235 ¯ DIFFERING CURRENTS IN THE LITURGY, TOO--Gerald Ellard, 2S4.J3. BOOKLETS . 251 ADVICE TO A NEW SUPERIOR (By a Spiritual Director) .2.52 STUDIES DURING THE NOVITIATE--Adam C. Ellis, S.J .2.5.5 SCRUPLES VERSUS CHASTITY Gerald Kelly, S.J . 263 BEATING THE AIR IN PRAYER (A communicatiqn) .2.68 BOOK REVIEWS (Edited by Clement DeMuth. S.J.)-- THE EXEMPTION OF RELIGIOUS IN CHURCH LAW-- By the Reverend Joseph D. O'Brien, S.J. 270 ON THE PRIESTHOOD. By Saint 3ohn Chrysostom .272 THE BOOK OF CATHOLIC AUTHORS (2nd Series)-- Edited by.Walter Romig . 273 TALES FROM THE RECTORY-- By the Most Reverend Francis C. Kelley . 274 HOW TO THINK. By Arthur D. Fearon . 27~e THE LOVE OF GOD. By Dom Aelred Graham, O.S.B .2.7.5 HYMNS OF THE DOMINICAN MISSAL AND BREVIARY-- By the Reverend Aquinas Byrnes, O.P. . 276 DECISIONS OF THE HOLY SEE . 277 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS-- 26. Use of Golden Jubilee Gift . 278 27. Renouncing Share of Inheritance or 15ension . 278 28. Appointment of Local Councilors and Bursar . ~ . . 279 29. Title of "Mother" for former General .¯ . 280 30. Questioning Applicants about Parents' Marriage . 280 31.Canonical Meaning of "Legitimacy" . .280 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, July, 1943, Vol. II, No. 4. Published bi-.monthly: January, March, May, July, September, and November at the College Press, 606 Harrison Street, Topeka, Kansas, by St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas. with ecclesiastical approbation. Entered as second class matter January 15, 1942, at the Post Office, Topeka, Kansas, under the act of March 3, 1879. Editorial Board: Adam C. Ellis, S.J., G. Augustine Ellard, S.J., Gerald Kelly, S.J." Copyright, 19,43, by Adam C. Ellis. Permission is hereby granted for quotations of reasonable length, provided due credit be given this review and the author. Sub~¢rlption price: 2 dollars a year. Printed ia U. S. A. Shall We .Talk About: Vocal:ion? The Editors OUR recently concluded discussion of spiritual direc-tion indicated that ~ve can derive considerable profit from a mutual interchange of views. For this.reason we sl~ould like to continue the Communications department in the REVIEW and we think it advisable to directthe com-munications toward some d~finitely useful subject. From a number of suggestions offered us, we hav, e concluded that a~highly profitable subject would be Vocation. Certainly Vocation is an interesting subject to all of us, and atthis time it is more practical than tisual. For several years most religious institutes in this country, particularly those of women, have-been acutely conscious of the need of more vocations. The war is increasing the p~oblem. Any-thing we can do by way 6f mutual help in the present crisis will be a real contribution to the welfare of the Church. It is:onething to select a topic for i:lis.cussion; it is quite another to .determine individual aspects of the topic that are Worth discussing. In general it seems clear that our discus-sion should turn along lines that have specia.1 reference to priests and religious. The more specific determination of these lines will no doubt be brought out in the communica-tions. In the subsequent paragraphs we are attempt'ing to indicate a few questions that might be discussed more com-pletely if the readers are so inclined. Ther~ must be some among our readers whom God has blessed with more than ordinary success.in the work of fos-terin~ vocations to the priesthood or the religious life. This is not a talent in which one should glory or about which one should brag; yet neither is it a talent to be hidden under a bushel. A person thus blessed could probably make many 217 THE EDITORS helpfu.1 suggestions that other priests and religious could use. To publish such suggestions anonymously in a review for the exclusive use of priests and religious is surely within the most iigid requirements of humility. Attitudes of religious sometimes have great influence for good or bad in the development of religious vocations. At various times we have heard rather severe criticisms of three such attitudes that are said to impede the wholesome growth of vocations. Perhaps these criticisms are too severe or even unjust; but references to them may offer food for thought and discussion. - The. first harmful attitude is an erroneous estimation of the priesthood and the religious life with respect to. other Christian states of life. For instance, some religious are said to be entirely unaware of the fact that there is such a thing as virginity in the world. They do not realize ~ the excellence of virginity in itself, independently of tell-; gious vows and priestly consecration. Also, some religious o are said to give the impression that they do not properly understand the dignity and sanctity of marriage; they seem to think that all good young people should be priests or enter religion. A second harmful attitude is the false estimation of one's own institute with' reference to other religious insti-tutes: in a word, an inordinate devotion to one's own. A religious with this attitude is apt to disparage other orders and congregations, if not explicitly, at least by im131ica-tion. He may even try to hinder the freedom of the indi-vidual aspirant to choose the institute for which he seems to be best fitted; and in doing 'this he may even spoil a promising vocation. The third harmful attitude may be described in the following words written to a priest by a teaching Brother: "From experience I have gathered that the great 218 SHALL WE TALK ABOUT VOCATION? majority of our priests do not realize that a vocationto the Bro.the.rhood is a special vocation, nbt .just something one takes as a last resort'. It is a vocation which requires con-stant self-effacement, self-denial, and an' almost heroic. spirit of Faith. Yet to a large number of priest~ and 'to many others it is a vocation that has no.meaning." Enough for the criticisms. Another ~opic of interest is that of the loss of vocation. Is this problem more acute today than it used to be? Are there certain fundamental explanations of our losses? Are there remedie~ that can be applied more effectively than they have been applied in the past? The foregoing suggestions were selected at random, merely for the purpose of stimulating discussion. We hope our readers will think of other topics, as well as expand on these. The one thing that remains is to begi~ the discussion. If letters are sent we will print them. If the letters are too long, we may have to edit them; if they are too numerous, we may have to summarize them. We ask those who send communications to observe the following points: 1) As in the discussion on spiritual direction, our present purpose is positive. The aim is mutual help in a great apostolic work. Criticism of certain policies or atti-tudes may at times be necessary, but it should be offered in a spirit of kindness and with a view to mutual improve-ment. 2) Communications will be printed without names and without references to places, unless the senders explic-itly request that their names and addrehses be printed. 3) The communications should be addressed directly to: The Editors of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, St. Mary's College, St.Marys, Kansas. 219 The Spirit:uai Message Ignatius ot: An :ioch Augustine Klaas, S.~I. pOPE PlUS XII, in a stirrinig radio broadcast on Ascen-sion Eve 1942, bade us turn to the heroes of the primi-tive Church in order to "clear all mists from our minds" and to "put new life into ourhearts" in the dark, " threatening days through vchich we are passing. Most elo-quently he described these brave Christians of the first three centuries as "moral giants" and "athletes" ot~ Christ, vigor-ous in both thought and action. Such a moral giant and athlete of Christ was Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch in Syria, whose message comes to us clear and vibrant across nineteen centuries. It is something unique in Christianliterature; it is the impassioned, spirit-ual. message of a prisoner in chains impatiently hurrying to a martyr's death. Life and Letters The historical facts of the life of Ignatius are very mea-ger. He was probably a Syrian, born at Antioch. Neither the date of his birth nor the events of his early years are known with certainty. Legend has it that he was the little child whom Jesus singled out as an example of humility to the Apostles and.then took into His arms (Mark 9:35). Most likely, as Saint John Chrysostom asserts, he had seen the Apostles Peter and Paul, both of whom had dwelt for some time at Antioch, and had even been their disciple, since in the first century bishops were usually chosen from among the immediate disciples of the Apostles. Some think be was also a disciple of Saint John the Evangelist. At all events,. what is known for certain is that Ignatius was the third 220 IGNATIUS¯ OF ANTIOCH bishop of Antiocl~, succeeding Evodius, .who had. been ¯ appointed by the first .bishop of that city, the Apostle Saint Peter himself, During the reign of the Roman Emperor Trajan (98- 117 A. D.), a short but violent persecution of the Chris-tians broke out for some unknown reason, claiming Pope Saint Clement at Rome and the aged Saint Simeon, Bishop df Jerusalem, as illustrious.victims. Perhaps the most dis-tinguished martyr of this persecution, however, was Igna-tius. He was arrested, tried,and condemned to death °at Antioch in the early months of 107 A. D. (according to the historian Eusebius), and was sent off to Rome to be executed. The slow, wearisome journey through Asia Minor to Rome Ignatius made with other .condemned Christians, among Whom, it s.eems, were Rufus. and Zosimus. They were guarded by an escort of soldiers who were by no means p!easant travelling companions. Ignatius writes of them:' "From Syria to Rome I combat wild beasts, on lahd and sea, by night and day, chained to ten leopards--a company of soldiers,~who in return for gifts on!y get worse" (Ro-mans V, 1)1. In spite of thi~ brutal treatment, their jour-ney was like a triumphal march, .greeted as they were on all sides by the faithful of the places through which they passed. They made a halt at Philadelphia, another at Smyrna, where Ignatius was received by the bishop of that .church, Saint Polycarp, the future martyr, then a young.man, Hither also came delegations of Christians from various churches in Asi~Minor to salute Ignatius and to encourage him,to persevere. -The final stop was made at Troas., whence probably by way of Philippi and Dyrrachium they proceeded to Rome. 1The quotations in this article are translated from the Greek text of Ignatius' Letters, critically edited by Father Francis Xavier Funk in his Patres Apostolici, second edition, Tilbingen, 1901. 221 AUGUSTINE KLAAS During this protracted oia crucis Ignatius wrote seven letters of varying length: four from Smyrna, to the churches of Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, and Rome; three from Troas, to the churches of Philadelphia and Smyrna, and to Bishop Polycarp himself. These seven magnificent epistles, of undoubted authenticity, are "justly regarded-as the most precious heirloom of Christian antiquity.!'~ Written in a vigorous Pauline style, the letters of Igna: tius are filled with warm, sincere, earnest exhortation, and packed With theological doctrine on the Trinity, the Incar-nation and Redemption, the Eucharist, the Christian vir-tues, and the hierarchical nature of the Church. I.ndeed, chiefly on account of their unmistakable doctrine regarding the one, holy, apostolic, hierarchical Church, these, letters have been bitterly, but vainly attacked by Protestants for over two hundred years. The following is a typ!cal Christ-ol6gical passage: "There is one Physician, both corporeal and spiritual, born and unborn, God dwelling in flesh, true life in death, both of Mary and of God, first passible and then impassible, 3esus Christ our Lord" (Ephesians VII, 2). In these letters the word "Eucharist," meaning the Blessed Sacrament, appears for the first time in Christian literature (Smyrnaeans VII, 1; VIII, 1), as also the word "Catholic" applied to the Church of Christ (Smyrnaeans VIII, 2). Cardinal Newman, a profound student of patris-tic lore, does not exaggerate when he declares that "almost the whole system of Catholic doctrine may be discovered at least in outline, not to say in 13arts filled up, in the course of them.''3 They give Ignatius a just claim to the title of the greatest of the Apostolic Fathers. 2Bernard Otten, S.J., A Manual of the History of Dogtr, as, Vol. I, Herder, 1917, p. 65. 3John Henry Newman, Essays Critical and Historical, Vol.I, Longmans," 1901, p.,255. 222 IGNATIOS OF. AN~FIOCH Spiritual. Message " " What is I.gnatius' spiritual message to us in these Stormy times, so much like his own? What is that vital message of the early Church of the martyrs to which Plus XII so movingly calls our attention in his broadcast? The spiritual message of Ignatius of Antioch can b~ summed up Very simply: it is Jesus Christ. For this cou-rageous bishop Jesus Christ is all in all. Saint Paul preached closest union with Christ and Saint John taught us life in Cl~rist. Ignatius marvellgusly blends both these doctrines and inculcates them with extraordinary vigor. Christ is the ambient atmosphere in which Ignatius lives and moves; Christ is his interior obsession; Christ appears on every page, almost every line of his letters. I shall let Ignatius give us his message in his own words, as much as possible. It is true that he addressed it long ago to the clergy and faith-. ful of the churches of Asia Minor, but Plus XII says that he and his noble,, fellow-Christians are speaking to us today. "Abundant greeting in Jesus Christ"--this is his usual salutation to the churches, expressed in various ways, some-times twice and thrice over in the same letter. Jesus Christ is "our tr.ue life,~' "our inseparable life," "our unity of spirit," "our only Ma~ter," "our common hope." "Fo~ let us either fear the Wrath to come or.let us love the grace which is at hand, one of thetwo--provided only we bd found in Christ Jesus unto true life. Let nothing be. worthy - of you apart from Him, in whom I carry about my. chains, those_spiritual pearls in which may it be given me to-rise again through your prayers, which I beg I may always share . " (Ephesians XI, 1, 2). And. again, it is Jesus . Christ "WHO also was really' raised from the dead, His Father haVi_ng raised Him up, as in like manner His Father shall raise up in Christ Jesus us who believe in .Him, with-out whom we have no true life" (Trallians IX, 2). In 223 AUGUSTINE KLAAS every letter Ignatius gives himself a second name. It is always the same--Theophorus, "God-bearer";-and well might he have answered as the legendary third century Acts of Ignatius say he did when questioned about this name. "And who is xneopnorus. .the Emperor asked, and Ignatius replied, "He who has Christ in his heart." According to Ignatifis, there are only two classes of per-sons off this earth: those who live in and for Christ, and those who reject and deny Him. To the first class, com-prising the faithful, he says: "You do all things in Jesus Christ" (Ephesians VIII, 2). "You are therefore all fellow-travelers .along the way, God-bearers, temple-bearers, Christ-bearers, bearers of holy ti~ings, arrayed from head to foot in the commandments of Jesus Christ . And I am permitted to share your jsy . because, on account Of. another life, you love nothing but God alone" (Ephesians iX, 2)."I know that you are not puffed up, for you have Jesus Christ in you" (Magnesians XII, 1). On the other hand, those who reject .Christ are living corpses. "Of what benefit is any one to me, if he praise me, but blaspheme my Lord and do not admit that He was clothed in flesh? He who does not profess this has denied Him absolutely and is himself clothed with a corpse" (SmyrnaeansV, 2). But that is not all. ':As for me, unless they speak of Jesus Christ, I hold them to be tomb-" stones and sepulchres of the dead, whereon are inscribed only the names of men" (Philadelphians VI, 1). Avoid, therefore, those who are not Christ's. "Flee from those evil offshoots bearing deadly fruit, which if a man eat he presently dies. For these are not the planting of the Father: for if they were, they would appear as branches of the Cross and their fruit.would be incorruptible" (Tral-iians XI, 1; 2). "Abstain from noxious herbs, which Jesus Christ does not cultivate because they are not the Father's 224 IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH planting . . If any man walk in strange doctrine, he has no part in the Passion" (Philadelphians III, 1, 3). And be yourselves genuine Christians, stamped with the image of God. "It behoovds us not only to be called Christians, but also to be Christians" (Magnesians IV,.1.). "For just as there are two coinages, ~he one of God, the other of the world, and each has its own stamp impressed "upon it, so unbelievers bear the stamp of this world, and believers the stamp of God the Father in love through Jesus Christ; and unless we willingly choose to die through Him in His Passion, his life is not in us" (Magnesians V, 2). "Wherefore, let us become His disciples, and let us learn to live like Christians. For whosoever is called by any name ¯ other than this is not of God. Get rid of the evil leaven which has become stale and sour, and be transformed into a new leaven, Jesus Christ. Be salted in Him, that none among you may be spoiled; since by your savor you shall ¯ be tested" (Magnesians X, 1., 2). Genuine Christians have faith and love, and these, lead to deeds. "None'of these things is unknown to you, if you have toward Jesus Christ perfect faith and love, which are the beginning and the end of life: the beginning, faith, and the end, love. And .wl, ien the two coalesce in unity it is God, and all other noble things follow. No man professing "faith, sins; nor does he who has love, hate. 'The tree is known by its fruit': likewise they who profess to be Christ's shall be recognized by their deeds" (Ephesians XIV, 1, 2). And What are these deeds? " 'Pray without ceasin~g" for other men also, that they ma~ find God, for there is in them a hope of repentance. Ac.cordingly, let them learn from you, at least through your deeds. Be meek when they are angry; be humble-minded when they speak proudly; oppose your/prayers to their blasphemies; in the face of 225 AUGUSTINE KLAAS their errors remain firm in the faith; be gentle when they are crud, and do not see.k, to retaliate. Let us be proved their brothers by our forbearance, and let us try to imitate the Lord--who was ever more wronged, more. despoiled, more despised than He?--that no growth of the devil be found in ¯ you, but that you may abide in all purity and sobriety in Jesus Christ, both in the flesh and in the spirit" (Ephesians X, 1-3). "Let us therefore do all things as though He were dwelling in us, that we may be His temples, and that He may be our God in.us" (Ephesians XV, 3). Hence, according to Ignatius, ~o be closely united to Christ, to live one's life in Christ, to be a bona Fide Chris-tian, means sinlessness, steadfast faith, strong love and Christ-like deeds. All this is fundamental. It is thus that one begins to be a "Christ-bearer." - But Ignatius goes- much further. He selects and emphasizes three particular means which will help greatly tO "put on Christ" ever more and more. It is these three means that make Ignatius eminently a guide for us today. . Un~t~l in Christ The first"important means stressed~by Ignatius is unity in Christ, that is, union with the bishop and other ecclesias-tical authorities, and also union with one another. We are one or-we are nothing: on no other point is Ignatius more repetitiously insistent. ' He counsels the Magnesians, who at the time had a young bishop: "It becomes you not to presumeupon the youth of your bishop, but, ou.t of consideration of~ the power of God the Father, to give him all respect, as I have learned that even the holy priests do not take advantage of his outwardly youthful appearance, but as men prudent in God they yield to him, yet not to him, but to the Father of Jesus Christ, to the bishop of a11" (Magnesians III,l). And to the Ephesians he says that "it is cle;ir that we must. 226 IGNATIUS OF ANTIocH look upon the bishop as the Lord Himself" (Ephesians VI, 1). ¯ The will of God, the will of Christ, and the will of the bishop are one and the same thing. "For this reason I took upon myself to counsel you to live according to the will of God. For Jesus Christ, our inseparable life, is the will of the Father, even as the bishops, appointed throughout the world, are in accord with the will of Cl~rist" (Ephesians IIL 2). "Therefore it is fitting that ~you should live in har-mony with the will of the bishop, as indeed you do. Fo~ your estimable prie~sts, worthy of God, are attuned to the bishop asthe strings to a harp. Hence, by your concord and harmonious love Jesus Christ is being sung. Now join in this~ chorus, each of you, that being harmoniously in accord and receiving the key of God in unison, you may s~ng with one voice through Jesus Christ to the Father, that He may .both hear you and recognize bE your good deeds that you are members of His Son. It is then .to your advantage to be in blameless unity, that you may have always a part in God" "(Epbesians IV, 1, 2). "For as many as belong to God and Jesus Christ .these are with the bishop" (Phila-delphians III, 2). Not only must there be union with the bishop but also with the priests and deacons. "Let all men likewise respect the deacons as Jesus Christ, even as they should respect the bishop as a type of the Father,. and the priests as the council of God and the college of the Apostles. Without these, there is noChurch" (Trallians.III, 1). Andthe faithful must be united to each other. "Work together, struggle together, run together, .suffer together, rest together, rise up together as God's stewards, assistants and servants. Please Him for whom you fight, from whom you receive your pay; let none of you be found a deserter. Let your baptism r~main as your weapons, your faith as a 227 AUGUSTINE KLA~.S helmet, your love as a spear, your patience as your panoply . Be therefore long-suffering with one another in gentle-ness, as God is with you" (Polycarp VI,, 1, 2). "Be then all in conformity .with God and respect one another and let no man regard his neighbor according to the flesh, but love one another in Jesus Christ always. Let there be nothing in you which can divide you . . . " (MagnesiansVI, 2). "'In your common assemblies let there be one prayer, one - supplication, one mind, one hope in love, in blamelessjoy, which is Jesus Christ, than whom there is nothing better" (Magnesians VII, 1). If, living harmoniously with each other, we must be closely united to the bishop, th~ bishop.on his part must be united also to us, his flock, so that there may be perfect unity in Christ's mystical body~ Ignatius gives excellent advice to the bishop in a letter to his good young friend Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna. "I exhort you in the grace with which you are clothed to press forward in your course and to exhort all men that they may be saved. Defend your office in all diligence of flesh and of spirit. Watch over unity, than which there is nothing better. Bear with all men, as the Lord also bears with you; suffer all men in love., as you indeed do. Be diligent in unremitting prayer; ark .for wisdom greater than. you have; stand guard, having a sleepless, spirit. Speak to each according to the manner of God; bear the ills of all as a perfect athlete. Where there is more toil there is also much gain" (Poly~arp I, 2, 3). "If.'you love good disciples, it is no credit to you; bring rather the more troublesome to subjection by your gentleness. Not all wounds are healed by the same plaster. 'Be prudent as the serpent' in all things and always 'simple as the dove' . Be sober as God's athlete. The prize is immortality and eternal li'fe" (Polycarp II, 1-3). "Let not those who seem to.be trustworthy, but teach .228 IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH strange doctrine, dismay you. Stand firm as an anvil which is smitten. It is a quality of great athletes to. take punish-ment and to win. Especially must we endure all things for God, that He may also endure us. Be more zealous than you are. Learn the opportune times for action. Await Him who is above time, eternal, invisible, w.ho for our sakes became visible, who is intangible, impassiblef who suffered for us and in every way endured for us" (Polycarp III, 1, 2). "Let nothing be °done without your consent and do nothing without God. " (Polycarp IV, 1). The Euc, barist and Unitg The unity in Christ so emphatically stressed by Igna-tius is fostered greatly by participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and by partaking of the Eucharist, "a pledge of everlasting life in Jesus Christ." "Obey the bishop as Jesus Christ obeys His Father, and obey the priests as if they were the Apo.s'tles; respect~the deacons as y.ou do God's com-mand. Without the bishop le~ no one do anything which concerns the Church. Let that be considered a lawful Eucha-rist which is celebrated by the bishop, or by one whom he appoints. Wherever the bishop appears, there let the people be, just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic Church. Without the bishop it is not lawful either to bap-. tize or to hold an agape [a Eucharistic love-feast]; but whatever he approves that is also pleasing to God." (Smyrnaeans VIII, 1, 2). Heretics, by disbelief in the Eucharist., disrupt unity. "They abstain from the-Eucharist and from prayer because they do not acknowledge that the Eucharist is~ the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins, the flesh which the Father in His goodness raised up again~ Therefore those who gainsay the gift of Godare perishing even as they wrangle; it were better for them to 229 " A~GUSTINE KLAAS partake of the Eucharist, that they too might rise again" (Smyrnaeans VII, 1). "Endeavor then to celebrate one Eucharist, for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and one chalice for union with His blood, one altar, just as there is one bishop with his priests and deacons, my fellow-servants,. " (Philadelphians IV, 1). Ignatiu~ speaks of the Ephesians as "breaking one bread, which is the" medi-~ cine of immortality, the antidote against death, a pledge of everlasting life in Jesus Christ" (Ephesians XX, 2). He himself longs for union with his Eucharistic Lord. "I take no pleasure in the corruptible foo.d or the delights of this life. I desire the 'bread of God,' which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, 'who was of the seed, of David,' and for drink I desire His blgod, .which is incgrruptible love" (Romans VII, 3). Imitation of the Suffering Christ Union with Christ and life in Christ are achieved also by a third means, by imitating Him and modelling one's life on His. Since Ignatius' thoughts constantly .revert to the painful death which is waiting for him at the end of his present journey/he is preoccupied with imitating the suf-ferings and death of Christ. To shed one's blood in mar-tyrdom beconsiders the closest imitation of Christ; it is per-fection itself. The only true disciple of Christ is he who gives his life for Him. Ignatius, ' shackled and condemned° to death, now only begins to be a real disciple of his suf-fering Master and he Will be a perfect disciple only through a bloody martyrdom. " Let no one interfere to rob him of this prize, for whoever shares in Christ's sufferings and death will also participate in His glory. "Honored with a name most pleasing to God, I laud the Churches in the chains which I bear, and I pray that in them there may be a union with the flesh and- blood of Jesus 230 IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH Christ, whois our ev.erlasting !ife, a union in faith and love, to which nothing is preferable, and aboveall a union with ~lesus andthe Father, in Whom, if "we endure the full on-slaught of the prince of this world.and go unscathed, we shall attain unto God" (Magnesians I, 2). "But if, as certain godless persons, that is, unbelievers, affirm. "His suf-fering was only a semblance . why am I a prisonei, and why do I even long to fight with the beasts? In that case, I die in vain; then indeed do I lie concerning the Lord" (Trallians X, 1). "If these things were done by bur Lord only in semblance, then I too am chained only in semblance. Why have I given myself up to death, to fire, to the sword, to wild beasts? Because to be near to the sword is to be near to G6d, and to be with wild beasts is to be .with God, pro-vided it be in the name of 2esus Christ. That I may suffer along with Him, I endure all thin.gs, and He strengthens me who is the perfect Man" (Smyrnaeans IV, 2). In the letter to the "Romans we find passages on mar-tyrdom which are sublime and immortal. Only a few can be cited here. Ignatius feared the Roman Christians would intercede for him with the government and thus deprive him Of his martyr's crown. Sohe .begged them to "grant me nothing more.than that I.may be immolated to God, while an altar is still ready; in order that forming a choir in charity you may sing to the Father in Christ ,lesus, because God deigned to grant that the bishop of Syria be found at the setting of the sun, having summoned him from its rising. It~is good to set from the world unto God, that I may rise unto Him (Romans II, 2). "I am writing to all the Churches and bid all men know that I die willingly for God, unless you should hinder me. I beseech yo.u not to show me an unseasonable kindness. Let me be the food of wild beasts, th.rough whom I can attain to God. I am God's wheat, and I am being ground 231 AUGUSTINE KLAAS by the teeth of wild beasts that I may be fdund ChUtist's pure bread. Rather entice the beasts that they may become my tomb and leave no trace of my body, so that when I have fallen asleep in death, I.shall not be burdensome to anyone. Then shall I be truly a disciple of Christ when the world shall not even see my body. Beseech Christ for me that through these instruments I may become a holoca.ust to God. I do not command you as did Peter and Paul. They were Apostles, I am a convict; they were free, I am to this very moment a slave. But if I suffer, then shall I be a freed-man of Jesus Christ and in Him I shall rise free. I am-learn-ing now in my chains to extinguish every human desire" (Romans IV, 1-3). "O that I may have joy in the beasts, prepared for me, 'and-I pray that they too may be found prompt for me; I will even entice them to devour me quickly, so" as not to be like those whom they did not touch through fear. Even if they themselves be unwi.lling, I will force them to it. Grant me this favor; I know what is expedient for me. -Now do I begin to be a disciple. °May naught visible or invisible envy me my attaining to Jesus Christ. Fire, the cross, combats with wild beasts, cuttings, manglings, wrenchings of bones, hacking of limbs, crushing of my whole body, cruel tor-tures of the devil, let them all come upon me, provided only I attainto Jesus Christ" (Romans V, 2, 3). "The confines of the earth and the kingdoms of this world shall profit me no~hing. It is better for me to die in Christ Jesusthan to reign over the ends of the earth. I seek Him who died for us; I desire Him who for our sakes rose again from the dead. The pains of birth are upon me. Bear with me, brethren! Hinder me not from living, do not wish my death. Do not give to the world one who desires to be God's, nor seduce him with material things. Allow me to recelve the. pure light; when I have arrived thither, 232 IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH then shall I be a man. Let me imitate the Passion of my God" (Romans VI, 1-3). "The prince of this world wishes to tear me to pieces and to corrupt my mind towards God. Let none of you present help him; be rather on my side, that is, on God's. Do not speak of Jesus Christ and yet desire the world. Let no envy dwell among you. Even if I myself, when present, shall b~seech you, do not obey me; rather follow this which I write to you. For I write to you in the midst of life, yet as one yearning for death. My human love is crucified and there is in me no fire of love for material things, but only 'living water' speaking and saying within me 'Come to the Father' " (Romans VII, !, 2). Death of Ignatius This urgent summons to the Fath4r was soon to be realized. Arriving in Rome in the latter part of the same year 107, Ignatius heroicallymet the d~ath he so ardently longed for, probably in the Coliseum. The~e are extant no. authentic details of his final combat with the beasts, nor can the date of his death be determined with accuracy. Shortly after, his relics were taken back to Antioch and there they remained until 63 7 when they were removed to the church of Saint Clement'in Rome where they still rest. The uni-versal Church celebrates his feast on February 1st. .Ignatius was every inch a bishop of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Self-sacrificing in his devotion to duty, fearless in defending the faith, untiringly solicitous~ for unity, ever an inspiring apostle by his personal holiness as well as by his words, he was one of the most profoundly Christian heroes of all times. As a,true shepherd, he laid down his life for his flock. He carried out fully what he himself once wrote: "Teaching. is good, if the teacher does what he says" (Ephesians ,XV, 1). He went even further, 233 AUGUSTINE KI~AAS he sealed his message with his blood. Hence we accept that message, for it rings true. It teaches us union with Christ and life in Christ by means of deep faith and an active love that overflows in good works, by close harmony with God's representatives in His Church and with our fellowmen, by participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and in the Eucharist, by the close imitation of 3esus Christ, especially in. His Passion and Death. The spirited message of Ignatius was.often read at the gatherings of.the faithful of the primitive Church; it gave comfort and inspiration to brave hearts in many a dark hour. It has not lost its appeal and significance today, for the message is ,Jesus Christ, who St. Paul says i~ "the same, yesterday and today, yes, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). HOLY CHILDHOOD CI=NTI=NNIAL The Pontifical 'Association of the Holy Childhood is celebrating its hundredth anniversary this year. The Association was founded by Bishop Charles de Forbin- Janson, who was born in Paris in 1785. \Vith the help of Pauline Jaricot, foun-dress ~f the Propagation of the Faith Society, be made plans for the establishment of the Association of the Holy Childhood. In 1843 the first council of the Association was appoi'nted. The membership was to be m~de up of childrer~ "throughout the world and each child, besides praying for the missions, was to give a penny a month. While the baptism of dying pagan children was to be the chief aim of the Association, it was determined that the society would also undertake the. erection of orphanages, work-shops, and other institutes for children. , ~ The fi}st returns of the Holy Childhood Association were only $25,000; in 1940, they had grown to $2,000,000. This money has been spread into some six hundred mission centers of the Catholic world. Pope Plus XI raised the Associa-tion to pontifical rank in 1926. Our Present Pontiff, Pius XII, as Cardinal Pacelli, was the Holy Childhood Association's Cardinal Protector. 234 Christ in the Refectory William J. Moore, S.J. RELIGIOUS are used to hearing the words of our Lord read to them during meals in the community refec-tory. The.re is a special.appropriateness in this practice "arising from the fact that a surprising number of these words w~re spoken by our Lord while actually in a refec-tory, or at least at times when His hearers were concerned, about food and drink. Man's necessary, concern about bodily food supplied occasions for miracles and discourses on the spiritual food of the soul. Page after page of the Gospels deals wkh Christ's mealtime instructioris. At the marriage feast of Cana our Lord changed xvater into wine and first manifested His glory. His disciples, too, were at the wedding celebration, and their belief in Christ ¯ was confirmed by the miracle. Such marriage feasts as this lasted seven days~ and a great quanti~y of wine was needed for the large number of guests who might drop in at' any time. Sympa.thetically our Lord relieved the distress of the young couple when their supply failed. (John 2.) Wearied after a !ong tramp over the hill roads, Jesus stopped at the well of Jacob. His disciples xvent ahead to buy food in the villhge close by. Christ. ~vas thirsty and asked the Samaritan womah for a drink. Then He took occasion to teach this poor sinful woman of her need of the living water of divine grace. She could offer Him cool water from the well, but He offered to her refreshing draughts of grace for her arid soul. (John 4.) Levi, the publican, was sitting at the tax-collector's booth one day. "Follow me," said Christ. Leaving all things, Levi followed Christ. To commemiarate his call to the apostolate, Levi (or Matthew, as he is better known) .235 ~rlLLIAM J. MOORE gave a great feast for Christ. A large gathering of publi-cans was at table with the Savior and Levi. ~'Why do you eat arid drink with publicans and sin-ners?" the grumblirig Pharisees and scribes asked the dis- . ciples. Christ answered the quest.ion Himself. "It is not the healthy who need a physician, but they who are sick. I have not come tocall the just, butsinners to repentance.~' As a physician Christ had to deal with and gain the confi-dence of.His patients. ' Then He explained why His disciples did not fast like those of ~lohn, and spoke a parable about the difference between the old order and the new. One Sabbath day Christ and His disciples were walking through a field of standing grain. The disciples were hun-gry and plucked some of the grain and .ground it in their hands. The Pharisees objected that this little operation°of milling grain by hand was a violation of the Sabbath. Christ replied that He was Lord of the Sabbath. The delighted disciples, thus justified, continued joyfully to munch their pitiful little meal of dry grain before the angry eyes of the discomfited Pharisees. (Luke 6.) Luke tells of a dinner at the home'of a Pharisee. Quite Often Christ dined with Pharisees, just ~is he dined with publicans. On this occasion a woman in the town who was a sinner, upon learning that Christ was at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabasterjar of ointment; and standing behind Him at His feet, she began to bathe His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hairoff her head, andkissed His feet, and anointed them with oint-ment. (L,uke 7.) To understand such an occurrence, we must remember that ~lewish customs differed from ours tod~ly. Strangers were often permitted to look on at great feasts. The guests usually did not sit in chairs as we do, but. reclined on couches, resting on the left elbowand eating with the right 236 " CHRIST IN THE REFECTOR~ hand. The couche~-were placed in the foim of a horse-shoe, so that servants could easily get to the tables plac.ed before.~he diners. T.,he Pharisee host was sh~cked. If Christ had divine knowledge, reasoned the Pharisee, He ought to know that the woman was a sinner, and should not let her touch Him. But .Christ at the dinner table contrasted the host's cold_ness and neglect with the sorrowful love of the peni-tent, )~nd gently told the woman, "Thy sins are forgiveh . Go in peace." It was evening in the desert. Five thousand men, not counting women and children, were with Christ far from village food markets. Only five loaves .and two fishes were to be had. The disciples urged the Master to dismiss the people at once, that tl~ey might get back to town as soon as possible. But Jesus said to the disciples, "They do not need to go away; you yourselves give them some food . And looking up to heaven, .[He] blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to His disciples, and the disciples gave them.to the crowds. And all ate and were satisfied." (Matthew 14.) Four thousand men, apart from children and women,, were with Christ on another occasion. The compassion-ate Savior said, "They have now been with Me three day~, and.have nothing to eat; and I am unwilling to send.tl'iem away fasting, lest they faint on the way." Once more our Lord multiplied loaves and fishes in a wondrous miracle to foreshadow the magnificent spiritual feast of the Holy Eucharist. (Matttiew 15:) Mary was sitting at our Lord's feet while her sister Martha was. busy straightening up tl~e house and watching the fire where a tasty meal was simmering. Our Lord did not condemn Martha for.her care about dusting and cooking. He did' approve of Mary's action, and spoke 237 WILLIAM J. MOORE the classical text for'proving the superiority of the con. templative life over the active life: "One thing is needful. Mary has chosen the best part." (Luke 10.) A Pharisee asked Christ to dine with him. Christ accepted, went in to the supper room, and reclined at table. He had of set purpose omitted the ritualistic washings which the Pharisees had elevated in importance to laws of supreme moment. When the Pharisee.host criticized Christ " in his heart, the Mast(Jr excoriated, the hypocrites' who were fanatical about washing their hands and cleansing pots and cups, but cared nothing .about washing sin from their souls. Fearlessly He denounced the whole brood of Pharisees and scribes who boasted that they had paid tithes " on everything they ate, even on the tiny little spice herbs such as mint. Christ was a guest Who never-bowed to the pride Or passion of His host. (Luke 11.) We find Christ a guest again in the house of a ruler of the Pharisees. It was a Sabbath. A great quantity of food had been prepared ahead, of time, lest there be any unnecessarywork on that day. Of that the Pharisee.s were very scrupulous, but of mercy they cared not. In fact they sought to trap Christin His mercy. Before the entrance to.the house a man ill with dropsy' was stationed. Would Christ cure the man on the Sab-bath? The Pharisees watched for a supposed violation of the Sabbath. Resolutely Christ cured the man and asked the hypocrites if theywould not drag an ox or ass out of a pit into which it had fallen on the Sabbath. Of course they would do so. Bu~ if an animal could be cared for at the-expense of some labor, why not a man? And the Pharisees "could give Him no answer to these things." The Savior then went into the dining room with His host and the other guests. The Pharisees were jealously pushing forward to secure each one for himself a place of 238 CHRIST IN THE REFECTORY honor. Christ spoke the parable of The Last Seat to rebuke their pride. Then He taught a lesson in charity. The rich Pharisees gloried in their great generosity in pro-viding sumptuous dinners for many people. The guests, however, were. usually well-to-do friends and relatives who~ could pay back in kind. In the parable on Poor Guests, Christ declared that true charity would consist in providing a feast for the poor.who could never issue a return invitation. A reward for such charity would be reserved for the host in the kingdom of heaven. At that, one of the guests exclaimed, "Blessed is he ~vho shall feast in the kingdom of God." The speaker was a Pharisee who assumed as a matter of .right that all Pharisees would have a place at the.heavenly feast. Christ, in the parable of a Great Supper, told the Pharisee that God had- indeed invited them tothe heavenlyb~nquet, but that they had contemptuously refused to come. The poor Jews and Gentiles would now take.their places. (Luk~ 14.) Zacheus, the publican of Jericho, was short of stature, but his hand was large to .grasp exorbitant taxes for the Roman treasury and his own private purse. He knew that his deeds were evil, knew the hatred with which the Jews cursed him. He had heard, however, of one great. Jewish teacher whowas notorious for kindness to the publicans. Full of curiosity to see Jesus of Nazareth, Zacheus hurried from his.office when Christ came to Jericho. Careless of his dignity, the short little man climbed a sycamore tree to see the friend of publicans and sinners. The unexpected happened. Christ stbpped beneath the sycamore, looked up to where Zacheus was perched, and said: '~Zacheus make haste and come down; for I must stay in thy house today." In amazement and haste Zacheus jumped down and welcomed Christ joyfully. BUt the crowd murmured 239 WILLIAM 3". MOORE Saying, "He has gone .to be the guest of a man who is a sinner." It was the old reproach, heard so frequently in the Gospel narrative. Christ was a friend of sinners.-. He ate at table with publicans and sinners. Over and over the same refrain of bitter complaint. BUt Christ went on converting sinners, saving what was lost. To the divine guest Zacheus said: "Behold, Lord, I give one-half of my possessions to ~he poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold." (Luke 19.)' It.was at a supper in Bethany that the greed of ,Judas became apparent. Simon the Leper (now cured) was host: Laza.rus, raised~ from the dead, was/~ guest near 3esus, ~nd Martha was s~rving. When Mary anointed Christ's feet, the thievish treasurer complained that the valuable oint-ment should have been sold for 300 denarii (about $51). and the proceeds given, to the poor. Christ waved aside the objection and praised the good work of Mary. H6w much of our Lord's teaching was done at meal-" time is well exemplified in the five full chapters which St. ,John devotes to the actions and discourses of Christ at the Last Supper. Ftirthermore, St. ,John does not repeat what the three other evangelists had already ~eported about the institution of the Blessed Eucharist. 3ohn tells instead of Christ's humility in washing the feet of the Apostles; the commandment to love one another; the beau-tiful allegory of the Vine and the Branches; .the.promise of ~he Holy Spirit; the priestly prayer of Christ "that all .may be one" even as the Father and Christ a~e one. (,John,. chapters 13-17.) The central event of the Last Supper is recorded by the Synoptics. "While they were at supper, ,Jesus took bread, and blessed and broke, and gave it to His disciples. and said, 'Take and eat, this is My body.' And taking a cup, He gave thanks and gave it to them, saying, 'All of 240 CHRIST IN THE REFECTORY you drink of this; foi: this is My blo~d of the new.cove-nant, which is being shedfor many unto the forgiveness Of sins'." (Matthew 26.) It was in the apostolic refectory that¯ Christ gave us His own body and blood for our spiritual food. It was there in a supper room that He ordained the first priests. Every church is a supper, room where Christ is offered again under the appearance of bread and wine on the altar table. Every church is a supper ro6m where God feeds His children with the Bread of Angels. It was a glorious Resurrection Day. All heaven rejoiced; but the disciples on the road to Emmaus Were sad. The .traveler who approached and walked with them ¯ gradually raised their ¯spirits until at last ¯their hearts burned within them as they gained a fuller understanding of the ScriptUres. "Stay with us," they pleaded as the stranger would have left them at Emmaus. The stranger agreed. "And it came to pass when He reciined at tame with them, that " He took the bread¯ and blessed and broke and began handihg it to them.~ And their eyes were Opened, andthey. recognized Him." ~ Christ their Risen Lord was with them at the supper table. Back to Jerusalem to the Apostles the two disciples hurried. The Eleven would not believe their report. Then Christ appeared to the Eleven as they were at table. ."See My hands and feet, that it is I Myself," He said. "Feel-me and see; for a spirit'does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have." Still the Apostles disbelieved and marvelled for joy. "Have you anything here to eat?" asked our Lord. They offered Him a piece of broiled fish and a honeycomb. And when He had eaten in their presence, He tSok what remained and gave it to them. (Luke 24.) St. John tells us of the ins.titution of the Sacrament of 241 WILLIAM J. MOORE Penance on this same Resurrection nigh~. To His Apostles Christ solemnly.said: "Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain; they are retained." (2ohn 20.) St. John's epilogue contains one of the most touching accounts of our Lord's considerate goodness. All night the Apostles had been fishing without success. Our Lord appeared, granted them a splendid catch, and prepared for them a hot breakfast of bread and fish on the lake shore. The poor fishermen were cold and weary and hungry after a chili night on the water. BreakfaSt over, orie ofthe most important events in history took place. Christ conferred on Peter the primacy in the Church. To Peter was given the commission, to feed Christ's sheep, to rule and guide them with full power " from God. Christ taught the people wherever they gathered. Since men most frequently assemble to take meals together, Christ frequently taught at meals. When the peopl.e gathered elsewhere, Christ preached elsewhere. St. Mark has 'two passages which must have had their ~ounterparts on scores 6f busy days. Such a large crowd gathered, says the evangelist, in chapter three, that "they could not so much as-take their food." And in chapter.six he says that so many people were coming and going that "they had no leisure even to eat." 242 Differing Current:s in !:he Lil:urgy, Too Gerald Ellard, DIOCESAN priests sometimes make it a matter of jest that, whereas pries.ts of religious institutes ard_ently advocate that worship-reform we call the liturgical movement, they themselves follow .in their chapels and" churches, ' more likely~than not, some variant liturgy and not the simon-pure Roman Rite. Again;they tease a little to the effect that members of religious orders look at the w.hole liturgical movement from an angle determined, by the specific outlook of their own religious group. Thus, the statement is made: "If I havea missionary from such an order, he preaches his kind of a liturgical movement, and anathema to all else. Then, the next year, a missionary from another order comes around, and his liturgical movement is something quite differen!! Why don't you religious who preach retreats and missions get together and fix on a definite program to preach? Before you kno@ it, we p/irish priests may get ahead of you, by organizing on our own, and then convert you to. our parish-type_ liturgi-cal movement in the Roman Rite.". . Behind this badinage and laughter there, is some real perplexity .and concern. It may prove helpful to religious as well.as to diocesan priests to remind ourselves, in Father Reinhold's vigorous phrase, that the Church does not seek to. impose one liturgical strait, jacket. That adjective, "catholic," after all, means "faking in all, taking in .the ~hole," and the Catholic liturgy includes the various gulf-streams of religious observance, as well as the vast stretches of the diocesan priesthood. A roundabout approach may be the shortest road to the subject. "Prior.to the feast of Candlemas the large monastic faro- 243 ~ERALD ELLARD ily at St. Meinrad's, Indiana, engages in the exercises of the annual retreat. In 1942 the retreat for the monks them-selves was being conducted by a- Franciscan friar, that for those in the Major Seminary by a monk from another abbey, while the last, for the Minor Seminary students, had been entrusted to the writer. Our dinner and supper were served in the monastic refectory, but breakfast was served the retreat-masters in the Guest Dining Rooml So it came abo.u~ that we had the pleasure of a short chat each morning as we breakfasted. My recollection of those little inter-ludes over thecoffee-cups is very pleasant, indeed. I .dare say the topic of the actual conduct of the retreats was the only one we avoided bringing into the discussions. We all . realized that in our several chapels we were conducting retreats that differed from one another not a little, although each one of us was endeavoring to herald the message of the one Christ.' While we all proclaimed Him, the monk saw Him after the manner of'the sainted Benedict, the friar as had the seraph on Mount-Alverno, and I somewhat after the manner of. the soldier of Manressa. All three concep-tions of Christ are true--if only partial: the unsearchable riches of Christ's Personality Will never be exhaustively comprehended by any man. More than once, therefore, as this daily contact of ours was broken off, I thought of how we three retreat-masters then and there gave a partial illustration of words of the late Peter Lippert that have stood the test of print since 1912. The passage, as a quotation, is somewhat long, but, I trust, justifiab!e for its interest. In formulating his expression of the ideal of the Jesuit vocation, Father Lip-per. t had sought clarification in comparisons: "For the sons of St. Benedict, of whose spirit all con-templative orders have a share, Christ is the worshipful King and.Lord, whom they serve by means of. their noc- 244 DIFFERING I~U~RENTS'IN THE LITURGY, TOO turnal psalmody, their earnest and solemn 'chan.t, the majesty of tbleir liturgy, their soulful, sacred art, their inspired craftsmanship.- This; tog, far from the bustle and noisy conflict of the world. They resemble the angels of the sanctuary: consecrated to the service of God, they st, and ceaselessly before the Throne of the Lamb, and enact the holy service of the Christian altar of sacrifice. With their praying art and their imperturable monastic peace, they present a vision or a foreshadowing of the Church Trium-phant, and hence above earthly conflict or earthly sorrow. Hence flows that harmony, that Wrought-out smoothness, so to speak, that sense of right proportion in their way of life, which even in the earliest period of the preaching of. the "Anglo-Saxon and Germanic missionaries made such "pro-found impression on~ the barbaric peoples of the forest. "Francis of Assi~si was the seraphic lover of the helpless Child in the st:;ble and of the crucified Saviour. He" was steeped, first o~ all, in the mystery of Bethlehem, a mystery of the most touching infancy and childlikeness. But no less was Francis held by that most frightful self-abasement of Golg01~ba. It was Francis who erected the°first-Christ-mas crib, and then ranged him, self, as an empty-handed mendicant, by .the manger of the divine Beggar-Child. So ¯ also by the Cross of the rejected, the last and the least of all men, he took his stand as a least brother. He considered,. too, the unending multitudes of his spiritual sons as his fellow-sentinels at the posts of the poverty and the humilia-tions of the great Son of God. Hence it is surely not by chance that for centuries precisely the Franciscans are the CuStodians of the Holy Places. Nor is it by chance that to -the Franciscans the hearts of the people have always be~ longed, for thesimple folk understand nothing so well as the mysteries of Bethlehem and Calvary. "Well, then, how is the image of Christ conceived and 245 GERALD ELLARD expressed in the Order of Loyola? In the Jesuit Order tl~e basic concept is of Christ as Founder of God's Kingdom, as conqueror of the whole world of the infidels, as the plan-ning, suffering, fighting Warrior for the honor and will of the Father.''1 In so far as he is a son of Ignatius, then, the 3esuit-strives to see "how the Lord of the whole world chooses persons, and sends them out the whole wor!d over, spreading His sacre~t doctrine: 'My will is to.conquer the whole world of the infidels; whoever will come with Me must work by day and watch by night, so as to share in the~ ultimate victory'." Since every one readily concedes that a Benedictine, a Franciscan, or a Jesuit, will eachconduct a specific type of retreat, I do not think it should be considered strange if various religions orders represent differing currents in the Church's li.turgical life. The modern apostolate of the lit-urgy affords ample scope for the labors of every order, and the religious, along with the pastoral clergy, have all their part in the Opus Dei. Let us enter an abbey church, as I have visited many in Eurgpe and several in this country. We are struck at once by the enormous size, especially, as a rule, by the towering height of the enclosed space. Dominating the whole inte-rior is usually a majestic fresco of Christ looking down' from. the high curve of the apse. Of almost equal promin-ence to the casual visitor are the serried choir-stalls, row on long row, each rising higher than the preceding. In ~ccord with the recommendatibn that the Blessed Sacrament be not reserved" at the altar before which the choir-functions are performed (canon 1268), the high altar does not enthrone the Eucha.rist, but none can fail to sense the very real way 1Translated from P. Lippert, Zur Ps~fcbologie des desuitefiorden (Miinchen: K6s¢l, 1912), pp. 26, 27. 246 DIFFERING CURRENTS IN THE LITURGY, TOO in which the heavenly Christ lends His glorified Presence, so to speak, go the holy place. "Thou, O Christ, art King of glory!" The entire passage of the Te Deum from which this ~jacul.ation is quoted proclaims as with trumpets what We might call the devotional atmosphere of the buiding. Here day by day and night by night the monk works at the work of God. O~ce he has been ordained, the priest-monk's own private~ Mass will be, as a rule, in some distant side-altar chapel. His daily conventual Mass, preceded and followed by one of the Canonical Hours, is ideally always a High Mass, at Which he himself is engaged, in singing either ¯ the Ordinary, or also the Proper as well. Every public Mass for the priest-monk is a sung Mass; every weekday is ¯ in this respect like.Sunday. In another very real sense "the Sunday atmosphere" pervades the abbey church. The calendar of the Romano- 'Monastic Rite, which is the Church's liturgy as given to the monks, minimizes Masses in honor of the saints, to multi-ply those of Sundays and ~:e.riae, on which, outside of Lent, the Mass of the preceding Sunday is repeat.ed. Thus, the "calendar for 1942 provided for a maximum of about 130 ¯ days on which Mass might be offered in honor of the Bles-sed V!rgin, the Angels, or Saints, despite the fact that the saints of the great Benedictine family are legion. Two out of every three' Masses were of the Dominical cycle, with the Saints being commemorated. ~ We enter in turn a Franciscan church. Here the altar" can be proportionately closer to the people, because the choir-stalls are set in a walled-off oratory at the side. .The peoplenever attend the ch0ir-service of the friars. But diocesan priests and regulars of orders founded.after that of St: Francis should .take a very lively interest in that choir-service, since the Roman Brevihry we use is a gift from the Franciscans. There was not, up to the thirteenth century, 247 GERALD ELLARD p a fixed arrangement of the Divine Office, obligatory on all as to details. Nor was it necessary, as long as the Office was performed in choir, that all its parts be found in one and the same volume. But just at the timeof the Poor Little Man of Assisi the papal curia was often abroad on trips, and this exigency of travel was then creating a breviary in which Psalms, Scripture lessons, and biographical lessons ,were all contained in one book. Francis, legislating for friars who were to go everywhere, stipulated in the Rule of 1223: "Let the clerics perform their Office according to the arrangement of the Holy Roman Church," by which he meant this new papal breviary then developing. The upshot, of this was that the breviary, as then 'definitely "fixed" for the Franciscans, was soon adopted by Rome and became that of the entire sphere of the Roman Rite. But it is with. the Mass-book, the Missale Semphico-t~ or~ar~tzro, the Church;s liturgy as given to the' friars, that we are more interested. One will note how the feasts of saints have multiplied, there being in the 1942 calendar about 240 days on which Masses are from the Sanctoral Cycle: mimbilis Det, s ir~ ,ar2cti~ ,tds. The' book is well named "Seraphic," because no less than 89 days provide Masses for the Saints and Blesseds of the Franciscan family. The psychological atmosphere, what we might call the "feel" of the Se.raphic Missal, may perhaps be illustrated by referring to the two great Franciscan sequences which the Church has put into our Roman Missal, the Dies I~ae, known with certainty only as of Franciscan authorship, and the Stabat Mates, which scholars now ascribe to Bona-venture, founder after Francis of Franciscanism. Perhaps, when we enter the Franciscan church, we find the church densely crowded, and the Forty Hours' Exposi-tion in progress. This is a typically Franciscan devotion, as common .today as the Christmas Crib or the Way of the 248 DIFFERING CURRENTS IN THE LITURGY; TOO Cross. Very likely a fiotice near the entrance will direct our attention to the fact that an evening service in honor of S~. Anthony is scheduled for later in the week. This serv-ice, we are told, will consist of the recitation of the rosary, hymn-singing, and "Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. There is nothing specifically .Franciscan about any single feature in that devotional pattern, and the pattern itself is ~epeated in practically every church in the land. True, it is not the the classic Opus Dei of Benedictine surroundings, but it can provide for popular participation in the public worship of the Church and is conducted according to norms approved by her "(Canon 1256). Granting that some of these devotional exercises co01d be~ from the litur-gical point of view, a good deal better,let us also freely grant that they are basically qood. Since there was mention a moment ago of classical Benedictinism, it is gratifying to recall that an American Benedictine translated and published the words of a Euro-pean writer dealing with this very problem of popular devotions: "Today, as in ~he past,.the~e must prevail in this d~partment of liturgical activity a certain largeness of scope and adaptation. We must be ready, to give proper recognition in the lituygy to those elemefits of popular reli-gious exercises in which the devotion of the people is really and truly expressed. And the same can be said of popular devotional hymns.''2 Just as the Gospel' of Frai~ciscan4ove has never been exhausted, so there is still, room in the lit-urgy for yet further Franciscan, and other, devotional additions. " , Ignatius, that would-be, crusader, and actual com-mander of troops, would have a man withdraw for a space, "to abide in all possible privacy; so that he may be free to ~J. A. Jungmann, Liturqical Worship, translated' by "a monk [Rev. Otto Eisen-zimmer] of St. John's Abbey. (New York: Pustet, 1941), p. 123. 249 GERALD ELLARD go daily to Mass and Vespers, without any fear of his acquaintances getting in his,way," and in this privacy study Christ's-plan of salvation against the ever-recurring questions: "What have I done for Christ? What am I doing for Christ? What ought I,do for Christ?" Ignatius, too, would have all influenced by him praise, as very touch-stones of orthodoxy, "chants, Psalms, long prayers in church, the Hours appointed for the Divine ONce, and all Canonical Hours" (Sp(ritual Exercises). "But because the occupations which are assumed for the good of so_uls,'.: he states in his Constitutions, "ore both .important and pressing, and the term of our residence in any place uncer-tain, the members of the Society will not recite the Canon-ical Hours in choir.'" Hence, neither before the altar, nor in an adjacent ora-tory, does one find dhoir-sialls in the liturgical setting of the Jesuit's life. This is not a Jesuit singularity; the same is true for most ~of the clerks regular of post-Reformation institutes. Save that the feasts of his order are celebrated, the Jesuit, like other clerks regular, follows the Roman Rite in all particulars. The liturgical pattern of a Jesuit's nor-mal routine (unless he is assigned to par6chial work) is that he celebrates low Mass, and, as far as he assists at Mass, it 1s a low Mass ordinarily, a High Mass very rarely. Thus these three orders, which we are taking as repre-senting religious p~iests generally, have each their differing modes of carrying out the sacred liturgy of the Catholic Church. Conditioned, then, and to a degree limited, by the liturgical practices of his religious institute,-the monk; the friar, or the clerk regular comes as retreat-master, or missionary,or week-end assistant, into the parish. There he is confronted by the full and majestic program of tl~e liturgical movement in all its manifold phases. In con-junction with the pastoral clergy, each religious will apply 250 DIFFERING CURRENTS IN THE LITURGY, TOO the principle of active lay-participation in the situation as encountered, and with the tools he has and can handle. This should amply.explain to the parish priests them-selves, or recall to interested observers of other religious orders, the reasons for" these somewhat diff.ering concepts of the scope and aims of the liturgical movement. The variation in emphasis is kimply unavoidable, given hiaman limitations. True, the several.interpretations are partial, but each is valid and true hs far as it goes, and each is an integral component in the symphony of praise ascending to God in the O/~u~ Dei. In abbey, convent, chapel, and church, if there is no single liturgical strait jacket, there is still what a tireless scholar of the last century used to ca!l the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic liturgy. BOOKLETS Father Foley's article on the Catholic Action Cell, in the May, 1943, number of the REVIEW, seems to have stirred considerable interest among many of our readers. These rea~lers (and perhaps many others) should be interested in "The Technique of the Catholic Action Cell Meeting, compiled by the Reverend Stephen Anderl and Sister M. Ruth, F.S.P.A. The compilers drew their material largely from the Priests' Bulletin, published by the Catholic Action Federations of the Archdiocese of Chicago, from articles by Father William Boyd in Orate Fratres, and from Mr. Eugene Geissler's book, The Training of Lay l~eaders. Father Anderl and Sister M. Ruth have dbne a-good job of compiling and offer many practical sug-gestions for organizing a cell and conducting, a meeting. 'The booklet costs 15 cents and can be obtained from St. Rose Convent, LaCrosse, Wisconsin. The Third Order Director is a pamphlet containing practical hints for adminis-tering the Third Order. It should be helpful not only to priest moderators, but also to Brothers and Sisters of various religious communities who are now in charge i of' Third Order groups. The pamphlet covers all practical details briefly and clearly. Price: 15 cents. Office of Publication: Third Order of St. Francis in the U. S., 3200 Mera'mec St., St. l-ouis, Mo. 251 'Advice I:o a New Superior By a oSpiritual Director, IN MY CAPACITY of spiritual director, I have been asked several times for advice by newly appointed reli-gious superiors. I have always considered these requests very seriously beforeGod; and the advice given, simple though it was, appears to have been helpful to the superiors who asked it. The points they seem to have appreciated most are the following. Humilitg , Ecclesiasticus tell~ us: "The greater thou art, the more humble tfiyselfin all things" (3:30). In another 151ace (32:1), the same sacred writer admonishes us: "Have tl-iey . made thee ruler? be not lifted up: be among them as one of them." Similar advice our Lord gave to His disciples: "You know that .those who are regarded as rulers among the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. But it is not so among you. On the . contrary, whoever wishesto become great shall be your servant; and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be the slave of all; for the Son of Man also has not come to be served but to serve, and. to give .his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:42-45). Behold your model, who was in the midst of His disciples as "one who serves" (Luke 22:27) ; there is no better model than Jesus. Justice and Kindness "And even as you wish mento do to .you, so also do you to them" '(Luke 6:31). There is your rule of action according to the maxim of Christ. Treat your subjects now as you wanted to be treated by your superior when 252 ADVICE TO A NEW SUPERIOR 3iou were a subject. Be a father (or mother) to them. Let your love and good .will be equal towards all; beware of favoritism, which is a source oof discord in a community. Be kind to the sick, have regard for the aged,.be considerate with the young. B~ sincere with your. subjects, "knowing that their Lord who is als0 your Lord is in heaven, and that with him there is no respect of persons" (Ephesians 6:9). Never betray their confidence, so that they may always trust you; for confidence once lost will seldom be fully .regained. If you should make a mistake or unwittingly ¯ wrong .a subject, do not hesitate to admit your mistake and to undo the wrong, for no one is infallible. Thus you.will give your subjects an example of humility and of justice, and it will increase their esteem for you and their confidence in you. Provide generou_sly for all their needs; never be niggardly with them on the plea of poverty. Try to produce a cheerful spirit in your community especially in time of recreation. This is the time for reli-gious to relax after the strain of the day's work; it is not to be a wake, Don't do all the talking yourself, and let not your presence be a damper on your subjects' joy. "Be among them as one of them." Let all join in to make the recreation religiously pleasant. The result will be. a greater spirit.of recollection during the time of silence. Prudence Avoid extremes in all things. Virtue takes a middle course. Be slow to judge and slower to condemn; hear both sides with equal patience and charity. Make no important decision without mature deliberation. Lean not too much on your own Wisdom; take counsel with a competent, unbiased, trustworthy and experienced person. If neces-sary, get the approval of your higher superior. But-- what is more important still--have recourse .to the Holy 253 ¯ A SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR Ghost, the Spirit, of Truth, that He may enlighten you to choose what is best. Firmness B~ firm, but with a firmness always tempered with' charity, prudence, and mercy; a firmness free from harsh-ness and severity. Be meek, but with a.meekness that is not weakness. Rule ~.tour communit!t b~t your example rather than. b~/~/our words. "Even if a person is caught doing .something wrong, you who are .spiritual instruct such a one in a spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thoualso be.tempted" (Galatians 6: 1). DO not reproach your sub-jects or nag them, but charitably call their attention to .what ought to be corrected. Never act on the .spur of the moinent, especially under the influence of any passion, lest you commit a graver fault than the one you are trying to correct; but go first to consider the matter before Jesus in the Blessesd Sacrament. Pra~/er " Cultivate a spirit of prayer. Often betake yourself to the Tabernacle, and there lay your problems before Jesus, saying to Him in the words of the Psalmist (69:1), "O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to. help me." Keep in touch with God at all times and hnder all circumstances in a spirit of Faith. And in your prayer, examine yourself from time to time on the various bits of advice given here. 254. S :udies During !:he Novifia :e Adam C. Ellis, S.J STANDARDS for the.teaching and other professions are high in the United States, and demand long years of careful preparation, It is not' surprising then to find religidus superigrs eager to have their subjects continue their studies as soon as possible after entering religion. Hence arises the practical .question: what about studies during the novitiatd? We shall, try to learn the mind of the Church through a brief study of her legislation on thissub, ject. Legislation of the Church I. On June 28, 1901, the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars issued a set of regulations called Normae for the government of religious institutes with simple vows. Article 73 of these regulations forbade all studies during the first year of novitiate in all cases, that is, whether one or two years of novitiate were had. Article 74 allowed a moderate amount, of study during the second year for those institutes which had two years .of novitiate. Nothing was prescribed regarding the nature of these studies. II. In 1908 Pope Pius X reorganized the Roman Curia and divided the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars into two new Congregation's, the second of which was called the Sacred Congregation of Religious and was given complete and exclusive jurisdiction over all re.ligious, both of orders and of congregations. On August 27, 1910, this new Congregation, with the explicit approbation of Pope Pius X, issued ~an instruc- 255 .~DAM C. ,ELLIS tion,. Ad Exploraf~durn Anirnum, regarding studies during the novitiate in all order~ and congregations of men. - In a preamble the Instruction first stated that the pur~ pose of the novitiate is to test the mind of the novice and gradually to imbue it with the spirit of religious perfec-tion by means of various spiritual exercises. Then a com-mon .experience was cited: namely, ~the fact that the con-stant- practice of pious exercises, even though they be varied, tends to 'tire the mind, especially in.the case of young people, and, when exercised cofitinually in the course of the day, is apt to render the will less attentive to them. Finally the advantages of a moderate amount of study during the n6vitiate were called to mind: for the novic,es, by helping them to retain what they havb already learned; for superiors, bygiving them some .idea of the talents, aptitude, and diligence of the novices. In order that this moderate ~amount of study might safeguard the novices from the strain.ot~ the constant prac-tice of spiritual exercises, and in. order to obtain the bene-fits'just mentioned, the Instruction laid down the fol. lowing regulations which were made obligatory for all: 1) Novices should devote themselv~es to private ¯ study one hour each day, except Sundays andfeast days. 2) The master of novices, or his assistant, or one of the professors of humanities, should supervise these studies. This same person might .give instruction to the assembled novices for one hour, three times a week at most. over and above the daily hour of private study. 3) While these instructions given in common .were not to be considered as regular classes "(veri norninis schola censeri nequeat), still they should not be a mere exercise in mortification. Hence the novices should apply themselves seriously so as to derive real profit from them. Studies taken up should correspond to the nature of the 256 STUDIES DURING THE NOVITIATE order or congregation. The vernacular, Latin and G~:eek, were recommended, either by way of repetition of what the novices had already learnt, especially in the matter of grammar, or by way of reading selections from the works of the Fathers and ancient ecclesiastical writers outstand-ing for their literary style. Ambrose, 'jerome, Lactantius, ,John Chrysostom, and Eusebius, as.well as the Greek texts of.St. Luke's Gospel and of the Acts of the Apostles, were ¯ cited as examples of such readings. Written and oral exercises were also recommended. 4) The instructor presiding ox;er these studies should give a written report on the diligence and progress of ea.ch novice to the superior general or provincial before the novices were admitted to the profession of vows. III. The Code of Canon Law, which was promul-gated on Pentecost Sunday, May 27, 1917, and which began to bind one year later, Pentecost Sunday, May 19, 1918, has this brief statement doncerning studies in-the novitiate: "During the year of novitiate the novices . . . are not to devote themselves (dedita opera vacate) to the formal study of letters, scienc.es, or arts',' (canon 565, § 3). The Code, th.erefore, does not retain the obligations of either the Norrnae or the Instruction. However, these documents, particularly the InstrUction (which is cited as one of the sources of the canon), may be Used in inter-preting the present legislation. In the light of this former legislation, we may say that it is within the spirit of the present law to allow a moderate amount of time for study in the novitiate, provided such study does not interfere with the principal purpose of ~he novitiate which is "to form the novice in the mould o~ the religious life by prayer, meditation, the study of the rules and constitu-tions, instruction regarding the vows and the virtues, exercises suitable to the acquiring of virtue and the 257 ADAM C. ELLIS uprooting Of vice, as well-as to regulating the moverhents ofthe soul (canon 565, § 1)." IV. Pope Pius XI sent an Apostolic Letter, Unigeni-tus De~ Filius, dated March 19, 1924, to all supe.riors gen-eral of orders and congregations of religious men, regard-ing the selection and training of subjects. Two para-graphs of this letter are pertinent to our subject. The first pertinent paragraph contains the studies to be required of candidates for admission to the novitiate of a.clerical institute. It refids as follows: "You must see to it, therefore, that after the young candidates for the reli-gious life have been seasonably and prudently selected, they receive, along with such training in piet~r as is suited to their age, instruction in secondary studies which ,are usually given in schools and colleges; sb that they do not enter the novitiate until they have ~ompleted the curricu-lum of the so called 'humanities,' unless in individual cases rather grave reasons mal~e it advisable to provide other-wise." For the United States this is interpreted as meaning the completion of High SchOol studies, including Latin. .For the duration of the war, owing to the present draft laws, superiors would be justified in admitting candidates. ~to the novitiate who have not ~ompleted their High School studies. Such studies, however, should be completed after the novitiate, before the study of philosophy is begun. This is prescribed in an Instruction of the Sacred Congregation. of Religious, dated .December 1, 1931, regarding the training and testing of religious candidates for the priesthood. The second paragraph of the Pope's letter pertinent to the subject under discussion insists on devoting the time of the novitiate to the exclusive spiritual training of the novices. He says: "Putting-aside all worldly amusements and studies 6f all branches whatsoever, let the novices 258 STUDIES. DURING THE NOVITIATE devote themselves, under the wise direction of their mas-ter, to the exercises of the interior life, .and to the acquire- .ment of virtue, especially of those.virtues which are closely connected with the vows of religion, that is, poverty, obedience and chastity~" V. Finally we have an Instruction of the Sacred Con-gregation of Religious, dated November 25, 1929, regarding the teaching of Christian Doctrine to all mem-bets bf lay insti.tutes of men-and women. The pa~'t referring to novices reads as follows: "During the time of probation and novitiate the young men and women shall reviewtheir Christian Doctrine and learn it more thor-oughly, so that each one shall not only know it by heart, but also be able.to explaifi it correctly; nor shall they be admitted to take the vows without a sufficient knowledge thereof, and a previous examination." Norms For Present Practice Taking into consideration all the documents qtmted above, we may formulate the principles regarding studies during the novitiateas .follows: Christian Doctrine must be studied, by all novices of lay institutes for the purpose of reviewing what they already know as well as of acquiring a deeper kov~ledge of their holy religion. In order to attain this end, it is very desirable that formal classes .in which the Christian Doc-trine is explained by a capable teacher be held once or twice a week. The teacher may be either a priest or an older, experiencedreligious. No other studies are .of obligation in the novitiate. How.ever, it is not contrary to the mind of the Church to devote a moderate amount of time to such studies, pri-vately or in class. In fact, this may be positively encour-aged, provided the purpose of these studies be kept in view and all harmful effects be eliminated. 259 ADAMC. ELLIS The purpose of these studies is to benefit the novices by helping them to retain the knov~ledge they have. already acquired, as well as by providing them with some neces-sary relaxation from the strain of multiple religiousexer., _cises. A secondary consideration is the information made available to superiors regarding the talents and diligence of the novices. Such studies must not be made a major item in the daily order of the novitiate; nor may they be allowed to become a source of distraction or detriment to the .spii:- itual life of the novice. Hence it seems obvious that no formal courses of instruction may be allowed whose sole purpose is to impart knowledge With a view to credits. Some Practical Suggestions Such are the principles to be followed in making plans' for studies inthe novitiate. .,in the application of these princil~les, superiors may find the following suggestions helpful: 1) The study of the English language is generally useful. In this connection, some few classes at least in spelling may be necessary, since this subject has become a lost art for many of our young.people. 2) For clerical institutes, _as well as for lay institutes in which the Divine Office or the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin is recited in Latin, a moderate study of that lan-guage is recommended. Its.purpose should be to ground the novices,in the essentials of grammar and simple corn- ,position. 3) The fundamentals of Bible-and Church History may be given either separately, or in conjunction with the study of Christian Doctrine. 4) Tr,aining in Gregorian Chant is desirable for all 260 STUDIES DURING THE NOVITIATE novices. Two half-hour periods per week would not. seem too much for this important subject. .5) Some practice in penmanship for those whose writing is hardly legible is to be encouraged. 6) As to foreign l'anguages, it is certainly desirable that the. novices should not forget what they have already learned; and each novice should be encouraged to keep up a.ny one of these languages to which he has already devoted one or more years of study. This may be d6ne by private reading or, if. the numbers warrant it, by some classesheld during the summer months. It does riot seem to be in keeping with the mind of the Church for a novice to begin the study of a .modern language. 7) Ten to fifteen .miiautes of setting up exercises daily will prove helpful to all novices, provided these exercises are given for reasons of health, and not to impart the science, of ph~csical education. 8) Courses in p~dagogy and education, as well as in the sciences, mathematics, and profane history, are out of place in the. novitiate. 9) As to the fine arts, they have no place in the novi-tiate curriculum. Specially gifted novices who hive had considerable .previous training might be allowed a mod-erate amount of practice in music or drawing during the second year of novitiate. Amount ot: Time to be Det~oted to Study Exclusive of the classes in Christian Doctrine and Plain Chant, not more than five hours a. week should be devoted to private study, and not more than three hours a week to class work. This is the norm laid down by the Instruction of the Sacred Congregation of Religious and 'approved by-Plus X. In place of three periods of sixty minutes each, it may be found more convenient to have 261 ADAM C~. ELLIS four class periods per week of forty-five minutes eaeh. ~Atthe most, relatively little time m.ay be given to study during the novitiate, and it is evident that only one or the other subjec~ suggested above can be satisfactorily treated. I~: is much better to concentrate on one or two subjects than to try to .get a smattering of four or five in the time.allotted. Non multa sed multum applies here if anywhere: Conclusion Religious superiors should ever keep in mind that the sole purpose of the novitiate is the religious training of th~ novices. Let them ponder the words of Pope Plus XI in the "letter of March 19, 1924: "Let "the novices never for-get that they will be for the rest of their lives such as they were in the novitiate, and that ordinarily it is most useless to hope that a novitiate once made with little o~ no fruit, can be supplied later on by a renewal of the spirit of the novitiate." It is, therefore, a very shortsighted policy, and one detrimental to the best interests of the religious institute as a whole, to. attempt to introduce into the novi-tiate any kind of formal courses of studies with a view to professional standing in later life. As we have seen, the reasons for allowing any study at all in the novitiate are to. help the novices retain, the knowledge they have already acquired, and to add a certain amount of pleasant variety-to the regular 'orde~ of spiritual.duties and exercises, thus helping them to avoid any overstraining of the" nervous system which may result in physicalor rnentaI exhaustion, and may manifest itself in scruples or melancholia. Let superiors be. conv.inced that after a fervent novitiate the young religious will devote themselveswholeheartedly to their studies, and in a short time make up for any apparent loss dt~e to a lack of formal study during the novitiate. 262 Scruples versus Chas :it:y Gerald Kelly, S.J. IN THE MAY, 1942, number of this REVIEW (I, p. 187) the readers were introduced to Scrupulosus, a typical victim of that gnawing and ~ unfounded fear of sin known as scruples. In the article referred to it was pointed out that a supreme difficulty for Scrupulosus is to acquire the "human way of acting": he is unable to-resign himself to the fact that human problems cannot be solved with the exactness of mathematical problems. Two examples of his diffi-culty-- confession and the Eucharistic fast--were described in the former article; the present article deals with a third. " Perhaps no other sphere of human life entails as much mental torture for Scrupulosus as does the practice of chastity. This is hardly surprising, because the practice of chastity demands a special blending of idealism an~t common sense. Though often referred to ¯ as "the angelic virtue," chastity is essentially a human virtue and it must be practised in a human way. Before illustrating Scrupulosus' problem with chastity, it may be well to call attention to certain cases which" very likely are not real scrupulosity. I refer to those casesin which, though many symptoms of scrupulosity are present, the basic difficulty is rather ignorance than fear. For instance, there are some good people who suffer from an undue axiety regarding chastity because they really do not know what chastity is. At some time in their lives they got the notion that ¯ chastity includes just about everything pertaining to the discipline of the senses and the affections; and because of this erroneous widening of the scope of. chastity they are unnecessarily fearful of.violating the virtue. T'his type of worry can be dispelled by the simple process of obtaining correct information as to the meaning.of chastity. Other good people know, at least in a general way, the scopeof chastity, but do not know the difference between temptation and sin in this matter. Such people are ignorant of 'the simple principle that u2hat is not udlful cannot be sinful. They are apt to brand as sinful, imagi'nations and feelings that are no more wilful than a shudder or the blink of an eyelash. They set themselves to do the impossible, that is, to exclude even spontaneous sense impulses; and when they 263 GERALD KELLY 'have failed to do this, the~" think they have sinned. The obvious result is discouragement, "worry, fear: the. obvious remedy is instruc-- tion. Our genuine.Scrupulosus knows the meaning of chastity and of sin; in fact, he may have even a superior degree of theoretical knowl-edge. But be is afraid to apply it practically to himself. F~ar enslaves him and paralyzes his judgment. He does not trust himself; he can-not or will not, put his confidence in God. In the previous article about Scrupulosus we contrasted his con-duct with that of Humanus, who was considered as typical of the ordinary sincere human being. Perhaps it may help to continue this contrast Wi~h re~ard to some of the normal problems of chastity. Take the question of "bad thoughts." Both Humanus and Scrupulos.us are subject to them, and each has characteristic reactions to them. Humanus knows, of course, that disturbing imaginations are apt to come unbidden into. the mind and that they are often accom-panied by tempting feelings and impulses. Nevertheless, though not impruden~t, he is not afraid of them nor perpetually on, the looko.ut for them. When they do pass through his mind, he ignores them. Even when they persist and grow strong, he is usually content with the quiet judgment, "I don.'t want these things," a'short aspiration for grace, and a sincere, calm. attempt to think of other things. Occa- .sionally he may find it advisable to read a book to distract t-fimself. Now and then he even has dotibts about his guilt; but these doubts are not a. source of worry for him. He knows this is a human prob-lem, and he deals with it the human way. Unlike Humanus, Scrupulosus is afraid of bad thgughts, o When he hasn't any, he is afraid that he will have them; and this makes him more susceptible to them. And when they do come, his fear .that he will give in to them incites him to engage them immediately in an interior wrestling match instead of resorting to the much more salu-tary. method of ignoring them. ~t isa wrestling match that seldom results in a complete victory for Scrupulosus. " His common sense tries to draw him away from ¯ the combat with the quiet, cheery message: "Dofi't bother, about these things. If you let them alone they won't hurt you. Rem(mber it's not :your fault they're here. Involuntary things are. never sinful." But the voice of his fear, louder hnd sharper than that of common sense, goads him on. "That's just the point," argues fear. "'Are they SCRUPLES VERSUS CHASTITY involuntary? They're pleasant, aren't they? Maybe you do want them! Maybe you did something that brought them on! Maybe. they're the result of your other ~ins! And even if you don't want them now, maybe you will want them. You'd better act fast. You'd better pitch them out right now, or you'll be gu'ilty of mortal sin." ¯ Blinded by fear, Scrupulosus ignores the voice of cofnmon sense. He tries to shake the thoughts out of lqis head; he clenches his fists; he prays desperately. He keeps his nerves at bowstring tautness, so that fear can play his haunting challenge on them~ And when the temptation is over--for a while---he looks back on it with the eyes of fear. He dare not decide that he didn't sin; yet he's not sure that he did. Then he's not sure that he isn't sure; and in the end he suc-cumbs not to a judgment, but tO a despairing conviction dictated by fear: "I guess-I must have sinned!" The foregoing are more or less typical reactions to involu6tary and unforeseen thoughts .and feelings. Another problem concerns " oluntary~thoughts and actions that are good' in themselves, but which are quite likely to be accompanied by temptations against chastity. There are many such thoughts and actions: for example, the study of the Sixth Commandment, the study of physiology, nor-mal social dealings with certain attractive persons, the care of the sick, the care of one's own body, reading that contains suggestive descriptions, and so forth. Many people know from experience that such things as ,these are apt to excite impulses and feelings that would be unchaste if deliberately indulged in. Hence arises the problem: must all such thoughts and actions be avoided? For determining whether any deliberateaction or-line of thought that is likely to result in physical disturbances andtemptatdns against chastity is permissible, the following set of questions is simple, yet scientifically sound: (1) Is the action itself impure? If it is~ it is wrong; if it is not, the remaining questions are applicable. (2) Is my motioe impure, that is, am I seekifig to arouse passion or trying to lead on to an impure action? (3) Have I a r~asonable assurance of preseroing self-control, if I should be tempted? (4) Have I a relatio.ely su~cient reason for this particular action or line of thought --in other words, is the good to be accomplished of sufficient value to justify my tolerating the physic~al reactions and te, mptation? For example, consider the case of. one who needs iristruction con-cerning chastity. It may be that the instruction itself, at least in the 265 GERALD KELLY .beginning, will be a source of disquiet to him. Foreseeing this diffi-culty, he can satisfy the demands of conscience by applying the four questions to his problem. The application might run somewhat as follows: (1) The action? Certainly the study of chastity is/not wrong in itself, other-wise not even priests could study or give information. ~2) The motioe? . In this case the purpose is to obtain useful, even necessary information, and the eventual, peace of mind that comes with it. "The evil effects adcompanying.the study are merely tolerated. (3) controI? This is is a personal problem; yet the normal good person who is not accus.tomed to sin against chastity and who is willing to ¢ta'ke the ordinary means of safeguarding his will against temptation usual!y has a reasonable assurance on this point. (4) SuOicient -Reason? Such reasons are relati~re, depending on the degree of the. disturbance and the force of ~he temptation. In this case, since the information is really useful, even necessary, it constitutes a sufficient reason for tolerating even strong physical reactions and ~temptations. The first of the questions would seldom pr.esent serious difficulty to anyone who is well-instructed as to the meaning of chastity, though, of'course, it is the great stumbllng-block for the ignorant. But it is well to note that the other three questions can rarely be answered with perfect exactness. They carry us definitely into the human sphere; they involve delicate subjective elements and the weighing of .rather intangible pros and cons. Most people have to be content with answering" these according to a "rough estimate." Humanus doesn't mind "rough estimates." He makes them often in all spheres Of life. Why should he demand more in the matter of chastity? Suppose," for instance, that his work calls for.the .reading of a book that he kfiows will be a source of some disturbance to him. His motive? Well, he knows he might deceive himself; yet he is not conscious of any impure motive or self-deception now, and he does have a rather obvious good purpose. Hence he coficludes that his motive is good. His self-control? .Yes, he has occasionally lost self' cofltrol in temptation, but it was only occasional, and he now h~s whatappears to be a prudent confidence that he can control himself; so hedoesn't-worry about that point. Does the good outweigh the evil? Humanus knows that he cannot put the good' effects of his action on one side of a scale and the evil effects on the other; but he also knows that the reading is necessary, or at least definitely useful. 266 SCRUPLES VERSUS CHASTITY for his work, and his good sense tells him that this outweighs merely unintentional physical reactions and.temptations. 'Life is seldom all white; a bit of black must often be tolerated. Scrupulosus detests "rough estimates." Each of the last three questions affords his fear a veritable field day. "How do you know you have a good motive? Lots of people act from hidden impure motives. You yourself fiave had evil motives before. You're just trying to cover, up your guilt so that you can enjoy yourself . . .'. "As for self-col~trol, .haven't you 10st it before? Even if your motive were good now, how could you know you wouldn't weaken? This temptation may be especially strong. Remember what the Scrip-ture says about the man who thinketh himself to stand. You're putting yourself in th'e proximate occasion of sin right now; and that means you're already sinning . "Good and evil! How can you balance, good and evil? A little bit'of evil outweighs a vast amount of good. Furthermore, how do you know this reading is useful or necessary? You don't really need it. You could get along without it. It's easy to deceive yourself into thinking things are necessary .or useful when pleasure is connected verb them. That's what" you're doing now--decei'~ing yourself. Then you'll go. to confession and deceive your confessor." But remem- ¯ bet: ~ou can't dece[oe God!" The second struggle ends in the same manner as the first--with Scrupu.losus a beaten man. If he does the things he has a perfect right to do, his fear continues to plague him, especially with the taunt that he is acting "against his conscience"; if he doe~ not do these things, he is deprived of many useful, even necessary benefits of' normal human living. And even then h~ is not at peace. The result of these interior conflicts is often a profdund ~tiscour-agement. Scrupulosus may begin to look upon chastity as something impossible for him, and this leads to the very ~eal danger that he will cease to care whether he practises it. His scruples, unlike a truly delicate conscience, become the worst enemy to his chastity. One remedy for this condition is to relax. If Scrupulosus can-not climb the fence, perhaps he can duck under it. And how can' he relax? By trying, to see the real absurdity of his frantic efforts to be absolutely certain of things; by living a normal life, despite the pain of fear; by trusting himself more; and by trusting and loving God. 267 Beating t:he Air in Prayer [EDITORS' NOTE: During the course of the discussion on spiritu.al direction, a priest who is. interested in the subject of "direction concerning prayer" sent us a long letter on the subject. We were unable to print the letter at that time. We are publishing it now under the title, Bea.ting the Air in Prat.ler.] THE NEED of spiritual direction presupposes the need of progress in the interior life, and one of th~ common gages of such pro-gress is prayer. Father Leen remarks: "It is a sad thing that of all those who start' out with such confidence and such good. will on the supernatural life, so few attain to any marked degree of spiritua, l-ity . Resistance to grace is the reason of the absence of gkowth in the spiritual life. Yet it would be hard to say that resistance,to grace is in the majority of cases deliberate. It is quite possible that it may proceed from want of spiritual enlightenment and that great numbers of failures are to be attributed not to bad will but to imperfect under-standing'. One who has some expekience in dealing with souls°. cannot fail to remark that very many good and promising beginnings end in disappointment and discouragement" (Prooress Through Mental Pra~er, pp. 13, 14). One is forced to concur With that judgment. The conviction grows with repeated experience that an understanding of progress in prayer is not as widespread as it sh6uld be. For instance is it not an implicit denial of anything like progress in prayer to expect that older religious" will pray in exactly the same way and according to the same ~method as novices? Yet in some plates the same matter for prayer is read to all, and, worse' still, it 'is read aloud during the very time of prayer, thus making it impossible for those who should be practiced in mental prayer to give to any one thing the prolonged attention of soul that should be characteristic of progressing prayer. One obstacle to progress in prayer is the fear that some s~uls entertain 'of progressing from strict meditation to the simpler forms of prayer, lest they be guilty of the heresy which they have heard called Quietism. A director who suggests a change is apt to be considered an innovator or anti-traditionalist. Yet sometimes a change is neces-sary. We are often fold, or we read, that we must be patient with aridity in prayer, that all God wants is the effort. It is true that He 268 ~EATING THE AIR IN PRAYER does want the effort; but is this all He wants? Do we not often put a great deal of energy and effort into merely "beating the air"? And as for the aridity, patience is nece.ssary, but patience is not a satisfac-tory solution to the problem if the' aridity comes simply from the fact that the form of prayer one has been using has accomplished its purpose and has nowbecome sterile. It is too hard to keep patient in such circumstances, too hard to keep exerting effort, and it happeng too often that souls give up all earnest me~atal prayer and simply "last out" the time 6f prayer in an uninterested and inacti;ce manner. It seems that some are ignorant of the need of progress in prayer because they do not know that even ordinary mental prayer has many forms and that it admits of progress from one form to the other. Those who do not know of these forms think that any mention of progress in prayer in~dicates a tendency toward "mysticism" and is therefore to be suspected. To these people, "relish" in prayer means merely sentimentality, feeling, or emotion; "effort" is the 0nly thing that counts. They mistrust anything that appears to go beyond the low foothills of out-and-out reasoned prayeL They consider that any prayer which does not result in a definite and concrete resolution with regard to some particular virtue or. vice is a fruitless prayer. Yet it is a princip!e of spiritual theology that progress in prayer should move away from sheer reasoning in the direction of simplicity. A second cause of failure to make progressin prayer is unwilling-ness to make the sacrifices necessary to persevere in recollection. Some use their work for the salvation and perfection of their neighbor as ari e~cu~e for riot wogking for their own perfection. This is~ absurd, because the tirst'purpose of any religious institute is the perfection of its own members. Utter absorption in working for others is accom-panied by a dissipation of mind and' energy that makes prayer unnec-essarily burdensome. It takes the interest from interior living which is our greatest need at the present time. Everyone who has tried to preserve recollection ifi the midst of intense external activity knows,, that it is diffictilt; but the difficulty is hardly an honest justification for neglect. Increasing self-abnegation is an indispensabl.e condition for progre.ss in prayer. Putting aside all rationalizing, most religious who do not try to make progress in prayer would have td admit that the real reason is that they are afraid of the self-abnegation involved. 269 Reviews. THE EXEMPTION OF: RELIGIOUS IN CHURCH LAW. By the Reverend Joseph D. O'Brien, S.J., S.T.D., J.C.D. Pp. xvil -t- 307. The Bruce Publ[shlncj Company, Milwaukee, 1943. $3.7S. Law, e~cleslastical as well as civil, is a living, thrivin~ organism, operating over an extensi,ce fi~ld of human~activity. While deriving its very vitality from" roots descending into God's own law, it must, in its daily operation, be adaptable to the oft-changing situations found among men. The flexibility of the ecclesiastical law's a1~li-cation "is made manifest by the frequent decisions, instructions and interpre~tations issued by the Holy .See, ever ready to meet, when possible, any new .situation that may affect the welfare of any class of her children. The periodic publication of these new prescription~ of the l'aw calls for a'corresponding revision of the Commentaries on the Code of Canon ~Law so that these new aspects of the law may receive appropriate consideration. One of the latest of such commen-taries is The Exemption or:. Religious in Church Law, the publica-tion of which marks the firs~ complete treatise on this subject writ-ten in English. ' Four grand divisions, further divi~ied and subdivided, form the complex pattern of Father O'B~ien's scholarly volume." Part I clears the ground° for an intelligent understanding of many of the questions'to be discussed in subsequent por.tions of the work by presenting the genuine meaning of many terms used without canoh-ical discrimination. Such words as "nun" and "order" are explained according to Canon 488. Popular usage often.tends to dull the fine canonical precision of such expressions. Our attention is next focussed on the juridical nature of exemption. The law of exemp-tion 6r immunity from the jurisdiction of the local Ordinary is expressed in Canon 61~: "Regulars, both men and women, in-cluding novices, except those nuns who are not subject to Regular superiors,, are exempt, together with their houses and churches, from the jurisdiction of the local Ordinary, except, in the cases pro-vided for-by la{v." Generally speaking, all the faithful residing within the diocesan limits are subject to ~he. spiritual rule of the local Bishop. The Sovereign Pontiff, however, within whose jurisdiction lies the Universal Church and each member thereof, has 270 BOOK REVIEWS seen fit to withdraw certain religious in.~titutes from the rule of the local Bishop and reserve their government to himself. Such is the meaning of exemption. Needless to say, the Holy See exercises this government of Regulars through the medium of their own supe- "riors. ¯ : A thorough analysis of the" jurisdiction exercised, over exempt religious and a further amplification of the notion of jurisdiction occupies the second part of this volume. Part III, easily the most 'important. section, enters into a detailed study of all the forms of religious activity exercised under the rule of the religious superior and independently of the local Ordinary. These details are handled with painstaking thoroughness over a space of 203.pages. Fol- !owing the classification of persons, plac.es and things, no aspect of religious activity is neglected. Part IV, "The Limitations. of Exemption," explains the juridical norm regulating the restrictions placed on this privilege by the Code .and supplies an enumeration of the cases expressed in the general law of the Code. In these excep-tional cases, the local Ordinary exercises jurisdiction over exempt as well as non-exempt persons. Human nature being what it is, Regular exemption did not opera/re ove~ a course of centuries without its vicissitudes. The occa-sional failure of Bishops and Regular prelates to recognize and to respect the rights of one anbther has caused at. times the straining of. relations if not regrettable conflicts between them. By her wi~e leg-islation, the Church has supplied an adequate preventive for many misunderstandings. A sound knowledge and a faithful ~ observance of the law of the Church will provide a solution to any problem that may arise among her children and will result in that apostolic harmony between Diocesan and Religious clergy that brought praise from the Fathers of the Third Plenary Council in Baltimore. For his very objective analysis~ of this point, Fr. O'Brien me.rits our commendation. ¯ The Exemption of Religious in Church Law is primarily a sci-entific commentary on 615 and related canons. The abundant cross-references presume a degree of familiarity with the structure and gbneral content of the Code of.Canon Law. It is to be kept in mind, however, that the Code is an integrated and highly system-atized body of laws, many of which are intimately .correlated No part or section of it may be studied properly without frequent 271 BOOK REVIEW~ ¯ references to other canons or sections of the Code. The complexity " of the question of exemption explains the frequent 'repetition by the author of fundamental notions--a repetition which serves to main-tain precision of tho.ught throughout the'entire volume. This study of the exerhption of Regulars is the fruit of long and patient investigation, as the ample bibliography and the countless citations testify. Roman documents, the great classics of Canon Law, and many modern commentarie~ bear eloquent witness to the author's scho!arship~ Pre-Code legislation on the subject of exemp-. tion is examined in order to point out the changes warranted by the varying circumstances over the course of .years. Differing opinions are carefully sifted and followed by a statement of the validity and 'practicability o~ the conclfisions reached. The foregoing sketchy estimate of Fr. O'Brien's treatise should not lead one to conclude that only the trained canonist will fully appreciate his efforts. All priests engaged in the directiofi-of reli-gious will find within the volume an answer to many of the ques~ tions periodically submitted by their charges. The fact, too, that a satisfying exposition of the general law of religious precedes the explanation of many points of exem15tion should extend the field of' interest in this work. A complete general index accompamed by an index of all the canons of the Code referred to will direct us to the different subjects that engage our interest or form the basis of'a problem calling for solution. Finally,' the thoroughness of the work, evident from the'vastness of the field covered and the num-berless questions discussed, cannot be too highly praised. Among the many excellent canonical treatises published during recent years, The Exemption of Religi~ous in Church Law merits indeed a place of distinction.--J. E. RISK, S.J. ON THE PRIESTHOOD. By. Saint John Chrysostom. Translated by the Reverend Patrick Boyle, C:.M. Pp. xl -1- 14S. The Newman Book Shop, WToesot mofintesnte rC, Mat~hIo., l1i9c4s: ]k. n$o1.w2S o. f their valiant predecessors. in tho~ Faith by hearsay rather than from having made contact with great . Christian minds'across the centuries. A thrill would b~ in store for th(m were they.to take in hand a book such as this and discbver for themselves how modern, in their timelessness, ar~ the doctrines and precepts they have inherited. 272 BOOK REVIEW$ St. John Chrysostom, an his.treatise On the Priesthood,.offers his friend Basil pertinent counsel regarding his duties and privileges as priest and bishop. Special attention is given to the greatness of the priestly vocation, the essential rules for Christian eloquence, and the priest's exterior ministry. The prospective reader need have no fear of being lost in an unfamiliar world. St. John ever aimed at bringing revealed truths to the understanding of the people in general, and his undying fame as popular preacher is proof that he succeeded. Cardinal Newman, as -'quoted in the introduction to this edition, has ~he folio.wing to say . of Chrysostom: ". He writes as one who was ever looking out with sharp but kind eyes upon the world of men and their history, and hence .he always has something to produce about~ them, new or old, to the purpose of his argument, whether from books or from the experience of life. Head and heart were full to overi~owing with a stream of mingled 'wine and milk,', of rich vigorous thought and affectionate feeling. This is why his manner of writing is so rare andspecial. " " First written more than fifteen centuries ago, On The Priesthood is a welcome addition/to the series of reprints being provided by the, Newman Book Shop. It has been called the finest of all Chrysostom's ¯ writings and the first great pastoral work ever written. --C. DEMUTH, S.J. THE BOOK OF CATHOLIC AUTHORS. Second Series. Edited with preface and notes by Walter Romicj. Pp. 312. Walter Romig and Company, Detroit, 194:L $2.20. The Second Series of The Book of Catholic Authors should be warmly received, especially by young Catholic writers, for whom it sdems to be particularly designed. Readers will be treated to a per-sonal interview, an inspirational chat with voyagers .in the field of Catholic letters who have arrived. Marshalled through its pages are many names that were regret-fully missed in the first group, personalities such as Bishop Francis C. Kelly, Rev. Owen Francis Dudley, Halliday Sutherland, Rev. Fran'cis LeBuffe, S.J., and John Moody. Priests, nuns, men and women of the world pass in disarming review and tell of their endeavors in becoming novelists, dramatists, historians, poets, essayists, l~ycholo-gists, spiritual writers. As informally and candidly as if it were a 273 BOOK REVIEWS conversation over the back fence while resting from the hoe'work on the Victory garden, they relate how they got thi~t way, their literary background and ~early struggles, the romance of the. best stiller that nobody wanted; punctuating their "do's"°and '~don'ts" with a flick of an imaginar.y .blade of grass, they offer practical advice to a~plring° authors. They plead the cause of Catholic v~riters. They are gen-erous with encouragement: "I becam~ a write~ because I am a'Cath-olic. There's something to write about when you're a Catholic." The sketches are pleasantly brief, but at the~ same time they are concentrated capsules of writer's vitamin, of antidote for the severest . . case of beginner's digcouragement.---~. F. ABBICK, S.J. TALES FROM THE RECTORY. By' the Most Reverend Francis clement Kelley. Pp. 193. The Bruce Pubilshing Company, Milwaukee, 1943. $2.2S. Every day all: over th~ world very ordinary PeoPle are passing.in and out of rectories, where from their pastor they receive added "stre.ngth tobear their burdens, kindly advice to solve their problems, and.sinceie sympathy in their sorrows. The pastors, too, have their own triumphs and failures. Bishop Kelley, author of many popu-lar books, has condensed many year~ of such pastoral experienc.e in this a.nthology of twenty.-four of his short stories. It is not s~rprising, therefore, that these stories are packed with interest for the reader. Like the p~rables of Christ, each has within it some gem of truth which may serve as a guide in everyday prob-. lems. As in the parables, that gem of truth is enhanced and b~ight-ened by the fact that it is set in a story whose characters are very real persons with very human emotions and reactions. In an atmosphere haunted with the grim realities of war, Tales from thd Rector~ is both a sedative for erratic emotions and a guide for bewildered minds. --J. W. NAUGHTON, ~.J. HOW TO THINK. By Arthur D. Fearon. Pp. 194. College Publishing "Company, San Francisco, 1943. (Price not listed.) The subtitle of this book is Hotu to Anal~cze, Associate, Memo-ri2e, Reason; but perhaps a more apt and appealing subtitle is indi-cated ixi the Preface, "Shortcuts toefficient studying." Every teacher will heartily concur wi~h Dr. Fearon in his ex-pressed wish that these hints will reach every thinking person over 274 BOOK REVIEWS I d. The remarks on Analysis ~speciallY show a real grasp of the problems confronting a prospective student. Yet is it not to be feared that the reading of such a concise¯ meth-odolgy wil! be meaningful only to one who has discovered by ex-pe~ rience the value of analysis in his. study? Only such a one will be struck with the high efficiency of the hints which are suggested. Expertus potest credere. ¯ In the hands of an enthusiastic teacher (and an apostle of clear thinking), this book could be used to give a real orientation to a class. A history teacher, a retreat master, a catechist, using the sub-ject- matter that is within his grasp, could provide his class with a wholly new illumination by presenting his ideas within the frame-work of this little manual. No educator Will be the worse for inves-tigating IDa. Fearon's contribution to the problems of youth. ¯ - --R. G. NORTH, S.J. THE LOVE OF GOD. By Dom Aelred Graham, O.S.B. Pp. xlx ~ 252. Longmans, Green and'C;o., New York, 1940., $2.50. This worthwhile book has been available for some time, but on the chance that some priests and" religious have not as yet made its acquaintance, attention is gladly called to it in tbe~e pages. While the love of God for man and man's obligation to love God in return are standard themes for spiritual writers, the fundamental philosophical and theologichl principles on which a solid devotional life must be based are usually to be found only in technical works. Dora Aelred has done a significant service, by gathering these 'pri.nciples from the works of St. Thomas, St.' Augustine, St. John of the Cross and other masters, fitting them together compactly, expand-ing them with clarity and objectivity, and in general making them understandable and highly inspirational to the intelligent, serious reader. To use the author's own phrase, his book is an "essay in analysis," explaining doctrine With a view to making it effective for spiritual living. The Nature, Conditions, Expression, and Effects of the Love of God are the headings of the four large sectiohs into which the book is divided. Each section is in turn distributed through three chapters in a manner admirably suited to provide a well-balanced treatment of thesubject under discussion. 275 BOOK REVIEWS Not the least attractivefeature of the book is the authbr's facility of expression. Without apparent effort, the words and phrases seem, on reflection, to afford the best possible settings for the thought-gems brdught to light. Not often is the medi~um of words so unobtrusively effective. The pages are regularly lighted up with passages that reveal the author as a vigorous, independent thinker even when he avows, his utter dependence on the great Christian masters. Such a passage, in the chapter on Knowledge, is his discussion of Y ideals in educati'on and his 'penetrating evaluation of current .methods. Again, in the chapter on Prayer, the inevitable interrelation of social worship and the personal element in religion is presented in a way to give consid-erable pause to the tunnel-visioned extremist. As a final instance, the .chapter on Action has a section wherein art, morality, and the virtue of prudence are brought together with happy results. The passage is ¯ recommended especially to those who are recurrently in a pother over the e.ssence of Catholic Arts and Letters.--C. DEI~IUTH, S.,J. HYMNS OF: THE DOMINIGAN MISSAL AND BREVIARY. Edited with . ir~÷roducfion and no÷es by ÷he Reverend Aquinas Byrnes, O.P. Pp. 694. B. Herder Book (2o., S÷. Louis, 1943. $4.75. This work is a useful companion volume to Britt's well known handbook. Destined primarily for Dominican friars, nuns, and ter-tiaries, it is also valuable for other religious who participate in the Opus Dei. Many hymnspresented here are common to the Domini- .can and ordinary Roman breviaries. In addition, students of .hym-r~ ody will be grateful to have at hand a number of fine compositions not contained in the Roman breviary, as well as the or.iginal forms of hymns that were revised under Urban VIII. On opposite pages are printed Latin texts and English verse trans-lations. The lower half of each page is reserved for literal prose ren-derings and pertinent comments on the content, form, author, and liturgical use of the hymn under consideration. Two appendices contain helpful data on authors and translators. A third of the poetic versions are by Father Byrnes and show unusual taste and competency in this dif/icult art, the remainder being by Msgr._ Henry, Neale, Caswall and other standard translators.--C. 2. McNASpY, S.,I. 276 Decisions he- See May 4, 1943: A general assembly of the Sacred Congregation of Rites attended by Pope Pius XII voted on the miracles attributed to~ the intercession of Blessed Frances Xavier Cabrini--v.a necessary pre-requisite in the advancement of her cause of canonization. At the same meeting the Congregation also decreed that it is. safe to proceed with the beatification of Venerable Alix Le Clerc, foun-dress of the Augustinian Regular Canonesses of the Congregation of Our Lady. April, 1943: In connection with the starting of the Vatican radio's new weekly broadcast to Russia, His Holiness Pope Plus XII granted indulgences for a new prayer recommended not only on behalf of all Christians outside the unity of the Church; but especially on beh.a!f of the Russian dissidents. The prayer reads, as follows: "O Most Holy Trinity, we adord Thee, and through Mary offer our petition: grant to all unity in the faith and courage to profess it faithfully." Indulgences: 300 days each time, a plenary indulgence once a month under the usual conditions. February 27, 1943: Pius .XII, through the Sacred Penitentiary, made the following modifications in the conditions for gaining the indulgences attached to the wearing of the Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel: 1) All religious of the Carmelite Order (priests, brothers, nuns, and tertiaries regular) may gain the indulgences attached to the wearing of the Carmelite habit, even though the habit is not made of wool. 2) All the faithful who belong to the Carmelite Third Order Secular, arid to th~ Confraternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary of. Mount Carmel, may gain the indulgences attached to the wearing of the scapular, even though they wear a ~capula.r not made of wool. These concessions were made at the request of the Procurator General of the Carmelite Order A.O., and they are made for tile dura-tion of the war onl~l. The Holy See also granted a sanatt'o for any invalidating defects in the erection of a Third Order and of a Confratern.ity of the' Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, as well-as in the admission of the faithful to these organizations. 277 ( UeS ons and Answers .~.26--. On the occoslon of his Golden Jubilee a religious is made th~ recipi-ent of a sum of money 'contributed by" his friends and former pupils. Should this money be considered as the personal property of the religious, or does it belong to the communih/? Canon 580, § 2 states that "whatever a ~eligious acquires by his " own industry or in respect to his institute, belongs to the institute." One may acquire in respect to his institute in two ways: (1) The donor wishes to make a gift to the institute or to the community, and does so through the individual religidus; (2) he gives it to the reli-gious, because he is a religious. In this latter case the donor knows the religious only.as a religious; he would not know him if he were not a religiotis. Thus gifts given to religious teachers.by their pupils, or by patients to religious who nurse them, are considered ~iven to the religious because they are religious.- In case of doubt, whether.[he ' gift is given to-the person or to the religious, the doubt is to be solved in favor of the community, by an analogy to canon 1536. From the foregoing it would seem that gifts received by a reli~ gious on the .occasion of his Golden ,Jubilee are given to him because he is a religious, hence their go to his community. In practice it i~ best to follow this interpretation because if the gift is considered as purely personal, the religious must add it to his pdtri-mony; and may not spend it or give it away (canon 583, 1°); whereas if the gift is considered as given to him because he is a reli- 'gious, it goes to the comm'unity but the superior may allow him to use part of it for a jubilee trip to some of the houses, or for some similar purpose. Of course, the'superior should be prepared to grant the same permission to all other jubilarians, whether they receive gifts, or not, so as to avoid any violation of common life. --27-- In case of a f~mily inheritance, may a religious renounce his or her~ share in favor of brothers and sisters? Similarly, is a religious free ÷o turn over to others of the family his share of a pension right due a parent? The answer to these questions will depend to a certain extent upon the civil law of the State in which the will of the deceased per- 278 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS son is executed. If the state law obliges a pare

Issue 17.1 of the Review for Religious, 1958. ; A. M. D. G. Review for Religious JANUARY 15, 1958 Retreats in Retrospect Thomas Dubay Spiritual Cancer . Francis ~1. Macl:ntee Roman Documents . R. I:. Smith Book Reviews Questions and Answers For You~ Information VOLUME 17 NUMBER 1 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS VOLUME 17 JANUARY, 1958 NUMBER 1 CONTENTS RETREATS IN RETROSPECT--Thomas Dubay, S.M .3 FOR YOUR INFORMATION .34 SPIRITUAL CANCER--Francis J. MacEntee, s.j .3.7 SURVEY OF ROMAN DOCUMENTS--R. F. Smith, S.J .4.2 OUR CONTRIBUTORS . 50 BOOK REVIEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS: Editor: Bernard A. Hausmann, S.J. West Baden College West Baden Springs, Indiana . 51 SOME BOOKS RECEIVED . 59 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: 1. Preferred Mass on a Ferial Day of Lent . 60 2. When Does an Anticipated Renewal of Vows Begin to Run?. 60 3. Personal Gifts and Poverty . 61 4. Saving Money for Desired PuFposes . 62 5. Permission Required for Minor Necessities . 64 6. Elimination of Precedence in the Refectory . 64 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, January, 1958. Vol. 17, No. 1. Published bi-monthly by The Queen's Work, 3115 South Grand Blvd., St. Louis 18, Mo. Edited by the Jesuit Fathers bf St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approval. Second class mail privilege authorized at St. Louis, Mo. Editorial Board: Augustine G. Ellard, S.J.; Gerald Kelly, S.J., Henry Willmering, S.J. Literary Editor: Robert F. Weiss, S.J. Copyright, 1958, by The Queen's Work. Subscription price in U.S.A. and Canada: 3 dollars a year; 50 cents a copy. Printed in U.S.A. Please send all renewals and new subscriptions to: Review for Religious, :3115 South Grand Boulevard. St. Louis 18, Missouri. Review t:or Religious Volume 17 January--Deceml~er, 1958 Ecllt:ed by THE JESUIT FATHERS St. Mary's College St. Marys, Kansas Published by. THE QUEEN'S WORK SI=. Louis, Missouri REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is indexed in the CATHOLIC PERIODICAL INDEX Retreats in Retrospect Thomas Dubay, S.M. IN SIX RECENT issues of this REVIEW~ seven hundred sisters told with considerable detail what they think about the prob-lem of more fruitful retreats for religious. This temperately told tale was no trite tally, for the sisters expounded their posi-tions with logic and insight. Yet all the same, we still lack an adequate analysis and evaluation of their views, without which, of course, the study remains truncated. But even more im-portant, we also lack solutions to many ot~ the problems they raised. This present article aims at contributing a mite toward the filling of both needs.2 I shall not, however, attempt to discuss every problem unearthed by the study, but those only whose solution is most signific~tnt and pressing. These latter we will review in the order in which they occurred in the original articles. Source of Retreat Masters Where ought religious communites to get their retreat mas-ters? From religious communities, manifestly. But which? Ought retreats to be given by priests from the same order each year or by priests from different orders? Most of the sisters queried favored the latter choice. As I went through the sisters' stated preferences regarding the sources of retreat masters, the overall impression I received was one of dissatisfaction with a current tendency to rigid uniformity. This dissatisfaction, while not universal, was especially noticeable in those congregations which are not attached to any order of men but nonetheless re-ceive retreat masters t?rom one order alone. Only 11.3% of the sisters belonging to these communities positively liked their custom, 73% positively disliked it, and 15.7% were indifferent. 1R£VIEW gOR RELIGIOI./$~ January through November, 1956. 2The reader will note that much of our discussion is pertinent to the retreats of all religious, men and women alike. THOMAS DUBAY Review for Religious Even among sisters attached to a religious order of men, 18.75% desired retreat masters from other orders at least occasionally, while another 18.75% were indifferent to the source of priests. The remainder preferred all priests to come from their own order. We may conclude that among religious women unat-tached to any order of men the vast majority prefer their retreat masters to come from different congregations each year. Among sisters affiliated with an order of men a notable minority like an "outsider" at least occasionally. With these opinions I must register a hearty agreement. But before delving into the realm of reasons I would like to clarify the position .here taken. I do not hold that a change of ordereach year is necessarily desira.ble, even for religious attached to no order of men. So frequent a change may be helpful, or it may not be. If one order consistently furnishes more skilled or more holy priests, there is no reason in the wide world why that order should no~ be tapped more often than others. Secondly, for sisters attached to a religious order of men I think that the usual retreat master should be a priest from their own order: a Dominican for Dominicans, a Trinitarian for Trinitarians, and so on. A majorityof sisters in these groups desire this arrangement, and their desire should be respected insofar as it is compatible with the preferences, of the minority. The formers' reasoning is i, alid: they feel that their, own priests bettei understand their spirit and way of life and hence can direct them more effectively. Since this is ordinarily true, the usual retreat for such. religious ought to be given by a priest belonging to their own order. However, since a sizeable number of these same religious women desire atlease an occasional change, I think that an outside priest should be invited every few years. Reason-able wishes e~cen of minorities should be respected, and this wish is reasonable. Now why is it desireable for retreat masters to be chosen from a number of different orders of men? First of all, the 4 January, 1958 I~ETREATS IN RETROSPECT supply of really top-flight retreat masters in any religious con-gregation is limited. This observation bespeaks defect in no order, since it simply reflects the fact that human abilities are distributed according to a normal curve. TO my knowledge no order is bursting at the seams with men highly gifted with the specialized talents needed for successful retreat work. If a community chooses its. retreat masters exclusively from one order of men, and especially from one province of that order, it may in time exhaust the supply of the best. A partial solution to this difficulty is the return of the good retreat master. When such can be arranged, and when the priest' has another set of meditations and conferences available, there seems to be no rea-son why he should not be invited for a second or third retreat. After all, a priest of proven ability is a far more secure risk than an unknown quantity. A second reason beckoning variety--and to my mind, a much more potent one than the first--is the danger of insularity. If we religious, men and women alike, are perfectly frank with ourselves, we will have to admit that we too often tend to horizon our outlook to our house, our province, our congregation. We may not intend it, but we do incline that way. We tend to insularity in our works, our "devotions," our interests, our spirit. In something of this context Thomas Merton refers to "the tyranny of restricted human systems and 'schools of spirituality' that might tend to narrow us down to a particular esoteric out-look and leave us something less than Catholic.''3 No one order .of men or women has a monopoly on helpful approaches to the love of God. We have a special love for our own society. Fine, we should. But we should also be interested in the works, the interests, the devotions, and the spirits of o~her orders and be more than ready to grant that in all likelihood they are just as worthy "as our own. The Catholic Church is catholic, and we aBread in the Wilderness (New York: New Direction, "1953), p. 41. THOMAS DUBAY Review for Religious religious are first Catholic and then religious. Would it not, therefore, be healthy for all of us to listen to a retreat master t~rom another order once in a while? Would we not stand to profit from another viewpoint? Not another truth, mind you, but another viewpoint on the same truth. Could not an "out-sider's" look at our own spiri( perhaps cast valuable light on our own appreciation of it? I, for one, think so. So also does a sister who observed to me that "we had one Dominican retreat master who was as Franciscan as any Franciscan we've had." Said another: "Personally, I am not a Franciscan, but St. Fran-cis's detachment, joy, and poverty have helped me tremendously, which led me to do much reading in Franciscan spirituality." Our final reason supporting a variety of retreat masters is the danger of monotony stemming from a sameness of approach. This objection is real for it was mentioned over and o~,er again in the sisters' comments. Some orders of men have a set retreat methodology, and ~sually it is an effective one. And yet i~or all that, a year-in, year-out repetition, of the same routine of subject and technique can be tiresome. We must agree that it is neither pleasant nor overly profitable to hear the same medita-tion subjects discussed year after year, and all the more so when they are treated in much the same manner and according to a prefashioned approach. On this score we might remember that God Himself in writing His Book chose to use a large number of different men with widely diverse backgrounds, techniques, and literary styles. He knows that men need variety . . . and He gave it to them. Among religio.us some like a sameness of approach~ but most do not. Those who do not seem entitled to an occasional change: But we must not be too rabid in our desire for variety. There are difficulties attached to it. Obtaining capable priests year after year from different r~ligious communities is without doubt a somewhat uncertain and perhaps unpleasant preoccupa-tion for the higher superior. It is much easier to have a stand-ing agreement with some one order of men for the simple reason Januavy, 1958 RETREATS IN RETROSPECT that uncertainty and negotiation are done away with. Then, too, it seems safe to suppose that most sister superiors have relatively few contacts with the higher superiors of orders of men. They may not, as a consequence, know exactly where to turn for com-petent retreat masters. What can be done? Two possible solutions occur at the moment, and there are doubtlessly others. The first bespeaks a widespread effort. Some national organization of religious women (or men, as the case may.be) could act through a spe-cially appointed committee as ~a~coordinating agency for the ex-change of retreat information. Superiors could forward to the committee the names of priests whom they have found through dxperience especially competent in retreat work. They could receive in return names of others whom they (the superiors) could contact for future engagements. The second possibility envisions the same type of coopera-tion on a limited, inter- or intra-community basis. Several com-munities could appoint individual religibus to exchange and relay pertinent information among themselves. Or within one com-munity (and especially one of the larger variety) sisters could be asked to forward to the provincia!, superior names of priests whom they "have found skilled in the giving of conferences or retreats to religious. Both of these suggested solutions would really be talent hunts. Their success would depend largely on the willingness of the superiors of religious men to appoint retreat" masters accord-ing to the expressed desire of other communities and also on the willingness of certain priests to be "worked over and over" in a rather taxing occupation. Experience seems to indicate that in many if not in most cases these religious men show that willing-ness and would be happy to cooperate insofar as possible in some such plan. If a program of this kind could be worked out, the bother and uncertainty so 'often bound up with obtaining priests from different orders would quite probably be lessened if 7 THOMAS DUBAY Review ]or Religious not entirely eliminated. There can be no doubt whatsoever that we in the United States possess within our land hundreds of earnest and skilled retreat masters, actual and potential It is up to us to exercise ingenuity and initiative in finding and using ¯them. Familiarity with Constitutions Unmistakable is the word to describe the preponderant number o~ sisters that desire their retreat masters to be well ac-quainted with the constitutions under which they live. Of 701 religious, 616 (89%) expressed- themselves positively, on this question, while only five (.7%) registered a negative opinion. The others were °indifferent. The majority view is to my mind soundly based, and that fo~ the ~.oIlowing reasons. i. From a negative point of view an acquaintance with a community's constitutions forestalls blundering statements in con-ferences and meditations. Such are, for example, advising the sisters how to spend time "in their, rooms" when they have no rooms; or speaking of vacations home when they have no vaca-tions, home; or, finally, making suggestions on how to say the Office when they do not say it. 2. Even more troublesome is advi~e that contradicts or seems to contradict provisions contained in the constitutions. Young religious may beupset or confused, while the older are probably annoyed. Neither reaction contributes to a suc-cessful retreat. 3. On th~ positive side we can find pertinent to our prob-lem the venerable scholastic adage that "whatever is received is received according to the condition of the receiver." What-ever the retreat master has to say to his "receivers" will surely be modified and conditioned by the mental set of those receivers. Part of that set is formed bytheir rule of life; and so, if he wants to know how they are going to understand his observations on the religious life, he should try to acquire some of their condition-ing by a reading of their rule. 8 ¯ January, 1958 RETREATS IN RETROSPECT 4. A priest will be much more practical (and interesting) in his meditation expos~ and conferences if he can occasionally choose for the illustration of his principles items selected from a community's own blueprint for life. As I pound the typewriter before me, the thought passes through my mind of the times my own-ignorance of a congregation's constitutions has wasted valuable conference time and rendered application less effectual. More than once has ~he awkward, expression passed my lips: "I do"not know whether you . . . , but if you do, you may find it helpful to . " Hardly a smooth attempt to be practical. 5. .Reading the constitutions enables the retreat master to grasp this congregation's spirit--not that of his order, nor that of a third or a fourth. 6. The work of the confessional can be done more effec-tively, more surely. Questions are understood and more cor-rectly answered. A sister is scarcely helped in her query about a possible infraction of poverty if her confessor knows nothing about her congregation's interpretation and practice of that vow. 7. An easy familiarity with a community's own ,way of life as expressed in its constitution~ is .bound to generate a receptive notein the retreatants. Their confidence in the master.i~ height-ened-- understandably. Sister~ typically love t~eir rule of life and are appreciative of the priest who will trouble himself, to read it for his own benefit. So much for reasons. A. few cautions seem in order. .The retreat master must exercise a bit of circumspection in his use of another community's constitutions. His references m~ist.be r~spectfui. Obviously out of place is any criticisfi~ of rule or custom, whether that ciiticism is patent or merely implied. This has been done and it isheartily re~ented. And.rightly. Con- ¯ stitutions have .been ' approved by ecclesiastical authority far greater .than any an individual priest can rustle .up. His criti-cism~ therefore, carries little weight.It further lal~ors under theburden of bad "taste. 9 THOMAS DUBAY Review for Religious The retreat master, secondly, should be reasonably sure of the interpretation he attaches to a principle or regulation. To obtain this reasonable degree of certitude one aid is the applica-tion. of the ordinary norms of hermeneutics. Such would be the consideration of the entire context: paragraph, chapter, whole work; the explanation of the obscure by the clear; the directive help of custom. Perhaps the safest guarantee of correct inter-pretation, however, is the help of a superior of the retreatants. She might favor the priest, with some hints on points she thinks need stressing. She might also offer interpretations that alter the prima facie meaning of regulations contained in the constitu-tions. Since custom is the best interpreter of the law and the retreat master may not know of modifying customs, both he and the sisters will be decidedly aided by observations of this type. Our third caution is a mere reminder that constitutions ought not to be worked td death by overdoing references to them. No Usable directive covering all cases can be given. Good taste and common sense must be the guiding norms. The protocol of getting a copy of the constitutions into the hands of a retreat master ought not to be difficult. It would seem best for the provincial superior of the retreatants to offer a copy to the priest about six months in advance. I stress the word, offer, for the reason that a priest does not especially care to ask for a copy of the constitutions. He fears that the superior might be unwilling or that she may think him curious (I doubt that he is). In any event her taking the ~initiative makes the whole matter more simple. Conference and Meditation Approaches What kind of approach do sisters like best? Intellectual? Emotional? Mixed? Difficult questions, these . . . questions that admit of no facile answer. And further, do the likes of the sisters necessarily coincide with .what is objectively best? It is possible that a religious keenly enjoy an emoti0nally toned meditation expos~ and actually derive little lasting benefit from 10 January, 1958 RETREATS IN RETR~ it. But as far as preferences go, we may recall that among the surveyed sisters-- 1. Almost none (.6%) want emphasis placed on the emotions alone. 2. Slightly more than half (50.5%) desire some stress on the use of emotions by the retreat master. 3. Slightly.less than half (49.5%) want no stress on the emotional approach. 4. A vast majority (93.1%) seek emphasis placed on solid intellectual content, whatever other techniques be mixed in.4 5. A lesser majority (78.4%) want Sacred Scripture to have a prominent place, o '6. In order of preference the intellectual approach out-distances the others; the frequent use of Sacred Scripture ranks second, and a stress on the emotions third. The retreat master is evidently ir~ the position of a cook seasoning soup destined for a hundred palates. But the cook enjoys an advantage in that he can season moderately and depend on the saltcellars to supplement his efforts. The retreat master, however, can lean on no stylecellar to alter the fare he presents. And yet spiritual palates vary .as widely as do material. The situation, nonetheless, is not hopeless. I am strongly inclined to think that while the sisters' differences in preference are real, they are not as deep as they first appear. For one thing, you will note that the whole problem is one of emphasis . . and emphasis is a relative thing, a thing that has many meanings and many degrees. Then, too, desire for stress on one approach does not thereby exclude other approaches. It indicates merely a wish that this one be given a prominent place. Emphases are not mutually exclusive. All things c.onsidered, I submit that the interests of most retreatants will best be served 4 In our original article we erred slightly (by 1.8%) on this point. This error was due to faulty grouping. For the present conclusion we should have com-bined groups 2, 4, 6, and 7 of the questionnaire items instead of 2, 4, 5, and 7. See REWEW FOR RELIGIOUS, March, 1956, p. 91. 11 V Review for Religious rences of the majority propet~ly honored by~ari ~ ¯ 'ing the. following characterigtics, negative and ~ ~[0~ry language, sentimental and.exaggerated orator2 ical devices (e.g.,. whispering, unusual exclamations--alas! oh!) are anathema. Earlier.ages may have felt differentlyi but realis-tic, twentieth-century American religious give evidence ot: little patience with the stage-pulpit mixture. We. typically resent any obvious, artificial attempt of a retreat mfister to play upon our emotions. Quite another matter, of course, is the sincerely felt but restrained emotion of a priest'who is deeply penetrated with his message. I do not think that the sisters who exi0ressed them-selves so emphatically against en~otionalism wish a re.treat master ¯ to be stoical. They, after all, are human and so is he. Rather I think they merely wished to exclude an emphasis on the emo-tional approach and any semblance of artificiality. The priest who knows himself to be inclined to manifest his feelings too freely--even s!ncerely experienced t~eelings--will do well to exer-cise a moderat.ing restraint over them.' . 2. While most ~eligious harbor a strong dislike for flowery language, the)) do seem to appreciate a .well-#pok~n sentence, English that is clear, correct, and intelligent. We do not need to labor the point that there is a vast difference between over-done verbiage and a first-class command of language. 3. Absolutely es~entihl in the minds of a vast majority of sisters is a sound intellectual current runiling through medi-tation exposes and conferences. With thi~ pFeference I am in complete agreement. I do not mean to imply, howev.er,' that. meditations and conferences are to be periods .of intense intel-lectual gymnastics. But they should serve as channels for the. conveyance of solid doctrine.on anintellectual level transcending the catechism. In a meditation on the Blessed Trinity, for ex-ample, I can see no reason for refusing to touch upon the intel-le'ctuai generation of the Word and the spiration of the Holy Spirit. These trutl~s, if we work overthem, can be put simply 12 / January, 1958 RETREATS IN RETROSPECT and explained clearly. Coordinated with the divine indwelling they can be°ihvaluable spurs toward sanctity. So, too, can abbre-viated theological analyses 0f the beatific vision, de~otion to. the Sacred Heart, and the mediation of Mary. Repet!tion is .the soul of monotony . . . and s~ is triteness. If a retreat master seldom offers new insights, rarely teaches what has not been heard ten. or twenty times already, ~carcely ever delves more deep!y into God's reve!ation, he is likely to leave little mark on his hearers. ¯ Sisters are people--they like to listen when they learn. 4. The retreat master must at all times keep .his presenta-tion gimple. While he does well to develop some of the finer. points of theology, he must keep his vocabulary lind phraseology tuned to a non-theologi~ally prepared audience. .Profundity of thought and simplicity of presentation can go nicely together. Most sisters are.intellectually capabl'e of understanding theologi- .cal concepts, but nonetheless many of them lack the technical ¯ training needed to grasp these concepts i'f they are ~ffe~ed in fancy terminology. In his outlook on conference-giving to religious; the priest must be careful not to confuse a lack of knowledge with a lack of intelligence. Some sisters may not hav.e too much of the former in matters theol6gical, but most are well equipped with the latter. 5. Attractive~ apt analogies and illustrations are indis: pensable helps, because ~hey suktain interest and pave the way to clear explanation. One i~eed only study the master teacher, Christ, to see how effective a concrete, well-illustrated approach can be. Instead of discoursing abstractedly about a psychology of pride, Jesus hammered home His teaching by talking about places at a banquet table, a boasting Pharisee, and ~a small child. Instead of extolling in the abstract the good-example angle of the religious life, a retreat master can nail down his point by doncretizlng it: "Every time you leave the door of this convent you give. the world a. wordless sermon, a sermon it needs badly, a sermon on the beauty of voluntary .poverty, chastity, and obedience." Or rather than a mere theoretical disquisition on 13 THOMAS DUBAY Review for Religious generosity, why not follow up the theory with a few concrete ideas about being available for extra jobs around the convent: substitution for a sick sister, extra duty in the hospital or class-room, acting as a companion (a happy one). Theory is fine, but apt illustration is even better. 6. It seems to me that an abundant--but not overdone --use of Sacred Scripture sh0ul'd usually find its way into the retreat meditation and confei:ence, The word of God Himself has an efficacy with souls Ufishared 'by the most clever words we humans can concoct. One sister remarked in this connection that "it is only too late that one finds the beauty and worthwhile passages in Holy Scripture. Personally, I have found myself living in close union with God by just one passage studied in the New Testament at meditation or spiritual reading." The retreat master, therefore, in gathering together material for his conferences ought to search the sacred pages (with the help. of a concordance) for apt scriptural support, Well-chosen texts will enlighten the minds and move the wills of his listeners far more effectively than his own words ever will. Theology in Retreats If ever a universal statement is dangerous, it is when discuss-ing the problem of theology in retreats fc~r religious. So varied are the talents, tastes, and training of typical groups of retreatants, that a priest's efforts to trim his treatment of theology to suit the preferences of all are almost predoomed to failure. And yet, while we may not be able to meet the needs of each and" every religious, I think we can tailor our approach to care for the great majority. First of all, I think it is safe to say that very few sisters and brothers have more~than a handshaking acquaintance with theology . . . real theology. I know full well that many have taken ~he mushrooming colleges courses in "theology," whether in their own juniorates or in regularly constituted colleges; but for the most part these are merely college religion courses 14 Janua~'y, 1958 RETREATS IN RETROSPECT labeled theology. In any event, we can agree that few brothers or sisters have taken the theology that priests have taken. The retreat master may not forget, therefore, that in his planning he ought not to assume technical knowledge or training in the .sacred science. Positively,. he sh(~uld assume that there are many theological concepts with which the retreatants are not acquainted ai~d about which they will be delighted to hear. These two facts suggest a pair of norms which may guide masters in their ap-proach to theology. First~ any theological concept that is introduced into con-ference or meditation must be presented simply if it is to reach the majority. This caution can hardly be overemphasized. A technical, highly abstract, sparsely illustrated presentation is so much wasted time . . . and sometimes patience. A' priest who uses unexplained theological or philosophical terms (e.g., hypo-static union, satisfactory value, timorous conscience, formal object, eschatological emphasis) may impress his hearers with the pro-fundity of theology, but he is hardly going to lead them to a greater love of God. Yet (and this is our second norm) this does not mean that retreat masters should not present profound truths. They cer-tainly should. God gave us the whole of His revelation for a purpose: the sanctification of souls. If a priest neglects to teach those truths when they can in some way be grasped, he is neglect-ing a powerful, God-given means diGrm[y aimed at the sanctifi-cation of souls. There is a tremendous difference between presenting the-ology in retreats and presenting theology technically. One sis, ter brought this point out beautifully. She observed that a retreat master: should give sisters exactly the same substantial content as he would give to other priests. He need have no fear that they will not be able to understand and live what he himself understands and lives. He should deliver his message, however, without scholarly verbiage, Latinisms, and all the other trappings which serve to im-press rather than to clarify. Through no fault of their own, sisters 15 Review for Religious do not have the.information to cope with this. It is a great mistake, however--and sad to say. a common one--to confound a sister's lack of technical theological learning with a lack of intelligence. It is the priest's task to make the technical comprehensible to the non-theologian. This of course demands inuch more understanding than does a presentation in the language" of the manuals. Most retreat' masters present a very thin gruel by comparison with what the}, could give if tl~ey had greater respect for the potentialities of the sisters. :&nd there are further reasons for introducing simplified theological concepts into. retreats. To my mind triteness of sub-ject matter (and triteness of expression, ~;oo) is candidate number one fo~ the title of b~te noire among the defects of contemporary preaching. We tend to' repeat meditation subjects and medita-tion ideas so unendingly that often little of enduring value is ldft with the retreatant.'If, on the contrary, we delve into the riches of divine revelation and teach the retreatants some of the many things they do we can hardly fail to Sot~nd theolegy not know about God and His.loveliness, leave a beneficial and lasting mark. retreat offers the further benefit of furnishing solid bases for a fervent spiritual life. It is perfectly true that learning is not .an essential ingredient in the make-up of saintliness; but, all else being equal, it is undeniably a power-ful aid. The reasori for this is nothing more. nor less than the age old scholastic axiom: nothing is willed unless it is first known. If we want our religious to live sensible, solid, and saintly lives, we must do our part by furnishing them with lucid explanations of pertinent sections from "moral, .dogmatic, scriptural, ascetichl, .and mystical theology. To offer less is to shortchange." Fine. I suppose we are agreed that simplified but new theological concepts .have a place in retreats for religious. But how is the .individual retreat master going to know (1) what will be "new" concepts for a particular group of religious and (2) whether his treatment of those concepts can be honored by the adjective simplified? A partial answer to the first problem can be worked out by a close cooperation between the retreat master and the provincial 16 January, 1958 RETREATS IN RETROSPECT superior of the retreatants. The latter could volunteer informa-tion on the background of the sisters with particular emphasis on their previous education and present work. If she can indicate with some precision to what extent the sisters have been in-structed in sacred doctrine, all the better. The retreat master needs help in answering the second question also, but this time it must issue from the retreatants themselves. A teacher can hardly know of himself whether or not his classroom presentation is clear and simple. He must hear from his pupils in some way or other, whether by examina-tion or oral comment. A retreat master hears nothing from the former and little from the latter. If he is brave enough, he might invite written comment. Toward the close of the exercises he could pass out a one-page opinionnaire asking for a frank evaluation of his exposition. If he does this, he should make it perfectly clear that he is not looking for an oblique pat on the back but for a statement of unadorned fact. Private Interview with the Retreat Master We approach now a question on which there is sharp dis-agreement between two large groups of American sisters. That question is whether or not sisters making a retreat should be allowed to approach the retreat master for a discussion of spiritual problems outside of the confessional. You will note that the question is not whether all sisters should see the priest in this capacity, but whether they may see him if they wish. Our survey indicated that a majority of religious women favor the availability of a priva.te confer.ence, although a strong minority look askance at it. The study suggested also that religious communities themselves vary in their official views. Some allow the private interview; others do not. To my mind the opinion favoring the availability of the private conference is the better. But before I set down reasons, a word of caution. No religious should be in any way forced or persuaded to seek a conference. Some sisters find the help 17 THOMAS DUBAY Review for Religious available in the confessional adequate for their needs. Others would be embarrassed and at a loss to explain their problems in. a private interview. We must remember that most sisters, unlike both religious and diocesan seminarians, are not accustomed to speak of their spiritual life with a priest sitting face-to-face be-fore them. Perfect and complete freedom, therefore, should surround this whole matter. Some religious, however, not only desire a private interview, but clearly need one. Any experienced spiritual director knows well enough that there are problems involved in the fervent living of the religious life far too complicated to be solved in the time ordinarily available in the confessional. As one sister put it, "there are some matters one simply can't get straight in the confessional." General conferences do not help here pre-cisely because they are general. We are not trying to form "religious in general" but particular religious, and for that individualized attention is indispensable. Said one sister: "Some-times the conferences would never have cleared up my diffi-culties, but a private conference where I can ask questions did." Aside even from strictly spiritual problems of an ascetical nature, a religious may want to discuss a moral or vocational difficulty. Again, as any director knows, these problems are often such that they cannot be solved by a few paternal (and some-times trite) words in the confessional. They need a full hear-ing followed by mature thought and discussion. Then, too, few sisters during the course of the year enjoy the opportunity of receiving an adequate hearing on their spiritual needs and aspira-tions. Why not give that opportunity to them at retreat time? A denial-of it could have unfortunate consequences. One superior has observed that "if a religious doesn't feel she has that freedom [of a private conference at retreat time], she Will look for other means to solve her problems, or just drop them and give up . " Failures in the religious life are not always due wholly to the unfortunate religious. 18 January, 1958 RETREATS IN RETROSPECT The fact that many sisters do so well in their spiritual" lives without systematic and thorough spiritual direction is hardly an argument against its value. In all likelihood they would advance in God's love even more rapidly if they were given regular direction as the major seminarian, for example, is given it. The objections brought against the private interview do not seem entirely valid. They are, for to the danger of abuse. And among likely (judging from the sisters' opinic community and self-seekir~g on the part on the latter I think we should reser~ religious could be sure that such an at for me to see. Nor is. disloyalty so. Most priests, after all, are sensible en( case of criticism, even bitter criticism, th side of the story. They are not going mentally with the other side unheard. sister's criticism is valid, it is clear that sl Her needs should be cared for. Possible abuse is no argument ag~ Church herself allows (and prescribes great abuse is possible. The same obi are possible also in the confessional, b~ dreamed of discontinuing the sacramen them. She merely surrounds that sacr~ guards as are reasonable and then lear of God. Which may remind us that which abuse may be .present. will. .the most part, reducible ~ossible abuses the most is) are disloyalty to the of the sister. Judgment to God. How fellow ase is present is difficult ormidable an objection. agh to realize that in a .'y are receiving only ond condemn a community But whether or not the may really need advice. .nst a good thing. The many things in which ~ctions mentioned above .t the Church has never of penance because of ment with as many safe- ~s the rest in the hands 3od also allows much in Consider the prosaic fact of free The practical problem of little time anda large number of retreatants is genuine: "I can't see how a retreat master in one private conference could possibly help one--especially when two or three hundred people are making the retreat that usually 19 THOMAS DUBAY Review for Religious lasts five or eight days." Real though the difficulty is, its solution is not impossible. First of all, we must remember that most religious will probably not seek a private interview, at least not in every retreat. Secondly, superiors should exhaust their in-genuity in seeking ways and means of multiplying retreats and consequently reducing the number of participants in each one. Finally, retreat masters should imitate St. Paul in spending them-selves without stint for the benefit of the sisters. They should give generously of their time and l~e as available as possible. On their part local superiors "(in congregations that allow the private conference) should make it as easy as possible for the sisters to obtain direction. While religious discipline may not suffer, red tape ought to be reduced to the barest minimum. And we might observe in conclusion that the religious themselves ought carefully to abstain from making comments of any kind about those who choose to avail themselves of the opportunity to. obtain spiritual direction. Understanding of Retreatants' Needs We have already observed in our survey series that a some-what disturbing number of sisters feel that at times their retreat masters do not understand well enough the spiritual problems of religious women. If we may judge the views of these sisters on the basis of the typical comments they made, we must return the verdict that usually those views are objectively based. Perhaps an instance of what I mean will help. If a priest counsels a community to do something prohibited by its constitutions, the sisters' judgment that their spirit is not understood is objectively founded. It is not a mere subjective persuasion. When a priest does not understand the needs of a particular group of religious, that lack of understanding will usually occur in one or other of the following categories. 1. Failure to grasp the diverse needs of the different re-ligious communities. This particular type of misunderstanding comes in a number of varieties. One sister observes that the 20 January, 1958 RETREATS IN RETROSPECT retreat master does not seem to appreciate the needs of the teach-ing religious. Another remarks that the problems of the nursing sister are for the most part missed. A third objects that the priest does not understand the spirit of her order or that he confuses it with the spirit of some other congregation. This type of misunderstanding is itself readily understand-able. Many retreat masters are not teachers; none are nurses; and none belong to the identical community as that of the re-treatants. It isi therefore, encouraging that the sisters themselves show a sympathetic appreciation of the di~culties lying before the retreat master. Yet for all that, the obstacles can be at least partially removed. If a priest habitually gives retreats to teaching or nursing religious, it seems imperative that he keep abreast of current problems facing the sisters by reading publications in which those problems are discussed. Such would be, for example, the Catholic Educational Review, the Catholid School Journal, Hospital Progress, Review for Religious, Sponsa Regis, and Sister Formation Bulletin. A first-class biology teacher keeps himself au courant on the newest developments in his field. So does the first-class retieat master. An invaluable means of learning about the problems peculiar to sisters in diverse works (and we are thinking also of contem-plation, social service, missi(~ns, and others) is to give the sisters a chance to say something during retreat time. A daily discussion period wi~h the master serves a number of excellent purposes and . this is one of them. A discussion period can easily replace or be integrated with the daily conference (as distinguished" from the meditations). 'Misunderstandings bearing on the community's works and spirit can be eliminated to a large extent by a careful reading of sisters' constitutions together with exchanges with their su-periors. We have discussed both of these matters in the early part of this present article. 2. Lack of understanding of the psychology of women and of the religious life as lived by women. On this point I would 21 THOMAS DUBAY Review for Religfous almost prefer to say nothing at all, for there is little that I can offer with certainty. Of this, however, we can be sure: we do have a prob.lem here that is worth noticing. In our survey the sisters mentioned it more than once and that in diverse con-nections. Now, of course, men and women are not so psychologically different that the one group can never hope to know very much about the other. Yet there does seem to be a chasm in mutual understanding wide enough to create difficulty in obtaining optimum retreat results. This difficulty is sharp-ened when we reflect on the patent fact that retreats for religious women given by religious men are here for keeps. We want, therefore, to make them as successful as possible. What can be done to further a more complege understanding? Experience, obviously, will help any priest. And so will his study of feminine psychology (if he can find something reliable on the subject). But I think that the real solution, if there is one, lies with the sisters themselves. To a consid-erable extent the heart of a nun is unknown terrain. Her confessor surely has some access to it, but a decidedly incom-plete access. The depths of her heart, its love, its aspirations and yearnings, its happiness and its pain are for the most part a closed book. How precisely she views the trials and joys of her-consecrated life are her secret hardly to be shared fully by another. Her entire reactions to her friends and i~amily and sister religious and superiors are unknown quantities. In all this, of course, she is no different from the rest of us. The difference lies in the fact that a priest can more easily understand all these things as they occur in laymen and in priests because he has been both. And many priests engaged in seminary work have spent long hours in the spiritual direc-tion of seminarians. They know the masculine mind in its religious implications because they have experienced it both in themselves and in others. 22 January, 1958 RETREAT~ IN RETROSPEC~ ' Now if there is such a thing as a psychology of religious women--and many sisters insist there is--it is the religious women themselves who must give an account of it. Perhaps our sisters have been too reluctant to explore this particular aspect of their vocation or too taciturn about making known what they have found. In any event the initiative must stem from them. 3. Lack of understanding of the real problems in the religious, life of sisters. This problem, where it actually does occur, is probably connected with the preceding. In our opinionnaire an item on community ~ problems was included and to it many interesting answers were given. I have not as yet written up this particular question, but hope to do so in the reasonably near future. It may cast some light on this third source of misunderstanding. 4. Failure to realize th~it most sisters are not interested in mere mediocre holiness. While this particular type of mis-understanding is by no means universal, mention of it did occur frequently enough to warrant more than a passing notice. Since, however, it shall come up for consideration in our next section, we will pass it by for'the present. 5. Lack of patience with sisters' poblems. To run out of patience is like running out of gas. Neither necessarily sug-gests a lack of understanding of people or of gas tanks. Either may bespeak nothing more striking than some deficiency or other in human nature. But on the other hand, misunder-standing may be the culprit. And this takes us back to our psycholog)~ of the sexes. It is easy to visualize a priest brush-ing off a sister's problems as petty and of no consequence. He may be right (and he may not), but in either case charity indicates that he give her a kind hearing and a patient-answer. Attitudes Toward Sanctity In proposing to analyze so intricate and delicate a question as the present one, we are perhaps treading where angels fear; 23 THOMAS DUBAY Review fo~" Religious but the very moment of the matter beckons at least a try. If it is true, as the Salmanticences say it is, that to raise a good person to saintliness is a greater work than to convert a sinner to grace, the efforts of retreat masters to lead religious to the heights of holiness loom up as of no little account. There are two elements involved in the retreat master's approach to sanctity for his auditors. On the one hand there is the question as to whether he urges them sufficiently to the heights, and on the other whether he explains adequately just how those heights are to be scaled. The survey indicated that a majority of sisters (63.1%) felt that retreat masters usually do urge them sufficiently to supreme sanctity, while a notable minority (36.9%) were of a negative opinion. Regarding the second element the breakdown was closer: 53:8% thought that retreat masters usually explain adequately how complete holiness is to be achieved and "46.2% embraced an opposite view. These contradictory opinions on both questions are easily understood. They are probably due to three factors: (a) the sisters polled have differing standards as to what the heights of holiness really are; (b) they also differ in their judg-ments as to what a retreat master ought to say about complete sanctity in a heterogeneous group of religious; and (c) they are speaking of different retreat masters. Understandable though these differences of opinion are, they are nonetheless represented by percentages large enough to indicate that a considerable number of retreat masters are not satisfying a considerable number of religious in their ap-proach to the question of sanctity. If this conclusion be correct, we might dwell with profit on possible means of improving inadequacies where they do occur. 1. The confessional is a situation tailor-made for the pru-dent direction of a soul to holiness. A confessor can often spot the fully generous so.ul, the soul that is ripe for a greater love of God. The penitent's confession itself both in its content 24 Janua~'y, 1958 RETREATS IN RETROSPECT and in its mode will often suggest the, practical means to be used at each pa_rticular stage in the spiritual life. 2. In his conferences and meditations the master should present saintliness itself as the goal of the religious life. He ought not to suggest by word or attitude that some sort of mediocre goodness is sufficient, but rather that the very end of the state of perfection is perfection, a thorough doing. The word itself, perfection, indicates a completeness, an entireness that can be predicated of nothing less than the sanctity of the saints. And yet while he presents holiness in all its totality, the retreat master will be careful not to discourage the weak. Some religious do not feel that they are ready to scale the heights and that they must first get themselves established at the moun-tain's base. The priest will, therefore, counsel patience and p~udence in adapting means to an individual spiritual condition and state in life. While pointing out the sublime goal, he makes it clear that we do not reach it in a month or a year, but that with the cooperation of our unstinting generosity God brings us to it in His own good time. .Presented in this way the doctrine of saintliness for the religious fits the needs of all and hurts none. 3. The retreat master should next show that the heights of holiness are possible of achievement. One sister'ha~ ob-served that the manner of reaching sanctity "is often presented as being very difficult rather than as something to be. faced with joy and confidence." Working for real holiness is difficult-- there can be no doubt about that. But it is not a sombre and forbidding difficulty and certainly not an insuperable one. Christ could not have commanded the impossible, and yet He made it crystal clear on at least two occasions that all men are to strive for perfect sanctity. "You therefore are to be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. 5:48). "Thou shall love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy Whole mind" (Matt. 22:37). The 25 THOMAS DUBAY Review ]or Religious comment of Pius XI on the first of these texts was emphatic: "Let no one think that these words apply only to a very few select souls and that all the others are permitted to remain in some inferior degree of virtue. It is evident that absolutely everybody without exception is bound by this law" (third cen-tenary of St. Francis de Sales). If saintliness is possible for all men, it is doubly possible for the religious who has chosen the most effective means to attain it, the state of perfection. 4. A step further. Saintliness for religious should b~ presented as eminently desirable, a thing at once splendid, satisfying, and sublime. There is nothing in the world so utterly charming as a saintly soul--and also nothing so pleasing to God. The beauty of a consecrated life lived to the hilt should be like a golden thread that the priest weaves through-out the retreat by his attitudes, words, and actions. 5. A practical explanation of the means to achieve sanctity is indispensable. We have already noted that a con-siderably greater number of the sisters participating in our study found fault with retreat masters on this score than on the score of theory. Such is not surprising for we humans naturally tend in our teaching to stress the general and avoid the specific. And in our spiritual conferences we tend to generalize all the more because we are subconsciously afraid that we will step on somebody's toes if we get too specific about what we mean. Yet if a retreat master is going to be clear he has got to be specific. Else he is likely doing' nothing but preaching pious platitudes: I suppose I might right now practice what I am' preaching and be specific. Instead of resting content with a glowing but merely general eulogy of detachment from created things, the retreat master ought to get down to brass tacks and spell out what this thing is really all about. He might tell his audience clearly what an attachment is: the clinging of the will to a created thing for its own sake; the loving of a creature for its own sake and not for the sake of God. Then January, 1958 RETREATS IN RETROSPECT he could specify as does St: John of the Cross what some of these creatures might be: a book, a piece of clothing, news and rumors, a love of ta/king. (See Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book I, Chapter 11.) He might be even more specific and explain the psychology of attachment and then use some of these examples to illustrate his point. When a speaker has spent twenty or thirty minutes in this fashion, he has said something . something that ~vi[l move to action because it is clear, practical, down to earth. 6. In our efforts to move souls to seek saintliness itself as their goal we might well draw more freely from the lives of the saints as a source t:or apt illustrations. If in a lecture on biology you want to explain the nature of plants, you draw your illustrations from plants. Why not the same in explain-ing saintliness? The unqualified idea that saints are to be admired but not imitated is, of course, the merest nonsense. Any good theology manual p.oints out that an essential reason for the pope's infallibility in a decree of canonization is pre-cisely that he is presenting to the faithful an example to be imitated and that, consequently, he cannot lead them astray. The retreat master, to be sure, ought not to dwell on the unusual doings of the saints for the twofold reason that these unusual activities are both comparatively rare and also not the chief basis for the saints' canonization. If the Church intends us to present the saints to the simple faithful as concretizations of perfect sanctity, all the more ought they to be presented to priests, brothers, and sisters both in retreat and out of it. 7. In order to further the work of all-outness in matters spiritual, the master could suggest to the retreatant community choice books eminently suited to the purpose. Our contem-porary spiritual reading market is not totally void of second-rate works, wo~'ks that sometimes clip the corners off perfection as it has been explained by the saints. If you wonder, perhaps, at exactly what I mean, I would suggest that you read side by side 27 THOMAS DUBA¥ Review ]or Religious St. Frzn¢is de Sales, St. John of the Cross, and St. Teresa of Avila on the one hand and some of our less noteworthy moderns on the other. 8. Our final suggestion: a self-analysis on the part of each retreat master. Some priests are undoubtedly doing a superb job in this whole matter; others seemingly are not. A self-examination may help to indicate who is where. I think that some such examination would be based on three funda-mental questions: (a) do I really~know the doctrine of the saints; (b) am I prudent in applying it; (c) am I practical in explaining it? Other questions would be mere derivatives of these three. Characteristics of the Retreat Master We will preface our comments on the traits of retreat mas-ters by refreshing our collective mind on the preferences and dislikes of the ret~eatants. It is the mark made on them, after all, that determines the success or failure of the retreat. As regards positive qualities our survey indicated that sis-ters, at least, overwhelmingly nominate genuine sanctity as thi~ trait most desirable in a retreat master. Practicality, a distant second-placer, was followed by experience, theological learning, kindness, and a sense of humor in that order. On the negative side the number of different defects noted by the sisters was decidedly large. Among the most frequently mentioned wero reading of meditations, lack of interest, conceit, verbosity, sar-casm, joking manner, impracticality, severity, harshness and speed in the confessional, bad delivery, superficiality, dramatic manner, lack of preparation, excessive intellectuality, critical spirit (and especially toward sisters), worldliness, condescension toward sisters, negative approach, scandalous stories, crude lan-guage, idiosyncrasies, and insincerity.~ For a complete treatment of these and other qualities and defects, see REY'IEW RELIGIOUS, September, 1956, pp. 253-62. 28 Janua~'y, 1958 RETREATS IN RETROSPECT Perhaps the brightest and most encouraging element in this whole matter is that every quality above mentioned, with the possible exception of a sense of humor (which came last in importance), can be acquired by a serious priest, while almost every defect can with due attention be eradicated. Any priest can, if he really wants to, set out after genuine sanctity; he can acquire practicality, experience, a competent knowledge of theology; and he can be kind merely by making up his mind to it. On the other hand he can tone down a clamorous delivery or clarify a muttering one; he can eradicate harshness, conceit, verbosity, and sarcasm; he can prepare his retreat well and refrain from reading conferences and meditations; it is within his power to avoid disinterestedness, criticism, condescension, and worldliness. Most priests (who, after all, have had enough talent to receive ordination) can with hard work develop them-selves into acceptable retreat masters. But--and this is a worthwhile but--we do not always know our defects and, for that- matter, sometimes our strong points. I would not be entirely unwilling to support the thesis that most of the failings we have noted are unrealized by the retreat masters possessing them . unrealized at least as defects. A man can easily be unaware that his manner is conceited, his delivery raucous, and his matter superficial. He may sincerely think that his emotionalism is desirable, his severity needed, or his critical spirit justified. He may not know that his read meditations grate on the nerves of many or that his manner in the confessional is at all hasty or severe. All of which suggests the need for a large package of charity in the mental and verbalized judgments of retreatants, but it also suggests that perhaps the priests among us ought not to take too much for granted. We may not be so free of deficiencies as we might imagine. How to find out? One way is honest self-examination. Some defects so stand out that they can be seen with half an eye. Sarcasm, 29 THOMAS DUBAY Review /or Religious insincerity, criticism of sisters, and lack of interest seem to fall into this class of obvious deficiencies, obvious at least on a mo-ment's reflection. I think that sisters' retreats would in many instances be greatly improved if each retreat-giving priest would examine himself periodically on the list of qualities and defects the sisters furnished us in the above referred.to study. Knowing a deficiency is half the battle; the other half is won by good will and God's grace. But there are other defects that even a serious examination will not reveal. To know these we must be told by another. Is it beyond the realm of feasibility to suggest that the retreat master distribute once or twice in his career a simple question-naire to the retreatants in order to obtain a frank expression of opinion? There is the danger, of course, that he may appear to be seeking a naive pat on the back; but that danger can be annihilated by a few sincere, well-chosen words. Most retreat-ants would be frank, and their comments couid prove invaluable for the future improvement of that priest's retreat work. Despite his best and most sincere efforts, however, it may happen, that a priest is just not fitted by nature to do retreat work. Well and good. He may be a fine man and capable of doing outstandingly well in some other field. And it would seem wise for his superiors to assign him to another field. But at minimum we submit as imperative that superiors send into retreat work only those priests who are interested in it and generously willing to do it. The sisters' complaints dealing with lack of interest on the part of retreat masters are, as we ha.ve noted, heavy. And in all probability it is often the root cause of other defects. Experience in the classroom indicates clearly that the best teacher is the enthusiastic, interested teacher. The very same may be said of retreat master~ for they too are teachers. It would be generally agreed, I believe, that the work of giving retreats to religious is highly specialized and quite unlike 30 Janua~'y, 1958 RETREATS IN RETROSFECT the Usual activities of most priests. Neither the ordinary course of seminary theology nor the typical Sunday sermon approach is equal to the sublime task of forming consecrated souls to a configuration with Christ. Ideally, therefore, men who do re-treat work should have specialized preparation for it. We prepare men and women for other les~ important specialized jobs. Why not for that of retreat master? .We need not necessarily think here of formal and especially tailored courses; they may be feasible--I do not know. But as a minimumwe must think of a private, orderly study on the part of priests who give retreats, a study bearing on ascetical and mystical theology, the New Testament, and the lives of the saints. The nature of the work demands, of course, that th~ retreat master be competent in dogmatic and moral theology--else his ascetical and mystical theology may be in a tottering condition. Real competence and facility in these fields take time. Years. A man cannot have a real grasp on ascetical and mystical theology by reading two or three books, no matter how good they be. Nor can he know the mind of the saints by reading two or three lives, even the best of them. An ideal retreat master can be that man only who is wholeheartedly interested in the glorious work of raising chosen souls to a lofty degree of holiness and who is willing to submit to the rigors involved in acquiring and maintaining a fitness for it. A final note for the retreatants themselves . . . and that note is one Word: forebearance. Despite the very best and sincerest efforts of all concerned with retreats, masters are not going to be perfect. Our first and last perfect retrea~ will be conducted in heaven. In the meantime we must be patient and do the best we can with what we have. Meditation Subjects I do not think there is need here to 'ana1~ze the question of subject matter for retreat meditations, since the major impli-cations of our retreat study on this point have already been 31 THOMAS DUBAY Review fo~" Religious discussed.° One observation only seems worthy of mention, and that is the avoidance of triteness. It is neither psycho-logically nor pedagogically wise to insist on the same set of meditation subjects year after yea~. Topic repetition is psy-chologically unwise because attention is blunted by sameness and impressions fade: assueta vi/e~cunt. Subject reiteration is pedagogically unwise for the obvious reason that you. are not teaching very much, if anything at all. By hitting the same truths in the same way, few new insights are given and, conse-quently, few new motives for action. If, on the contrary, the same subjects are tackled from .new points of view and if they furnish new insights, all our objections fall to the ground. In a true sense, you really have new subject~. You are no longer trite. Rest Before Retreat A noteworthynumber of sisters mentioned in our opinion-naire that plain weariness hindered them from getting full spiritual benefits from their retreats. And one need not tax his imagination to believe them. Ushered by ol~edience directly from the hospital floor or the classroom into conference hall and chapel, these religious simply do not have the energy to give themselves completely to the searching work of a vigorous self-renewal. But we must remember at the same time that scarcity of personnel may prevent a provincial superior from doing a whole lot about the situation. Yet when it is possible, a full day's rest would seem in order for all sisters about to go on retreat. Even bettek would be a week or two of vacation, a vacation during which only spiritual exercises and trifling daily duties are mandatory. Religious (as we well know but some-times tend to forget) do not acquire nerves of copper merely by donning a habit. Daily Retreat Schedule Closely linked to the immediately preceding problem is the tightly packed retreat horarium. A daily schedule that is closely °See gEvIsw FOg gELm~OUS, November, 1956, pp. 301-5. 32 January, 1958 RETREATS IN RETROSPECT crowded with a multitude of spiritual exercises is psychologically and spiritually unsound. It does not take cognizance of the fact that God works best in peace and quiet, that the sisters need serenity of mind and heart if they are going to love Him tremendously. It would seem wise, therefore, to reduce the number of exercises in a squeezed-together horarium, to sched-ule vocal prayers in moderation, and to allow an adequate amount of free time. Most sisters are in dead earnest about the business of sanctity; and it should be assumed, until the contrary is proved, that they will use free time to their greatest advantage. Physical Accommodations During the Retreat One of the sisters good-naturedly referred to the problem of spacial overcrowding during retreat time as "one of those August mob scenes." We may easily sympathize with her viewpoint and yet at the same time grant that the problems of the assigning superior are knotty. Especially in large communi-ties this latter has often to provide the benefits of an annual retreat to hundreds of religious and that within the narrow confines of a few weeks and drastically limited facilities. For some communities, perhaps, the "mob scenes" cannot be avoided, at least in the near future. For others, however, careful plan-ning and personnel adjustment together with fresh thinking could conceivably issue in an amelioration of the situation. The solution in most cases would probably be a greater number of distinct retreats, however they can be provided. Possibly the week after Christmas would for some communities lend itself to an additional retreat time; for others the Easter vacation might be used for the same purpose. In still other cases the solution might lie in a greater dispersion of retreat locations. Rather than have all retreats in a motherhouse or community college, smaller houses might with some adjustment be adaptgd to serve as supplementary retreat centers. Aside from the greater ad-vantage of more physical space, such dispers)on would enable the sisters to seek and receive more individualized attention from 33 ¯ FOR YOUR INFORMATION Review for Religioz~s the master whether in the confessional or in the private conference. Conclusion Before capping this disquisition with its amen, I would like to reject in anticipation a possible illusion, for if. it came to be, it would probably be my fault. That illusion is that this study contains the answers to almost all retreat prol~lems. The truth is, of course, that it may contain some answers to some problems. The truth is also that we need a lot more thinking, fresh think-ing, about these questions. Investigation, too. It seems to me that we ought to learn from our secular friends how to use the tools of research to further love for God. We ought to study ourselves and our doings more objectively--scientifically, if you want to call it that. In all likelihood both we and our doings would be much more effective. For Your Informal:ion In Future Numbers NOT INFREQUENTLY we receive articles that have to be returned because the subjects are treated in articles that we have already accepted, but not yet published. It has occurred to us that this problem might be avoided if we publish a list of articles that will appear in subsequent numbers of the REVIEW, with a brief indication of the content of each article. Besides being helpful to prospective contributors, this list should be of interest to all readers. We give here a list only of articles that have been accepted at the time we are preparing this material for the printer. That means, roughly speaking, articles accepted before November 1, 1957. 34 January, 1958 FOR YOUR INFORMATION "The Holy See and Teaching Brothers." Under date of March 31, 1954, Pope Pius XII addressed-to Cardinal Valeri a letter on the special vocation and apostolate of religious institutes of teaching brothers. ,Several magazines have published English translations of this letter. The Commentarium pro religiosis published not o~nly the original Latin text of the Pope's letter, but also some background material and a commentary on the papal letter by Father A. Guti~rrez, C.M.F. We intend to pub-lish an English version of the papal letter, together with the background material and some o~ the more important observa-tions made by Father Guti~rrez. -"The Gifts of the Holy Spirit." This article gives a clear, simple, and attractive explanation of the more common theolo-gical teaching on the gifts and on their function in the ascetical life. "Religious and Psychotherapy." What are psychiatric treat-ments? What is their purpose? Should religious who suffer from a mental illness go to a pxsychiatrist and cooperate in psy-chotherapy? The article answers questions such as these. "A Sense of Balance." This is a study in contrasts: opti-mism and pessimism; with insistence that the true Christian view of life is an optimistic view that sees God as love, man as re-deemed, other creatures as means of sanctification, and the com-mandments as laws of love and life. "Saint Th~rhse of the H61y Face." The Little Flower's full name in religion is Sister Th~r~se of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face. This article brings out, by means of numerous quo-tations, how profound was her devotion to the Holy Face. "To extend the Reign of Jesus Christ." This is an account of the founding of the first non-cloistered institute of teaching sisters. "Unceasing Prayer." We all wonder at times how we can fulfill the words of St. Paul, "Pray without ceasing." One ex-planation, called virtual prayer, has been recommended by cer- 35 FOR YOUR INFORMATION tain prominent French Jesuit writers. Their explanation is presented briefly in this article. "Proficients Who Do Not Progress.'? One division of the stages of spiritual progress is: beginner, proficient, and perfect. This article pays particular attention to the difficulties of the second stage and to the ways of surmounting these difficulties. "Preliminary to Adaptation." The theme of the article is that, in order properly to carry out the recommendations of the Church concerning adaptation and renovation, there must be a careful study of the spirit of the institute. "Countering Serious Sin." Religious are not immune from the possibility of committing mortal sin, and they need to take precautions. Such precautions are outlined in this article, which, in the author's words, is "a blueprint . . . for constructing (or re-constructing) an interior citadel against the lethal foe, serious sin." "Keeping the Rules." In religious institutes there are two kinds of rules: disciplinary regulations that mainly concern exter-nal observance and community order, and spiritual directives that pertain to the interior spirit and the apostolate. The article shows that fidelity to the rules means one thing as regards the first kind of rules, and another as regards the second kind. "The Neurotic Religious." This is a sequel to the article on religious and psychotherapy. Most religious who might need and profit by psychotherapy suffer from an emotional illness known as neurosis. This article is an attempt to paint a verbal picture of the neurotic religious and his problems. Non-Jesuit Contributors We are often asked (apparently by those who have not been regular readers of the RE'Ci, EW) whether we accept articles by non-Jesuits. One answer to this question might be a simple reference to the articles published during the last three years, (continued on page 41) 36 Spiri!:ual Cancer I:r~ncis J. M~cEnt:ee, S.J. wE ARE HEARING a great deal these days about cancer. Millions of dollars are set aside every year to study it, to learn everj~thing possible about this mysterious killer. People are made constantly conscious of it because they see and hear about it on all sideg: campaigns for research funds and hospitalization; drives against this and that as possible causes; salves and various ray-treatments as possible cures. The obituary page in every newspaper is also a persistent reminder of its omni-presence. Yet, even though cancer is prominent in the public eye, the very mention of it still strikes terror into those confronted with it. Any unexpected need for hospital care or sudden surgery generally wrings the same agonized question from the anguished patient: "It. isn't cancer, is it, doctor?" as if anything else would be almost welcome as an alternative. There is good reason for this terror, because the most terrifying thing about cancer is its insidiousness. Cancer is really an abuse. It might even be called too much of a good thing. Many people have a vague notion that.cancer is something like leprosy in that it is a disease that eats away until the poor victim just distintegrates. Actually it is just the opposite. Cancer is a lively exuberant~ growth of body cells, which in itself is a good thing because it is the normal function of body cells to increase and grow. Only in this case the growth gets out of hand and keeps right on growing long after it should have stopped. The cells continue to divide madly without any apparent cause or method of being stopped. That is why cancer is an abuse; why it is too much of a good thing; why it is insidious, for it starts with something that is normal and natural and perverts it. Finally, since these wildly pro-lifer~ ting cells are living things, they must be nourished; con-sequently, they spread out like the crab from which the disease takes its name and pirate their nourishment from the surrounding 37 FP~-NCIS J. MAcENTEE Review for Religious healthy tissue which in time, as is quite obvious, will be starved dead by the greedy voracious intruders. I am sure the .medical profession would find much to criticize in this over-simplification of one of the most serious and complicated diseases of our time, but my purpose is a medical one only to the limited extent of setting up a parallel with what might be called spiritual cancer. Our growth in the spiritual life is measured by our close union with Christ, an ever-deepening awareness of His presence and a constant striving to have an unalloyed intention in all our endeavors in His service. One good sign of a sound spiritual growth is the balance and harmony with which it proceeds. Our performance of the many activities which make up our dedicated lives mirrors, to some degree, the progress of our spiritual growth. We of course realize that all our duties and obligations, even those which may seem to be of lesser moment, or even (to our practical minds) somewhat impractical, are nonetheless very important from God's viewpoint. Therefore we must be on the alert that we don't allow our more favored activities, like those that bring more immediate and concrete results, to divert the activity that should be going into all our activities. For any such activity in our lives which starts to grow out of all due proportion, siphoning off time and energy from some other duty, is an abuse; it is too much of a good thing; it is a spiritual cancer. We must bd constantly on our guard against the manifesta-tions of this disease because, like its physical counterpart, it will have begun long before we become aware of it. The insidious-ness here lies in the fact that we have within ourselves the germs of the disease because, for most of us, activity of some sort is our way of life, our prime means of doing .God's will. And it is so easy for one phase or other of this activity to get out of hand, to start growing out of all due proportion, thriving perhaps, but only to the detriment of our whole spiritual or- 38 Janua~'y, 1958 SPIRITUAL CAN(~ER ganism. Since activity, then, is the way by which we serve God, it is so easy ~or us to play the doctor in our own case and give a false diagnosis to our symptoms, admitting perhaps the begin-nings of an excited growth but misinterpreting the symptoms as a case of increased fervor in doing God's work. If God is pleased with this much activity, we say, then He will be twice as pleased with twice as much. Like the man who reads the prescription on the medicine bottle then doubles it, convinced that he will get well twice as fast. Such a dangerous spiritual bedside manner in dealing with our own ailments can lead to only one conclusion: an ever-spreading cancer which will soon sap our entire spiritual nourishment leaving us spiritually ema-ciated and all under the guise of giving God a service which He most assuredly does not want. The activities in our dedicated lives by which we serve God are numberless. As long as their growth is normal and in har-mony with the growth of our whole spiritual structure, our spiritual li~e will be sound and healthy. But let's look at a ~ew pertinent instances of activities that could, if we are not watchful, begin to grow malignantly. For those o~ us who teach school on any level whatsoever, there is little question of what to do with our superfluous time since that precious commodity is practically non-existent in-this glorious activity. But because there is no proportion at all be-tween the time spent in preparation for and actually spent in the classroom and the time formally spent in meditation, examen, and spiritual reading, we might come to the sad conclusion that the one which takes the more time is the more important. If that becomes the case, then it won't be long before there is a big-business merger and even the little time which was once spent in spiritual duties will be absorbed by the larger enterprise. Prognosis? Incipient malignant cancer. However, we might justify this course oi: action by saying that we have thereby be-come a better teacher. After all, we argue, if it's God's will that I teach others that I may bring more and more souls to 39 FRANCIS J. MACENTEE Review for Religious love Him an°d to save their souls, then anything I can do to make myself a better instrument will be furthering God's glory. The fallacy there is that we are judging only by externals. We forget that God can raise up. better instruments from the stones in the street. What if the time plundered from spiritual activi-ties did give us the appearance of a better teacher, how would we then differ from the good lay teacher on our faculty? Another phase of teaching that might blight this great activity with an unhealthy growth is the element of competition involved. We want our classes to do well, for their own sakes, of course, but also to some extent for our sakes too. For if they don't do as well as other similar classes, the reflection will be on us; and we will be in a bad light not only in the eyes of our fellow teachers but perhaps also in the eyes of superiors. Therefore, we start giving undue time to class preparation and class work in general in order to fill up what we label a defilzit; but in the process we lay the groundwork for a deficiency of a much higher magnitude. We are deluded into thinking that success depends entirely on ourselves so that, if we're not an apparent success, there is a fault involved and the fault c.'-n be only our own. We ignore the palpable fact that God can make greater use of the not-so-successful teacher who depends totally on Him than on the obviously successful one who is just as obviously self-pleased with the whole thing. When we begin to realize that God doesn't look solely at results (which unfortun-ately are almost our sole criterion of judgment), that He looks first at the motive and effort involved, then we will see that our opinion about any teacher or anything else, for that matter, might be quite different from God's. The same thing would apply to the student. When the nourishment for our spiritual life begins to feed the abnormal appetite which studying can easily become, then it is high time for a spiritual check-up to see that the instrument which is being honed for Christ's service does not slice us too thin. Studying 4O Janua~'y, 1958 SPIRITUAL CANCER is just another activity which we undertake for Christ's greater glory. Success is welcome, but it is certainly not the be-all and end-all of the undertaking. God demands first our pure inten-tion, great effort, and continual complete dedication. From there on in, it's His affair. If He wants others to reap the academic fruits, what is that to us? Again, the fallacy of judging success only by the results produced. Despite all "the changes in our way of life, despite loud mass production and speedy efficiency, growth in the spiritual~ life is a delicate thing that needs a sustained climate of quiet, inward ¯ peace, and recollection. Nervous effusions to exterior things and a one-sided dedication to activity which results in making ar~ end. out of what should be only a means are so many strangling weeds that make spiritual growth impossible. The only growth they foster is an abnormal one, a growth that drains off spiritual vitality, a growth that is cancerous. For Your In[ormal~ion (continued from page 36) 1955-1957. During these years we published 67 articles. This does not include translations of papal addresses, compilations of papal statements, and the surveys of Roman documents made by Father Smith. Of these 67 articles, 35 were by Jesuits, 32 by non-Jesuits. We might add that anyone who contributes an article should confer our "Notes for Contributors," which were published in the REVIEW, March, 1955, pp. 104-112, and July, 1955, pp. 194-196. 41 Survey oJ: Roman Document:s R. F. Smil:h, S.J. IN THE PRESENT survey there will be given a summary, of the documents which appeared in Acta Apostolicae Sedis (AAS) from August 24, 1957, to September 25, 1957, in-clusive. Page references throughout the article will be to the 1957 AAS (v. 49). Our Lady On July 2, 1957 (AAS, pp. 605-19), the Holy Father published a new encyclical, Le P~lerinage de Lourdes (The Pilgrima~/e o/ Lourdes). The document was directly ad-dressed to the Church in France on the occasion of the coming centenary of our Lady's appearances at Lourdes, but granted the international extent of devotion to our Lady of Lourdes the encyclical is of great interest to the entire Church. The en-cyclical is divided into two parts, the first of which begins by sketching what may be termed the Marian history of France. So notable has been France's devotion to our Lady, remarks. the Pontiff, that today the entire country lies under the protec-tive shadows of Marian sanctuaries--humble chapels or splendid basilicas as the case may be. There is good reason to say that this Marian history of France culminated in the nineteenth cen-tury. It was then, for instance, that our Lady gave the miracu-lous medal to a humble daughter of St. Vincent de Paul; and a few years later in 1858 she appeared to St. Bernadette at Lourdes which from then on became a pilgrimage center for the sick, the afflicted, and the truth-seekers of the entire world. The Pope then notes that the hundred years that have passed since Our Lady's appearances at Lourdes have seen an ever stronger relationship between the See of Peter and the grotto of the appearances. Indeed, the relationship was present 42 ROMAN DOCUMENTS from the beginning, for it would seem that what the Holy Father had infallibly defined a few years previously the Blessed Virgin wished to confirm by her own words, since she appeared to Bernadette with the message: "I am the Immaculate Conception." Since then each of the Romari Pontiffs has eagerly shown his favor toward the sanctuary of Lourdes. Pius IX showered bene-fits on the shrine erected there and ordered the coronation of its statue of our Lady; Leo XIII granted a proper office and Mass for the feast 6f the Appearance of Our Lady Immaculate. St. Plus X introduced the cause of Bernadette; and above all the sainted Pontiff emphasized the remarkable manner in which Marian piety at Lourdes led to an equally remarkable worship of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Benedict XV permitted the bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes to wear the pallium at the place of the appearances, while Pius XI beatified Bernadette and chose to close the jubilee year of the Redemption at the shrine of Lourdes. Plus XII then concludes this first part of the encyclical by recalling his own endeavor to continue the relationship between the Roman See and Lourdes, an endeavor which was manifested most recently by the closing at Lourdes of the centenary year of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The second part of the encyclical is devoted to a considera-tion of the spiritual lessons of Lourdes; these lessons, notes the Vicar o~Christ, are but echoes of the gospel message, for, like John theB, aptist and like Christ .Himself at the beginning of His public life, our Lady called at Lourdes for l~enance and con-version. At the same time she brought a message of pardon and hope for those who do repent; indeed just as the miraculous cures of Christ were but signs of the power and readiness of Christ to forgive sins, so also the physical cures at Lourdes are invitations to hope for pardon. The centenary jubilee at Lourdes, continues the Holy Father, will possess grandeur only in so far as men respond to these messages of our Lady. Each pilgrim to Lourdes and each Catholic throughout the world who is united in spirit to the 43 Review for Religious centenary celebrations at the shrine should realize in himself a true spiritual conversion. The conversion of the individual, however, is not enough; rather the faithful must be aroused to a collective effort directed towards the Christian re;aewal of society. This will be shown by a reaction to that materialism which manifests itself not only in the philosophy that presides over the political and economic affairs of a large segment of humanity but also externalizes itself in a greed for money, a cult of the body, a flight from all austerity, and an unrestrained pursuit of pleasure. The Holy Father then urges priests to preach to their people the narrow path that leads to life, reminding them that they, like Mary, must live only to give Christ to the world. So too religious must seek the same end by their weapons of prayer, penance, and charity. Families, too, should do their part by considering the irreplaceable mission they have in society; they should consecrate themselves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, asking her to remove from their lives all false judgments and egoistic actions. In a moving conclusion to the encyclical the Holy Father addresses the poor and those in bodily or spiritual afflic.tion, urging them to journey to Lourdes where they.will be received with special predilection by our Lady who knows the value of their sufferings when these are united with those of Christ. There can be no doubt, declares the Pope, that the prayers and sufferings of such will play a great part in the Christian renewal of the human race. As his final message the Holy Father makes his own the words of St. Bernard: "In.dangers, in diffichlties, in doubts, think of Mary, call on Mary." Social Matters On June 7, 1957 (AAS, pp. 621-29), the Holy Father addressed a group of Italian workers on the problems attendant on automation. While, as the Pontiff points out, the existence of automation should arouse in the Christian a grateful admira- 44 Janua~'y, 1958 ROMAN DOCUMENTS tion for the Creator and His works, still one should not think that automation of and by itself can radically change the life of man and society--such an admission belongs to Marxism with its false emphasis on the technical side of human life. For social reality and its stable ordering cannot be based only on statistics and mathematics; social life demands besides and prin-cipally other knowledges: theology, philosophy, and the sciences of the spiritual life of man and of his history. Moreover, the Vicar of Christ continues, it should be re-membered that automation, even when considered merely as a new method of production, will give rise to delicate problems. The first is that technical productivity may be confused with economic productivity. Automation offers a continuous, unin-terrupted process of production and hence a fantastic increase of productive capacity. But this does not necessarily constitute a true increase in the productivity of the national economy. This is why even the European countries who possess the best eco-nomic qualifications for automation approach automation with caution and content themselves with only a partial form of it. In any case a country that is not rich and is faced with urgent problems of communication systems, of land reforms, and of adequate housing must not live above its conditions--as it would if it were dominated solely by the fascination of technical progress. Moreover, adds the Pope, the introduction of automation may cause serious unemployment. Even if this problem can eventually be o,~ercome, it still must be remembered that even a temporary increase of unemployment can be a serious matter for certain countries. Added to this is the consideration that under automation the entire question of salaries wiil have to be com-pletely reconsidered. Prior to automation human labor is part of the very process of production and the value of labor can be determined by what it contributes to the production; under automation, however, the worker will be above and outside the 45 Review for Religious actual process of production; hence there will be need for new criteria of estimating the value of labor. So great and so many are the problems connected with a~tomation, the Holy Father warns, that some think that these problems cannot be resolved except by some form of socialism, involving a greater or lesser abolition of private property. It is true, he says, that in an era of automation a greater degree of planning will be needed, but this should not lead to a more or less absolute control, for the independence of the family and the liberty of the citizen are naturally bound up with the sane existence of private property as a social institution. Automation will also give rise to problems connected with the training of the worker; under automation technical training of the highest type will be required; moreover, the worker will not be able to be highly .specialized but "will require a training sufficiently versatile to embrace the functioning and coordinating of greatly differing machines. Such training, however, cannot be given rapidly, but will necessarily entail a long apprenticeship both in the place of production as well as in specialized schools. Moreover, the education given to the worker must also provide for his general culture; only in this way will the worker be able to solve the problem of leisure time which automation will bring to him. In this connection, the Holy Father adds, it must be noted that automation can easily produce a grave danger to personal morality and hence to the sane structure of production and consumption in the national economy. It is for this reason that under automation professional formation must include the general education of the worker. On July .23, 1957 (AAS, pp. 730-37), the Holy Father addressed a group of bishops and priests from all the dioceses of Italy who constituted the first meeting of the Italian Catholic Congress for Emigration. The Pontiff urged his audience to apply to themselves and their work the parable of the Good Shepherd and told them that the basis of their work for emi- 46 Janua~'y, 1958 ROMAN DOCUMENTS grants must'be a supernatural charity that is at once intensive, universal, and disinterested. It is this and not a mere humani-tarian sympathy that will make of them good shepherds of the people they work with. This charity, he continues, must be reduced to effective action by which they become all things to all men. Hence the Vicar of Christ urges them to devote themselves to the careful preparation of the emigrants for the new country to which they are going. They should give the emigrants instructions in the language and customs of the country to which they are going and above all impress on the emigrants by their zealot's work a remembrance of the maternal solicitude of the Church. Finally, the Holy Father takes up the case of the priest who himself emigrates with a group to another country. Such a priest will have special need .of a right intention which wi!l remove from him the danger of a merely nationalistic motive and which will prevent his group from seeing in him, not a missionary, but a mercenary. As a pastor of the group of emi-grants the priest must be alert to the needs of his flock, take care that they gradually adapt themselves to their new country, and at all times treat them with the highest degree of patience. On June 13, 1957 ('AAS, pp. 629-32), the Pontiff addressed the Congress of Europe, a group dedicated to the unification of Europe. The Holy Father recalled his own interest in the idea of European unity, noted the progress made towards this goal since the conclusion of World War II, and encouraged his listeners to ~ontinue their efforts for a political unification of the countries of Europe. He also urged them to advocate a large and comprehensive aid on the part of Europe to Africa, so that it can be clearly seen that the desire for a European community is not merely a selfish reflex of defense against a common encroaching enemy but proceeds rather from constructive and disinterested motives. Finally, the Pope recalled to them the nature of Christianity which offers 47 R. F. SMITH Review for Religious to all men an unshakable assurance of a fatherland which is not of this world and where alone perfect union will be known, because it proceeds from the power and light of God Himself. On June 27, 1957 (AAS, pp. 632-33), Pius XII addressed the third convention of the Atlantic Treaty Association, encour-aging them in their work to enlist the cooperation of schools in the task of spreading knowledge of the union that exists between all men. Miscellaneous Matters By a declaration of August 20, 1957 (AAS, p. 762), the Sacred Congregation of Rites took up the question of the use of vestments made according to .their ancient form. The use of such vestments is now left to the discretion of the local ordinary. The Sacred Congregation of the Council issued a decree dated July 25, 1957 (AAS, p. 638), transferring the obligation of fast and abstinence from the vigil of the feast of the Assumption to the vigil of the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Two documents published during August-September, 1957, deal with causes of beatification and canonization. In the first, which is. dated March 3, 1957 (AAS, pp. 756-59), the Sacred Congregation of Rites approved the introduction of the cause of the young layman, Zephyrinus Numuncur~ (1886-1905). In the second, dated April 9, 1957 (AAS, pp. 759-62), the same congregation approved the introduction of the cause of the Servant of God Frances de Sales Aviat (1844-1914), found-ress of the Congregation of the Oblate Sisters of St. Francis de Sales. Four documents of the same period pertain to priests and religious. On July 16, 1957 (AAS, p. 637), the Sacred Congre-gation of the Council forbade priests, whether secular or religi-ous, to engage actively in Hungarian politics. They are forbidden to seek or accept any position in the Hungarian Parliament; and if they presently hold such a position, they must resign it within a 48 Janua~'y, 1958 ROMAN .DOCUMENTS month; they are moreover forbidden to attend s~ssions of the parliament and to give help to any activities connected With the position they have resigned. A priest disobeying an); of the above prescription~ incurs by that very fact an excommunication specially served to the Holy See. ¯ " On July 12, 1957 (AAS, p. 640), the Sacred Congrega-tion of Seminaries and Universities issued a decree bidding bishops not to admit to their seminaries students who have left any diocesan seminary or who have been dismissed from any such .seminary. If in a given case such a person should be thought worthy of admission, th'e bishop, besides fulfilling the requirements of Canon 13.63, §3, should' apply to the Sacred. Congregation of Seminaries and Universities for further direc-tions. On July 1, 1957 (AAS, p. 751)., the Sacred Congrega-tion of Religious inaugurated the Pontifical Institute "Iesus Magis~er" " ("Jesus the Teacher"). The new institute is in-tended f0~ members of n0n-clerical congregations of religious men and other similar groups; the institute will provide training to einable ~uch religious to be. better fitted to promote the sanc-tification of themselve~ and of others and to imbue their students with Christian truth and virtue. The same congregation in a decree of March 15, i957o (AAS, pp. 749-50), promulgated, the canonical erdctionof a school to be called "Mater Divinae Gr.atiae" ("Mother of Divine Grace") des~tlned foi the training of mistresses of postulants, of novices, and Of younger religious women. The school offers a three-year course which¯ is open to members of a.ny state of per-fection for women. The school is tinder the jurisdiction of the Sacred Congregation of Religious and has its own statutes ap-proved by th~ same qongregation. Under date of July 1, 19.57(AAS, pp. 737-39), the 'Holy Father sent a written message tothe Catholic BoyScouts attending the .international jamboree, held in England on the 49 R. F. SMITH occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the. founding of the movement. The Pope expressed his satisfaction at the vitality and expansion of the scout movement among Catholic youth and urged them to prepare themselves for their future place in the world by developiag the compreher~sive friendship that translates itself into, the disinterested service characteristic of the scout movement. He also encouraged them to be proud of their purity, their courage, and their nobility; he concluded by suggesting to them that. at Mass they raise their ideal of Catholic scouthood to the heights of the divine Master who came among us to serve and to give Himself. Two documents of the Sacred Congregation of Sem-inaries and Universities deal with general educational matters. In the first of these, dated April 25, 1957 (AAS, pp. 638-40), the congregation canonically established the Catholic Uni-versity of Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo. The new uni-. versity will include a faculty of sacred theology. In the second document, dated May 4, 1957 (AAS, pp. 753:55), the Catholic University of St. Thomas of Villanova in Havana was officially established. Finally/ it should be noted that AAS on pp. 663-89 lists the 261 matrimonial cases which were decided by the Rota during the year 1956. OUR CONTRIBUTORS THOMAS DUBAY teaches philosophy and ascetical theology at Notre Dame Seminary, 2901 S. Carrollton Avenue, New Orleans 18, Louisiana. R. F. SMITH is a member of .the faculty of St. Mary's College, St. Marys, K~nsas. FRANCIS J. MacENTEE is studying for his doctorate in bacteriology at Catholic Uaiversity, Carroll House, 1225 Otis Street .Northeast, Washington 17, D. C. 50 Book Reviews [Material for this department should be sent to Book Review' Editor, REVIEW FOR.RELIGIOUS, West Baden College, West Baden Springs, Indiana.] SON OF THE CHURCH. By Louis Lochet. Translated from the French by Albert J. LaMothe, Jr. Pp. 255. Fides Pub-lishers Association, Chicago 19. 1956. $4.50. Son of the Church is a penetrating analysis of ~he spirituality of the. apostolate, 'written as a series of personal insights and not as a formal treatise. Its purpose is to give the reader the benefit of years of reflection on the character of apostolic action by a former professor of theology who is now parish priest in the diocese of Reims. His thesis is that work in the apostolate, for cleric, religious, and layman, must be done with and through the Church in order to be truly effective. "Lacking that, it founders in absurdity and despair." In tracing this theme, the author shows a solid grasp of human psychology which he integrates with the basic principles of ecclesi-ology, especially of the Mystical Body. Among the temptations that face the apostle, the greatest is "the latent rationalization of all our difficulties [which sees] only what we are doing and not what God is doing. What we do hides from us what God does. It is a short and narrow view of our activity and that of the Church, on the level of what we know of it through history and experience alone." True to the mission of her Founder, the Church is described as a manifestation of divine love, and not only of love but of mercy. Accordingly, the apostle is not to be surprised at running into obstacles of sin, as Christ did. "The love he bears the world is a redeeming love. This is what he has to understand if he does not wish to be disconcerted by the difficulty of the mission. It is not by some strange accident that he meets with coldness, disdain or hatred. It is as the law of his development." Perhaps the outstanding chapter in the book deals with the proper dispositions of anyone engaged in the apostolic life. First must be the conviction that the heart of the apostolate consists in subordinating oneself to the hierarchical authority of the Church. Correlative to this dependence is the realization that the principal object of apostolic labor is to bring the world into the Church's sacramental order--b~ receiving the sacraments in greater numbers, with greater frequency, 51 BOOK REVIEWS Review for Religious increased fervor, find consequently greater efficacy. As an expression of this zeal, the. apostle desires to bring all men into the Mystical Body of Christ, at least to the extent that the Church is every.where implanted with her life-giving channels of grace. However the per-spective must be. kept very clear. A person "who would want to reduce his activity to promoting a better social orgariization or to spreading a temporal beneficence without referring it all to the restoration of the Church by faith in Christ and the sacramental life would no'longer be doing apostolic work." Since the task of bringing souls to God is supernatural, it does not finally rest on the resources of human power~ to succeed--not even those of the apostle. If he .employs all his native ingenuity, "it is not so much in the mahner of a wealth which God needs as of a poverty which God is willing to use for a tran-scendent goal." Corollary to this reliance on grace is the value to be set on self-renunciation. "One will not avoid the mystery of the Cross . Far from fleeing it, we will welcome it as the means par .excellence of realizing the greatest ambitions." In many ways, LocKet has written an excellent book. If on occasion the diction is a bit verbose, this is more than compensated for by the wealth of ideas covering the whole range of apostolic asceticism. It differs considerably from P~i:e Chautard'.s classic on tl~e same subject. Lochet is more cor~cerned with theological integra-tion than with direct motivation. There is also less coherent logic hmong the various parts; something in the style of the Imitation of Christ. For that reason almost any page can be quoted out of con-text withodt losing its inherent meaning. Son of the Church is highly recommended to priests and religious as a doctrinal synthesis of Catholic evangelism.--JoHN A. HARDO,XT, THE CROSS OF JESUS. Voi. I. By Louis Chardon, O.P. Trans-lated from the French by Richard T. Murphy, O.P~ Pp. 304. B. Herder Book ComPany, St. Louis 2. 1957. $4.25. The Dominican Father~ have presented us with another spiritual masterpiece in the "Cross and Crown Series of Spirituality." Written by Father Louis Chardon, O.P., Tl~e Cross of Jesus was published in France in 1647. Thanks to the fine work of the translator, the first volume is now available in English. The Cross of Jesus is not the type of book one rushes through. if given the attention any good spiritual I~ook requires, it will cer-tainly prove profitable. The content is solid; the theme.is simple: 52 January, 1958 BOOK REVIEWS Growth in holiness is achieved through the cross. Although the ideals are lofty ones, they are not set forth merely for mystics. Heeding Jesus' command to take up the cross daily, all holy souls will find guidance and consolation in this book. Father Charddn makes no compromises. He leaves nb doubt as to the necessity of p~arification through the.cross before a s0ul can be united with Jesus. This austere message, however, seems less sdvere when we read the chapters on thesuffe.rings of Jesus and His Mother. It strikes us as quite logical after we read of our place in the Mystical Body of Christ. Most important of all, we are assured that purification is effected by our cooperating with grace and the indwelling Trinity--a doctrine that is beautifully treated by the authoL In all, there are forty-eight chapters. The.relative brevity of most of them seems to be a marked advantage. In each chapter a distinct message is conveyed and understood withbut the necessity of reading dozens of pages. ¯ This book could also be used for meditation material. As indi-cated above, a number of doctrines of the. spiritual life are discussed --/~11 with reference to the cross.' Father Chardon cites Scripture for added effectiveness. Moreover, his exclamations ~nd invocations give The Cross of Jesus a warmth and unction that is often either lacking or overdone in spiritual, writings.' Finally, this re~ciewer wants to congratulate Father. Ri~:hard T. Murphy, O.P., for his very readable translation. Seventeenth-century French does present difficulties which often show up in. English' trans-lations. This cannot be said of the English edition of The Cross of Jesus.--DoNALD O. NASTOLD~ .S.J. CHINA AND THE CROSS; A SURVEY OF MISSIONARY HIS-TORY. By Dom Columba Cary-Elwes, O.S.B. Pp. 323. P.J. Kenedy and Sons, New York 8. 1957. $3.95. Shakespearean Sonnet 116 con~(eys, poetically the spirit of Dom Cary-Elwes's latest work. With an insight which is the fruit of twenty-five years of resea.rch, this artist dep~ct.s vividly the scenes of Cath-olic victories as Christ's mind marries China's amid "tempests, and is never shaken." This is the first Catholic work of this type since Abbe Huc's Christianityin China, Tartary, and Thibet in 1858. As thd author asserts, the eastward expansibr~ iof the Ch~arch is an inspira-tional story, not something freakish and unique. His labor, which is based on the latest evidence, proves his statement. 53 BOOK REVIEWS Review for Religious The book is divided into five chapters: "The Legend of St. Thomas the Apostle," "The Nestorians," "The Franciscans in Cathay," "The Jesuit Age," and "Modern Times." Some summary of the contents of these chaptegs will amply support this reviewer's opinion that Dom Cary-Elwes has penned an exposition which covers the essential points of the history of Chinese Christianity and which contains facts and colorful incidents which appeal to the scholarly, as well as the casual, reader. Latest evidence indicates that St. Thomas the Apostle never set foot on China. Earliest Christians were the Nestorians who landed at Cathay in the seventh century. Tamberlaine was the death-knell of the Nestorian Church. New hope for conversion comes with the Franciscans. Friar John o~ Pian di Carpina, intrepid explorer, arrives at the command of Innocent IV. William of Rubruck, "John of Montecorvino, and others follow with tenacity of purpose. Clement V at Avignon orders that seven Franciscans be raised to the episcopate, and they in turn would consecrate Friar John archbishop ~nd patriarch oi: the whole East. When the Ming dynasty won its way: to the imperial throne, the immense labors of the Franciscans terminated in the wake of violent persecution. Then came the Jesuits. Saint Francis Xavier, "for whom nothing was impossible with God," died off the coast of China in 1552, In that very year was born his greatest successor, Father Matteo Ricci, S.J., whose discreet guidance of missionary activity in China wins the highest praise from the author. F~llowing the Pauline "Go in their door . . ," Ricci builds a r~/¢rocl~elnent between himself and the tradition of China. The Jesuit showed the similarity between the moral teaching of Confucius and that of Christianity. In general, Dom Cary-Elwes judges that the Jesuits met with success as long as they followed the Riccian teaching of not exciting the Chinese by imprudent acts of proselytism. The author's explanation of the famous Rites Controversy is clear, accurate, and prudent. The possibility .that the Jesuits are condoning certain pagan rituals in observance of the memory of Confucius prompts the Holy See to pronounce in 1704 against the Jesuit position. The fact that this decision was reversed in 1939 leads the writer to state: "It is not for us to sit 'in judgment on that decision [1704]. There were cogent reasons in favor of that judgment then. Today those reasons no longer hold, and the Holy See has thought fit to 54 January, 1958 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS reverse that decision in the year 1939" (p. 160). The Jesuits fade from the picture with Clement XIV's Dominus et Redemptor. They will return, Dom Cary-Elwes predicts, "if love is stronger than death." The remainder of the book cites modern conditions: the rapid rise of Communist control, uncanny persecution of the faithful, the work of the Maryknolls, the .Catholic school system in China, the elevation of Cardinal Tien, and the fundamental reason why merely philanthropic Christians become Communists. For the informed reader of Chinese history, Dom Cary-Elwes synthesizes centuries of Christian activity in a scholarly, carefully annotated volume. For the uninformed, he presents a colorful and factual account of the history of the Church in China. For both, he instills with his information the desire to see one yet unwritten chapter: "The Conversion of China to Catholicism." --JAMES J. CREIGHTON, S.J. SARDAR PANNIKAR AND CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. By Jerome D'Souza, S.J. pp. 146. St. Joseph's Industrial School Press, Trichinopoly, India. 1957. One rupee. A grand old pagan of the Roman Empire confronts his Augustine in this book--with differences. St. Augustine heard the accusation that Christianity was destroying Roman civilization, and he wrote the great De Civitate Dei. The Catholic Church, which has been growing up in India gince the days of St. Thomas the Apostle, hears the accusation that Christianity is destroying the civilizations of India and Asia. Here is an answer worthy of a smaller brother of the great Augustine himself. The.author, a member of the India dele-gation to the General Assembly of the United Nations, finds the latest and greatest exponent of this accusation, the former India am-bassador to Red China, "biassed" in his approach to the missions and possessed of "insufficient" knowledge and of "harsh" judgment. Any-one interested in the missions and missio[ogy wil| profit by this frank and friendly and fearless volume.--PauL DE,X,T, S.J. BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS THE BRUCE PUBLISHING COMPANY, .400 N. Broadway, Mil-waukee 1, Wisconsin. Common Sense. By Joseph McSorley, C.S.P. We read essays on spiritual or religious topics to acquire new knowledge or new or 55 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS Review for Religious renewed motivation. We do not expect to find, and all too often do not find, gems of the essayist's craft. In .Common Sense each of the thirty-one essays might well be .taken ~s a model of what essays on the spiritual life can and should be. Reading the book is almost as inspiring and refreshing as a personal visit with. the author would be. Pp. 136. $2.75. CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA PRESS, 620 Michigan Avenue, N.E., Washington, D. C. The Supreme Moderator of. Clerical Exempt Religious Institutes. A Historical Conspectus and Canonical Commentary. By Maurice J'. Grajew~ki, O.F.M. This is a dissertation submitted to the faculty of the Catholic University ofAmerica in partial fulfillment of the requirement~ for the degree of Doctor of. Canon Law. Pp. 180. Paper $2.00. FIDES PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION, .744 E. 79th Street,Chi-cago 19, Illinois. Marriage Is Holy~ Edited by H. Caffarel. Translatdd by Ber-nard G. Murchli~nd, C.S.C. A group 0f Christian families meeting with their chaplains to discuss their common problems are responsible for .the various essays whicl~ are the chapters of this book. .There is a tKirty-six page appe~di~ which contains synopses and discussion questions. It is one of the volumes of the "Fidds Family Readers." Pp. 219. $3.75. GRAIL PUBLICATIONS; St. Meinrad, Indiana. .Queen of the Universe. An Anthology on the Assumption and Queenship of Ma~y. Edited by Brother Stanley G. Mathews, S.M. This i~ thd secohd volume of the "Marian .Library Series of An-thologies." The first was The Promised Woman (Grail, 1954). In the present volume .you will find all the. most recent pronouncements'of the Holy See as well as the most recent theological researcl~ .on two ~rerogativ.es of our Lady, her Assumpti6n and her Queenship. Here .is a volume well c~lculated to increase our love for her who is both" the Mother of God and our Mother." Pp. 258. $4.00. P. J. KENEDY & SONSI .12 Barclay Street, New York 8, New The Hermit of Cat Island. The Life of Fra Jerom~ Hawes. By Peter F. Anson. Monsignor ~'ohr~ C. Hawks, the future hermit.of Cat. Island, led a ver~ full and c6lorful lifd. He was born ~n September 7, 1876, of Anglican parents, became an architect who sp~cial!zi:d in 56 J~nua~'y, 1958 ~BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS ecclesiastical 'architecture, then became an Anglican Clergyman and went as a missionary to the Bahamas in 1908. He designed and built Anglican churches while acting as pastor on Long Island. He became a Catholic in 1911, was ordainedin Rome in 1915, and then took up missionary life, until 1939, in Australia where he designed and built many churches, monasteries, and convents. He was made a domestic prelate in 1937. He led the life of a hermit for seventeen yearg on Cat Island, one ofthe Bahamas. He died on June 26, 1956, and is buried near his hermitage as he requested. The author has given us an interesting and profitable, book. Pp. 286. $4.75. THE NEWMAN PRESS, Westminster, Maryland. Communal Life. Edited by Albert PIE, O.P. Translated by a Religious of the Sacred Heart. This is Volume VIII in the justly '. popular "Religious Life Series." It deals with that essential element of the religious life, common life, from many points of view, historic-ally, canonically, ascetically; it does not neglect the contributions of modern psychology; and it points out adaptations that must be made in view of the background that modern youth bring to religious life. Pp. 320. $4.50. The Insight of the Cur~ D'Ars. Selected Stories by Msgr. Francis Trochu. Translated by V. F. Martel. The fifty stories of this volume, all illustrative of the mystical insight of the Cur~ D'Ars into the secrets of souls, make very interesting reading and furnish "much material for reflection. Pp. 103. $1.75. THE PRIORY PRESS, Asbury Road, Dubuque, Iowa. Toward Marriage in Christ. By Thomas C. Donlon, Francis L. B~ Cunningham, and Augustine Rock, all of the Order of St. Dominic. The book is the first of a new series entitled "College Texts in The-ology." Unlike most books on marriage, this one was written to be ¯ used as a textbook; hence with the requirements of college students and college class procedures in mind. It contains a nine-page bib-liography. Pp. 199. Paper $1.50. SHEED & WARD, 840 Broadway, New York 3, New York. Theology for "Beginners. By F. J. Sheed. Perhaps the greatest single need of the average Catholic layman today is a better knowledge of the faith that is the norm he lives by; a knowledge that will enable him to give a satisfactory answer to the non-Catholic who may agk him the reasons for his faith and conduct; a knowledge too that will BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS Review for Religious lead him to a more intelligent practice of hig faith. An excellent introduction to that knowledge is Theology for Beginners, writte~ by a layman who has received the degree of Doctor of Sacred Theology l~onoris causa. The book could also serve as an excellent text for study clubs. Pp. 241. $3.00. M~re Marie of the Ursulines. By Agnes Repplier. This gripping biography of M~re Marie who founded the first convent school in North America in 1639 was first published in 1931. If you have not al-ready read the book, now is the time to read it. Pp. 314. $3.15. The Beginning of the English Reformation. By Hugh Ross Wil-liamson. The author, a former Anglican clergyman and a recent convert (1955) to Catholicism, gives us an excellent analysis of the complexities of the English Reformation, a period of English history widely misunderstood even today. The book is very well written as. one would expect from the author of eleven plays and a former editor of The Bookman and The Strand. Pp. 113. $2.50. In We Sing While There's Voice Left by Dom Hubert van Zeller, O.S.B., we have another interesting book on the spiritual life for the layman. It measures up fully to the high level of excellence which the author has established in his other books. Like them it is matter-of-fact, down-to-earth, and faces reality squarely. Pp. 198. $2.50. The Restless Christian. By Kilian McDonnell, O.S.B. The number of spiritual books written explicitly for the layman is gratifying. It testifies to the growing realization that the lay Catholic is called to holiness, and it supplies the necessary information and inspiration. You may recommend The Restless Christian to lay Catholics with the certain knowledge that you are giving them an effective means of progress. You may also, though you are a religious, read the book yourself with profit for your own soul. An unusual feature of the book is an eight-page list of suggested readings on the spiritual life. Pp. 183. $3.00. SISTERS OF MERCY, 8200 West Outer Drive,' Detroit 19, Michigan. Into Thy Hands. By Sister Mary E. O'Connor, R.S.M. This book of reflections intended for refectory reading for the Sundays of Recollection first appeared in mimeographed form. So many requests for copies were received that it is now available in printed form. Pp. 105. Cloth $1.75. 58 January, 1958 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS SYRIAN CARMELITE CONGREGATION, Monastery Road, Erna-kulam 1, South India. Souvenir of the First All-Kerala Religious Week, Dec. 27-30, 1955. The closing days of 1955 witnessed what was probably a unique and certainly a most profitable centenary celebration at Sacred Heart College, Thevara, in the state of Kerala in Southwest India, to mark the completion of the first century of activity of the Syrian Car-melite Congregation since its canonical erection in 1855. All the numerous orders and congregations of Kerala were invited to send delegates to a convention, not to recall the history of the congregation or to extend their felicitations, but to discuss their common religious problems and those of the South of India. Souvenir prints in full the addresses made before the convention together with a resum~ of the discussions that followed. We congratulate the Syrian Carmelite Congregation not only on the occasion of their centenary but also on the wise and profitable way that it was commemorated. It was a good preparation for the persecution the large and ancient and fervent Kerala Catholic community suffers in its schools from the Communists recently elected in the predominantly non-Christian state of Kerala. SOME BOOKS RECEIVED [Only books sent directly to the Book Review Editor, West Baden College, Wes~ Baden Springs, Indiana, are included in our Reviews and Announcements. The following books were sent to St. Mass.] Love and Marriage. By James Kelly. Clonmore and Reynolds Limited, 29 Kildare Street, Dublin. 3/-(paper cover). God's Infinite Love and Ours. By Robert Mageen, C.SS.R. Clonmore and Reynolds Limited, 29 Kildare Street, Dublin. 12,/6. Come, O Holy Ghost! By Adrian Lyons, O.F.M. Clonmore and Reynolds Limited, 29 Kildare Street, Dublin. 12/6. A Dangerous Little Friar. The Life of Father Titus Brandsma, O.Carm. By Josse Alzin. Clonmore and Reynolds Limited, 29 Kildare Street, Dublin. 9/6. 59 ( ues ons and Answers ['The following answers are given by Father Joseph F. Gallen, S.J., professor of canon law at Woodstock College, Woodstock, Maryland.] DuringLent should a priest celebrate the Mass of the ferial day or of an occurring feast? On a dm. or d. feast that falls between Ash Wednesday and the Saturday before Palm Sunday, an ember day except tl~ose of Pente-cost, Rogation Monday (Monday before Ascension), or a common vigil, the Mass may be either of the feast in the festal, not votive, manner or of the ferial day or vigil. However, since liturgically the Temporale is preferred to the Sanctorale and the full celebration of a vigil is desirable, the preferred Mass liturgically is that of the ferial day or vigil. If the feast, is ~ d. 1 or 2 cl., it must be celebrated. If the feast is only of s. rite or a mere commemoration, the Mass of the ferial day or .vigil must be said. On din. and d. feasts during the same period of Lent and Passion-tide only, the private recitation oi: the office may be of the feast or of the ferial day. Cf. J. O'Connell, Tl~e Celebration o[ Mass, 54; Mueller- Ellis, l-Iandbook of Ceremonies, 42; Wuest-Mullaney-Barry, )l~fatters Liturgical, n. 280. Our constitutions permit a renewal of temporary vows to be an-ticipated by a month. When does such an anticipated renewal or new profession begin to run? Your constitutions are. merely stating the law of the code. The following three important ~oints are to be kept in mind in an antici-pated renewal. (a) .Length of anticipation. Canon 577, § 2, permits an anticipated renewal of tempo.rary vows but not by more than a month. Therefore, if the profession is to expire on August 15, 1957, the anticipated renewal may not be made before July 15, 1957. Berutti, De Religiosis, 2i0; Jone, Commentarium in Codicem luris Canonici, I, 506; Cervia, De Pro/essione Religiosa, 114. 60 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS (b) Competent superior. In the law of the code, the anticipation as such may be permitted by any superior, whether higher or minor local (c. 577, § 2). However, the right here is only to permit an anticipation. Since the renewal is a juridical profession, all the requisites of suoh a profession must be observed; and therefore ~he admission to this anticipated profession must be made by the competent higher superior with the vote of the council or chapter according to the constitutions (cc. 543; "575, § 2). In constitutions an anticipa-tion is usually reserved to higher superiors or to a partictilar higher superior. (c) .When does the anticipated renewal begin to run? In the example given above of a profession that expires on August 15, 1957, and is anticipated on July 15, 1957, does the new l~rofession begin to run from August 15 or July 15? This depends on the intention of the one making the profession, which is presumed to be according to the way the matter is understood in the particular institute. Ordi-narily the understanding is that the anticipated renewal begins to run from the time when the former profession is completed, i. e., August 15. If such an understanding does not exist in the institute, the presumption is that the intention was for the new profession to begin to run from July 15. Explicit instruction should be given to the ren-ovants on this matter, since it is possible that the subject would be without vows for a month of the triennium; and consequently the perpetual profession would be invalid. The better method is to intend that the new profession begin to run from August 15. Cf. Goyeneche, Quaestiones C.anonicae, I, 442143; De Carlo, Jus Religiosorum, n. 300; Creusen, Revue des Cotnntunautes Religieuse's, 18-1946-184-85; Choupin, Nature et Obligations de l'Etat Religieux; 301-2; Jombart, Trait[ de Droit Canonique, I, 626. m3-- My family~ or close relatives give me five or ten dollars or more because I am their relative. The money therefore constitutes, a personal gift. When the money is turned in, is it contrary to poverty to ask to use it for a definite purpose? The norm for asking and giving permission in the matter of poverty is the need of the religious according to the limit in quantity and quality of material things prescribed by the law or legitimate traditions of the particular institute (c. 594, § 3). Therefore, the fa~t that yoia received a gift 'is completely indifferent in relation to 61 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Review for Religious this norm. If you had not received a gift, you would have the same right of asking for your necessities. The fact that you did receive a gift is no motive for asking and no motive for the superior to give the permission. Religious profess poverty according to their constitutions, i. e., according to the norm described above; they do not profess poverty according to their income: The gift is in some sense a positive-reason for not giving the permission, simply because it leads to the practice of poverty according to one's income. This practice eventually causes a distinction of classes in the institute, the well to do and the poor, and is contrary to canon 594, § I, which t prescribes a moral un

Issue 16.6 of the Review for Religious, 1957. ; A. M. D. G. Review for Religious NOVEMBER 15, 1957 Current Spiritual Writing . Thomas G. O'Callaghan The Intellectual Life of Religious Sister Emily Joseph Survey of Roman Documents . R. I:. Smith Persevering in Prayer . Mother Marie Vandenbergh Book Reviews Communications Questions and Answers I:::or Your Information Index for 1957 VOLUME 16 NUMBER 6 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS \7o~,~.~E 16 NOVEMBER, 1957 NUMBER CONTENTS FOR YOUR INFORMATION . SOME BOOKS RECEIVED . OUR CONTRIBUTORS . CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING-- Thomas G. O'Callaghan, S.J . THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF THE RELIGIOUS: PRACTICAL ASPECTS--Sister Emily Joseph, c.s.J . FATHER GALLEN'S ABSENCE . BOUSCAREN-ELLIS . COMMUNICATIONS . SURVEY OF ROMAN DOCUMENTS--R. F. Smith, S.J . PERSEVERING IN PRAYER-- Mother Marie Vandenbergh, R.C . BOOK REVIEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS: Editor: Bernard A. Hausmann, S.J. West Baden College West Baden Springs, Indiana . QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: 34. Simplification of the Habit . 35. Bibliography on Renovation and Adaptation . 36. Minimizing the Religious Exercises . 37. Anticipation of Perpetual Profession Not Permitted . 38. Using Personal Gifts for Masses . 39. Reciting the Formula of the Vows Collectively . INDEX FOR VOLUME 16 . 321 ¯323 323 324 337 341 341 342 343 350 366 375 377 378 379 ¯ 380 380 381 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, November, 1957. Vol. 16, No. 6. Published bi-monthly by The Queen's Work, 3115 South Grand Blvd., St. Louis 18, Mo. Edited by the Jesuit Fathers of St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approval. Second class mail privilege authorized at St. Louis, Mo. Editorial Board: Augustine G. Ellard, S.J.; Gerald Kelly, S.J., Henry Willmering, S.J. Literary Editor: Robert F. Weiss, S.J. Copyright, 1957, by The Queen's Work. Subscription price in U.S.A. and Canada: 3 dollars a year; 50 cents a copy. Printed in U.S.A. Please send all renewals and new subscriptions to: Review for Religious, 3115 South Grand Boulevard. St. Louis 18o Missouri. I:or Your Inl:ormat:ion Regarding Summer Sessions For many years we have been publishing announcements of sum-mer sessions. Our purpose in doing this is to help our readers to know where they may attend courses or institutes of special per-tinence to religious. Directors and deans of summer sessions who wish to avail themselves of this service should carefully observe the following points: 1) Only courses of special pertinence to religious should be listed. 2) The announcement should be limited to a single paragraph. The length of this paragraph is irrelevant, provided it contains only matters of special pertinence to religious. 3) The paragraph should be triple-spaced and prepared in such a manner that it can be sent to the printer without re-typing or editing. 4) There should be a reasonable minimum of capital letters, and no words should be typed entirely in capital letters. 5) The dates of the summer sessions or institutes should be clearly specified. 6) The best time for publishing these announcements is our March number. The deadline for this number is January 5. The next best time is the May number. The deadline for this number is March I. Plus XII on Self-love We receive many articles that refer to self-love as something opposed to love of God and love of neighbor, as something that must be stifled at all costs. No doubt, similar statements can be found in the writings of saints and in classical spiritual books. The basic mistake in such writings seems to be an unjustifiable identifica-tion of self-love with selfishness, or inordinate self-love. According to sound theology, self-love itself is good and a matter of divine precept. This was emphatically taught by Pope Plus XII in his address to psychotherapists (April 13, 1953), when he said: "From certain psychological explanations, the thesis is formulated that the unconditional extroversion of the ego constitutes the funda-mental law of congenital altruism and of its dynamic tendencies. This 321 FOR YOUR INFORMATION Review for Religious is a logical, psychological, and ethical error. There exists in fact a defense, an esteem, a love, and a service of one's personal self which is not only justified but demanded by psychology and morality. Nature makes this plain, and it is also a lesson of the Christian Faith. Our Lord taught, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' Christ, then, proposes as the rule of love of neighbor, charity towards onself, not the contrary." The Religious Habit In our January number (pp. 3-9), we published an article by Father Lee Teufel, S.J., which gave the results of a questionnaire on adapting the religious garb of sisters. Our May number (pp. 176-79) contained a lengthy communication from a sister, who criticized the attitude of those religious who had answered Father Teufel's ques-tionnaire. This sister also expressed the fear that seculars who read this article would be shocked. We have received four more communications on the same topic. All these communications are from sisters. Two defend Father Teufel and those who answered his questionnaire; and two defend the view expressed in the May communication. We should like to publish ali these letters, but we cannot do so for two reasons: (1) the communications are too long; and (2) the letters on both sides manifest too many misunderstandings of others' views and actions. Unless all write about the same thing, and do so briefly, there seems to be little use in continuing the discussion. Although we cannot publish the communications themselves, we believe we should mention, and comment on, some of the points brought out in them. One sister, for instance, protests that we showed poor taste in publishing Father Teufel's article--in fact, she thinks the Communists should feel happy about it. We leave it to others to judge our taste. It seems appropriate, however, to call attention to the fact that one of our purposes in founding this magazine was to have a medium through which religious could discuss their common problems. And since the change of garb advocated by the Holy See has many aspects that are common to numerous religious in-stitutes, we think this an appropriate topic for discussion in our pages and that those who take part in such a discussion are not showing any disloyalty to their own institutes. Perhaps the basic difficulty is really expressed in the other letter against Father Teufel's article, as well as in the communication 322 November, 1957 FOR YOUR INFORMATION published in May: namely, the fear that public discussion of this topic will disedify seculars. On this point, we should like to inform our readers that we try to limit the circulation of this periodical to religious and diocesan priests. We do not encourage other sub-scriptions, and we have very few of them. It is true that in some institutions the REVIEW is placed in the library where it is available to students and others. We are not responsible for this custom, and we should like to have it changed. SOME BOOKS RECEIVED [Only books sent directly to the Book Review Editor, West Baden College, West Baden Springs, Indiana, are included in our Reviews and Announcements. The following books were sent to St. Marys.] Lutero en EspaF~a yen la Am6~rica espahola. By Ricardo V. Feliu. Protestant Founders, 15 Whitehall Street, New York 4, New York. 90 pesetas (paper cover). Priestly and Religious Formation. By Edmund T. Dunne, C.SS.R. Clonmore and Reynolds Ltd., 29 Kildare Street, Dublin. 18/-. The Art of Teaching Christian Doctrine. By Johannes Hofinger, S.J. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana. $3.50. Ontologia. By Salvator Cuesta, S.J. Sal Terrae, Santander, Spain. 60 pesetas (paper cover~. People's Participation and Holy Week. Seventeenth North Ameri-can Liturgical Week, London, Canada, 1956. The Liturgical Confer-ence, Elsberry, Missouri. $2.08 (paper cover). The Image of God in Man According to Cyril of Alexandria. By Walter J. Burghardt, S.J. The Catholic University of America Press, 620 Michigan Avenue, N.E., Washington 17, D. C. $3.00 (paper cover). Praelectiones theologicoomorales Comillenses. Tomus IV. Trac-tatus de conscientia morali. Pars altera. Theoria de conscientia morali reflexa. By Lucius Rodrigo, S.a!. Sal Terrae, Santander, Spain. L'Apostolat. Probl~mes de la Religieuse d'aujourd'hui. Les edi-tions du cerf, 29, Bld de Latour-Maubourg, Paris. Memento canonique sur le noviciat et al profession religieuse. By Dom Pierre Minard, O.S.B. Editions Fides, 25 est, rue Saint-Jacques, Montreal 1, Canada. $2.60 (paper cover). OUR CONTRIBUTORS THOMAS G. O'CALLAGHAN is professor of ascetical and mystical theology at Weston College, Weston 93, Massachusetts. SISTER EMILY JOSEPH is head of the classics department at the College of St. Rose, Albany 3, New York. R.F. SMITH is a member of the faculty of St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas. MOTHER MARIE VANDENBERGH is guest mistress at the Cenacle Retreat House, Route 1, Box 97-A, Rosharon, Texas. 323 Current Spiritual Writ:ing Thomas ~. O'Calhgh~n~ S.J. Sacred Heart ON THE OCCASION of the first centenary of the extension to the universal Church of the feast of the Sacred Heart, Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical letter Haurietis aquas. The subject matter of this encyclical is devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, its scriptural and traditional foundation, its true meaning and place in the Church. The Holy Father assured us that this devotion is not only the most complete profession of the Chris-tian religion, but that it is also of obligation for all the faithful. Because of this importance of the devotion to the Heart of the Incarnate Word, there is a real need for a clear understanding of its true meaning. To read, reread, and study carefully Haurietis aquas itself is of primary importance. It might be mentioned here that in re.ading it one of the points to be observed is the constant emphasis which the Holy Father places on the triple love which the Incarnate Word has for each of us. He loves us with a divine love, with a human spiritual love, and also--perhaps this has never been stressed so much before-- with a human sensible love. The adorable Heart of Christ is the symbol of this triple love. As a help to the study of this encyclical some of the follow-ing articles, which comment on Haurietis aquas, could be read: M. J. Donnelly, s.J., "Haurietis aquas and Devotion to the Sacred Heart," Theological Studies, XVIII ( 1957), 17-40; P. J. Hamell, "Devotion to the Sacred Heart: Encyclical Haurietis Aquas," The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, LXXXVI (1956), 217- 241; G. Dupont, S.J., "Pius XII on the Cult of the Sacred Heart," The Clergy Monthly, XX (1956), 248-260, and also "The Cult of the Sacred Heart," The Clergy Monthly, XXI (1957), 161-171; C. K. Riepe, "Some Thoughts on Devotion to the Sacred Heart," Worship, XXXI (1957), 328-333; F. 324 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING Courtney, S.J., "Devotion to the Sacred Heart," The Clergy Review, XLII (1957), 332-342. The best and most scholarly of these articles is that of Father Donnelly. Two quotations from his article might be of interest. First, his statement of the purpose of the encyclical: "To elucidate the soul's journey back to God through the Sacred Heart, the heart of flesh, symbol of Christ's human (sensible and spiritual) love and of His divine love, and to show that such a path to God is deeply rooted in Scripture, tradition, and the liturgy of the Church--this is the purpose of the encyclical letter Haurietis aquas" (p. 39). The other quotation which we would like to cite from Father Donnelly is a commentary which he makes upon the following words of Haurietis aquas: Therefore the Heart of our Savior in a way expresses the image of the Divine Person of the Word and His two-fold nature, human and divine. In it we can contemplate not only the symbol, but also, as it were, the sum of the whole mystery of our redemption. When we adore the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, we adore in it and through it both the uncreated love of the Divine Word and His human love and other affections and virtues, because both loves moved our. Redeemer to sacrifice Himself for us and for the whole Church, His Spouse (N.C.W.C. translation). Commenting on this passage, Father Donnelly writes: . . this passage sets forth the whole theology of the devotion to the Sacred Heart, because any reader will at once see therein the following teaching. (1) There is question of the physical heart of the Savior. (2} This heart is in a certain sense an image of the Person of the Word and also of His twofold nature, human and divine. (3) We can see in this physical heart, not only a symbol, but, as it were, the epitome of the whole mystery of our Redemption. (4) We adore this physical heart. (5} In the very act of adoring the physical heart, we adore in and through this same physical heart (a) the uncreated love of the divine Word, (b) His human love (sensible and spiritual), and (c) all the other affections and virtues which the Incarnate Word possesses. (6) The reason for this is that His divine and human love alike moved Him to sacrifice Himself for us and the universal Church, His Spouse, that we might be redeemed from our sins. In the light of this passage, it is clear why the Holy Father calls the devotion the most perfect profession of the Christian religion (pp. 30-31). 325 THOMAS G. O'CALLAGHAN Review fo~ Religious The Saints Gregory tells us in his Book of Dialogues that a certain nun, on going into .the garden, saw a head of lettuce and desired it; and, forgetting to make the sign of the cross over it she greedily bit into it; but forthwith she fell to the ground possessed by a devil. When the blessed Equitius came to exorcize her, the devil began to cry out, saying, "What did I do? What did I do? I was just sitting here on the lettuce, and she came and bit me!''1 This is one of those humorous anecdotes which during the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance delighted the readers of the Golden Legend. This book is a collection of saints' lives, compiled during the latter half of the thirteenth century by the learned and saintly Dominican, Jacobus de Voragine. In the article from which we have cited the anecdote above--an article which makes for pleasant reading--William F. Manning points out that the distinguished Dominican hagiographer was not a simple and gullible soul. He was well aware that these accounts of the saints were a blend of fact, fiction, and humor. What Jacobus de Voragine was primarily concerned with was not the historical truth of these stories; he was much more interested in using them as examples--they were known as exempla during the Middle Ages--to illustrate pleasantly some moral or spiritual principle. His goal was not objective history, but to foster among the faithful a fervent love of, and devotion to, the saints and God. Considering the extraordinary influence which the Golden Legend has had in the history of spirituality, his work was a complete success. But books like the Golden Legend make the life of a modern hagiographer a very troubled one. In addition to the ordinary difficulties which any historian or biographer meets, the hagiographer has a few special ones of his own. These are discussed by Lancelot C. Sheppard in "Some Problems of a Hagiographer.'' If the biography of a saint is to be a true 1This quotation from the Golden Legend is cited by William F. Manning, "Humor in the Golden Legend," Cross and Cro,wn, IX (1957), 168. 2 The Li/e of the 8pirit, XI, 454-461. 326 November, 1957 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING and living portrait, the first problem of a hagiographer is to remember that he is "dealing with a man or woman in the world" (p. 456), and thus he has to pay attention to the ordin-ary things of everyday life. Otherwise he will be presenting "an unnatural wooden figure of his saint . . . no example or help to the ordinary reader, but . . . a hindrance to the develop-ment of the Christian life in the souls of many" (p. 457). Another problem is that which is occasioned by the miracu-lous events which at times take place in the lives of the saints. If something miraculous occurs in the life of a saint, it should be historically verified, and then it should be treated as a miracle, and not as a normal and everyday occurrence. Closely allied to the question of miracles is that of those other extraordinary phenomena--stigmata, etc.--which sometimes occur. Since some of these phenomena can be explained at times by natural causes, a hagiographer should be very hesitant in assigning to them a divine cause. Some of these observations of Sheppard are very just, but I am sure that he would readily admit that these prob-lems are much more easily mentioned than solved. In the same issue of The Life of the Spirit there is an interesting article by Donald Attwater on the martyrs of the early Church.3 In the Christian Church the cultus of the saints began with the veneration of these early martyrs. In fact, one of the first definitions of sanctity was based on the idea of martyrdom: the perfect imitation of Christ even to the sacrifice of one's life; or, as Attwater says, a man is "never so Christlike as when he wil!ingly goes to death for his Saviour . . ." (p. 441). This article is a series of short sketches of some of the early saints and martyrs--th'ose who suffered in the early persecutions, up to 313, and whose accounts are based on reliable documenta-tion: Ignatius ot: Antioch, Polycarp, Justin, Blandina, Cyprian, Perpetua, Felicity, etc. Although these sketches are most brief, "They are enough to show these martyrs as men and women, "The Early Martyrs," pp. 441-454. 327 THOMAS G. O'CALLAGHAN Review for Religious not as puppets . . ." (p. 451). Indeed, they were men and women whose lives were centered, in a simple yet firm way, or~ God and Jesus Christ. They were ~fully conscious of being ~a chosen race, a kingly priesthood, a consecrated nation,' a society of which, in the words of St. Augustine, ~the king is Truth, the law is love and the duration is Eternity' " (p. 453). Why did Bruno of Hartenfaust leave the world and found the Carthusians? It was once piously believed that his decision, was occasioned by an event which took place during the funeral of a certain Canon Docr~s in Paris. The canon's only known failing was a worldly desire for literary fame, and yet he seems to have been damned for it. According to the legend, three times during the funeral the canon raised himself up; first, to announce that he had been accused; then, judged; and, finally, that he had been condemned to eternal damnation. Supposedly witnessing this, Bruno decided that the world was no place for him; so off: to the deserts of the Grande Chartreuse. All this is pious legend. The real reason and motive why Bruno sought the hidden life of solitude and rooted his order in contempt of the world is explained in a fine article by Dr. Borisz de Balla, a former Hungarian diplomat and at present an associate professor of history at Le Moyne College) Since the spirit of silent solitude with which the Carthusians have moved through the last nine centuries has kept them well hidden, an article such as this is most welcome. For in it Dr. de Balla uncovers the historical and psychological background of Bruno's vocation and clarifies the Carthusians' contempt for the world, which is merely a negative way of expressing their fervent love of God. The life of St. Thomas Aquinas was dedicated in an extra-ordinary degree to intellectual work. Since this was a most substantial part of his life, it must have been very closely linked with his sanctity. What was the connection between these two? In 4'~Contempt of the World," Cross and Crop, n, IX (1957), I1-23. 328 November, 1957 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING a very penetrating article Father Thomas Deman, O.P., shows how closely St. Thomas's knowledge was tied to his sanctity.~ The connection between the Angelic Doctor's knowledge and sanctity is not merely that he studied with a pure intention, nor merely that his intellectual activity demanded great abnega-tion. These things manifest more the link between effort and sanctity rather than between knowledge and sanctity. The far more interesting problem is in establishing the relation between these latter two, for in the connection of these two, according to Father Deman, "lies the ultimate secret of St. Thomas' sanctity" (p. 404). To summarize Father Deman's solution to this prob-lem would be to do it an injustice; but to recommend the study of it, especially to seminarians and theologians, would be far from unjust. F~nelon, onetime archbishop of Cambrai, although not a saint, was certainly an outstanding personality. Derek Stanford gives us in a two-part article a general overall view of his life, doctrine, writing, and great appeal.6 Even those who met him through his written word were charmed by him. " 'If F~nelon were alive today you would be a Catholic,' Bernadin de St. Pierre once wagered Rousseau. 'Oh, if F~nelon were alive,' Rousseau replied,, his eyes moist with tears, 'I should try to become his lackey in order to deserve to be his valet' " (p. 15). Perhaps the part of F~nelon's life which was most im-portant in the history of spirituality, and best known for that reason, is his rather bitter dispute with Bossuet, his former friend and bishop of Meaux, over the quietistic doctrine of Mme. Guyon. This was settled only by a papal brief from Pope Innocent XII condemning twenty-three propositions taken from Fenelon's Maxims of the Saints. To this condemnation he com-pletely and humbly submitted. Stanford's articles are a fine summary of the life of this man who was a cultured scholar, distinguished prelate, and grand seigneur. 5"'Knowledge and Holiness and St. Thomas Aquinas," The Life of the Spirit, XI, 394-406. 6"A Word for F~nelon," The Cler#y Relieve, XLII (1957), 14-25, 76-84. 329 THOMAS G. O'CALLAGHAN Review for Religious Sin One of the basic needs in the spiritual life is to acquire a sincere detestation of sin, a real hatred of the evil which sin is. But what is sin? The Catholic faith has always considered sin as an offense against God. But what does it mean to offend God? Obviously sin cannot harm God himself; it cannot touch God or injure Him. The harm which is done by sin is done to man, not to God. Yet, how is this an offense against God? Father DeLetter, s.J., suggests a solution to this problem, a solution which in its full explanation depends upon the philo-sophical doctrine of relation.~ He writes: ¯ . . the sinner . . . by rejecting God's love, rejects the gift of that love, sanctifying grace. Accordingly, in this case, because of the relative character of grace . . . it is easy to see how the "malum hominis," loss of sanctifying grace, is at once "malum Dei," offence against God . The wilful destruction on the part of man of God's gift of grace is an offence against God . . . because grace is a relation to God, unites man to God; and so by refusing or rejecting grace man refuses or rejects God, to whom grace orientates and unites him (p. 338). It is basically this same problem which Father Lyonnet, S.J., tries to solve by studying the nature of sin in the Old Testament) Judging from the words used in the Old Testa-ment to designate sin, sin is not only an evil of man, malum horninis, but also malum Dei, insofar as it is against God, in opposition to God. "The sinner despises and contemns the commands of God, and therefore in some true sense God Him-self" (p. 78; translation ours). But going beyond the words used to designate sin and con-sidering sin in the whole context of the Old Testament, Father Lyonnet points out various ways of looking at sin as an offense against God. Sin offends God insofar as it harms man whom God loves and desires to protect as His very own. Sin is also 7"Offense against God," The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, LXXXVII (1957), 329-342. S"De natura peccati quid doceat V. T.," l~erburn Dornini, XXXV (1957), 75-88. 330 November, 1957 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING described as an offense against God insofar as it breaks the bond of conjugal love between God and His people, His beloved spouse. Thus sin is likened to adultery, God being the offended spouse. (Based upon this idea, God is portrayed in the Old Testament as a husband who cannot live without his beloved spouse; and, even though she is unfaithful, he pursues her with his merciful and forgiving love until she returns to him.) But in any understanding of sin the divine transcendence must always be preserved; sin never takes from God anything divine. But it does snatch away from Him man, whom God loves as the very apple of His eye. The Liturgy Those who are actively engaged in pastoral work in a parish will find food for serious reflection in an article written by Father Josef Jungmann, s.J., one of the world's most outstanding schol-ars of the liturgy.'~ The main theme of his article may be stated in his own words: "In the concrete community of the Church, which normally appears in the form of the parish, the liturgy does not represent merely one set of tasks, however holy, among many others. The Sunday and holy day Eucharist constitutes nothing less than the goal and ultimate meaning of all pastoral work here on earth" (p. 67). There is a fine article in The Life of the Spirit on the active participation of the faithful in the sacrifice of the Mass.1° The primary purpose of the article is to explain why the people should be active at Mass. The answer to this is based upon the proper understanding of the nature of the Mass and the nature of the Christian people. The nature of the Mass is that, being the principal act of the Mystical Body, it is a social, community act, in which all the faithful have their part. As regards the Christian people, by baptism they were made members of the Mystical Body of Christ the Priest; and by the character im- '°"The Liturgy and the Parish," l#ors/~ila, XXXI (1957), 62-67. 10j. D. Crichton, "The Mass and the People," The Life of t/~e 8~irit, XI, 548-560. 331 THOMAS G. O'CALLAGHAN Review for Religiou.~ printed on their soul at baptism they share in the priesthood of their Head. These ideas are developed in the first part of this article, while a second part suggests ways of educating the faith-ful to take an active part in both the dialogue and high Mass. When Christ at the Last Supper said, ~This is My blood of the new covenant, which is being shed for many," what would the apostles understand by the words blood of the new covenant? Father Siegman, C.PP.S., the editor of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly, discusses this question and in so doing offers a few points which might be helpful in understanding better the Sacrifice of the Mass.11 He shows that the words blood of the covenant, spoken by our Lord at the Last Supper, ~'must have suggested to the Apostles the sacrificial character of the rite that Jesus was performing. Blood that was shed had to be offered to God in sacrifice, as acknowledgment of His absolute dominion" (pp. 171-172), and also as an atonement for sin. Further, the apostles must have understood that the covenant, the pact be-tween God and His people, was now fulfilled. ~What Jahweh had done on Mt. Sinai was a beginning, a first aspect of the perfect covenant-act to be realized in the future" (p. 172), when this covenant would be ratified not by '~the blood of goats and calves," but by the blood of Christ (Heb. 9:12). Finally, this fulfilled covenant would have meant "community of life"(p. 172), Christ the victim sharing His life with His apostles. A few months ago there was published in Worship the translation of an address which Father Athanasius Miller, O.S.B., secretary of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, gave last De-cember at the Biblical Institute in Rome.l~ His concern in the paper was to discuss the problem "whether or not a harmony can be established between the psalms on the one hand, and a Christian prayer and a Christian devotion to the psalms on the other" (p. 334). Since the book of the Psalms is pre-Christian, H"The Blood of the Covenant," 7"he American Ecclesiastical Re,view, CXXXVI (1957), 167-174. 1'-, "The Psalms from a Christian Viewpoint," l'Forship, XXXI (1957), 334-345. 332 November, 1957 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING many priests or religious, whether in reading the Office or in using the Psalter for private prayer, have difficulty in giving the psalms a Christian character and interpretation. Their devotion suffers in attempting to make an Old Law prayerbook into a Christian prayerbook. Father Miller's answer to this problem may be summed up in his own words: Thus the psalter is for the Church of the martyrs a Christ-book. Its songs center around the Kyrios raised on the cross, whether she speaks of Him, or to Him, or He Himself speaks to the Father: "The psalm is a voice speaking of Christ; the psalm is the voice of the Church speaking to Christ; the psalm is the voice of Christ speaking to the Father." It was left to the ingenious hand of Augustine later to combine all these aspects into one: "The psalm is the voice of the whole Christ, Head and body": Psalmus vox totius Christi, capitis et corl~oris (p. 340). In an address, given May 1, 1955, to members of the Chris-tian Association of Italian Workers, the Holy Father instituted the feast of St. Joseph the Worker and he assigned it to the first day of May. This new feast took the place of the Solemnity of St. Joseph. In this exchange, however, nothing was really lost; in fact, much was gained. In order to show this, Father Francis J. Filas, S.J., an authority on the theology of St. Joseph, examines and comments very simply and intelligently on the text of the Mass and Office of the new feast.1:~ Of particular interest are the few remarks which he makes about "father Joseph" (p. 296). This com-mentary on the Mass and Office of St. Joseph could be used ior "points" for prayer by those who desire to "Go to Joseph." "In the providence of God, for the greater glory of God, to know Jesus and Mary better and to imitate St. Joseph more closely, may this new feast of St. Joseph the Worker be a promise of even greater liturgical honors to come" (p. 303). 13,'The Mass and Office of St. Joseph the Worker," The /lmerican Ecclesi-astical Re~ie~, CXXXVI, (1957), 289-303. 333 THOMAS G. O'CALLAGHAN Review fo~ Religious Priestly and Religious Vocation What is a vocation? How do I know if I have a vocation? The answer to these questions is given by Father Columba Ryan, O.P., in three helpful articles.14 A good part of the matter of these articles is a commentary on the important apostolic con-stitution Sedes Sap¯len¯tla15e. The Holy Father had written in this document: ". the divine vocation . . . consists of two essential elements, one divine and the other ecclesiastical." Father Ryan uses these words of the Pope both as a point of departure and also as a suggested division of the matter of his articles. The first article considers the divine element, the divine call, but looked at from the side of God, as God's signified will. The second article examines this same divine call, but insofar as it is a grace received in a man's soul. The final article treats the ecclesiastical element of a divine vocation, the ecclesiastical call, and that which is closely associated with it, the necessary qualities which ought to be found in the aspirant. In regard to the first element of a divine vocation, the invitation of the soul by God, this is so necessary that without it the foundation of the whole structure will be lacking. Whether it be a call to the priestly life, or the religious life, or both combined, the initiative must come from God; without it there is no vocation. Because of this Father Ryan reiterates and comments upon the strong warning of the Holy Father about forcing or alluring or admitting to the religious or priestly life those who do not show the true signs of a divine vocation. But if these signs are clear, if God's loving will for a man is that he be a priest or a religious, there arises a problem: What is the obligation of following this signified will of God? There is some obligation, says Father Ryan, but this obligation falls not so much upon the acceptance or rejection ot? the voca- 14Vocations and Their Recognition," The Life of the Spirit, XI, 217-223, 258-263, 517-527. 15 The English translation of this document may be found in gEVlEW FOg LIGIOUS, March, 1957, 88-101. 334 November, 1957 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING tion as "upon the deliberations preceding . . . [the] decision . . an obligation in the line of the virtue of prudence" (p. 223). Let us observe that one should be careful about insisting upon this obligation with the young, since they could easily confuse what is of counsel and what is of obligation in this matter. In the second article Father Ryan takes up the problem of how we may know whether there is present in the soul the grace of a vocation. The most we can do is to "detect it by signs of its presence, by the outward effects which it produces" (p. 259). The signs which he indicates are: a conscious and felt attraction to religious or priestly life; an obscure drawing towards it, perhaps with a sense of duty attached, but without attraction; such a drawing, accompanied by positive repug-nance for the life in question; a calculation, from the recognition that a man may have from his whole providential setting, that he ought to follow such and such a life; the sense of the emptiness for him of any other life (p. 259). These signs are not a proof of a vocation; in fact, they are often counterfeited. Many of the observations which the author makes about these signs, their counterfeits, and the faulty motives behind the latter, are well worth careful study by those who are engaged in the work of vocational directing. Besides the divine call there must also be, in order to have a divine vocation, the ecclesiastical call, that is, being called by lawful ministers of the Church. No person with a genuinely divine vocation can fail to be received by legitimate superiors. This does not mean that every first refusal of ecclesiastical superiors proves the lack of a true vocation. But it does mean that against the refusal of a superior there can be "no ultimate appeal to some subjectively experienced call of God as a con-clusive proof" (p. 519) of a divine vocation. An ecclesiastical superior must determine whether a can-didate possesses the necessary qualities. What are these? Father Ryan classifies them under three headings: "first, qualities of health, physical and mental; secondly, general character and dis- 335 THOMAS G. 0'CALLAGHAN position; thirdly, talents appropriate to the special vocation undertaken" (p. 521). In commenting upon these Father Ryan makes some very solid observations about emotional maturity, general strength of character, intelligence, docility, and affability. These articles will well repay careful study. The question of fostering vocations, a very important ques-tion these days because of the growing need of priests and religious, is discussed by Father Baier.1' In the fostering of vocations, one point which is to be carefully noted is that which Pope Pius XI mentioned in Ad Catholici Sacerdotii. In the ordinary course of divine providence, he remarked in this encyclical, the %rst and most natural place" where the God-sown seeds of vocation "grow and bloom remains always the truly and deeply Christian family." Another point which Father Baier mentions is that young Catholics do not understand the real meaning and excellence of the religious life. Too much attention is given to the "externals." '~If we want more vocations, we must tell young people about the 'inside' story of God's call. Only the inner meaning and the full significance of a vocation can inspire the qualities of enthusiasm, self-sacrifice and heroism for Christ" (p. 3:23). l°"Toward More Vocations," The llomiletic and Pastoral Revie.w, LVII (1957), 320-324. 336 The Int:elled:ual Li e ot: t:he Religious: Prad:ical Aspect:s Sister Emily Joseph, C.S.J. THAT THIS ARTICLE may have a practical aspect in substance as well as in name, I have presumed to borrow heavily from a source that has directed the intellectual progress of many scholars. The advice here presented comes from a man who was the outstanding humanist of his day; a man of letters as well as of action who figured prominently in the political, ecclesiastical, and diplomatic affairs of his times; a man whose profound learning, both religious and secular, lent a brilliance and charm to his spoken and written word. This man was the twelfth-century scholar, John of Salisbury, secretary of St. Thomas of Canterbury, author, poet, ecclesiastic, diplomat, and an intellectual of the first order. Among John's writings we find an account of certain at-titudes prevalent in the educational circles of his day--a day which, we note with a smile, John calls these "modern times." He deplores the tendency to specialization, the immoderate tribute paid to cleverness, and the influence of a segment of educators who would over-emphasize the "practical" at the expense of the humanistic studies. Then, paying tribute to his revered old teacher, Bernard of Chartres, John quotes the pair of fluid Latin hexameters in which Bernard neatly packaged his recom-mendations for scholars-to-be. John himself called these the "Six Keys to True Learning." As a practical aspect of the intellectual life of the religious, I give you John's six keys) First: mens humilis--a humble mind. Recently I came upon this definition of humility in an article entitled "Vocation of the Intellectual; Its Requisites and Rewards.''~' "Humility is a per- 1 All references to John of Salisbury are from his Policraticus, VII, 13 (ed. C. J. Webb). Z Whalen, Reverend John P., "Vocation of the Intellectual; Its Requisites and Rewards," The Catholic Educational Re~ie~, LII (Dec. 1954), 597-601. 337 SISTER EMILY JOSEPH Review for Religious sonal evaluation without personal interest . It is observing ourselves as part of the creation of God with an unjaundiced eye, neither allowing our egoism to exaggerate our vision nor our insecurity to underestimate it." Such an attitude is funda-mental, not only for the acquisition of the moral virtues but for the intellectual ones as well. It is the guarantee of an objective approach to the search for knowledge; it precludes an interpreta-tion of research findings which accords with one'~ own prejudices or inclinations rather than with the objective evidence. Above all, it is a safeguard against one of the most pernicious spiritual ills to which man is subject--intellectual pride. The second key: studium quaerendi--the eager, questing spirit. The phrase carries a twofold implication: first, a steady, zealous, self-sacrificing devotion to the research entailed by scho-larship; secondly, it betokens the inquiring outlook which is the hallmark of a scholar. It implies, too, the proper attitude toward the intellectual life. With regret, we acknowledge that this attitude, latent in everyone who has consecrated his or her life to incarnate Wisdom, fails, in many cases, to develop and in-fluence the religious. Some hold intellectual efforts and attain-ments suspect. By their attitude of aloofness they try to cloak their own apathy where research is concerned. Others contend that the present need of the Church calls for concentration on a vigorous social apostolate. Still others avow their respect for intellectual activity but modestly place themselves outside its periphery. That all might acquire a correct attitude toward the importance, both for time and eternity, of personal intellectual growth we would strongly recommend two classic works: Cardinal Newman's Idea of a University and Cardinal Suhard's peerless pastoral letter, Groi~lh or Decline? The third key which John recommends is vita quieta--a life of tranquillity. John's own life as a scholar was interrupted by ecclesiastical responsibilities which plunged him into incessant activity. He crossed the continent of Europe ten t:.mes on diplo-matic missions and such extensive traveling in the twelfth century 338 November, ~957 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF RELIGIOUS was only at the cost of much time and considerable inconvenience. Such a life is not compatible with the atmosphere that the scholar needs. His must be a well-ordered life---a life of dedication to intellectual pursuits. His energies must be concentrated upon this one end, not dissipated upon a multiplicity of activities, how-ever worthy each in itself may be. From his life all non-essentials must be (often painfully) pruned. One in whom secular tastes and worldly attitudes develop and foster a craving for recreation, for indulgence in entertainment provided by radio, television, or light reading, for needless travel and social contacts will find neither the inclination nor the time for intellectual growth. In a recent article in the NGEH Bulletin, Father Gustave Weigel, s.J., underlines the special responsibility of the college faculty, which he calls the "soul of the collegiate community," to foster the intellectual life. Exploring the meaning of the term, "intellectual life," Father Weigel contends that it is a life of contemplation. "The true intellectual," he says, "always seeks for essences and essences are not obvious . Hence the practi-tioner of the intellectual life is a contemplative." He maintains that "the intellectual life is the very essence of the college" and that contemplation is the essence of the intellectual life; and he intimates that there are dangerous attitudes, social and economic forces, that make incursions upon and destroy the vita quieta that is a sine qua non of scholarly pursuits? Closely allied to this third key is the fourth--scrutinium taciturn--a study room where silence reigns. Just as the silence of the chapel is most conducive to contempletion of God and His attributes, so for the scholar's contemplation there must be freedom from distractions, prolonged periods for undisturbed thinking. Here is a problem which superiors should acknowledge and try to solve. The religious whose teaching assignments, ex-tracurricular responsibilities, and community obligations exhaust 3 Weigel, Gustave, S.J., "Enriching the Intellectual Life of the Catholic Col-lege," NCE/I Bulletin, LII (May 1956), 7-21. 339 SISTER EMILY JOSEPH Review for Religious his or her physical powers and necessitate constant contact with students, institutional personnel, and externs cannot be expected to develop the intellectual life, regardless of personal inclination and intellectual endowment. Paupertas--poverty--is the fifth key in John's list. Our vocation, then, in which we are privileged to bind ourselves by vow to a life of poverty, ought to insure us this key without further worry. But does it? In the pursuit of higher education what is the end in view for the majority of religious who flock in such numbers to the universities? Is their goal those spiritual entities, knowledge and truth, toward which, like a shining beacon, they are willing to press on resolutely in spite of summer heat and winter snow, demanding professors and elusive research articles, frustrating language barriers and disappointing lab ex-periments? Or does a motive which is, at least in part, pragmatic and materialistic, namely, the determination to acquire a degree and thus satisfy certain educational standards and demands, com-mit them to a temporary and half-hearted educational episode which they dispatch with a minimum of research and a maximum of compensating recreation? All will acknowledge that the poverty of a monk or nun differs from the poverty of a derelict in the slums. How does the poverty of a scholar differ from the poverty of a religious? Or does it? Was John of Salisbury implying that this fifth key imposes upon the scholar a form of discipline and a degree of detachment that is unique and un-paralleled, which demands renunciations over and above those required by the vow of poverty? The last of John's six keys s~iows his penetrating wisdom: terra aliena. We might presume to interpret it rather freely to mean: ~Get away from home base." One of the most practical aspects of this question of intellectual growth is that of time. It is one of the limitations imposed upon us by our mortal state. Certain legitimate demands upon our time are inextricably associated with our observance of community life. Charity obliges even where temporary dispensations exempt. Religious 340 November, 1957 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF RELIGIOUS superiors, then, should take this into consideration and, to the extent possible, assign students to graduate studies in universities where they will reside away from home. Financial and other practical considerations may render this difficult. Still, anyone who has attempted scholarly study or writing will insist that this sixth key is oi~ prime importance. These, then, are the six golden keys which John of Salis-bury left us nearly eight hundred years ago. I repeat them, as they are found in the seventh chapter of his work entitled Policraticus." ~Iens kurnilis, studiurn quaerendi, ~dta quieta, Scrutiniurn taciturn, paupertas, terra aliena. I rather suspect that, were John listening to me, he would repeat what he said, referring to Bernard's hexameters: "Though I am not taken by the smoothness of the meter, I approve the sense and I believe it should be faithfully impressed on the minds of those seeking true learning." FATHER GALLEN~S ABSENCE Father Gallen, who answers questions for the REVIEW, has been in Europe for several months; and we are not sure when he will return. This is the reason why answers to questions have been delayed. Since we have no other canonist on our staff, we suggest that those who have canonical problems requiring prompt answers send their questions to a canonist of their own diocese. BOUSCAREN-ELLIS It is a little more than ten years since Fathers T. Lincoln Bous-caren, S.J., and Adam C. Ellis, S.J., first published their Canon Law: A Text and Commentary. The third edition completely revised is now available. This edition incorporates papal decrees and decisions issued since 1951 and adds current literature to the bibliography fol-lowing each chapter. It includes new material on the alienation of property and on secular institutes. Father Ellis, it will be remembered, was one of the founders of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS and was one of the active members of the editorial board until very recently. The book is published by the Bruce Publishing Company, 400 North Broadway, Milwaukee 1, Wisconsin. 980 pages. $10.50. 341 Com rnun icat:ions On Delayed Vocations Reverend Fathers: In accordance with the announcement in the May number of gEWEW FOg RELIGIOUS (p. 154), we are happy to send you the fol-lowing information. We are Dominican Sisters established for foreign mission work and for social and catechetical work in the United States. We are at present approved as a Pious Union by Cardinal Stritch. Our habit is the regular Dominican habit. We accept candidates between the ages of 20 and 40. We do accept widows or previously married women whose marriage was annulled or invalid, if they give signs of a true vocation. Mother M. Agatha, O.P. Missionary Servants of St. Dominic Rosary Mission House 656 West 44th Street Chicago 9, Illinois Reverend Fathers: In response to your note on Delayed Vocations, we wish to say that we would consider accepting the classes of persons mentioned in the announcement. Ours is a cloistered order. We have perpetual adoration. We accept candidates up to the age of 35, and even a little older if their health is good. If the spiritual directors who seek this information have possible candidates on the waiting list we would be glad to make their acquaintance. Mother Mary Edwina Franciscan Nuns of the Most Blessed Sacrament 2311 Timlin Hill Portsmouth, Ohio [EDITORS' NOTE: Regarding communications on the religious habit please see page 322.] 342 Survey.of Roman Document:s R. F. Smit:h, S.J. THE DOCUMENTS which appeared in the ~lcta ~lpos-tolicae Sedis (AAS) from June 1, 1957, to August 15, 1957, will be the subject matter of the present article. Page references to AAS in the course of the survey will accordingly refer to the 1957 AAS (volume 49). The Saints On May 16, 1957 (AAS, pp. 321-31), two days after the Pope had received in audience the recently liberated Car-dinal Wyszynski, His Holiness issued the encyclical, Invicti athletae Christi, in commemoration of the three hundreth anniversary of the death of the Polish martyr, St. Andrew Bobola. In the first section of the encyclical, Pius XII briefly sketches the life of the martyr. Born in 1591, Andrew entered the Society of Jesus at the age of 19. The future saint gave himself wholeheartedly to the conquest of Christian perfection, seeking only the glory of God. After his ordination to the priesthood, his life was devoted to the faith he professed. It was this love of his faith that led him to work in the eastern marches of his country where dissident churches strove to separate the faithful from the unity of the true Church. When the Cossack persecution of the Church broke out, it was this same love of the faith that prompted him to do everything in his power to keep Catholics from denying their faith and to reconcile those who under pressure of the persecutors had deserted their faith. It was, finally, the ~ame love of the faith that enkindled in him the courage to endure the fright-ful martyrdom which the Cossacks inflicted on him on the feast of the Ascension, May 16, 1657. In the second part of the encyclical, the Vicar of Christ urges the faithful to imitate in their own lives the faith and 343 R. F. SMITH Review for Religiou~ courage of Bobola. The need for similar faith, he notes, is especially great today, for materialism continues to grow and to seduce men by the mirage of an earthly happiness without God. No less necessary today is the courage of St. Andrew. Every Christian life must have something of the martyr in it; for a Christian gives testimony to his faith not only by shedding his blood for it, but also by a constant war against sin and by a complete consecration of himself and all he has to Him who is his Creator and Redeemer and who someday will be his eternal joy. The Holy Father concludes the encyclical with a special plea to the Polish nation that they of all men may imitate the faith and courage of their sainted compatriot so that Poland, today as yesterday, may be a rampart of Christianity. Three documents concern Mother Mary of Providence (1825-71), foundress of the Helpers of the Holy Souls. The first of these was a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites which was dated April 21, 1957 (AAS, pp. 374-76), and which stated that the beatification of the Venerable Servant of God could safely be proceeded with. On May 26, 1957 (AAS, pp. 339-44), Pius XII proclaimed her beatification and the day after (AAS, pp. 361-64) addressed a group of the Helpers of the Holy Souls who had come to Rome for the beatification of their foundress. In his allocution to them the Pontiff stressed the Blessed's devotion to Providence which led her to repay Provi-dence by rescuing souls from purgatory and by devoting herself to an active and universa! apostolate. The last document concerning the saints is a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, issued on April 9, 1957 (AAS, pp. 424-25}, and ordering that henceforth a determined part of the consultors of the congregation shall have consultative vote with regard to the official scrutiny of the writings of persons whose causes of beatification are introduced. The Eucharist Three documents of the period surveyed are concerned with the Eucharist. On May 19, 1957 (AAS, pp. 364-68), His 344 November', 1957 ROMAN DOCUMENTS Holiness broadcast a message to the Eucharistic Congress of Spain, which was being held at Granada, telling the faithful assembled there that in the Eucharist is to be found the same Christ who is the way, the truth, and the life for all men. He also reminded them that in the Eucharist there is the highest manifestation of that greatest of all truths: God is love. On May 23, 1957 (AAS, p. 370), the Holy Office an-swered the following question with regard to the concelebration of Mass: Do several priests validly concelebrate Mass if only one of them utters the words "This is My Body" and "This is My Blood" over the bread and wine, while the rest do not pronounce the words, but, with the knowledge and the consent of the aforesaid celebrant, have and manifest the intention of making their own the words and actions of the same celebrant? The Holy Office answered the question in the negative, since, as it said, by the institution of Christ only he validly celebrates who pronounces the consecrating words. The Sacred Congregation of Rites issued a decree on June 1, 1957 (AAS, pp. 425-26), dealing with the tabernacle and the manner of conserving the Holy Eucharist. The decree states that the pertinent norms of canon law (canons 1268-69) should be carefully observed. Moreover, the tabernacle is to be so fixed to the altar that it is irremovable. Ordinarily the taber-nacles should be affixed to the main altar, unless in certain cir-cumstances the veneration of the Eucharist can be provided for better elsewhere. Such circumstances are ordinarily found in cathedral, collegiate, and conventual churches where choir func-tions are exercised. Similar extraordinary circumstances can sometimes be found, the decree continues, in larger devotional centers where, because of popular devotion to some venerated object, the veneration due the Blessed Sacrament might be over-shadowed. The decree goes on to state that Mass should be habitually celebrated at the altar where the Blessed Sacrament is kept; and, 345 R. F. SMITH Review .for Religious in churches where there is only one altar, this should not be so constructed that the priest celebrates Mass facing the people, for in the middle of such an altar there should be placed a tabernacle for keeping the Blessed Sacrament. The tabernacle should be strong and secure so that all danger of profanation is avoided. When the Blessed Sacrament is in it, the tabernacle should be covered with a veil and a light should always burn in front of it. The tabernacle should con-form to the style of the altar and the church and should not differ too much from the style of tabernacles already in use. The tabernacle should represent a true dwelling-place of God with men and should not be adorned with unusual or misleading symbols. Finally, the Sacred Congregation notes that tabernacles that are off and apart from altars are strictly forbidden. More-over, with regard to the way of keeping the Blessed Sacrament or with regard to the form of the tabernacle, there is no presump-tion in favor of contrary customs, unless the custom is centenary or immemorial. Social Questions Speaking on May 3, 1957 (AAS, pp. 351-55), to a group of Belgians, the Holy Father underlined the necessity of better housing for a large number of people. Ten to twenty per cent of the total population of European countries, he pointed out, live in subhuman circumstances where they can not live a decent and truly human life. Such circumstances not only weaken health and physical stamina but also induce extensive moral damage: immorality; juvenile delinquency; loss of the desire to work; and revolt against the society that allows such subhuman conditions to exist. On May 26, 1957 (AAS, pp. 403-14), the Vicar of Christ addressed a group of Italian Catholic lawyers on the right way of giving assistance to those in prison. The Holy Father began his allocution by studying the presuppositions of all effec- 346 November, 1957 ROMAN DOCUMENTS tive aid to prisoners. The first of these presuppositions is con-. cerned with the relationship that exists between the punishment and the crime committed. Only the conviction that the prisoner is culpable can furnish a sure basis for all consequent aid. It must be remembered, the Holy Father stated, that even in con-crete situations the great majority of men have the possibility of regulating their personal conduct and hence of contracting obli-gations and responsibilities. This is the reason why morality and law are correct when they assert that in a given case cessation of free will must be proved, not the presence of free will. The second presupposition to be borne in mind when work-ing for prisoners is concerned with the suffering that is necessarily included in the punishment. A prisoner, the Pontiff remarked, is not comparable to a sick person; since the latter has no obliga-tion to suffer, it is right to seek to lighten his sufferings as much as possible. The prisoner, however, deserves to suffer, hence the removal of all suffering cannot be desired in the case of prisoners. The third and final presupposition to be considered cen-ters around the meaning and purpose of the punishment that has been inflicted on the prisoner. Since human punishment should in its own way imitate divine punishment, the Holy Father turned to a consideration of the meaning and purpose of the punish-ments inflicted by God on sin. The primary and essential pur-pose of divine punishment, he observed, is the reestablishment of the order of things violated by sin. By sin, man prefers him-self to God; by imposing suffering on the sinner, God constrains him to submit himself to the divine will and hence to restore the order he has previously violated. This, however, is not the sole purpose of divine punishment as far as this world is concerned. Often the punishments willed by God in this life are rather medic-inal than vindictive. They are meant to reeducate the sinner, to lead him to repentance, and to turn him toward goodness and justice. All these aims of divine punishment should be striven for also by human punishment. 347 R. F. SMITH Review .for Religious His Holiness then took up the manner in which prisoners can best be aided. The first aid to be given to prisoners is to know them thoroughly: their origin, their formation, their life up to the present time. Secondly, one should attempt to con-vince them that through their detention they can efface the errors of their past and remake their lives. Finally, one must love the prisoner. It is not sufficient to approach him with correct ideas and notions; along with this must go a love that is as comprehensive and devoted as is maternal love. In conclu-sion the Holy Father advises his listeners to look on prisoners as God looks upon them: in a spirit of justice tempered with mercy. Miscellaneous Matters On June 2, 1957 (AAS, pp. 433-603), Pius XII issued the Motu Proprio Cleri sanctita¢i, promulgating a new section of the projected Code of Canon Law for the Oriental Churches. This new section contains 558 canons and corresponds roughly to the second book of the Code of Canon Law for the Latin Church. The section deals successively with the following points: the oriental rites; physical and moral persons; clerics in general; clerics in particular from patriarchs to assistant and substitute pastors; the laity. The prescriptions of these new canons will go into effect March 25, 1958. On May t9, 1957 (AAS, pp. 414-17), the Roman Pontiff delivered a radio message to the Third Portuguese Congress of the Apostleship of Prayer held at Braga. In the message the Pope expressed his great desire to see the Apostleship of Prayer propagated among all catagories of persons in the Church. The principal part of his message, however, is concerned with what he called the proper essence and the secret of the immense effectiveness of the Apostleship of Prayer. This is nothing else than the practice of the morning offering of all one's actions and sufferings of the coming day for the intentions of the Sacred Heart and of the Roman Pontiff. This practice, the Holy Father 348 Nove~ber, 1957 ROMAN DOCUMENTS noted, is an elementary and simple one, but when motivated by a conscientious desire to live it out completely, it can revolution-ize a life. On May 20, 1957 (AAS, pp. 355-61), the Holy Father gave an inaugural address for the week of astronomical studies held under the auspices of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The body of the address is devoted to a summary of recent findings with regard to the nature of the stars, in the course of which the Holy Father accepts five billion years as a reason-able estimate of the age of the universe. At the end of the allocution the Pope remarked that that man is fortunate who can read in the stars the message they carry, inviting man to rise to the knowledge of Him who gives truth and life and who estab-lishes His dwelling in the hearts of those who adore and love Him. On May 10, 1957 (AAS, pp. 427-29), the Sacred Peni-tentiary published the text of two prayers composed by His Holiness. The first is a prayer to our Lady of Lourdes; an indulgence of three years can be gained by the faithful each time they recite the prayer with contrite heart. The second prayer is a prayer to be recited by physicians; physicians can gain an indulgence of three years whenever they say the prayer with contrite heart. On June 4, 1957 (AAS, p. 429), the Sacred Penitentiary announced that a plenary indulgence could be gained in connec-tion with the practice of the twelve Sundays in honor of the infancy of our Lord. The conditions for the indulgence are the following: prayers and pious meditations in honor of the mysteries of Christ's infancy on twelve consecutive Sundays of one's own choosing; confession; Communion; visit to a church or public oratory with prayers there for the intention of the Holy Father. 349 Persevering in Prayer Mot:her Marie Vandenbergh, R.C. I. Introduction CONCERNING IGNATIAN spirituality less has been writ-ten perhaps than about some other schools of perfection; nevertheless, there are enough articles and books extant on the subject to make one pause before adding to their number. Especially if one's years in religion are not many, will the query arise, "What do you have to contribute?" The answer is, "Not very much." The best to be hoped for is that being relatively lately come to the field of interior combat might lend freshness to one's point of view. The re-cently won scars of battle might generate a more sympathetic and generally helpful approach to the problems confronting beginners about to enter the lists. There are, conceivably, certain advantages that derive from having traveled far enough along the road of the interior life to get some perspective, but not so far as to have forgotten what it felt like to be just start-ing out. Furthermore, and more importantly as a credential, the Cenacle, keynoted by its motto, "Perseverantes in oratione," has, throughout its brief history of less than two hundred years, upheld in its constitutions an ideal of high spiritual excellence. However large the discrepancy between these ideals of the con-gregation and one's personal attainments, it is surely nonetheless permissible to set forth this heritage and let it speak for itself, at least in regard to one or two problems of beginners in prayer. The Cenacle Religious have an Ignatian Rule and are devoted to the work of providing retreats for laywomen and teaching Christian doctrine. It is not, then, surprising that St. Ignatius's book, The Spiritual Exercises, figures largely in our novitiate training, as well as all through our religious life. 350 PERSEVERING IN PRAYER We are told early in our formation that a Cenacle Religious must learn to love "the solitude of the heart" and "live in prayer as in her proper element." As means toward this spiritual growth, we are given, to quote a superior general, both "meth-ods" and "liberty." The "liberty" is that inspired by the Holy Spirit; the "methods" are those suggested by St. Ignatius--his "Spiritual Exercises." If his directives applying to the special circumstances of retreat time are set aside, there remains a remarkable body of instruction for those who wish to learn the science of the saints and for those who are constituted their guides. In this article we shall prescind entirely from the retreat relationship and, using the Exercises as a manual of spirituality, concentrate on the part methodical meditation is meant to play in our spiritual lives. II. Pro's and Con's The ultimate purpose of any sort of meditation, formal or informal, is to bring a soul to give itself to God by a process of instruction, reasoning, and resolution resulting in the formation of religious convictions and in great purity of life. Training in the use of formal meditation methods often starts with ready-made outlines, developing into personally prepared meditation outlines. This has two principal advantages. First, it prevents waste of time and energy to have something definite in mind to do when you go to your meditation. Second, as a result of the first, it helps develop the habit of prayer. Unless a girl has been living a modified rule of life in the world, the likelihood is that she has been praying "when she felt like it." Entering religious life she must learn to pray at a set time--whether she feels like it or not. A knowledge of prayer technique, i.e., an outlined meditation, will help her get started on days when she doesn't feel like it. It will keep her busy and trying to pray at times when prayer is more or less distasteful. Furthermore, fidelity to the attempt to "contact God," espe-cially when sensible consolation dries up, is a sine qua non 351 MOTHER MARIE VANDENBERGH Re~iew for Religious of real progress. This fidelity is a fruit of habitual use of a method. St. Teresa of Avila :lays down two rules for the would-be saint: refuse God nothing and never abandon the practice of prayer. Use of meditation methods can keep a soul from idleness in prayer time and prevent its giving up from sheer boredom with itself in time of dryness. There are, however, dangers to be avoided in the use of a method: strain and slavish fidelity to mechanics. While bridging the gap between the free and easy ~pray when you please" of life in the world and the regular, disciplined ~pray when you ought" of religious life, it is of paramount importance to avoid undue strain. The spontaneity of the soul's response to God must be safeguarded. It is that element of sweet familiarity with God which, as far as God's grace allows, makes of prayer the personal relationship it is meant to be. Undue efforts such as straining for ~success" in meditation, in-sistence on completion of the full meditation outline, or self-induced fixation of the imagination are sure to result in a ~broken head." Some such form of tension becomes a danger wherever emphasis on high ideals is combined with strict discipline. Ex-aggerated fidelity is one of the occupational hazards of religious life. Especially in the atmosphere of a novitiate, a spirit of holy emulation can make it contagious. To such an extent is this true that over-eagerness can be suspected of spoiling more voca-tions than laxity; for tension, though combined with all the good will in the world, has a paralyzing effect. In certain cases it persists as a chronic ailment through the early years of professed life, sooner or later, let us hope, to be outgrown. In extreme cases, however, the victim may be spiritually crippled for life. The cause of the difficulty does not lie, needless to say, in the traditional methods of prayer. The trouble arises when, instead of the neophyte's mastering the method, the method masters the neophyte. What was intended as a help toward union 352 November, 1957 PERSEVERING IN PRAYER with God becomes an end instead of a means and acts as a hindrance to that very union. The exasperating part of it is that often the victim of this malady, if questioned, would reply glibly that, of course, a method is a means, not an end in itself--and then go right on clinging inordinately to his little shell of prayer technique. In his mind, though he does not realize it, prayer formality has become an indispensible means to union with God; whereas authors and advocates of prepared methods intend them to be used tantum-quantum, just insofar as they help to attain this union. An inexperienced soul can become more attached to its method than to its God. It makes him feel so secure. If ever doubts as to his fidelity to prayer arise, he has only to point to his daily "two preludes, three points, and a colloquy." There, he feels, is concrete evidence that he has not been wasting his prayer time. He does not realize until much later, perhaps, that he has been slowly strangling his spiritual life. Retreat masters have dealt with this difficulty, books have been written about it; but still it can happen that a suffering soul will not recognize itself to be a victim of prayer-tension until the sterility of its meditation and its self-imposed rigidity threaten to kill its religious life entirely. Sheer starvation of soul is its inevitable result. In order to forestall this turn of events if possible, those in charge of the spiritual formation of young people exercise a great deal of vigilance. "I watched my young men like a hawk," said one novice master, "to detect signs of strain." As soon as they began to pray spontaneously and to speak familiarly with God, they were instructed to leave their prepared meditation outline for as long as they could pray without reference to it. "Be relaxed in the presence of God," was the advice they were given. There is a possible hazard, too, for people with a studious turn of mind. They, more easily than others, can be tempted to make a purely mental exercise of their meditation and never 353 MOTHER MARIE VANDENBERGH Review for Religious really pray. There is no real "contact" with God at all. This makes of meditation nothing but a sterile academic study instead of an affair of the heart that leads them to fall in love with their Lord Christ. III. Liberty of Spirit Besides these rather obvious dangers to be avoided in the use of meditation methods, there is a further point it might be well to discuss here. The principal charge leveled against tech-niques of prayer is that slavish fidelity to "two preludes, three points, and a colloquy" hinders a soul's progress toward God in the more simplified forms of prayer. The Spiritual ercises of St. Ignatius are often called upon to bear the brunt of such criticism. For some reason it has been difficult to convince the praying public that to advocate methods of prayer is not the same as to advocate slavish fidelity to them. St. Ignatius of Loyola, himself a contemplative and even a mystic, could hardly have recommended a spirituality which excluded such graces a priori. Anyone thoroughly grounded in Ignatian spirituality knows well enough that there is in it wide margin for originality and freedom. In the beginning of the life of prayer, however, the method is more in evidence than the freedom. The same is true of playing the piano. You learn the scales before you improvise. Benson, in his The Friendship o.f Christ, and Boylan, in This Tremendous Lover, point out that one's prayer life develops along the same lines as human friendship. In the early stages of mere "bowing acquaintance," formalities and conven-tional conversation topics like politics and the weather make up the larger part of the relationship. As the acquaintance deepens, there is growing mutual self-revelation, a sharing of tastes, of personal history, of hopes and fears. There is mutual interest in and support of one another's projects and plans. Should friend-ship ripen to the point of falling in love, the amount of con-versation is reduced to a minimum, and the silent language of 354 November, 1957 PERSEVERING IN PRAYER love takes its place. There is a ~honeymoon" stage, followed by inevitable trials and tests which strengthen and mature the soul. The maturing of married love has frequently been de-scribed as a process of transition from eros to agape, from selfish to unselfish love. A similar process goes on in the prayer life. Eventually prayer comes to the point where it lives by a continuous, silent sacrifice of self for the sake of the Beloved. Such prayer is a life of love and is consonant with a great deal of suffering and self-forgetfulness. Married couples who have lived and loved together for many years have no great need of words; they are content to share each other's silent company. Even so does the soul's happiness come to consist of being silent together with God. In human love this silent togetherness can be such a dear and deep and precious thing that when one partner dies, the other does not linger on much longer. The whole reason for living has disappeared. So in prayer one's whole self can come to be lost in God who is one's only reason for living, moving, being. IV. Variety of Method Although all comparisons limp, at least it should be obvious that in our friendship with the most wonderful Person in the universe we should expect growth and development and change. The purpose of the variety of methods provided by St. Ignatius is to allow for this most desirable adaptability to the attractions of grace. Furthermore, the key to this adaptation is St. Ignatius's direction, "In that point in which I find what I desire, there I will rest, without being anxious to proceed . . . until I have satisfied myself" (Addition IV). This varying of meditation methods to suit one's need of the moment is sometimes a matter wherein a well-meaning young person is too timid. Wisely reluctant to trust her own instincts unless they receive the approval of authority, a beginner must still remember that obedience is controlled initiative. With cer-tain personalities the emphasis must be on the control; with 355 MOTHER ~ARIE VANDENBERGH .Review for Religious others, on the initiative. During the years of religious formation especially, there should be the control of reporting to the novice mistress or superior on how one's time of prayer was spent-- this at intervals of at least two weeks--together with submission to her judgment as to one's success or failure. However, the temptation to cling to a method already approved simply for fear that any other will not receive a similar approval is a kind of human respect. Reduced to its ultimate form, this is hoping to please men at the price of failing to please God. God looks for our initiatives; indeed, if they are good, it is He who inspires them. The novice will do well to remember that she is being led by the hand in order to learn to travel the road alone. Over-dependence on the novice mistress is at least equally as bad as failure to have sufficient recourse to her guidance. Like a good physician, the novice mistress aims at making her ministrations unnecessary. Second year novices, other things being equal, should expect to need less counseling than in their first year, etc. It should not take long for a reasonably intelligent person to acquire enough facility in the use of prayer techniques to begin a little experimentation in method variations. The more personal and familiar our prayer becomes, the better it accomplishes its purpose of uniting us to our Lord and transforming us into His likeness. Of course, if we fall as it were naturally into one or other method, there is no great need to force ourselves to vary our approach--except occasionally to counteract monotony, weariness, boredom; in general, to avoid getting into an unthinking rut. Some people more easily think their way to God, and their meditations reflect this trait. Others lead with their heart. Some can study our Lord in the gospel text with a ready, but quiet, imagination. Some whose imagination tends to run riot, stirring up over-strong emotions, pray best by a loving attention to the presence of God--a simple, peaceful, wordless gaze of the soul focused upon its invisible Guest. 356 Novembe~, 1957 PERSEYERING IN PRAYER Sometimes our prayer is a kind of seeking, searching, asking, wanting. It is a quest for God, a thirst for God, a need for more and more of Him and His love and peace. This is another form of wordless prayer. We may come away from it with no specific resolution, with just an increased consciousness of our need for God, God alone, God first and foremost. It would still be a very good prayer. Some are able to speak familiarly with God, telling Him all the events and hopes and needs of their daily life. So long as there are moments of pause when we can listen to Him, this is a very helpful prayer. It should, however, be a conversation, not a monologue. Too many words can be a barricade between the soul and God. In our daily mental prayer one of these methods may pre-dominate or we may use a combination. On certain days, at certain times in our lives, our prayer methods will almost auto-matically take on certain changes of pattern, simply from neces-sity. As Father R. H. J. Steuart liked to say, the level of our prayer is the level of our lives. Chameleon-like, our prayer adapts to our presefit state of soul, of emotion, or of physical well-being. A real effort to pray when we are in a state of high excitement or deep depression will have a tranquilizing, stabilizing effect. When we are very tired, just to remain numbly in the presence of God is an appropriate prayer. Just to be with Him suffices for us then. The very sick can sometimes unite themselves to God only by the loving contemplation of a crucifix; sometimes even that is beyond them. A weak grip on a crucifix or rosary can symbolize their intention to pray, becoming an outward sign of the inward turning heavenward. When a person is in a state of dryness, interior trial, or is interiorly agitated by a difficulty from without, his prayer is a prayer of spiritual pain. The soul suffers; suffers, it may be, with little hope of respite, with no alleviating sense of vitality as sometimes accompanies a beginner's cross. Father Caussade 357 MOTHER MARIE VANDENBERGH Review for Religious considers it a great grace thus to "suffer weakly," unable to find satisfaction in the thought that one is bearing up nobly under one's cross. This state of pure suffering is extremely pleasing to God and highly profitable to the soul. A person's prayer in this state may be a continual interior Miserere, springing from a great sense of unworthiness and guilt, and in spite of having no specific blemish of conscience to which it may be attributed. Later on, depending upon the degree of purification already accomplished by this state, one's prayer may be an inner attitude of oblation, willingly offering one's suffering self in sacrifice to God. "Take, O Lord, and receive all that I am and all that I have." Lastly, when the purgation of suffering has nearly run its course, an attitude of adoration, of God-regarding prostration of soul, may begin to predominate. These are all methods of prayer which, explicitly or im-plicity, can be found in St. Ignatius's book, The F~xercises. In his very first annotation St. Ignatius gives the title of "spiritual exercises" to "all methods of preparing and disposing the soul ¯ . . to seek and to find the divine will," adding a little later on that "in these spiritual exercises it is more fitting and much better, in seeking the divine will, that the Creator and Lord Himself should communicate Himself to the devout soul . . ." (Annota-tion XV). As Father Peeters has pointed out, "The Exercises in their entirety are presented to us as a means of entering into con-tact with God." V. Discursive Prayer a Preparation for Contemplation Used properly and suitably adapted to the individual, these techniques of prayer are calculated to leave the door open for the divine initiatives by which God leads a soul through darkness into light. Fruitful meditations result in a generosity and purity of soul which dispose a person, insofar as it depends on him, to receive the graces of infused contemplation. In this "gift of prayer," as it is sometimes called, God's action, though imper-ceptible in itself, is powerful in its effects and may temporarily 358 November, 1957 PERSE~CERING IN PRAYER put an end to our ability to meditate discursively. The soul is reduced to a state which seems to be one of comparative inaction, weakness, and passivity. This is because God is taking the lead and the soul is willingly following Him. St. John of the Cross gives three signs by which the director may recognize the beginnings of passive union: impossibility of meditation, painful anxiety as to fervor, and dryness, wi~out consolation in God or in creatures. A soul accustomed to discursive prayer finds a most dis-concerting adaptation necessary when it arrives at the threshold of contemplative prayer. The main reason for the element of surprise is that we cannot possibly imagine ahead of time what the direct action of God will be like or what precise form the purification will take. Secondly, it is a fairly common, though unwarranted, assumption that the habit of prayer increases ac-cording to the familiar pattern of a purely natural habit. But there is this remarkable difference between the habit of prayer and, say, the habit of playing the piano. In the latter case, repetition breeds facility, the habit increasing in kind; whereas the unpredictable element of the supernatural in the habit of prayer allows for an otherwise unaccountable psychological phenomenon. Dom Chapman in one of his letters puts it most clearly: "Progress in prayer is not (1) from troublesome discursive meditation to easy contemplation of a beautiful thought; and from weak affections to fervent and strong affections, but (2) from easy discursive meditations to the impossibility of medi-tating at all (except by ceasing to pray), and from easily warmed affections to no affections at all--to aridity, that is, and to 'night.'" The paradoxical fact about meditation is that we expect it to become easier and easier~'and instead it becomes harder and harder, then "nauseous or impossible." Dom Chapman says in another letter, "Meditation is usually necessary in order to induce souls to love God and to give them-selves to Him. But at that point--when it begins to be reached 359 MOTHER MARIE VANDENBERGH Review for Religious --the power of meditation usually stops and something better begins." It is not our purpose here to analyze the ~something better," but to indicate the point at which there must be a radical change in our technique of prayer. That St. Ignatius envisaged the possiblity of such a transi-tion is evident in his F~xerc[s~s, pronouncedly in the contrast between Annotations IX and X. He presupposes knowledge of the different phases of prayer in his instructions to the director, though he includes nothing specific in regard to passive prayer in his instructions for the retreatant. The reason for this is primarily historical, for the Jesuit founder had been called up before the Spanish inquisitors two and three times to have his writings examined for teaching a false mysticism. In such cir-cumstances it was better not to put everything he knew into print. Secondarily, there is a reason for his reticence that to some extent still applies. This is simply that it is almighty God who decides when and if a soul is to enter upon the way of contempla-tion, and it is the director who decides whether or not this has actually been the case. St. Ignatius allows for the possibility of a soul's discontinuing discursive prayer in his instruction that it rests where it finds satisfaction. He expects the director to do the further instruction when the need arises. Naturally, a soul is not incapable of recognizing in itself the symptoms mentioned by St. John of the Cross. But no man is a good judge in his own case, and far too often wishful thinkers in the spiritual life have attributed to almighty God phenomena that were actually the natural products of their own faculties and pas-sions, the result, say, of insomnia or indigestion, or in some cases the work of the devil. Hence the need for solid guidance. In the text of the F~xercises, St. Ignatius divides the retreat into four ~weeks" which correspond roughly to the purgative (first week), illuminative (second and third weeks), and unitive (fourth week) ways so often mentioned by spiritual writers. He 360 November, 1957 PERSEYERING IN PRAYER makes a noteworthy distinction between the treatment to be ac-corded souls suited only for the meditations on the purpose of life, on sin, and on repentance customary in the first "week" and the treatment of souls capable of the greater service of God asked of them in the ensuing "weeks." He has two sets of "Rules for the Discernment of Spirits," applying to the age-old principles whereby the director decides if a soul is being influenced by the good or the evil spirit or by its own self. The rules for souls of the first-week category are rules for beginners in the spiritual life, i.e., either souls struggling to break with habits of mortal sin or innocent souls just learn-ing how to meditate. (Discursive meditation is good for both alike.) The rules for the second week are for the more pro-ficient. Their application extends indefinitely onward into the heights of union with God. This marked difference between the advice St. Ignatius would give beginners and the advice suitable to the more advanced shows plainly that the author of the Exercises took it for granted that the time would come when a radical change would take place in the soul's activity. In other words, he allows for the fact that discursive meditation in many cases develops into something very different, while taking into con-sideration the instances where it does not. "If Ithe retreatant] be a person who has been little versed in spiritual matters and . . if he betrays impediments to making further progress in the service of God our Lord . . . , then let not the person giving the Exercises converse with him upon the rules of the second week for discerning various spirits, because in the pro-portion that those of the first week will benefit him, those of the second will do him harm, because they contain matter too subtle and too high for him to understand" (Annotation IX). St. Ignatius never intended his methods to be set above the valid inspirations of grace, though some of his devotees have at times given that impression. His admonition, "It is 361 MOTHF~R MARIE VANDENBERGH Review for Religious not to know much, but to savor the matter interiorly that fills and satisfies the soul," certainly shows that he meant meditation to be used in such a manner as to pave the way for the simpli-fying process God so often undertakes in the prayer of the generous. A person who remembers this advice will find Igna-tian spirituality an excellent preparation for "the gift of prayer." By way of further example we might point out that a soul formed by the asceticism of St. Ignatius is told, when prayer is dry and disgusting, to prolong it somewhat beyond the usual space of time; when prayer is sweet and easy, to resist the temptation to linger longer. This discipline breeds the detach-ment from even spiritual delights and the perseverance through times of desolate prayer that are the necessary preparation for higher gifts of God. This teaching trains a soul not to give up when ~he going gets tough and, contrariwise, not to make sweetness or facility the criterion of its success in prayer, safely guiding it between the Scylla and Charybdis of its spiritual Odyssey. VI. Adapting the Exercises to the More Proficient Throughout the Exercises there is a noticeable progres-sion of thought, an ascending scale of higher and higher moti-vation, designed to overtake a soul at whatever point it has reached in its journey toward God and guide it further, as far as the grace of God permits. St. Ignatius, though unwilling to speak to beginners about the conduct of the more advanced, did not believe that an earnest soul who has made some progress should be allowed to think that there is no other sort of prayer possible except discursive meditation for "ordinary" Christians and mystical phe-nomena for the saints. This is a common misconception castigated by Father M. Eugene Boylan, O.C.S.C., in his practical little vol-ume, Difficulties in ~ental Prayer. Although St. Ignatius in Annotation XI exhorts the retreatant "so to toil in the first week as if he did not hope to obtain anything in the second," 362 November, 1957 PERSEVER,ING IN PRAYER he does not intend this to mean that a soul should be kept in ignorance of the fact that there is something further to attain, especially if he is generous in striving to correct his defects and to remove the obstacles to his further progress. The sign St. Ignatius gives as an indication to the director that it is safe to instruct a soul in the ways of more advanced spirituality is the discovery that the soul ~is assaulted and tempted under the semblance of good," because this is characteristic of a per-son who ~is exercising himself in the illuminative way" (Anno-tation X). Sometimes in the providence of God it is not very long before the neophyte needs to know what lies ahead for him. When a soul, then, has reached the degree of purity of life where its temptations are not of a ~gross and sensual nature," or when discursive meditation is ceasing for some legitimate reason to be profitable, it is time for him to learn what the future may hold in store. Then, if his prayer begins to dry up, there will be less danger that he will do himself harm by violent efforts to ~pray as I used to," not realizing that there can come a time when a person who says, ~I can no longer meditate," must learn to pray another way. What is the part to be played by methodical meditation during the confusing transition period when the soul is not as yet accustomed to its new role as patient rather than agent? Dom Chapman's advice at this point was always, ~Pray as you can and don't try to pray as you can't,t'' With some persons, the transition between discursive prayer and passive prayer is' abrupt. With others it is gradual, periods of passivity being interspersed with times when meditation is possible to some degree. There is likely to be danger of illusion in refusing to meditate when it becomes possible, even as there is danger in making violent efforts to meditate when it is not possible. Here one's early training in outlined meditation becomes very useful, for the safe course seems to be to make an initial try at medi-tation when beginning the time of prayer, but to rest content if the trial proves a failure. The habit of turning to a preo 363 MOTHER MARIE VANDENBERGH Review for Religious pared outline is a safeguard, in spite of the fact that more and more the method of "doing something" must be replaced by a method of ~doing nothing," of learning to take one's cues from God, God working within the sanctuary of the soul. Sometimes a soul finds it helpful to pray, as it were, by means of an attitude of soul, of humility, supplication, and self-oblation. For such a soul has received ~the call of the King," inviting those who wish to distinguish themselves ir~ God's service to follow their Lord in poverty and suffering. If a person cannot make the offering of himself and all he posses-ses to serve the kingdom of Christ, he obviously has neither the grace nor the capacity for the sacrifices necessary for further progress in the prayer life. If he has made the offering, he must be prepared to fulfill it literally; for, stripped of even the spiritual armor in which he trusted, he will suffer unbearably in the experience of his poverty in the sight of God. This, however, is the way God must treat a soul in order to make it pliant in His hands. When a person has learned how to remain tranquil under the direct action of God, he has learned how to pull in the oars of meditation-technique and let ,:he breath of the Spirit fill his sails. He has learned how to launch out into the deep. Let it be noted, though, that, if the soul may ~pull in the oars," it does not throw them away. As Father 1~. H. J. Steuart put it, "You don't tear down the staircase just because you have arrived at the top." Father Boylan makes the sage re-mark that we must have "the humility" to return to discursive prayer when the facility for it is restored. In many an instance the course grace takes after passive stages have done their work is to restore the discursive ability in combination with the infused contemplation that is the fruit of the purification the soul has undergone. It would be a tempting digression to go more into detail in regard to the rules for discerning spirits, but that would be beyond the scope of this article which set out to be no 364 November, 1957 PERSEVERING IN PRAYER more than a general survey. The point we have tried to em-phasize is that in the text of the Exercises can be found the evidence that St. Ignatius, though he teaches methodical prayer, by no means intended to limit souls to it if they were drawn by God to something simpler. He definitely planned the F~xercises to prepare and dispose a soul to find more quickly the will of God in its own regard--and devotion to the will of God is one of the marks of a contemplative soul. There are references in rules 2 and 8 of the second week to "consolation without any preceding cause" as being the work of God par excellence in the soul. There follow warn-ings against pseudo-consolation inspired by the devil and the illusions of auto-suggestion apt to follow upon actual and God-sent "consolation." These show how familiar St. Ignatius was--and how familiar he expected the director to be--with the hazards attendant upon even the most legitimate graces of infused prayer. Without doubt, Ignatian spirituality, rightly understood, is designed to prepare a soul for God's direct action, protect it during the dangers of the transition period, and safeguard it from illusion when it has accustomed itself to surrender to the will of God. Mother Marie Aimee Lautier, superior general of the Cenacle for nearly fifty years, stressed the function of prayer in our "mixed" vocation as "contemplative in action." "Masters of the spiritual life," she wrote, "teach that the soul called to perfection, after being exercised in the exterior practice of charity, is drawn by the contemplation of divine things to an interior conversion and purification, so that being wholly en-kindled and burning with divine love, it is impelled anew by the strength of this love towards creatures in order to give them of its fullness: 'The love of Christ impels us' (II Cor. 5:14). "Its charity, then, is quite different from what it was at the beginning; and its zeal which at first was the auxiliary of natural activity now becomes the disinterested fruit of love." 365 BOOK REVIEWS Review for Religious This same holy religious exhorted her daughters, "Ask for this precious gift [of prayer]; we must prepare ourselves to receive it, and we must await it with confidence. It is the gift par excellence of our vocation." Of course, the Cenacle tlas no monopoly on it. We are grateful, though, to have the strong guidance of St. Ignatius to help us achieve our goal. Book Reviews [Material for this department should be sent to Book Review Editor, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, West Baden College, West Baden Springs, Indiana.] THE FIRST JESUIT, ST. IGNATIUS LOYOLA. By Mary Purcell. Pp. 417. The Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland. 1957. 5.oo. In her preface to this delightful life of St. Ignatius, Miss Purcell says that if he were better known, he would be better loved and oftener invoked. Her own efforts are no small contribution to this happy con-summation. Too often St. Ignatius has been presented to us in the guise of what Father La Farge, in his forward, calls "a glorified efficiency expert," with the result that the lovable qualities of the saint are frequently overlooked, thus leaving him in these later days a figure more feared and admired than loved. "It is interesting to note," writes Miss Purcell, "how many people in so many different walks of life 'become fond of Inigo.' He seems to have had an easy and spontaneous manner, a nature that led him to make friends quickly. In the places where he lived, people soon got to know of him . He had an extraordinary flair for knowing exactly which ap-proach would win the heart of the particular individual or group he was contacting at any given time. And 'When he gazed at one,' writes a contemporary, 'while his conversation was benign, his eyes seemed to pierce the heart, to see all; conversing with him only once, you felt that he knew you through and through.' " It would seem that the reaction has well begun; and future biographers, taking their cue from writers like PSre Dudon, Father Brodrick, and Miss Purcell, will in the future give us an Ignatius 366 November, 1957 BOOK REVIEWS who, besides being a founder and a general, is also a fellow-pilgrim and a father. A preliminary glance at the bibliography might suggest that Miss Purcell has undertaken to write something more than a merely popular life of St. Ignatius, and the reader will not have gone very far before he realizes that there is a great deal of scholarship to it; and once he gets himself tangled up in the notes at the end of the volume, he won't have any doubt about it. Miss Purcell has gone to original sources, some of which may have been within easy reach, like the seventy-seven volumes of the ~lonumenta llistorica Societatis Jesu. But others must have been farther removed, like the diaries of the pilgrims who accompanied Inigo on his pilgrimage to Jeru-salem or about his time made pilgrimages of their own. There is a very thorough treatment of the Irish mission of Fathers Broet and Salmeron, but this reviewer feels that Miss Purcell is too sweeping when she calls it the only complete failure in the life of Ignatius. After all, they were not missionaries bent on the conversion of a pagan land. They were papal nuncios. They came, they saw, they returned. Uoila! Since they were papal nuncios, we might have wished that their visitation had been carried on with a little more leisure and something of the ceremonial becoming their exalted rank. But they knew they were putting their heads into the lion's mouth, even if St. Ignatius thought that Ireland was another Guipuzcoa when in fact it was what we should call today hardly more than a satellite state. The very fact that they survived, surveyed conditions, and escaped with their lives to make their report is by itself a considerable achievement and deserves to be regarded as some measure of success. Some readers will be very sceptical about accepting one or other of Miss Purcell's conclusions, for instance, that Inigo was "barely five feet tall" and that he was "red-headed." Consulting the sources given I can find none that warrants such a conclusion. He is described as being of "medium height" or "a little below medium." Barely five feet would place him in the under-sized class completely. One wonders how a man of such small proportions (even remember-ing Napoleon) could hope for any notable success in the use of arms on battlefield or jousting court, or expect to play Amadis to any Oriana. Yet we know that Inigo, the caballero, made no bones about aiming at glorious successes in both instances. 367 BOOK REVIEWS Review for Religious There is a text in the Monumenta which refers to the caput aereum, and although the term occurs twice in the same paragraph, the editors of the hlonumenta seem to be convinced that aereunt should be cor-rected to cereum, since it evidently refers to the wax effigy which was taken from the death-mask. His complexion seems to have been what we should today call blond verging on ruddy. Juan Pascual, who described him as he remembered meeting him on his way down from Montserrat, wrote of him as being "'no molt alt, pero blanc j ros, j de molt bona cara" (p. 83), which is the Catalan for "medium height, fair complexion, and handsome." Occasionally Miss Purcell is a bit unguarded and leaves herself open to misinterpretation, as when she says: "One cannot think of Ignatius of Loyola limping a little at times as he trudges from Rome out to Monte Cassino to give the Exercises to Dr. Ortiz and back again to see how Cardinal Contarini is faring in his contemplations, without recalling a veritable litany of great names . " The reader is not always ready to interpose a month or more between these two excursions; and, while Miss Purcell of course knows better, this sentence can easily give the the untraveled reader the impression that Monte Cassino is one of the outlying hills of Rome and that St. Ignatius was giving the Exercises simultaneously, but separately, to these two veritably great men, Pedro Ortiz and Cardinal Contarini. We do know that once he had three exercitants in retreat simul-taneously in different parts of Rome, a task which obliged him daily to trudge practically the periphery of the city, "limping a little," not only at times, but every step of the way. Limitations of space may be responsible for other false impres-sions as that in St. Ignatius's dealing with Father Simon Rodrigues, whom he did not threaten with "excommunication," or even dismissal, although he was fully prepared to proceed to this latter extreme if Rodrigues persisted in his refusal to leave Portugal and come to Rome, as his Father General had begged him to do in letter after letter. But, then, Miss Purcell did not write this book for specialists. She has given us a delightful picture of St. Ignatius, but an in-complete one. In fact, who would ever think of making it complete? For what she has given us we should be deeply grateful. The points here adversely touched upon are minor indeed and do not in the least impair the picture that is actually presented. The reader is 368 November, 1957 ~OOK REVIEWS given a fair and unbroken page to examine, typographically speaking; but he pays for this satisfaction in the added labor of tracking down references. But Miss Purcell's publisher is to blame for that; and, after all, it is for the most part only rugged reviewers or determined researchers who will have to bear that burden. Their growling should not be taken as an attempt to bite.--WH,LI,.\.x~ J. Youxc,, S.J. A WOMAN OF UNITY. By Sister Mary Celine, S.A. Pp 357. Franciscan Sisters of the Atonement, Graymoor, Garrison, New York. 1956. $4.50. A Woman of Unity tells the story of Mother Lurana of Gray-moor. The career of this "remarkable woman" is traced through her childhood, her searchings as a young woman for a life of perfect poverty in Anglican communities, her founding of Graymoor with Father Paul Francis, her reception into the Church with her com-munity in 1909, and her direction of the Society of the Atonement in her mature years. Mother Lurana is an inspiring personality; and in these days, when church unity is talked of more seriously than at any time since the Protestant Revolt, her life and vocation are of especial significance. It is most interesting to read of the humble beginnings of the Chair of Unity Octave at Graymoor during Mother Lurana's Anglican days and also to know of her dissatisfaction even then with the Anglican position on the unity and leadership of the Church: "In legislative bodies not so much as a committee of three can discharge its functions, unless one of the three presides in the chair of unity. It is a futile dream to contemplate a united Church on earth without a visible head. If every parish must have its rector, and every diocese its bishop, and every province its archbishop, how could the whole Catholic Church throughout the world exist as one fold without having one supreme or chief shepherd over all?" Mother Lurana conceived her life's task and the task of her society to be that of "repairer of the breach," to use one of her favorite ways of expressing her vocation to work for church unity. Sister Mary Celine, a member of Mother Lurana's community who knew her personally, has faithfully reconstructed her story from letters, official documents, and personal recollections. The biography proceeds in clear and chronogical sequences, and Mother Lurana is given ample opportunity to speak for herself in letters and exhorta-tations to the community. Sister Mary Celine brings the reader into the Graymoor community to share the joys and sorrows of the mother 369 BOOK REVIEWS Review for Religious foundress and the pioneer nuns. The book, however, has a tone reminiscent of the sweet and moralizing hagiography popular in an earlier day, a tone to this reviewer somewhat distasteful, and abounds in phrases and reflections which seem a little worn. On the other hand, even though in the pages of A Woman of Unity Mother Lurana loses a trifle of the vibrant humanity which must have been hers, she clearly has aroused in her biographer and all her religious daughters an admiration which is at once warm and contagious. As a matter of fact, it is difficult to see how anyone who knew her could help but admire the courage and spirit of this woman who braved all in order to lead others to the Chair of Unity. --JOHN W. O'~IALLEY, THE WORD OF SALVATION. Translation and Explanation of I. The Gospel According to St. Matthew by Alfred Durand, S.J., and II. The Gospel According to St. Mark by Joseph Huby, S.J. Translated into English by John J. Heenan, S.J. Pp. 937. The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee 1, Wis. consin. 1957. $12.50. A translation of the famous Verbum Salutis series has been long overdue. Father Heenan is to be congratulated for making two of the volumes of this popular commentary available to English-speak-ing Catholics. The English version of both text and commentary is fortunately unabridged, and the translator has thoughtfully added a handy index for each Gospel. Father Heenan has preferred to reproduce the text of the Gospels with an eye to the French rather than to follow strictly any one of the standard English versions. But the words of the Gospel flow at least as smoothly as they do in the Confra-ternity edition, and to many they will have a more familiar ring. Some may be disconcerted by the alternation of you and thou in the text. However, the former is used consistently for the plural; and it seems that Father Heenan wisely opted for accuracy in this instance as in all other respects, since the main feature of the book is the commentary which closely follows the translation of the gospel text. The style of the English commentary follows the French quite well: simple, direct, concise, with occasional fluent passages. As for content, technical discussions are limited to a bit more than the minimum 370 November, 1957 ]lOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS claimed by the authors, but will prove to be of interest even to the layman in biblical studies. It should be noted that these few learned asides are written in non-technical language and can easily be handled by the average intelligent reader. They serve, too, to undergird what might otherwise be considered a pious commentary with little basis in historical fact. One cannot ignore history if one seeks a fuller understanding of the words of Christ. The Savior became incarnate for all men, but taught and toiled primarily for the lost sheep of the House of Israel. It was in their language, thought-patterns, and history that He voiced the Word of Salvation. This volume will go far to re-create for the preacher, student, and religious the atmosphere of the Gospel and its interpretation throughout the course of Christian tradition. It will be quite help-ful to those who prefer spiritual reading and meditation material which is more directly in touch with the words of the Gospel than is usually the case in a "life of Christ." The text and commentary are neatly divided into sections averaging about six pages of com-mentary for every five of ten verses of text. The apologetic value of the work should not be overlooked by teachers of high school and college. Father Smith Instructs Jackson, for all its merits, is often completely unacceptable to the college student or to the prospective convert whose chief difficulties lie in understanding the paradoxical words of Christ Himself. In this connection, Sodality study clubs (at least on the high school senior level) might use the Word of Salva-tion with much profit. May this excellent work see even more editions than its French original. It is to be hoped that the companion volume (Luke and John) will appear shortly.--CH.~RI, ES H. (~J~L~X', S.J. 8OOK ANNOUNCI:MI:NT$ THE BRUCE PUBLISHING COMPANY, 400 North Broadway, Milwaukee 1, Wisconsin. De Ordine. Tom. I. De Institutione. By Emmanuel Doronzo, O.M.I. Priests and seminarians will certainly want to read this monumental Latin work on the sacrament of orders. This first volume of more than a thousand large, closely printed pages begins with an eighty-two page introduction to the whole treatise which is to consist of seven chapters. The introduction is followed by the first chapter 371 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS Review for Religious which takes up all the remaining pages. This chapter is divided into three articles: the first on the existence of orders; the second on the sacramental nature of orders; and the last on the three grades of orders. There are exceptionally complete bibliographies and indices. The work gives promise in this first volume of being even more exhaustive than the author's justly renowned work on the sacrament of penance. Pp. 962 ~- 41. $19.00. Canon Law Digest. Annual Supplement Through 1956. By Lincoln T. Bouscaran, S.J., and James I. O'Connor, S.J. $1.75. CARMELITE SISTERS, Santa Teresita Hospital, Duarte, Calif. The Doctor's Widow. By William M. Queen. This is the first biography of Mother Maria Luisa Josefa of the Most Blessed Sacra-ment, foundress of the Discalced Carmelite Sisters of the Third Order. This congregation was born at the turn of the century and has two provinces, one in Mexico, the land of its birth, the other in California. Its expansion to California was one of God's ways of drawing good out of the evil of the persecution of the Church in Mexico. This inspiring book will be of interest to both religious and lay women since Mother Josefa was an exemplary wife before she became a religious. Pp 127. Cloth $1.00. The Soul's Elevation, by a Discalced Carmelite Father, a master of novices, is a meditation book for religious. In the introduction we find an explanation of meditation in which the author outlines both the Ignatian and the Sulpician methods. There is also a brief outline of prayer in general. In Part I there are eight meditations on the four last things. Part II contains nine meditations on the gifts of God to man. Part III devotes eight meditations to the Passion of our Lord. Part IV consists of three considerations on Holy Communion. There is also an appendix which contains "Mirror of the Good Religious" and meditations for the day of investiture, of first vows, of final vows, and of jubilee. Pp. 94. Paper $1.00. GRAIL PUBLICATIONS, St. Meinrad,Indiana. Follow Christ. No 18. This largepamphlet on vocation to the priesthood and the religious life, profusely illustrated with excellent photographs, deserves wide distribution. In it the questions which eighth grade boys and girls of today are actually asking about the important topic of vocation are answered by experts. It 372 November, 1957 [~OOK ANNOUNCEMENTS contains much information about seminaries and many religious orders and congregations for both men and women. Pp. 134. $0.75. SHEED AND WARD, 840 Broadway, New York 3, New York. Terrible Farmer Timson and Other Stories. By Caryll House-lander. Pictures by Renee George. Here are twelve stories for children which first appeared in The Children's Messenger of Lon-don, England. Children will be pleased with them and learn 'some very profitable truths without pain or effort. Pp. 152. $2.50. Soeur Angele and the Bell Ringer's Niece. By Henri Catalan. This is the third detective story by the author in which a Sister of Charity appears in the role of detective, and she does so without derogating in any way from her role as religious. The setting and characters are typically French. Pp. 179. $2.50. SISTERS OF ST. FRANCIS, Mount Alvernia, Pittsburgh 9, Penn-sylvania. As a Living Oak. Biography of Mother Baptista Etzel, O.S.F. By Sister Mary Aurelia Arenth, O.S.F. There should be more, many more biographies of the men and women who have rendered out-standing service to God and religion. Such biographies would extend the sphere of influence for good which they exercised while living to the men and women of ~he present generation. We have the material; what seems to be lacking are authors to put it to good use. Hence we welcome the present biography with a great deal of satisfaction. It is the biography of Mother Baptista who was one of the pioneers of the Franciscan Sisters in Pennsylvania, and their third mother superior. That so many of the hardships of the pioneer days are now a matter of history for this congregation and that their sphere of influence has been so greatly enlarged is due very largely to her courage, vision, and fortitude. May this biography inspire many more souls to follow where she led; may it also inspire authors to gather material from the same fertile field, the pioneer religious in the United States. Pp. 133. $3.00. SISTERS OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN, St. Scholastica's, Glebe Point, Australia. The Wheeling Years. The Sisters of the Good Samaritan. 1857. 1957. Faith and reason prove the providence of God for His crea-tion. History illustrates it for the discerning reader. In The Wheel- 373 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS ing Years we have such an illustration. The book, made more graphic with drawings and many photographs, recounts the story of the foundation in Sydney, Australia, of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan just one hundred years ago. It tells the story of the first difficult years and their subsequent growth. Houses of the congregation are now found in the whole length and breadth of the island continent. This new congregation adapted the rule of St. Benedict to the needs and requirements of life on a continent at that time rapidly growing to the stature of a new nation. In this centenary publication we also find an account of their spirit, the training imparted to their members, and the work that they do for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. Despite the many demands made on them at home, they have not been deaf to the call of the missions and have two foundations in Japan. We join with these sisters in thanking God for the innumerable graces of the past one hundred years. SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL, 2187 Victory Boulevard, Staten Island 14, New York. Holy Mass and Life. By Aloysius Biskupek, S.V.D. "The more the significance of the Mass is understood, and the more its power is used for the realization of the ideal Christian living, the more holiness there will be among the faithful." With these words the author sums up his book in the final chapter titled Conclusion. To offer adequate means to the faithful to attain this end was the motive which guided his pen. His explanations are clear, his exhortations persuasive, and his meditations on the unchanging prayers of the Mass even priests who have said Mass for many years would find helpful. There are twenty-three full page photographs of a priest at various parts of the Mass. Pp. 189. $2.50. 374 ( uestdons and Answers [The following answers are given by Father Joseph F. Gallen, S.J., professor of canon law at Woodstock College, Woodstock, Maryland.] Why has the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS emphasized so frequently the simplification of the habit of religious women? The articles and statements in the R.EVIEW have been mere ex-planations of the principles of Plus XII and the Roman congregations. They have been relatively conservative, as may be seen from some of the following quotations. "The first is that of particular observances. Each of these, even the most material, should bear at least indirectly on the sanctification of the religious. We find a characteristic example in the habit. It is certain that in itself, especially as regards form or color, it contributes very little to the perfection of charity. Nevertheless, it places the re: ligious in a state of separation which is visible to the world and sym-bolizes and favors that interior separation which is the first step of the soul in search of God" (Dora Basset, O.S.B., Religious Sisters. 87). "When the different religious habits were adopted by the founders, they resembled the dress of the poor people of the period. Today a habit is required that helps the body, not one that embarrasses it; it should be practical, simple. A long habit and a simple veil are always graceful and becoming. They offer many practical advantages and are in perfect keeping with modesty and with religious consecration. In order that in our day the religious habit may keep its aesthetic appeal and its character of poverty together with its attractive symbolism of consecration, it would suffice to simplify it. It would thus become more practical, fewer pleats, narrower sleeves, less pretentious coifs and cornettes" (Reverend Victor de la Vierge, O.C.D., ibid., 272-73). "The choice of religious habits for each order was not necessarily motivated by rules of hygiene but frequently by contemporary usage and certain principles of mortification and decency. In recent years a number of religious habits have undergone simplification and a wholesome process of alleviation. Still, it must be recognized that many remain far from healthy either on account of weight (some 375 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Review for Religion, s weigh as much as fifteen pounds), or of difficulty of washing, or of headdresses and winged coifs worn tightly around the head and fore-head" (Sister Germaine Marie, Ckastity, 252). "It is simply not permissible that religious should pay more for their clothing than people of the world. There are habits that have become simply impossible with regard to both health and work, and some have become ridiculous and endanger the acceptance of a voca-tion" lMost Reverend A. Ancel, deta et Documenta (~'on.qressus (;en-eralis de Statibus Perfectionis, I, 381). '~In general, the people approve simplicity and practicality. In those consecrated to God, they desire a habit that is serious, but not eccentric, clean but not ostentatious. Therefore they cannot compre-hend today some religious habits, for example, of some sisters. The eccentricity and at times the awkwardness of their headdress is really incomprehensible. One cannot grasp the purpose of those yards of material in folds and pleats, of the starched cloth that makes the imprisoned face look like a mask, of an obstructive and ridiculous headcovering" (Reverend G. Amorth, S.S.P., ibid., I, 308-09). "Dear Father, many, very many of us are one hundred per cent in agreement with you. Please keep pushing, pushing, pushing and talking, talking, talking until results are obtained. It isn't our fault that we must wear the ridiculously conspicuous and unsuitable out-tits we do. We would be eternally grateful to you if you could do anything to hasten our release from these swaddling bands, this en-casement of the face, the starch, ruffles, pleats, quantity of cloth, number of articles of clothing, the many pins which relentlessly stick our fingers and neck, the dangling, rustling rosary which catches into everything, gets caught in train and bus seats, and is forever break-ing into a dozen pieces and constantly in the repair shop. The Blessed Mother did not make herself conspicuous by adopting a singular mode of dress; she conformed to the style of her day. Religious men when working wear suitable clothes, and neither do they have their heads all bundled up. Give me a habit which is extremely simple, suitable in color and for work, and something that can be thrown into a wash-ing machine and washed at least once a week the way common sense and decency demand. Deliver me from this intricate and unwieldy headdress whose weight and pressure cause so many headaches, eye troubles, sinus troubles, and many nervous troubles as well as adverse comments" (,1 communication from a sister on the missions). 376 Nove~nber, 1957 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 35- Will you please give a bibliography on renovation and adaptation? The primary sources are the statements of Pope Pius XII and the Roman congregations. These were given in the REV[E\V FOR RF.LI(;IOUS, 14-1955-3-11; 85-92; 123-38; 15-1956-309-27. The acts and documents of the first general congress on the states of perfection, held in Rome in 1950, are next in importance. They have been published in four volumes by the Edizioni Paoline under the title of Acta et Documenta Congressus Generalis de Statibus Per-fectionis. Many of the articles of these volumes are in Latin, French, Italian, other modern languages, but very few in English. The next place must be given to other Roman meetings, which can be found in the following works: Acta et Documenta Congressus Internationalis Superiorissarum Generalium; Atti e Documenti del Primo Convegno Internazionale delle Religiose Educatrici; Atti e Documenti del Primo Convegno delle Religiose Rieducatrici, all pub-lished by Edizioni Paoline. In the fourth place are the acts and documents of the various na-tional congresses, e. g., that held for the United States at the University of Notre Dame and published by the Paulist Press in separate volumes for the sisters' and men's sections under the title, Religious Community Life in the United States. The English congress has been published by the Salesian Press under the title, Religious Life Today. In the order of practicality, the next place must be given to the Religious Life Series. These are translations from the French published by the Newman Press and Blackfriars. The volumes that have been translated and published are Religious Sisters, Vocation, Poverty, Chas-tity, Obedience, Doctrinal Instruction of Religious Sisters, and The Direction of Nuns. The volume on common life, La Vie Commune, published in French by Les Editions du Cerf, has not as yet been translated. Again in the order of practicality, the next place is given to Eng-lish works and articles, e. g., The Mind of the Church in the Forma-tion of Sisters, published by Fordham University Press; the Sister Formation Bulletin, published at Marycrest College, Davenport, Iowa; and articles in the l~EVl~.W FOR REL[C, mUS, e. g., 8-1949-86-96; 9-1950- 131-39; 10-1951-75-81; 12-1953-252-72;12-1953-285-90; 12-1953-291-304; 13-1954-13-27; 13-1954-87-92; 13-1954-125-37; 13-1954-169-78; 14-1955- 205-15; 14-1955-293-318; 16-1957-3-9. 377 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Review for Religious A really great source in quantity and quality of thoughts on reno-vation and adaptation will be found in the French periodical, La Vie Spirituelle and its Supplement, from 1946. Many modern spiritual books, especially in French, are affected by the movement and contribute to it. Our work the essentials, included, why the customary is a prayer. Therefore, why not get along with just Mass and Holy Communion? If meditation must be not make a good fifteen-minute meditation rather than one of a half hour? Work is not infallibly nor by any means always a prayer, and it is rarely a prayer in those who do not give sufficient time to formal prayer. The regime of prayer you favor is that of a devout person of the world, not of a religious who professes to be striving for sanctity. The prayer in the religious life must be of a duration and quality sufficient and capable of inspiring and developing a really saintly life. Some words of Plus XII can also be pondered. "However, We cannot refrain from giving utterance to Our solici-tude and anxiety for those who, because of the special circumstances of the times, have lost themselves so completely in a maze of external activities that they have forgotten the first duty of priests, namely, that of securing their own personal sanctification. We have already publicly proclaimed that those so rash as to hold that salvation can be brougl'~t to men by what has been aptly termed the 'heresy of activity' are to be brought back to the right path. We refer to that kind of activity which is not based on divine grace and does not make constant use of the aids provided by Jesus Christ for the attainment of holiness." "With the growth of devotion to exterior works therefore, let there shine forth a corresponding increase in faith, in the life of prayer, in zealous consecration of self and talents to God, in spotless purity of conscience, in obedience, in patient endurance of hardship, and in active charity tirelessly expended for God and one's neighbor. The Church insistently demands of you that your external wor

Issue 4.1 of the Review for Religious, 1945. ; 'Origin o{ Ref.reats forR61i9ious INUMBER 1 Review t:or. Religious Volume IV January'--DeCember, ,1945 Published at THE COLLEGE PRES~ Topeka, Kansas Edited THE JESUIT FATHERS SAINT MARY'S COLLEGE St.'lVlarys, Kansas Origin of Re!:rea~:s for Religious Augustine Klaas5 S.3. THE statement is sometimes made that retreats t~or reli-gious originated in the sixteenth century with 'Saint Ignatius of Loyola. Historical facts, however, do not sustain this assertion. It is true that, owing to the influence mainly of Saint ignatius, and later of Saints Francis de Sales, Charles Bor-romeo, Vincent de Paul, and others, retreats for all classes of socii~ty flourished far .and wide in thelatter part of the sixteenth and especially in the seventeenth century--so much so that the seventeenth century could justly be called "the century of retreats." It is, also'true, as Saint John Eudes, a zealous promoter of retreats, wrote specifically of religious in 1636, that a retreat is made "every year at least once in all religious communities in which piety and the love of God reign." Yet, if one examines the spiritual writers of the period as to the origin of these numerous retreats, he will find that almost unani,mously they ascribe it, not to their own times, but to a far earlier period. They ascribe it to the primitive ¯ Church, even to Jesus Christ Himself. It was Christ, they say, who inaugurated, retreats, particularly when He Him-self made a forty days' retreat in the desert before heginni.ng His public life. Retreatants.down ~the centuries have only imitated Him--the retreatant par excellence. What Histor~t 8a~s Already in the early third century we find Tertullian exhorting the persecuted and imprisoned Christiansl among whom there were many religiou.s,.to make their AUGUSTINE KLAAS 'imprisonment a time of retreat.~ The Lord Himself was very often in retreat, thit He might pray more freely.and withdraw from the world (Luke.4). Let us abolish the word prison: let. us call it a retreat" (Migne, PL 1:623.):. Saint Gregory Nazianzen notes a century later that Christ "did not,need a retreat," but He made it "that we might learn that there i~ a time for action and a time for more sub-lime employment" (PG 35:1238). ~The most striking example of imitating Christ's retreat ot~ forty days is that furnished by the monks of Palestine in the fifth century. During Lent-they were not s:itisfied to imitate merely the Savior's fast, but were determined to emulate also His stay in the desertmand that titeratl~t. The monk who inaugurated these annual Lenten , retreats for religious in the Holy Land was Saint Euthy-mius, who.died in 473 at. the age of ninety-five. An Armenian by birth, he came to Palestine at twenty-nine and established himself about six miles from Jerusale-m, near. the laura of Pharan, a group of separate, independent, monastic cells under a common superior. Each year, from the octave of the Epiphany to Palm Sunda.y, he retired 'to the desert, at first with one companion, Theoctistus, and later with his disciples, Sabbas, Elias, Martyrios, Domitian, and many others. The desert was the iddn'tical, desolate region by the. Dead Sea where our Lord had fasted,-prayed, and was tempted by Satan. Here the monks dispersed and, with .only. wild animals for- companionship, they spent their long retreat, fasting, doingstrenuous penance, soul-searching, and° communing with God. They called their retreat "a combat," and that is precisdly what it was. The length of the retreat varie~l. Thus, Saint Sabbas, thefutuie abbbt of all the hermit monks of Palestine, con- 1The. word i"religious" is applied to these early Christians, not in the technical sense o( canon law, but in a wider sense, namely as persons who had dedicated thegn-selves to God by taking private vows. 4 danuarg, 194 ~ , ORIGIN OF RETREATS tinued ithe practice of his spiritual master, Euthymius, though he almost died of heat and thirst during his first retreats. However, he changed the date of beginning from the fourteenth tO the twentieth of January, in order, he kells us candidly, that before his departure he might cele-brate at the laura the feastsof Saint Antony and of Saint Euthymius--no doubt, to brace himself for the ordeal ahead! The retreats usuaily ended on Palm Sunday., Monks in Retreat A vivid description of th~se Palestinian religious setting out' for their annual retreat is found in the Life of St. Mar~/ of Eg~Ipt (PG 87:3702-3), believed to h~ive been written by Saint Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, . who died in 638: "On the first Sunday of Lent were celebrated pubiicly according to custom 'the holy mysteries, during which all the monks communicated of the unbloody arid life-giving sacrifice. Afterwards they took a little breakfast.Then they assembled in the church, recited some long prayers accompanied with many genuflexions, and lgave one another the kissof peace. Singly they prostrated themselves at the feet of the abbot, asked his pardon, for faults cdmmitted, and his' blessing, that they might, be assisted by his prayers during the imp.ending combat. "Now. the door of the monastery was thrdwn open, and they went forth chanting in unison: 'The Lord is my light and my salvation, wh6m shall I .fear? The Lordis the protector of my life: of. whom shall I be afraid? . . . ' (Psalm 26). One or two were ordinarily left behind to guard the monastery, not that they might protect what was stored up within,, for there was nothing for thieves td steal, but that the church might not be without divine services. "Each one saw to his own provisions as suited l'iimself: AuGUsTINE KLAAS ReVieo7 for Re!igious for :his bodily needs, one ;took along a little bread; another, some figs; a third, s6me dates; a fourth, vegetables soaked in water. Some took nothing along with them except their bodies and the mantles they wore, and when nature should clamor for food, they purposed to eat the herbs which grow in the desert. "Among them there existed an inviolable rule and law~ one was not to know what.austerity another practiced, nor what manner of life he led. "Having crossed over the 3.ordan, they scattered far and wide, seeking complete isolation, so that they would not ¯ even meet one another. If it happened that any one saw another approaching in the distance, he Would turn aside immediately and proceed in another direction. Each one lived for himself and for God, chanting the psalms inces-santly., and subsisting on the food he had with him. "After they had spent the days of Lent in this fashion, they came back to the monastery ota the Sunday-preceding the life-giving resurrection of our Savior from the de.ad. Each returned bearing the personal fruit of his retreat and the testimony of his own conscienc~ as to the manner in which he had conducted himself, and the fruits of labor he had harvested. "No one, however,-presumed to ask another how he had carried out his combat. Such was the rule of the mon-~ astery and it was observed perfectly. For in the desert, every monk fought against himself° with God as referee, not seeking to please men-nor fasting out of ostentation, because what is done for the sake Of men and from the desire to please them, far_from being a help, is often th~ ¯ cause of great personal ruin." Abbot Zozimus in Retreat Naturally we are curious to know more in d~tail how 6 ,~m~um,'tj, 1~)'$.,~ . ORIGIN OF RETREATS these religious spent their Lenten retreat in the desert wil-derness by the Dead Siva. Sophronius tells us how the Abbot Zozimus, presumably a model monk, spent his time of retreat (PG 87:3703).: "According to the custom of the monastery, Zozimus also drossed the Jordan atthe sametime, carrying a modi-cum of provisions' for necessary use, and only the garments he had. on. There, as the rule prescribed, he wandered through the desert. To satisfy nature's demands, he had a set time for taking food, and wherev.er night overtook him, he lay down on the ground to snatch a little sleep. In the morning, he girded himself again for travel and gaily trudged onwards, desiring, as he afterwards narrated, tO penetrate into the deep interior of the desert to find a cer-tain Father living there who might guide him to what he " aspired. And he walked fast, as though he were going to arrive soon at some famous hostelry.' Thus he spent. twenty days in travel. At the.sixth hour, he slowed his pace somewhat, and turning towards the east, he recited his customai'y prayers. At certain times during the day he was al~;o wont to interrupt the strain of walking by resting a little and praying and chanting psalms, now standing, now kneeling." These Lenten retreats are the most notable ,example of retreats for religious in ancient times. They were not a mere passing episode. They continued on for centuries, surviving even the bitter Arab persecutions which destroyed so many Palestinian monasteries and .decimated the monks. Gregory's Life of Saint Lazarus, an eleventh-century document, describes the desert retreats as still flourishing in that century. Outside of Palestine Retreat~ for religious were by no means confined to 7 AUGUSTINE KLA&S [or Religious Palestine. All over the East we find religious withdrawing to greater seclusion and to a more penitential life during Lent. The saintly monk, Macarius of Alexandria, who died about 393, used to remain the whole of Lent in the dark-ness of a windowless, cell (PG 34:1059 C). A certain monk of the desert of Scete, in Egy.pt, was astonished to discover that he could seek spiritual direction from the ven-erable Poemen during the second week of Lent. ~'I almost decided not to come to' .you today," said the monk. "Why?" asked Poemen. '.'I was. afraid that because of Lent you wouldn't open the door to me." "We have not been taught to close the. wooden ~loor," replied the old man, "but the door-of the tongue" (PG 65:336): Saint Hypatius, the most influential monk in Constantinople at-the beginning of the fifth century, made his annual Lenten retreat. And Saint Theodore of Sice, a very famous sixth-century monk of Galatia, later a bishop, began the custom of making an annual retreat in his home at the age ,of twelve, and kept it up throughout his life. From Epiph-any to Palm Sunday, he used to retire to a cave, or an aban-doned, uncomfortable hut without a roof, there to pray and do penance. ¯ These are by no means exceptional, isolated cases: they are illustrative of a custom, widespread among religious throughout the East. And in the West The practice is also found in the Western Church:. Dynamius, in his life of Abbot.Saint Marius, says that the Lenten retreat was common among the religious in Gaul in the sixth century. Saint Radegunde, roundness and abbess of the famous convent of the Holy Cioss at Poitiers, is a notable~example.,,. Among the nuns~of the eighth Century January, 194.s. ORIGIN OF RETREATS we may cite Saint Sigolena,.Abbess of Troclar. " E~ample. after example can be.adduced to sh.ow that. religious, both. men and women, in Italy, France, Brittany, the German Rhineland, England, and Ireland, spent the time of Lent in ¯ the silence and recollection of retreat. Let us conclude the list with Saint Bernard,. Who would not leave his monas-tery to meet his good ~riend William of Saint-Tbierry, nor even to refute the false doctrines of Abelard, that he might not disturb the prayer and solitude of the Lenten retreat , (P.I2. 182:533). For the same reason he wrote shorter let-ters during Lent! Purpose of the Retreats The purpose of these retreats was substantially that of our own retreats: the' "noverim te, noverim me" of Saint Augustinema deeper knowledge of God'~nd of self. It was a time of greater seclusion, of more fervent prayer, of more intense spiritual life and¯activity. It was alooking back over the achievements and fhilures of the past year, and a looking forward with resolutions to a better year to come. In the tenth century, John Tsimitzes addressed, the monks of Mount ~thos in Greece as follow.~: "We exhort all those who practise the ascetical life in monasteries, all those who live in community, to spend the time¯of Lent in recollection, and not to deal with each other except about important~business, or when there is necessity, or on mat-ters of conscience. Let no one go out to work, except on Saturdays, and let all be occupied solely in spiritual things." ¯ Echoing Saint Augustine, Bishop Caesarius of Arlesl one of the most illustrious monks of the early sixth cen-tury, states the general purpose of these Lenten retreats very clearly (PL 39:2019-21): "Although throughout the year, thanks be to God, we llstened often and faith- AUGUSTINE KLAAS ~ ¯ Review) for .Religions fully to the word of God, nevertheless during these days, When we have retired from the. ocean storms of this world -as to the haven of Lent, we must gather the divine word in the receptacle bf. our hearts amid silence andpeace. And this we must do, in order that, occupied with eternal life, we may with the grace of God during these days repair leisurely and put in order all that has been broken, destroyed, damaged, or" lost in the ship of our souls by the year's storms, that is, by the tempests of our sins." Then, Changing the figure, he likens Lent to a time of spiritual harvest, a time .when, by fasting, ~by reading, and by praying, we .make provision for the future, and store up what the soul will live on for the following year. In a word, it is the opportune season to fill the spiritual barns and cellars of the soul. Other Retreats Too ¯ Bdsides these long Lenten retreats for religious, "so prominent in ancient Palestine, but also in vogue through-out the Eastern .and Western Church, there were other retreats in use, of varying .lengthmthree,.seven, or nine days: Notable in the monasteries were those following the religious profession, especially among the Benedictines and Carthusians. Retreats were not confined to religious alone: Including the Lenten one, they weri~ made in surprising numbers by bishops, diocesan priests, and even layfolk from the earliest times, the purpose being always the same, renewal of spirit and imitation of Christ. However, as we leave 'the Middle Ages and approach the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there is a marked.decline in the making of retreats. May not that neglect have been one reason why the reJigious spirit of so many monasteries and convents was. at a 1.ow ebb on the eve of. the Reformation? danUarF, 1945 ORIGIN OF RETREATS Conclusion: Work of Ignatius It is c~rtain, then, that religious made retreats, quite like our own in purpose, long before the time of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. ~The work Of Ignatius lay mainly in injecting a new life into this pot.ent spiritual means to per-fektion that had come to be neglected in religious houses arid else.where, and in popularizing the making of retreats among all classes of soci.ety. This was noted by Saint Francis de Sales, who, in his Treatise on tb~ Looe of God (Lesson 12, chapter 8), lauds th~ retreat as "that holy de~-i~e, familiar to the primitive Christians, but since almost completely abandoned, until the great servant of God, Ignatius of Loyolal restored it to use in the .time of our Fathers." Arid Father Julius Nigronius, S.J., a 17th cen-tury authorit~ on the. history of retreats, cites with apprbval the judgment of his confrere Father John Lori-nus: "If Saint Ignatius is.not the originator, he is at least the restorer .of the spiritual retreat." This he accomplished, and it is his chief merit, by reducing the retreat to a definite method. Surely the spir-itual ideas, doctrines, and practices 0f the Spiritual Exer-cises are not original; they are for.the most part the com-mon traditional Ones of the Church. But the grouping and marshalling 6f them in logical sequence fo~ a clear-Jut and the striking psychological presentation of them,, this was something the old retreats had lacked. And this was supplied by Ignatius in masterly .fashion. He was not alone in. this work, but his is .the most important c0ntribu.- tion to the renascent retreat movement which grew so vig-orously during the sixteenth and seventeen'th centuries. This "second spring" Of retreats has flowered~ and prodt~ced ¯ a fruitful, harvest .that'still goes on increasing from year toi year, to the immense spiritual benefit of religious and of the whole Church of God. 11 AUGUSTINH As Plus XI so aptly remarks in the Encyclical Mens Nostra: "Ignatius, in the lit.tie book he compiled when he was still without literary education, and to which he him-self gave the title of Spiritual Exercises, was the first to trace a path, the first to teach a method of retreat, suitable ~o help marvellously the faithful to detest their sins and to model. holily their lives according to the exampl~ of 3esus Christ. . The power of the Ignatian method,a's Leo XIII affirmed, has been shown by .the experience of three cen-turies, and by the testimony of all who', during that time, have distinguished themselves by. their science of asceticism and sanctity of life. ~' Thus Ignatius of Loyola merits the title bestowed upon him by Plus XI: Patron of Retreats in the Universal Church. " " For Deans of Summer Sessions At about this time many religious throughout the country are beginning to con-sider their summer school programs. For some. of course, there is no difficulty. b~cause their own institutes provid.e the educational facilities. Others, however, must go to outside schools. It has occurred to us that superiors who must send their subjects-to outside schools might benefit by a summer session directory in our March and May numbers. We will gladly pro.vide this service if the deans will send us the requisite information. We cannot afford much space; hence we ask the deans to sen~l us only a very brief statement comprizing the following points: a) Name of school. ' b) Courses ~hat are of. special interest or value to religious. (Evidently we can-not print a complete statement of all courses offered at the summer sessions, We wish to know only about thbse things that have a particular interest or value for reli-gious.) c) Accommodations for religious who attend the summer school. d) Where to write for.further information. Deans who wish to have their announcement appear in the March number should send us the information immediately. Address: The Editors of 'REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, St.Mary's College,, St. Marys, Kati.sas. 12 General Councillors ot: a Religious Inst:i!:ul:e Adam C. Ellis, S.J. [T HAS ALWAYS beenapart of the polityof the Church . to provide that those who are given authority to govern in the name of the Church should have the benefit of the experience and wisdom.of prudent men. The glory of God, the welfare of the Church, and the good of souls,, are immeasurably, promoted by the prudent counsel of good men. Thus the Sovereign Pontiff has his Senate of Car-dinals; Bishops have their Chapter of Canons or board of Diocesan Consultors; Rectors of Seminaries have a two-fold council, one for discipline, the other for the adminis-tration of property. We are not surprised, therefore, but rather expect to find that the law of the Church shou.ld pro-vide some sort of council for religious superiors. It does,so in canon 516, § 1 of the Code of Canon Law, which reads as follows: The superior general of, every institute or monastic congregation, also every provincial superior, and local superior .at least of every fdrmal house, shall have their.councillors, Whose consent, or counsel they must seel( according to the terms of the constitutions and the sacred ca, n6ns. Appointment The Code does riot determine how the general councit-lors are to be appointed. ¯ Hence the constitutions or cus-toms of each institute will have to be Consulted. Usually ~h, ey are elected by ~he general.chapter in conformity with the nbrms laid down in canon 101,' § 1, 1 °, of the Code of Canofi L~w. These norms require an a~bsolute rnajorii~ for an ~lection 0fi the first .or Second ballot: that is, more than bali the vhlid votes cast. Thu~ 8 would constitutd a ADAM C. ELLIS Review for Religious majority when 15 votes are cast. If no majority is obtained oh the first or second ballot, a third and final ballot is taken in. which a relative majorit~l (plurality) will suffice for an election: that is, the person receivin.g the most votes of all the candidates will be elected, even though the i~umber of~ votes he receives does not constitute an absolute majority, or more than half the votes cast. In case two or more persons are tied for the .relative majority on the third ballot, the senior by reason of ordina-tion, of first profession, or of age, is 'considered to be elected. In clerical institutes ordination will determine the senior-ity: in non-clerical institutes the date of first profession, and, in case the persons concerned made their profession on the same day, the senior by reason of age will be considered as ~lected. The first person to be elected councillor is commonly also tl~e assistant or vicar of the superior general, and takes the place of the latter when he is absent or impeded from the exercise of his office. It is also usual to allow any one of the other councillors, but not the first, to hold the office of secretary general. Term of Ot~fce When gendral councillors are electei:l to office in a gen-. eral chapter, they rema'in in office until the nextgeneral chapter of ~lections takes place. Usuall~r their term "of Office coincides with that of the superior general to whose council they have been elected. However, should the superior general .resign,. or die during his term of office, .the assistant or vicarr (first councillor) will take the place of the superio~ general and convoke a general chapter of elec-tions. All the councillors continue in office until this gen-eral c.hapter convenes to elect a.new superior ge.n.eral. After his election the general chapter will proceedto, the. election danuarg, 194 ~ GENERAL COUNCILLORS of his general councill~rs.~ The general law of the Church places no restrictions on the repeated election of the same persons as general coun-cillors. Sometimes the constitutions of individual insti-tutes limit their cap.acity to.two or three successive t~rms of office. ~ General councillors may. not be removed fromoffice except for a grave cause, and.most constitutions require the deliberative vote of the council; as Well a's the subsequent approval of the Holy See, for such a course of action. Duties ot: General Councillom General councillors enjoy no authority merely by rea-son of their, office. They are not commissioned witfi the government of the institute; but it is their special and prin-cipal duty to give advice and aid to the superior general in the government and administration of the entire ~institute. They have the right and the duty to give a deliberative or consultative vote in matters to be submitted to them as pre-scribed by carion law or by the constitutions. Each may likewise suggest to the superior general that certain matters which he judges important and for the good of the insti-tute be submitted to the general 'council for discussion. ¯ Superiors are not limited in seeking the advice of their council to the cases in which the Code of Canon Law or the constitutions require them to do so. They may and should consult their council on all matters of great moment. The Normae of 1901 required that the general coun-cillors reside with the superior general, though they allowed .two of them to reside elsewhere, provided that they could easily be present at council meetings when needed (Art. 276). Furthermore, councillors were forbidden to hold any office whidb might impede their principal duty of 15 ADAM C. ELLIS Revi~to for Religious assisting the superior general ~ith advice and co~unsel (Art. 279) ; specifically, they were prohibited from holding the office of bursar or treasurer general (Art. 284), as well as that Of master of novices¯ (.Art. 300). These provisions are found today in most c6nstitutions of congregations approved by the Hoy See, although they are not contained _in, the Code. A councillor, though not enjoying any authority by reason of his office, may be given a share in the authority of the superior general in certain matters if the constitu-tions do not prohibit it. Or he may be given another office which carries ~authority with it, such as that of local superior. Council Meetings The Code does .not determine when or how often the superior must call meetings of his council. Constitutions usually prescribe that the general council meet once a month, and oftener whenneed shall require. ¯ ' Ir~ council' meetings it is customary for the superior gen~ eral to propose a subject for consideration and, after having given whatever information is required for a proper under-standing of it, to ask the opinion.of the councillors. It is advisable (and sometimes required by the cons~titutions) to ask the youngest councillor first, then the others in order,,and to have the superio.r general give his opinion last, so as not to influence the councillors by any undue regard for the opinion of their elders. After a reasonable time has been devoted to discussing the subject under consideration, a vote is taken. This vote may be eil~he~ delibe.rative or consultative, oral or secret. Deliberative vote: In certain matters the Code of Canon Law or the constitutions require the consent of his council before the superior canact validly. A vote taken in 16 January, 194 ~ GENERAL COUNCILLOR~; such cases is called a deliberative or decisive vote, .in contra-distinction to a merel~; consul~ative vote. The vote of the. council decides the matter, and the superior must follow the majority vote of his council in order to act validly. Here a?etbe canons of the Code in which a deliberative vote of the council is required: 5116, '§ 4: for the appointment Of bursars or treasurers, when "the constituti6ns make no provision for their appointment; 534, § 1 :. for the" alienation of property, and for the contracting of debts, even though the permission of the H~ly See is not required; .575, §. 2: for the admission poral profession of vows;' 647, 650, and 653: for hlI of a novice to first tern-cases of dismissal of reli-gious, whether they have temporary or perpetual vows. Furthermore, in loractice, the Sacred Congregation. of Religious demands the consen.t of the general' council for all matters requiring, the permission of the Holy See. Consultative vote: The vote of ~he chapter is s~'id to be only consultative when the superior is obliged indeed by the law of the. Church or by the constitutions to ask the advice of his council, but can. act validly even if he does not follow the advice given. Canon 105, however, admon-ishes superiors. "to make mu~h of the unanimgus opinion of those to be heard, and not to-depart, from it Without a weightier reason, of which~.they are the judge," Thus; canon 543~ requires at. least a consultative vote of the council for the' admission of candidates to the novb tiate;, as well as~ for professi.dn in general, subject Co the restrictions of canon 5.75, § 2,. which states: explicitly that the vote of the c6uncil is d~liberative for the first temporar~l profession of vows~ but only consultative for the subse- ADAM C. ELLIS Rm.tiew for~ Re~igio-~ quent perpetu.al profession, whether of simple or solem~i vows. . It may be well. to consider .here just how far the, lcon-stitutions. may require more in this matter than is required by the law of. the Church. These general rules may.help" to answer the question: ' 1. Evidently the constitutions may contain prov.isions regarding matters not determined b~ or contained in the Code, for example, the number of'consultors. ,Such a pro, vision-is said to be outside (or beyond) the law (praeter. 2. The constitutions may not contain prov.isions conz trary to the Code (contra ius), for example,, they may not exempt the superior from asking the vote Of his council wher~ the Code requires it; nor may they allow less than the Code dem~ni:ls (infra ius) ". for instance, they may no( pre-scfibe. ohlya con~ultative ~rote when thd Code reciuir.esa deliberative vote. '3. The constitutions may be stricter than the Code (supra ius), provided they are~notcontrary to it. Thus canon 543 requires thevote of the council or chapter for admission to the novitiate, as Well as for the subsequent profession of vows. The constitutions may require that the vote Of the council or chapter be deliberative for the admission of.candidates to the novitiate. However, .canon 575, § 2 defines the nature of the vote of the council or chapter "in two case~: for the/irst profession of temp0raiy vows, the vote is d~liberative;for the profession of per-petual vows, whether si,rnple or solemn, the vote is.con-sultative only. Hence the constitutions may not require that the vote .of the council or chapter be deliberative for. the final profession. That would be not only stricter than the Code, but contrary to it. All provisions of consti-tutions which are contrary to the Code.wdre abrogated January, 1945 GENERAL COU~,'C/LLORS by the Code itself (canon 489), and a special privilege would have to be obtained from the Holy See in order to ¯ " retain thefn. Again, in" some 'institutes tempbrary vows ari~ taken, not for a p~riod of three years, but for one year onlY, to be renewdd for a year on two successive occasions. The Code requires the deliberative vote of the council for the first pro-fesSilala of such temp6rary vows, but says rlo~hing about the nature of th~ vole for the anntfal renewal'of ~uch t~mpo-rary vowg Hence th~ cons~itdtions may detb~ine' ~hether thisv6te is deliberative or m~rely consultative. O'Orat or secret vote: Ordinary matters in which the ad~ic~ of tile~ coBncd is sought by '~he ~up~rior general are &scussea o~ally and op~mons are'expies~d verbally. Even ~ntfie cbnse~ 0f ihb c~b~ncil is requiie~ by law, it ii ~ot "~ e.~.a.dded t~"t a' s~cr~t ~ be taken, ~xc~pt in th~ case of cbntracfing Aebtl or aiienhtin.g property -(canbn ~34, ~. 1 ), -and in all card 6f ~diimislal 0f.rdigib6s With temporary ~ows (khfion~ ~47, ~ "1) Constithtions frequently' call f~r a secret vote i~other matters, a~ ifi the appointment of ocal superiors, and at t~me~ giye the ~guhcillors the right-to ~demand a ~ecret Vbte in any important matter. " ~The ~e~retar~ "oeneral is present at all council heetings, without vote; ~howe~r, unlem he be a councill~r. It is his-duty to re~drd th~ 8eliberations ~nd decisions arrived ht, be "iehd and appr6ved ~at ~he follbwing meeting' and si~ned b~the suPeiidr.and~e ~ecre'tdry. ' Spir~'t of Consultation All Oarsons whose cons~n~ or advi~o is askad, should s~a~a *hair opln-ion w,~h dun raspa~L ~ru~ulnass. and s,n~r,~ {canon 105. ~o}. 'T6~'~ ~hoh'td s?~ fbeir okibio~: .that is, they must. g~ve an opm~o~ tor or against me measure id question when their~onsem is'req~iredb~, the law or thee constitu- ADAM C. ELLIS Review [or Religious tions for the. validity of the superior's act; they may decline to give an o~pinion if they have nothing worth while to con-tribute to the discussion when the superior is only obliged° to hear his council, that is, to listen to and consider their ¯ advice. ' Councillors should always remember that they are but advisors of their superior, to whom reverence is due. When they find it necessary to e~press an opinion 'contrary to that of their Superior, 'it should, be given with all due respect, without acrimony, in simp~le but dignified language. Trutht:uli~ess means not merely the avoidance ofall that is false, but especially the positive disclosure of facts and cir-cumstances that are relevant to the matter under discussion. Sincerity implies a candid and genuine expression of opin-ion, and excludes ali dissimulation or pretence, even though motivated by a desire not to displease the superior. ¯ On his part the superior who is obliged by the law of the Church or by the constitutions to seek the advice or to qbtain the consent of his council should do so willingly and even eagerly, since it is for his benefit as well as for the com-mon good that th'e Church has established its system of councillors for all those who exercise authority in her name. To try to influence his councillors in such a way as to impose his opinion upon them, Or to give them the impres-sion that he considers the council meeting a mere formality, would show~ that the superior does not ,understand the spirit of the law. Provincial Councillors What has been said regarding general councillors may and should be applied to provincial councillors within the scope of their activity.as defined by the constitutions. They" are usually appointed by the superior general and his coun'cil, but in some institutes they are elected in a pro- 20 Janu'ary, 19#5 j GENERAL COUNCILLOR8 vincial chapter. Their ~umber is usually four, and the con-stirutions determine how often they meet, as well as the nature of their vote. Matters usually referred to the prrvincial douncil by .~he constitutions include the following: admission of can-didates to the novitiate; admission of novices to first vows; dismissal of novices; admission to perpetual vows; aliena-tion of property and the incurring of debts bY the province or by the houses of the province; investment of dowries; all matters which must-,be rei~erred to the Holy See for permis-sion or approval. Local .Councillors Canon 5.16, § l.requires them at lea'st foc .formal houses, those, namely, which have at least six professed religious in the community, four of whom must be priests in the case of a clerical institute (canon 488, 5°). The "'at least" of the. canon implies that they are desirable ialso in a smaller d0mmunity, but are not strictly of obligation. Usually they number four in larger communities,.and not less than two in smaller ones. They are appointed by the superior general and his council, or by the provincial supe-rior and his council in institutes which are divided into provinces. The matters in which their counsel or consent must be bad by the local superior are defined by the con-stitutions. OUR C~ONTRIBUTORS AUGUSTINE KLAAS, ADAM C. ELLIS, and GERALD KELLY are pr.ofessors of sacramental thdology, canon law, and moral theology, respectively, at St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas. ROBERT B. EITEN, of the University of Detroit, is an ~siduous writer bn ascetical subjects. FRANCIS L. FILA~, of West Baden Col-lege, West Baden Springs, India.ha, is the author of The Man Nearest to Christ. recently published by Bruce. JAMES A. KLEISTI Of St. Louis University. is the author of The Great Prayer Now in Time of War, published by The Queen's Work. 21 Towards $implit:ied At:l:ect:ive Prayer Robert B. Eiten~ S~J. THE purpose of the prdsent article is to offer some sug-gestions for disposing a soul to reach simplified affec-tive prayer or to grow in such prayer, if one has already attained it. Of course, not all these suggestions can be used by everyone. The important thing is that every-one who desires to advance in prayer will fdllow those sug-gestions that help him and then set about to prag, and prag, afld prag some mode. Only thus does one normally advance inprayer. The realization of God's presence is perhaps the first step toWaids successful prayer. Of course, we know by faith that Godis present everywhere in and about us and that, when we are in the state of grace, He dwells within us as in His temple; yet, unless we have received mystical graces, we m~ist frequently recall, this mar~rellous presence and try as far as possible t0 get a habitual realization of i~. Otherwise while at prayer we may fail to realize sufficiently His.presence. We do not see God, we do nottouch Him. All these pleasant experiences connected with our sense life are not ours in addressing God. Yet by faith we know that He is most near. Our faculties bf prayer, the imagination, memory, intellect, and will, have their natural-objects towards which they have a natural affinity and in which they find pleasure when they are exercised. It is hard to pull these faculties away from . natural objects. Much self-control and self-denial are required to withdraw them from ~hings_naturally pleasing to.them and tS direct them to that (the Divine) 22 SIMPLIFIED AFFECTIvE PRAYER towards which they have little or no natural attrac~jon or ~spontaneity in the beginning. When we speak to God in prayer we cannot see Him and it is no easy task to hear His whispered inspirations. But we must try to realize His presence. This c.ertainly is possibl~. I can be most awareof another person's presence in the dark even though I do not hear him.speak, nor see him nor even hear any movements of his, nor touch him. It is sufficient that some trustworthy person tell me of the presence of this third person. ¯ It is not strange, then, that a great saint insisted that at the beginning of our mental prayer we should recall God's presence. Much of our success and progress .in men-tal prayer will largely depend upon our growing realiza-tion of God's presence. If we fail to make God, our loving Father, vivid and rightat hand With us, our prayer will most likely be i;trai.ned; andlack a' familiar touch and spon-taneity. Mucfi care, thought, and ~oncentration should be devoted to developing within ourselves ~the realization of the Blessed .Trinity's indwelling. Briefly, our psychologi-cal dispositions toward God must bemade so realistic that" we act almob;t as if we saw Him, touched Him, and so forth. Then prayer will b~ easier and carried on with grbater relish. ' It will ordinarily take a l'ong time to arrive at the point where we instinctively, as it were, live in God's presence. And here I am not referring to the presence bf God as felt through inystical graces. Perhaps one of the best,ways to arrive at this state is to medi~ate fiequently on the in~lwel!- 0ing of the Blessed Trinity and to direct all our ejacula.tions ,to that indwelling Guest. Long, careful, and repeated striving,and prac'tice will'bear fruit. What a'grace it would bd if We could e~perience habitually all day long the reality. arid consciousness of. G0d's indwelling .as we experience ROBERT B.' EITEN ," " ,, " . Review for Religious His presence when we are before the tabernacle in church! Many who have been sacristrans or who have had occasion to.work inside a church *certainly have had this practically const:~nt and subconscious awareness of God's pre~efice. It resembles the awareness which a child, although much. occupied in playing with-his toys, has of his mother, who is perhaps busy in the next room of the home. Our realization of Christ's presence in the tabernacle b~gan in early~childho0d, our mothers cons(antly hushed us when we~babbled out in church. Then they ~pointed to ~he l~abernacle, and. tried, to tell.us most simply who was there. ~ With other training in this matter,, we gradually formed a sort of instinct or conditioned reflex whereby we .came to.~,an active and spontaneous realization of God:s ¯ presef~ce whenever we were in church. : ."' Heart-to-heart chatting with our indwelling Guest will help.not a little to obtain this rather spontaneous aware-' r~ess and living experience of His presence. This will bring 'us to St. Teresa's ;onception of mental prayer, which she says, "is nothin.~ else but an intimate friendship, a frequent ,converse, heart to heart, with Him Whom ~e know to be our Lover." Again, how we experience God's presence after Holy Communion! . We are very self-conscious of the necessity of being by ourselves, alone and recollected. Why cannot good habits directing our t.houghts and affections to the indwelling Trinity bring similar rgsults? True, this is not usually a. work of a few weeks or months, and ordinarily much patience, calm, and protracted effort is required. A soul that has reached this active rea!ization Of God's presence will 'instinctively :upon waking in the morning turn its first thoughts to God. Outside of formal rspiritual exercises such a. soul, while walking or unoccupied with other mental work, is rather instinctively taken, up with January, 1945 SIMPLIFIED AFFECTIVE PRAYER God's sweet presence. This soul too is alway~ seeking times and opportunities for spiritual reading, and visits to the Blessed Sacrament. Even during the various duties of the day such a soul is very frequently aware of God's abiding presence. Obviously such a soul'during formal mental prayer is quite, taken up with God since its every impulse, even outside of prayer, is towards a continuous and affectionate abiding with God. At praye~ we should not be afraid to interrupt our part, of prayer to listen quietly to God. We must permit God to have His parr in our chat with Him. He will do His part by His silent inspirations. We must get into the habit of making these attentive pauses. For beginners they should be short. Later on it will be easier to lengthen th'em either because of habits acquired here or because of an. attraction . for recollection. ~At any rate, let us rest in them as long as we find profit. In the beginning, if we: experience little or no results, we should not become wearied or distrustful. Patience will win out and have its day. of harvest. In any case these pauses are not.a waste of time. At least, they are made with a good intention, and this makes them pleasing to God. Moreover, to summarize de Caussade, they imply many Other good acts. For example,, they include an act of faith in the presence, the power, and the mercy of God, and an act of hope, for we await only that which we' hope for. The pauses further imply contempt of ourselves and great con-. fidence in God, since during these pauses, we suspend our own mental acts only because we count very little on our own and very much on God's. Finally they imply deep .humility, as well as resignation and surrender, since We" remain before God in silence either to be heard or'refused and in .spite of all the distractions, tedium, and weariness which make these attentive pauses at times wearisome,, ROBERT 15. EITEN ¯ Review for Religious tedious,¯ and distressing. (See de Caussade, On Pra~ter. pp. 210-211.) Some persons think erroneously that their prayer is of little worth unless the)~ are in a.continual interior activity or movement, piling reflection on reflection; prayer .on prayer, act on act. It Would be well for these people to realize that the more important part of prayer is rather the attention of the heart. Let us learn, then, to rest in God in silence, pe.ace, and attention, especially when He seems to invite us to this holy repose of soul. This, may happen Outside our formal .prayer, as during Mass, spiritual reading, and .so forth. Always bear in mind that this is a favorable moment, not for talking to God, but rather for listening to Him, not for .acting as.we ordinarily do, but rather for simply abiding in God's presence and being, receptive to all He. works in us. Let us try then to.enjoy His presence as a mother will qui-etly and.in silence at times enjoy the presence of her soldier- :~.on, who, after being a long time away, has now returned home. To sit merely in his presence is a real thrill for her. Would anyone be so rash as tO deny that this mother, although silent externally, is without any mental or affec: rive activity? .What maternal love is active in her heart! Although she doesnot reflect that she,is loving him, never-theless that love is there in a.sublime way. She loves him without saying anything. And if her 'son saw her heart, what actual tenderness he would find there, what depths of deliberat~ and freely accepted, although r~on-reflective, emo-tions he would see! Thus, in'this apparent idleness there is a height.of activity. This same height of activity can be present if, imitating this mother, .we quietly rest and enjoy God's presence. Another helpful means for progress in prayer is to repeat slowly, affectionately, and wi~h relish some aspira- 26 January, 1945. SIMPLIFIED AFF:ECTiVE PRAYER tion, be it one's own or another's, or some Scripture text, over some period of time. While this is being done we ought to ponder over it carefully, as well as sense and relish it in its complete significance. It is related of .St. Francis of Assisi that he spent an entire night in prayer uttering very slowly, but with great devotion and relish, the following ~ublime words: "My God and my All!" It is easy to see how this prac.tice can.be a beginning, 6r at least an approach, to the prayer of simplicity; for, ~Ithough there may .be various affections occurring, .there is one predominant one whose object is, as it were, a t~xed' idea about which our other ideas and affections are pivoted. This seems t6 be little more than an extension of St. Igna-tius' second method of prayer. Or even better, it is in some respects a combination of, or a variation between, St. I.gna-tiusr second and third methods of prayer. In his second method of prayer St. Ignatius-recommends that we leisurely meditate on the Our Father, or any other prayer, by dwelling on it word by ~word as long as we find meanin.gs, comparisons, relish and consolation in such con-siderations; while in his third methodof prayer he suggests that we,recite the Our Father, or any other prayer, in such a way that by properly synchronized rhythm only one word is said between one breath and another, and while the tim~ fromone breath to another l~ists, [one gives atten-tion] to the meaning of such word, or to the persgn .to whom he recites it, or to his own baseness, or to the 'differ-ence from such great height to his own so great l~wn'ess. Of course this rhythmic interchange between word and affectionate thought must not be taken too lit~rally or mathematically. It is {mportant for anyone aiming at high sanctity and progressive prayer to have recourse to God in all difficulties, joys, and so forth,'by informal ejacfilatory prayer. (See 27. ROBERT B. EITEN- Reoietu for Religious" gEVIEW r~0g RELIG~OUS, Sept. 1943, p. 305.) This can be reduced to an attitude resulting from the habit of talking, famiiia.rly with God as with anyone who is constantly around us. He becomes our constant ~;ade mecura. Why . not act on this principl~ .by familiarly talking with Him frequently as we would with a friend who never left our side? In this practice one must, of.course, avoid brain-fag. This latter can be largely obviated if, rather than trying to imagine too vividl~r God's presence, we simply take it for granted. This obviously is notthe work of a day; but "when. acquired, it will immeasurably help our prayer-life. Our progress in prayer is also helped by repeating the same meditations several times. After several reflections we find that the intellectual part ,0f our prayer has been con-siderably. diminished while the affective part ~has consider~ ably'increased. It can in many cases end in an affectionate, loving, and protracted gaze upon God or some divine mys-tery that would be simplified affective prayer. In gen.eral, it is well, after we have been accustomed for some time to mental prayer, to lessen gradually the discur-sive .element. Though it is profitable, while meditating on the mys.teries of Christ's life, to reason and weigh various facts, motives, and so forth, yet, other things being equal, we should not weary, ourselves too much b.y .trying to fatfiom these divers points. Let us rather remain in peace near our Lord. "The soul should then be occupied according to her ability in reflecting that He is.loo.king at her: she will keep Him company and will address her petitions to Him" (St. Teresa, Life., ch. 12). We ought to endeavor gradu-ally to lessen our considerations both in length and number, and accustom ourselves "to go through the mysteries of our Lord by merely glancing at them, rather than by meditating upon tbem;~ and to make use of their different circumstances 28 danuary, 1945 SIMPLIFIED AFFECTIVE PRAYER to excite in our soul acts of love, gratitude, humility, or similar affections" (Lehodey, The Wa~ts of Mental Pra~/er, p. 187). In.this way.our prayer will g.radually become a ¯ simple loving gaze at God or divine things. No 10nger,will ~the soul be seeking for truth as in meditation, for, now pos-sessing it, the soul rests in it with love. It looks and it loves--that is the sou1~s chief preoccupation. Grasping things now by intuition and immediately rather than by the long, toilsome, and roundabout 'ways of the~ imagination; the memory and the understanding, the soul perceives thd things of God almost as we perceive first principles. " "We remember, we look, we attend, and this is enougl'i. This does not hinder this view from being sometimes more luminous, sometimes weaker and more veiled. By i~s very nat.ure it is somewhat obscure and confused, because it pro.- ceeds mostly by way of general views, not stopping at details, pretty much as we take in at a single glance a whole landscape. "This simple look is always accompanied with love-- a love, it may be, almbst imperceptible or all on fire, calm or impetuous, bitter or savoury . . . We look because we love, we 10ok inorder to love, and our love is fed and inflamed by looking" (Lehodey, The Wa~/s of Mental Pra~ter, p. 193). Both our looking and. loving mutually help each other. In the beginning of the spiritual life we reason and meditate. But after we .have grasped our Lord's beautiful character we sit at His feet with Mary Magdalene tO look at Him that we may love Him. more, and our love in turn makes us want never to ~take our eyes from Him. "He is all mine and I am all His." ¯ .It is often helpful after preparing our prayer to go -before the Blessed Sacrament' (it can be done elsewhere too) and let our Lord speak to us on the matter prepared. Ask 29 ROBERT B.' EITEN Him to develop the ~ubject for us. Ask Him to let us know His mind on the subject. It is really surprising how many new angles and lights He sometimes suggests. It is,. besides, a very reposeful prayer, to say nothing of its being very simple and affective. Balthasar Alvarez, who directed St. Teresa and who, according to the latter, was more advanced in prayer than" she, thus describes what we have been trying to say: "To p~ay is to raise our heart to God; to communicate with Him familiarly, though with great respect, regarding ail our affairs; to confide in Him more than a child confidesin h;s mother, however good she may be; to offer Him all that we possess, all that we hope for, without any reserve; to open our heart to Him, and pour it out, as it were, before Him: to speak to Him of our labours, of Our sins, of our desires, our projects, and all that occupies our mind; finally, to seek in Him our consolation and our repose, as one friend with another, in whom he has full confidence" (Life of Ft. Bal-tbazar Alvarez, vol. 1, p. 175). The burden of this entire article has been to show ways and means of quickly disposing, ourselves" to reach simpli-fied affective prayer as well as to grow in it. Still, we must be on our guard against outrunning grace With the result " that we are like a boy in a class .beyond his intellectual years. We must avoid either extreme, the tendency to go too slowly and the impulse to jump too fast from ordinary meditation tO affective prayer: or from affective prayer to simplified affective prayer. A. Good Book for March For reading daring the month of March, we s~ggest The Man Nearest to Christ, by F. L. Filas, S.J.' It provides interesting and valuable material on St. doseph. Published by Bruce, Milwaukee. Price: $2.50. Some Th6ugh! s on t:he I-Ioly Family. Francis L.Filas, S.3. OWING to limitations of space meditation manuals usually present only tWO or three points for medita-tion on the hidden life of the Holy Family and do not enter on the. subject at greater length. Yet since the richness and utility of this meditation call for more ~letailed treatment, we shall bring together in this article the ideas ordinarily proposed and at the same time shall endeavor to .suggest several new avenues of thought. Above all else, meditation on the Holy Family finds its u~efulness in its direct, many-sided application to the reli-gious life. The religious life is essentially a hidden and obscure life, in which the interior efforts God alone sees (and not necessarily outward results) are the hallmark of success. It has its long periods of difficult preparation such as the postulancy, the novitiate, and years of Study--years tbat,:may appear utterly useless at the moment. At certain times temptations to discouragement arise because of a lack of tangib!e results. For the inspiration to adyance stead-fastly amid all such circumstances there is no antidote or tonic better than the example of the hidden life of 3esus, Mary, and 3oseph. Perhaps' we db not suflicientJy associate the hidden life of Christ with the life of the Holy Family: yet .the one is .actually a part of the other, as Leo XIII wrote: ".In the( veneration of the HolyFamily the faithful rightly under-stand that they are reverencing the mystery Of the hidden life which Christ led together With His virgin mother and 31 FRANCIS L. FILA8 Review for Religious St. Joseph."* It is from this that the meditation derives so much of its richness." Then, too, it offers healthy variety. Whatever con-sideration we select can be projected against any of six or" seven aspects, according as we feel inclined at the moment. We can look at the relations of Jesus to Mary or Joseph; of Mary to Jesus or Joseph: of Joseph to Jesus or Mary: or ,finally, at the union of these three h61iest of. persons as the "earthly trinity." This opportunity of co.ntemplating the same truth from different angles is of great psychologi-cal value, for the mind quickly becomes fatigued if its atten-tion is focused uriswervingly on only one facet of a given subject. The meditation falls into two salient divisions,: the fact of the hidden life of the Holy Family, and the multiple lessons,it teaches. Its Gospel. text is, of course, that of St. ,Luke (2:51, 52),_"And He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subje~t to them; and His mother kept all these things carefully .in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom an~ age and grace before God and men." The Fact Jesus Christmthe Second Person of the Blessed Trin-ity, who took to Himself human nature--whose mission was the redemption of mankind by means of suffering and a p.ainful deathmwho came to teach mankind the difficult law of brotherly love--to found a Church that would last for all time as the only .certain road to salvati0nmwho would draw men to embrace a moral code of self-denial and even suffering for the love of God. W.ith this tremendous task before Him Jesus spent ten *,Further information on the nature and history of the devotion to the Holy Family is contained in the author's article in REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, January 15, 1944. 32 danuarg, 1945 THOUGHT8 ON THE HOLY FAMILY times as much of His life in obscurity as in His p.ublic aposa tolate--because it was the will ,of His Father in heaven. Only two personswere Hi~ intimate and c6nstant com-panions during this period Mary and Joseph. Mary--the Mother; of God-God's choices~ handi- Wi~rk among mere creatures--who lived with Jesus'in the intimacy of mother With son--in obscurity because He willed it--the second Eve, .united with Him in His.work of redemption as the first Eve was united with Adam in the ' first sin. Joseph--the only man who ever received the virginal conjugal 10ve of Mary and the filial, submission'of Jesus--- truly the'virginal husband of the Mother of God and the virginal f0ster-i~ather of the Son of God--buried in obscurity because. Jesus willed it--and realizing perhaps that this obscurity must be continued in the life of the Churcl"i for more than a thousand years, lest the iecogni-tion of the foster-father hinder the recognition of Christ's divinity and Mary's virginity. The Holy Family--a true family supported by Jbseph its head--mothered by the perfect mother--preparing the Lamb for the sacrificemthe Child and Son in this .family like to us in all things, sin alone excepted. - The Lesions Obedience and use of authority: Jesus with His divine wisdom often knows a "better way,'"but does He refuse to obey Mary and Jbseph? .--Mary has the unsurpassed holi-ness and dignity that befit the Mother of God,, but is. she any.less submissive to her husband and head of the fam-ily?-- How,great must be theworth of Joseph, to be put in charge of Jesus and Mary, as the representative on earth of the Eternal Father!--See how prudently Joseph usds his authority, recognizing that its source rests in no intrinsic 33 FRANCIS L. FILAS Review for Religious superiority or. merit of his own~ but.on the will of God! The value ot: labor and ot: works ot: charity: Jesus works for Mary and Joseph diligently, in a spiri.t of coop-eration, and with a willingness to take up any task assigned . Him.---Mary and Joseph work for Jesus; was ever labor done more perfectly "all for Jesus" ?--If a cup .of water offered in Christ's name is to receive its reward, what must be the merit of these two great souls directly employed in Christ's personal' service.~ Yet even this their pri.vilege is not all-exclus.ive, for we can always remember that what we do for the least of Christ's brethren, we do to Christ-- in imitation of Mary and Joseph. Life of obscurity: The actual fact is that for thirty years Christ. hid Himself from the public view. For our. instruction and for the .success of His own future miiaistry. Christ shows the need of conformity to God's will even if it means givingoup the externalworks of the apostolate.--If God wishes to accomplish great work for souls through our efforts, the or~e essential condition is that~ we be conformed to His will,, united to Hini.--Then, too, there is only one soul over which we have .direct power, and that is our own. All othets~we can help or guide only indirectly, :for God with His grace does the work, using us as instruments.---!f our life is obscure according to God's will (we may be spending months and years in preparation for the active apostolate, .or on the other hand our time of labor may be cut short by sickness or old'age) ', we should not fret because of the apparent uselessness of our efforts. They are highly meritorious for ourselves and fo~ others precisely because they are done according to God's will.-~They can be far more selfless than prayers united with an exterior action in which we have Succeeded and semi-deliberately take the credit for ourselves.---We lose 0nly self-love in God-willed bbscurity. 34 THOUGHT~ ON THE HOLY FAMILY If We are spending Ourselves in a public apostolate such as the hospital Or classroom, our interior life ever remains hidden and obscure, knownonly to the Father from Whom we derivethe strength and inspiration to labor in His sdrv~ ice, and from whom Will come the reward that is Himself. ¯ ---To imitate the hidden life that Christ led, we look.to the two persons who followed Him most. closely, Mary and ~Joseph. Cbarit~l: desus, the perfect Son; Mary,. the perfect wife-arid mother; Joseph, the perfect husband and father: need more be said to describe the bond ~of lord that existed at Nazareth, our ideal to imitate? Pra~let': At Nazareth we see the value of the contem-plative apostolate, as well as the background of prayer that is so essential in. supporting and making fruitful the works o'f the mixed apostolate.--Our novitiate, our annual retreat, monthly recollection, daily meditation,' and exa-mens, are all so many times when we "go down to Naza-retl'i" to" pray.m"Whoever wants a master to teach him how to pray, let him take St. doseph for. his guide, and he will not lose his way" (St, Teresa of Avila).--Mary is the mediatrix of all graces, whose prayer God can never refuse, who a~ St. Luke says (2:52), pondered "all these things carefully:in her heart."--Jesus here at Nazareth is pre-paring Himself bypraying during a period ten times as long as His public life--and even in His public life and Passion He prayed before anal during every, action, To pray is to raise, the mind and heart to God, to put oneself consdously in God's presence. Mar~r and: Joseph were ever in the bodily presence of Jesus; can we doubt that the house at Nazareth was a house of prayer?-,--We marvel at thii privilege of Mary and Joseph; do we appr.edat.e and utilize to the full ~our.privilege of b,eing in the b.odily pres-ence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament? FRANCIS L. FILAS ¯ Farnil~ virtues: If the.Holy Family is the patron of the Christian family, it is no less the exemplar for all families of religious. We have the love and concord that existed at Nazareth to show us how we should live our religious fam-ily life.--:-' In imitating the family virtues that were exempli, fled at Nazareth, we may well offer our own efforts ~n con-junction with those of Jesus, Mary, and. Joseph, begging God to protect and bless the families of our Church and ¯ riation. - Triple,Colloquy/: with Joseph, Mary, and desus--"By :.Joseph we are led to Mary, and by Mary to Jesus" (Bene-dict XV).--No one, save Jesus, ever loved Mary more than did Joseph: his greatness comes from his union With her" .and Jesus--can there be a greater proponent of devotion to Mary?:--No human person ever loved Jesus more than did Mary; can there be a. surer way of coming to the Son than through the Mother? '--"Jesus, ' Mary, Joseph, be with us now and at the hour of our deathV'- ¯Books Received (From O~tober 20: to December ~0) THE BRUCE PUBLISHING CO., Milwaukee. War Is My "Parish. By Dorothy Fremont Grant. $2.25. A Realistic Phi-losopby. By K.'F. Reinhardt, Ph. D. "$2.75. The Man Nearest to Christ. By the Regerend F~ L. Filas, S.J. $2.50. THE NEWMAN BOOKSHOP, Westminster, Md. ' " With the Help of Thy Grace. By the Reverend John V. Matthews. S.J. S.T.D., Mag. Agg. (Pont. Greg. Uniw). $1.50. Our Lady of Fatlmm B~ the Most. Reverend Finbar Ryan, O.P. $1.25. SHEED ~ WfiRD, New York. Secrets of the Saints. By Henri Gheon.$3.1~0. 8peaMng, of How to Pray. By Mary Perkins. $2.75. GEORGE GILL ~ SONS, LTD., London. A Heroine of the Mission Field. By Dom. Romanus Rios. O.S.B. $1.00. ST. PAUL'S PRIORY, Keyport, New Jersey. Symbols of ChriSt. Volume I: The Old Testament. By the Reverend Damasus Winzen, O.S.B. $1;00~ 36 "l'he ,D~ily I::~min~:ion of Conscience James A. Kleist, S.J. RELIGIOUS are accustomed.to make a"dai'ly examina-tion of conscience. ' In some communities.the rule pre-scribes two such examinations: one at noon, the other ifi the evening. The time allowed for the exercise varies in different institutes, but nevor, so far as I know, exceeds fir-teen. minutes. It is not.to my present purpose to stress the imp0rtanc¢ of this spiritual exercise, beyond saying that i~ is intended, not only tO cleanse the. soul from blemishes con-tracted during the part of the day which it covers, but also to pave the way for a definite improvement of the whole-tone 0f one's spiritual 1ire. My immediate purpose is to enlarge upon a partic,ula.r method of conducting this inquiry into the state of one's soul. The fifteen minutes at our disposal pass sw!ftly, and they are either fruitfully spent or frittered away without results. To avoid iuch loss of time, it is well to have a definite method, for example, that recommended by St. Ig-natius in the Spiritual Exercises, "The method for making the general ¢xamen,:' says. th~ saint,. ~'has five points in it. The first po, int is to give thanks to God our Lord for the benefits received." Itl was a stroke of genius for the saint to advise opening the unpleasant business of examining our conscience with an act of thanks- .giving to God, the. Supreme Judge, who is either to. ratify or to. reject, our findings. We. are to thank "God our Lord." God is infinite in all. His perfections. He is holy, almighty, immense, everlasting:, just, sovereign in every respect. He is; 37 JAMES A. KLEIST Re~ieu~ [or Religious moreover, supremely happy. And yet, He created the worId, and u.s, who live in the world. He willed to be "our Lord." Vainly ~hall we try to~ understand fully God's reasons'for creating. What we do know for certain is that He wished to share His happiness with other beings, with finite creatures. To enable us to reach this end lie has endowed us with marvellous faculties, both of body and of soul. Moreover, He so directed the oursd of events fro.m the beginning that the wOrld might almost seem tO be cre-ated for ea'ch one Of us ihdividually. The psalms cannot 'say enotigh of His Providence, which looks after the tiniest details of our lives. When mankind failed to cooperate with H~s original beneficent designs, even then He was not turned aside: He sent His Only-begotten Son into the world to restore us to grace. Besides these.general ble~sings,.each one of us can tell of special graces showered upon him. No 'need of going into details; but we must not overlook the .blessings received on the particular day when the examen is made. : ' Thus .far our minds have been busy with'a rapid survey ~of God's g00dne~s toward~us. But wehave'not yet corn- .plied with St. Ignatius's first point. We have not yet ¯ ~'~halnk~d. God our ILord.'~. Ev!denfly, we must do more than m e 'r e'l y , r e h e a r s ~ o u r B e n e f a c t o r ' s k in d l y ' d '~eds. The next and altogether necessary st~p, then, is to find ~¢ords :a~Pr0tSriate to the praise of God our LOrd. This is the problem of the first point. Imight solve it by saying that each one is be~t qualified to find words to express his thanks. Or I might suggest the use of the¯psalms,those great store-houses of devout aspirations. But ~just now I prefer to recommend the use of' the ¯Roman Missal, especially the Ordinary of the Mass, for .fitting expressions of gratitude. Many prayers Of the Mass have beer~ in Use for fifteen hundred years, or even more: Itsword~ tome to us laden Januar[l, i945 DAILY EXAMINATION OF (:ONSCIENC~ with" an unction which nothing else can rival, except, of course, the words ~)f Holy V~.rit. A further advantage is that, if~we cull our ejaculations from the Mass, we feel, our-selves in communion, with the whole Church. V~re speak not merely as individuals, .but as God's "holy people." This is an important point, as we shall see presently. To begin with, we ,may repeatthe Church's doxology: "Glory be to the F~ther, and to the Son, and to the H01y Spirit." Again, we may recite the tuneful opening of the Preface: "T~uly fitting it is and just, truly right and wholesome for the soul, that we.should, in every place and. time, give thanks to Thee, 0 I-I~ly Lord, Omnipotent Father, Eternal God." Then there are the Urgent declara-' tions of the Gloria: ."~re.p.raise Thee! "~xr~bless Thee! "~re adore Thee! :V~re glorify Thee! ~re give Thee thanks for Thy great glory!" Again,-we may turn tO our Blessed .Lord in phrticular, and say the beautiful, ending of that song of' the angels: "ThOu alone art holy; Thou alone art Lord; Thou alone' art Most High, 0 Jesus Christ, together with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father." A well-known text from St. [~aul's epistle to the [~hilippians occurs in several Introits: "In the name of Jesus every knee shall bend, of beings in heaven, of beings on earth, of beings in the world below; and every tongue shall confess, to the Father's glory, that Jesus Christ is Lord." Again, there is-not a priest but feels a touch of solemnity ,when he says at the "little elevation": "Through;Him, and with Him, and in Him, all/2onor and glory/ redounds to Thee, O God the .Father Almighty, in the unity of the Holy Spirit." In our examination of conscience, why not make the priest's words our own?. W~ thus conclude the first of the five points. Wh~t counts is not so much a multiplicity of prayers as a :deep-felt desire to pour out our thanks to God for.all the benefits 39 JAME~ A. KLEI8T Re~ieu~ for Religious received. The prayers suggested ~above will be helpful, unless we have still better ones suited to our individual temperament. I said a while ago that it was important ifor us to feel ourselves in communion" with th~ whole Church whenever we pray. It is signHcanr that her prayers are ~couched in the plural number. Are there not millions and millions of men and women who breathe God's air and have their daily bread from God, but never have a word of thanks for Him? ]~riefly, then: while the mind takes a rapid view of God's blessings, the heart is .constantly and devoutly engaged in prayer., "The second point," says St. Ignatius, "'is to ask grace to knov~" our sins and cast them out." How well the saint understood the paramount place which di~rine grace holds in the sanctification of ~e soul! "Without me you can do nothing," our Lord had said. We cannot know our failings in their true light, and rid ourselves of them, withou~ help ~rom God. Gettihg rid of inordinate habits is much like casting out the devil, and this, a~ the apostles found, out on a certain occasion,, is no child's play. The grace we ask is twofold: to cure the blindness of mind which refuses to recognize sin, and to rouse the sluggish will to form strong resolutions. Our problem now is how ~o secure this divine assist-ance. ~,Ve must pray for it. "vVe may, perhaps, begin with a prayer to Mary Immaculate, whose mind was flooded. with light, and whose will was untouched even by the faintest weakness. We shall of course,, recall the Church's official prayers for light and strength, the vigorous Veni Sancte Spir~rus and the.collect for the Sunday of Pentecost. The.Sequence, in particular, will yield a number of power~ ful pleas for help, especially the two stanzas in which each verse begins with an urgent imperative.~. "Wash, water, Januarg, 19415 DAILY EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE heal; bend, warm, direct"--all expressions that stress the difficulty the soul experiences in the process of driving out sin. But here, as elsewhere in this examination of conscience, - I would recommend that we go through this point with an eye to the future. We may ask the grace to know and expel sin., not only here and now for the purposes of this examen, but also. to secure help for the future, as, for example, by asking the twofold grace for our next weekly confession. This practice, faithfully adhered to, will raise our estima- .tion of the Sacrament of Penance, and, no doubt, make its reception more profitable. Again, there is but one step in thought from the weekly confession to that last ~f all con-fessions which we hope to make when we arrive on the threshold of eternity. Our death is in the hands of a mer-ciful God: it may be sudden, if He so decides, but we pray' that it may not be unprovided. This long-range prepara-tion for it will win us special light' and special strength in the momentwhen'we shall welcome them most. It is then that we shall wish to know all our "innumerable sins and offences and negligences" and to repent of them so genuinetg that our entrance into "the Holy of Holies" may, if pos-sible,, be instantaneous. And here, too, we may be apostolic in our prayer and ask the twofold grace for the thousands, that shall die this day. Are they prepared? Or are they ' unprepared? We shudder to think of it. Many live so lightheartedly as hardly ever to think of God.~ We can assist them in the hour of their greatest need. I repeat what I said in the first point: what is v~anted is. not a multiplicity of prayers, the depths of which we do not sound, but rather one or two sincere aspirations that set our hearts aflame. We are "now ready for the third point, the scrutiny. Here we are: defendant, prosecutor, witness, judge, all in 41 JAMES A. KLEIST Reuietu f6r Religious one. "The.third.point," says St. Ignatius, ;'will be to ask account of our soul from the time at which we rose tO the present examen, hour by hour, or period by periodl and first .as to thoughts, then as to words, and finally as to acts." Thoughts,. words and deeds are. the material on which to base the final verdict. Of th'e five points this is the only one into which prayer as such does not enter. It is a Cold-blooded examination conducted by the understanding, illumined, of course, by the light of the Holy Spirit for which we prayed in the sec-ond point. Among the "thoughts" we include motives, those hidden springs of action which make an individual's seemingly plain, monotonous life so ~colorfui in the sight of God. Further detail is unnecessary: We know the ten commandments, we know the precepts of the Church, we kno~¢ the rules of our order. We recall the persons .w.ith whom we were dealing earlier in the day, and the work or task we were expected to perform. That is all. The minutes allowed for the examination'are brief, and we must proceed to its most important part. "The fourth point," 'says St. Ignatius,, "will be to ask pardon of God our Lo~d for the faults committed." Contrition is sorrow for sin,, and sorrow has a sting in it. St. Ignatius has two significant words for it, "shame"-and "confusion.''~ But while the realization of the numerous'lapses in the past (I ¯ say "the past" designedly, for we may wish to include in. .every act of contrition the sins committed from the dawn of reason onward-) is painful ~o a soul that loves God, yet sorrow for them must not be depressing. True Christian contrition is hopeful, and hop~ is not unmingled with joy. Even the Church on Holy Saturday, after the night of sin has passed away and the true Light of the world has risen, cries' out: "'0 felix ci~Ipat."' Adam's fault was a "happy" one in the sense that it has brought "us " a Redeemer.so 42 danuar~ o 1945 DAILY EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE good, so great." So in" our own case; our sorrow for sin, if genuine, will be a source of blessings. Every sin of the past will be a stimulus to greater fervor in the service of God. This, surely, is reason enough, even if there were 'no others, to make our contrition as perfect as we can. The devil, who rejoiced in. our faults, ~s thus utterly routed. In going through this fourth point, we should remem-ber that there is a distinction between perfect and imperfect contrition, the former based on the love of God, the latter on supernatural, though inferior, m6tives. Furthermgre, every sin presents many. aspects. It is "heinous," says St. Ignatius, "even' if it were not forbidden." It forms the , strongest possible contrast to the infinite holiness of God. It is also an offence.against the divine lawgiver who forbids sin as an infringement of His commandments. It is ingrati-tude toward'our divine Benefactor, whose blessings we recalled in the first point. To deplore our faults more e~- caciou'sly, we may also remember that, in committing them, We seemed to make so little of all that Christ our Lord did and suffered for us. Thoughts like these will furnish numerous motives for making a heartfelt act of contrition. As to the words in which to clothe our act of contrition, the Church supplies us with numerous well-tried patterns. There is, first of all, the act of contrition so familiar to us from childhood. Then, again, we may find something suited to our state of mind in the psalm, called the Miserere. But here, again, I would stlggest that we closely adhere to the Ordinary of the Mass. It is.not without significance . that the priest at the foot of the altar, in preparing for the Holy Sacrifice, spends so great an amount of time in asking God's pardon. The Conliteor invites Heaven to witness our contrition, and thereby increases our sense of shame. Again, have we ever tried to utilize the urgent appeals for divine'mercy in the versicles and responses directly follow- 43 JAMES A. KLEIST Reoieu~ [or Religious , ing the Conl:iteor? "May Almighty Go~] have mercy on us, forgive our sins, and bring .us to ere}hal life. May the Almighty and Merciful Lord grant us pardon, absolution, and remission of our sins. Turn to us, 0 Lord, and give us file: and Thy people shall rejoice in Thee." (Note by the way, how the Church couples "joy" with the act of con-trition. Sin is not forgiven except through the infusion or an increase of "life,"' tha/is, sanctifying grace.) Ascending the altar Steps, the priest says the beautiful Aut:er a nobis:. "Take away from us our sins, we beg, O Lord, that by Thy grace we may enter the Holy of Holies with minds that have been purified." In the Oramus te he calls upon the saints for their intercession: "We implore Thee, O Lord, by the merits of Thy saints whose relics are upon our altars. graciously to forgive all our sins." Th~ need of contrition for sin is so vividly present to the mind of the Church that expressions of it appear again in later parts of the Mass, as, for example, at the offering of~the bread, when the" priest asks pardon "for my innumerable sins, offences, and negli-gences." Again, a little later: "In humble frame of mind and with a crushed heart we beg to be received by Thee, O .Lord." ¯ The last reference to sinin the Mas.~ occurs in the Placeat, the ver~ last prayer in thi~ Mass. Th.ese prayers are all apt expressions of contrition that We 'may use in the examination of conscience. Fr. Meschler says:. "Our sorrow for sin should be as perfect and sincere as we can make' it " A further warning by the same writer is also jn place here: "It is of importance td spend most of the time (that is, during the dxame.n) on the act of contrition and on the constructive part of the exercise. To rembve ~the dust from a piece of furniture w~ do not pick up particle after particle. One good sweep of the duster will do the woik in a momimt. The effect of deep-felt sorrow fo~: sin and a firm purpose0f amendment 44 January, 1945 DAILY EXAMiNA'~ION Ol= CONSCIENCE is much the same. One more remark before we pass on. As Ghrist our Lord took.upon Himself the whole burden of the world's load of sin', and made Himself a pe¢¢otum, that is, a sin, a repre, sentafive of the whole sinful race, so we may, in imi-tation of Christ, take the world's sins~upon ourselves and include, in our act of contrition, a will to make reparation forthe sins of all men. In the general examination of conscience, by the way, St. Ignatius says nothing about corporal penances or acts of mortification which, one may undertake as a natural and spontaneous fruit of contrition. But we know from his life that he was one of the world's great penitents; and besides, from occasional remarks in the Spiritual Exercises, it is clear that he approves of this pbacfice. There is one more point to consider, the constructive part of the examination of conscience. After tearing down the whole or part of a building, it is necessary to build up again. "The fifth point," says St. Ignatius, "is to propose amendment with God's .grace."-Again we notice the saint's awareness of the fact, that divine grace plays an indispen-sable part in the work of sanctification. "The resolution," says Fr. Meschler, "should be.firm and. strong. ¥~re should foresee 'the ordinary occasions of our faults and take preo caution agaifist them." Here, as elsewhere in this examination, the Missal is a trustworthy guide. I would call attention tO two prayers in the Canon of the Mass which seem to me well suited to ask the help of God in laying a solid foundation for the future. There is first the Supptices te rogamus, in which we pray that our sacrifice (which in our own case should mean-all ~the efforts we wish to make to reform our lives) may be presented,, by the hands of the Angel, to God's majesty "in order that we may.be filled more and 45 JAMES A. [~LEIST , Review for Religious ¯ more with every celestial grace and benediction.~' Then I suggest the Libera nos, which comes directly after the Pater~ noster and ends in this consoling prayer: "Graciously shed peace upon our darts, in order, that, aided by the wealth of Thy mercy, we may ever be free from sin and secure from eyeful disturbance." Here the Outlook is upon the rest of our days which we hope to spend in this vale of tears. "Gra-ciously shed peace upon our aa~ls. Once more I wish to point out that these prayers of the Church are phrased in the plural number,, so that, in saying them, we actually include the interests of our fellow men. HoWever good a prayer may be, it is still better for an addi-tional touch of Christian charity,.and since charity begins at homel we are praying for our fellow religious, thosel in particular, who live in the same community with us. With them our lot is cast by the arrangement of our superiors, and it is essential tha~ we live in harmony and give edifica-tion. When. defects are noticed, human nature is prone to ~riticize, to judge rhshly, to harm more than to help. All such unlovely traits of character may be effec.tively stifled ¯ by a hearty prayer for the supposed offender. Nor would khe examination of conscience be quite complete if we did hot resolve to mend such ways of our own as we know from experience to be irritating to those with whom we live. ,St. Ighatius Wants us to close the examination with ~in Our Father. After all, the Lord's Prayer contains every-thin. g we need for a devout life. I must conclude. The daily examination of conscience is a recognized practice in religious institution~. It is of vi~al importance for the spiritual well-being of the entire community, and should, therefore, be made, to borrow a ¯ phrase from St. Ignatius, "with all~ diligence in the Lord." Unless our heart is in it, it becomes a matter of routine ~vhich leaves us just where we ~were before we began. -46 danuar~l, 1945 DA!LY EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE An examination well made prepares the soul 'for the various indulgences, plenary or partial, which one may ¯ wish to gain that particular day. It is essential to St. Ignatius's method to go through all the five points as often as the examen'is made. But it would "be contrary to his mind'to give the same amount of time, say, three minutes, to each of the points. °On Easterday, for example, it would seem natural to draw out the time for the giving of thanks, while on Good Friday the soul is, perhaps, more attuned to sorrow for sin. St. Ignatius believed in methods, but had no ,use for soulless rigidity in the use of them. , The pattern here set forth links the examination with the Roman Missal and thus centers our attention arofmd the one great act Of worship, the Mass: There are, of course~, other ways,, of conducting this inquiry. I once listened to a talk in which the instructor linked St. Ignatius's five points with the Five Wounds of our Blessed Savior. The saints are ingenious in devising methods of prayer that suit their personal preferences and, at the same time, yield notable results. A decided advantage of the method here proposed is, I think, that it lays stress on actual prayer. The complaint has been made that "some religious giv~ more time, in their devotions, to the play of the intellect than they give .to the Will." After all, prayer is the daily bread of a religious. I,shall close, therefore, with the admonition of St. Paul: "Be assiduous in prayer." Holy Hour for C6nvers;ons Father Albert A. Murray, C.S.P., has m~de a simple, striking arrangement of prayers for use during a Hol!i Hour for Cont~e~:dons. The Paulist Fathers will supply the 'booklets, free of charge, to religious communities that wish to establish this apostolic devotion. Write to: The Paulist Fathers. 911 South Wabash Ave-nue. Chicago 5. Illinois. 47 Decisions'orr I-Ioly .July 21, 1944: The Sacred Cbngregation of the Holy Office pub-lished a decree in whicl~ it declared that the system of mitigated mil-ler~ arianism cannot be taught safely. His Holifiess, Pius XII, approve~l and confirmed this answer and o~dered it to be published. In its decree the Holy Office defines mitigated millenarianism as that system "which teaches that Christ the Lord will come before the final judgment, either before or after the resurrection of many of the just, for the purpose of reigning visibly here upon this earth." May 20. 1944: In an audience granted to the Cardinal Major Peni-tentiary, His Holiness, Pius XII,in reply to the .request of' many "priests, granted to those who, in the adversities of this life lift up a trusting heart to God and with pious mind and contrite heart recite the words: "Thy will be done," t14e following indulgences: (1) 50 days each time; (2) a plenary indulgence to be g;iined under the usual conditions, after having devoutly recited the aspiration every day for a month. Promulgated in a decree of the Sacred Peniten-tiary, dated July 10, 1944, , January 24, 1944: In an audience granted to the Secretary of the Sacred .Congregation of Religious, His Holiness, Pius XII, approved with his apostolic authority, the erection and constitution of a special commission within the said Sacred Cdngregation to assist it in ful-filling the duties entrusted to it by canon 251. This new commis-sion, tO be made up of learned and experienced men, will handle all questions and matters in any way pertaining to the religious and clerical training of aspirants, novices, and junior members of every-religious institute, and of societies living in common without vows. It will also handle questions pertaining to their literary, scientific and practical training. The following will be especially entrusted to the Commission: (a) to define and outline the cardinal principles and p~uliar charac-teristics which should guide the education and ~training of religious; (b) to keep a watchful eye on the ordinations of supdriors and chapters regarding matters pertaining to education and training, as well as to inspect and examine carefully the reports furriished on these subjects by superiors and apostolic visitors. 48 Should We Baptize Dying Adults? Gerald Kelly, S.J: 44~ATHER, why do priest~ differ so much on the qu~s- I~ .tion of baptizing unconsc!ous dying people?" The speaker was a zealous nurse. I suspected what she meant, but I preferred to reply the Irish way: ",Just what do you mean, 'differ so much' "Well, during my trainingthe priest who taught us religio.n advised us always to give conditional baptism, to unconscious dying people, ~nless we were surethey.-were already:baptized. But our hospital chaplain insists that it is wrong to baptize people unless they have given some kind of sign that they want to be baptized. This is a.pretty serious matter, it seems to me. We nurses frequently have to attend patients who. were brought into the hospital unconscious.and who die without regaining consciousness. Sometimes we don'~ know anything, about their religious beliefs. It might be that they want baptism and that they .need it, but.they can't express themselves. Are we to stand by and let them lose their souls when we might do the :one thing necessary to save them?" That nurse rather completely outlined a difti~:ulty not infrequently encountered by those who care for the sick. .Priests differ on a point of seemingly supreme importance. Some say, "Baptize": and some say, "Don't dare baptize": and the result is confusion, even distress, on the part of the Sisters, Brothers, and nurses. In slightly varying form, this question has been often presented to me. -I have given answers and explanations to the.individuals presenting the qtiestion; but it has occurred 49 GERALD KELLY. Reoie'w for Religious to me'that, since a large number of our readers are engaged in caring for the sick, it might.be well to give them the back-ground for this diversity of opinion among priests regarding the baptism of unconscious dying people. The ques'tion, of course,, concerns dyingadults. No chaplain, I know,' would tell a nurse that she ~hould never bapfze an unbaptized .dying baby. ¯ Dying infants who are not certainly baptized, are always to be baptized unless their baptism wouid bring harm to the Church--something which is quite improbable. But the question of baptizing dying adults has certain complications, both theoretically and practically; and a difference of opinion regarding some casesis almost inevitable. The Church law concerning the baptism of adults is contained in canon 752. The thrde parts of this c~an0n. 'cover three distinct cases: (1) The baptism of adults.who are not' in danger of death; (2) the.baptism of adults.who ¯ "are, in danger of death, but conscious; and (3) the baptism o°f adults who are in danger of death and already uncon-scious. Since our present discussion coficerns the baptism ¯ of the dying, the first part of the canon is not strictly per-tinent. However, for the sake of ~:ompleteness and clarity, [ believe it advisable to give 0a brief commentary on the entire canon. NoDanger of D~ath The first part of canon 752 prescribes that adults who are not in dangerof death are not tO be baptized unless they expressly desire it. Moreover, before they are baptized they are to be given complete catechetical instructions and are to be warned to make an act of contrition for their sins. Such are the' regulations for what we may'term the 6rdin~rycases: that is, the'.preparation and baptism of con-verts who ard nol~ in danger of death. .The reasbn for the January, 1945 "SHOULD WE BAPTIZE DYING ADULTS? first prescription is obvious. Everyone who has reac~ed the agi~ of reason must decide for himself whether bewishes, to receive baptism; God does not force his gifts on anyone. Hence, in the case of ail but infants, a: requisite for valid baptism is the w(lffngness of thesubject. And of course, the ministel of l~he sacrament should know of this willing-ness before he baptizes. The need of complete instruction in this case is also evident. The convert is being prepared to lead a Catholic life, and one can hardly lead such a lifd iif he knows only the few truths of Faith that are necessary for salvation. Finally', the act Of- contrition is necessary, because even bap-tism cannot wipe away his persorial sins unless he iepefits of them. We need not delay further on thi~ p.art of the canon. - A priest would be the one to confer baptism in these ordi-nary cases, and he would know. the requisites of law and should see that they are fulfilled. I might add, however, for the benefit of those religious who may be called on occa-sionally to instruct converts, that it is very important to teach them how to go to confession. The knowledge .will be an immense help tO them after their conversion. Dying, but Conscious The second partof the canon deals with the case of a person who is in danger of .death,but still conscious and in possession of his faculties. In this case there is no change with regard to the requisiti~ intention and act of contrition. The person, is not to be baptized unless he wishes it; and. if he isbaptized, he is to be cautioned to make an act of contrition for his sins. With regard to the instruction, there must be some modification. The complete instruction of a convert-takes sever~il weeks, or even several months, depending on the GERALD KELLY Review for Religious convert's capacity and on ~the frequency and durdtionof the instructions. Evidently such complete instruction is im-possible, when death is imminent. The canon recognizes this and indicates the minimum essentials of instruction to be given in these urgent ~ases: namely a sufficient explana-tion of the principal truths of the Catholic Faith so that the sick person can give some assent' to these truths and pro-fess his willingness to live up to the obligations.imposedby the Christian religion (in case he should recover). The principal truths of our Faith, belief in which is ' necessary for salvation, are four: the existence of one God, the.fact that God rewards the good and punishes the wick-. ed, the mystery of the Blessed Trinity, and the mystery of the Incarnation. These truths ar,e. aptly expressed in simple acts of faith by Monsignor Markham in the prayers he. has composed for the assistance of. dying non,Carbolics. "I believe, iri oneGod, I believe that God rewards the good and punishes the Wicked. I believe that in God there are three divine Persons--God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy. Ghost. I believe .that God the Son became Man, without ceasing to be God. I believe that He is my Lord and My Saviour, the Redeemer of the human race, that He died on the Cross for the salvation of all men, that He died also for me." Such isonebrief statement of the four truths tha~every-one must believe in order to be. certain of saving his soul. If at all possibl~, something should be said about each of the truths so that 'the dying person can make his act of faith ¯ ~n all of them. This can generally be done in a few min-utes; hence there is usuaIly no great difficulty in at least out-lining the truths. In the rare cases in which all "four truths ' cannot bementioned, we should, at least help the patient m~ke an act of faith in the first two truths: namely, in the e~istence of one Godand in the fact that God rewards the 52 danuar~t, 194"5 SHOULD WE BAPTIZE DYING" ADULTS? good and punishes the wicked. It is probable, though by no means certain, that faith in these two truths is sufficient for salvation; ahd that probability can be'acted upon when further instruction is impossible. In assisting dying non-Catholics we should not place ,too much confidence in the mere words,. "I believe." In Catholic doctrine the words' "faith" and "believe'.' have technical meanings. When we say we believe, we meah we accept a truth, not because we see it' or understand it, but because God revealed ~t. in other words, we take God's word for it. It is important for us to bear this in mind and to impress this point on the dying non-Catholic, because many of them have v.ery vague notions Of "faith" and "be-lief." Monsignor Markham's card, after giving the acts of faith cited above, adds this brief prayer: "I believe, on God's authority, everything that He has taught and re-v. ealed." If a nurse is using this card, these words would give the opportunity for a brief explanation of the true meaning of faith. Father William Bowdern, S.d., in his pamphlet, The Catholic Nurse and the Dyin'9, suggests that the nurse ex-plain the meaning of faith and the truths necessary to be believed in the. following simple manner: "You believe that there is a very good and loving God, don't you? You know that He could not tell a lie or teach us anything wrong. Hetold us some tlSings about Himself, and because He only tells the truth, you and I believe what He has told us. We take His word for it, don't we? He told us that there is only one God and three divine persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And He said that the Son ~ame down on earth and took on Himself our hu-man nature, and then died on the' cross to save us, ~because He loved us so much. And He told us that He wants us all to be happy with Him forever in heaven when we die. 53 GERALD KELLY ¯ minist,ered unconditionally."~ . : ".* .: ~ Dging, bht Unconscious Reoieto [or Religious And He told us that the only ones who will not be with Him in heaven are those who insis.t on going to bell where they wills u"f f e r~ and never see Him. We believe these thir~gs because God told us," don't we? The fof~goiiag are ways ,9f helping 'the d~inigperson make th'e necessary acts of fhith. Every nurse ought to have some s,mple, eleafly-planfied way o~ doing .th~s? ,Having helped the patient m~k~ th~ acts of faith, ~h~ ~shbuld then help him to make the other pr~ers,particularlY the act of contrition. M0nsi~fi~r Mhr~am's card is'also a great aid to this, as it contains, be~des the ~cts of faith: also brief acts,of hope~ charity, and'c~n~rition. - What we have said thus far pertains to the preparatton 0f a dyi.ng person for baptism. Tfiis is equivalent to saying that '@e are ~repa~igg him for admtss~oh into t~e C~iholic Church; hence the canofi caa~ions u~ t~.have ~e~atient ex-press a wilhngn~ss to observe tb~* ~recepts "of~the Christian rehg~on. ~h~s db~s fi~t ~an 'tSat~we 'have to &codnt all thesd precepts ifi d~tail: but wh:en~e ar~" d~aling ~with a con-scio~ person and~there ,s ~me We should~ at least be sure that he wants to.keep thCe o m "mandmen.ts of God and live ~p to thebbligatio~s that the Church impos(s on him. - he~xpresses't~s wflhng~ess,be is tb be baptized Without oe~ay. ~ne canon supposes that the oapt~sm~wm oe con-ferred while the recipient ~s sm~ onscious, i~ tbis'i~ possible. H~w4ver, should he ~o~e" ~o~scious~ess~ bef6re receiving the sacrament, bu~ after havin~ requ~s~e~"i°t, ~:sho61~ be ad- The third part of Canon 752 gives us.some-practical rules about dying adults who are either wholly or partially-unconscious. Such persons are to be bapti'~'ed'd~3ndi~ionally if, before°becoming uncbnscious, they"gave Some l~robable 54 , Januac~/o 1945 :, ~. SHOULD WE BAPTIZE DYING~ADULTS?. sign that they wanted baptism, or if, in their present state (when-partially unconscious) they give.a probable indica-tion that they wish to be baptized. The baptism is admin-istered c0nditionally--the condition being: "If you wish to.be baptized." Later,~ if the subject recovers and mani-fests a clear desire to be baptized,, he is tO be re-baptized conditionally (".if Y0u.are not baptized:7.), because it'.is not certain, that the first, conditional baptismis valid. Such are the prescriptions of the canon. In. themselves, these prescriptions are clear.and admit of ~no controversy. However, with regard to one .point there is evidently room for differences of opinion. I.refer to the interpretation Of the words. "a probable, sign that be wishes to be baptized." Theologians can and do dispute .over what. constitutes a wish to be baptized, and also over what constitutes a mani-festation of such a. wish. Because of this possibility of differencesof opinion, it may be.well for us to consider some of the cases likely to arise. - - Mr. X belongs to no particular religion: but his wi~e is .a Catholic and his children areCatholics. He.has never said openly that he intended to join~thi~ Catholic Churcki, l~ut he has manifested such general good will that those who know .himfeel rather confident that he had .~'leanings". in that direction. Cases like this are not infrequent. One who is assisting at X's deathbed has good reason to conclude" "It is probable that this man intended to join the Catholic Church before his death." Evidently, an intention to join the Catholic Church incl.ukles an intention.to receive bap-tism; hence we have here a probable .sign of the will to be baptized. I doubt if any one would question the.fact that such a person should be given, conditional baptism if be -were.unconscious and dying. . . Mr. ~Y presents a somewhat different case. He has never manifested ~hat he wanted to be a Catholic, but he has 55 GEliD KELLY Reoie~o for Religious shown a disposition to be a '~Christian," ~l~at is, to belong to One of the sects that profess Christianity. In other words he has given some indication that he Wants to belong to "Christ's religion,." whatever that is. Actually, of course, thi~re is only one true Church of Christ.- A person may be mistaken as to which is the' true ohe: but, if he does want to belong to Christ's Church, he also wants baptism, because our Lord made baptis.m the sacrament of entry into His Church, Hence, anyone who has given an indication that he .wants to be a Christian should be c0nd!tionally baptized when he is unconscious and dying, unless it is ce'r-tain that he is already validly baptized. Mr. Z presents a still different and. more difficult dase: He belongs to. no Christian bod~,; but he has been a "good man," in the sense that he wanted to do the right .thing, or at least he has manifested' that he was sorry for all his sins and: that he wanted to do what was necessary to save his soul. This, of course, is a much more ger~eral disposition than that of X or Y. And the question arises: can such a. disposition, for example, sorrow for sins and desire to do what is necessary for salvation, be construed, as a wish~ to receive baptism, or is something more definite d~mafided? Theologians do. not agree in 'their answer to, the question. Many hold that this dispositi0n~ is entirely too general: others consider that it implicitly includes the' wish to receive baptism, because baptism is one' of1 the ordinary means, of salvation instituted by God. Because of the controversy ~just mentioned:, .we cannot say .with certainty, that a man who has indicated that he wants to do everything necessary tO save his, souli has tl~e requisite intention for baptism. But we can say, at least because of the authorities behind: the opinion,, that it is ¯ p.robable ~that such a, person, wishes to be baptized; hence we are justified in conferring conditional baptism when the 56 January/, 1945 SHOULD WE BAPTIZE DYING ADULTS? man is in danger of death and unconscidus. ~. The foregoing .brief .comments exhaust the .provi-sions of canon 752. The canon says nothing directly about thecase proposed by fhe nurse at the beginning of this article" namely, about the unconscious pearson about whom we know nothing. From the silence of the Code, ,and from the severe tenor of cert~iin decisions of theHoly See that are used as the foundation for canon 752, many theologians argue that the Church forbids the baptism, even conditional, of a dying unconscious person unless he has given some posit!ve sign that he wishes to be baptized. In other words, according to these theologians, canon 752 tells us not merely everything that we should do,. but also everything that we rnag do, Some authors convey the. impression that this severe opinion is the only tenable opinion in the matter. Very likely the reh.son why the.chaplain referred to by the nurse a(the beginning of this article insisted that unknown, unconscious dying persons may not be baptized, even con-ditionally, is that he had not heard of another tenable opinion. ' Yet there is another, opinion, an. opinion held as prac-tically probable by such theologians as Bucceroni, Cappello, Da, vis, Genicot, Iorio; Lehmkuhl, Piscetta, Sabett~i, Ver-meersch, and Wouters. I. realize, of course, that a list of names like this may be "so much Greek" to nurses and hos-pital Sisters and Brothers; yet to the priest wh~ is conver-sant with books of Moral Theology the list should be highlY significant. Some, if not all, of these men are cer-tainly among the outstanding moralist~ of the present cen, tury. We may safely say that the opinion they sponsor as probable in the present matter may be followed unless some further decision of the Holy See makes it clear that the opi.nion is to be.rejected. 57 GERALD KELLY Review ~or Religiotts In the opinion of the authors just cited--an opinion often referred to as the "lenient" opinionmwe are°justified in conferring conditional baptism on the unknown and unconscious dying adult. The authors admit that their opinion seems less in conformity with the decrees of the Holy See than the severe opinion; but they deny that these decrees make the other side certain. To sum Up the mate~:ial treated.in this article. In 6rdi-nary cases of conversion, when there is no urgent necessity for baptism, thd sacrament is not to be conferred unless the subject expressly asks for it and until he is prepared for the sacrament by complete catechetical instruction. And, in order that the ~acrament be certainly fruitful, he is to be warned to repent of his sin~. In urgent cases, in which even those who are not priests may confer the sacrament, it suffices to help the dying per-son make the essential act of faith and a sindere act of con-trition. The supposition here, of course, is that the sub-ject wishes to be baptized and is willing to live up to the precepts of God and the Church, should he recover. As for unconscious persons, we have treated three dis-tinct cases. First; those who certainly wanted baptism before lapsing into unconsciousness are~ to be baptized unconditionally. Secondly, those who gave some probable sign that they wished to be :baptized are to be baptized con-ditionally. And finally--in the case proposed by the nurse --if nothi~ag is known about the person, the nurse is justi-fied in conferring conditional baptism if she wishes.to do so; but because of the strong opinion against it, she is not strictl} obliged to do so. As Father Sabetti would say: "If she does nothing, I do not reprimand her; but if she confers conditional baptism,. I. praise her." In other words, the nurse may make her ow6 the opinion of Father Ver-meersch, who, after having examined all the arguments of 58 January. 1945 SHOULD WE BAPTIZE DYING ADULTS? the severe side, concluded that: "If scandal is avoided, one may confer conditional baptism on any unconscious, dyi~.g adult who is not known to be already baptized." As for myself, I believe that this same Father Vermeersch expressed what seems to be a Catholic instinct when he said: "I could not resign myself to permit a single soul to be lost that might have been saved by my ministrations." Father Vermeersch's words could ~ell be taken as an ideal by all who minister to the dying. The wolds are applicable, not merely to the case of giving conditional baptism to unknown, unconscious persons,, but also and even especially to the preparation of conscious patient~ for death. After all, the baptism of unknown and unconscious persons is of very dubious efficacy, as even the staunchest defenders of the practice will admit. It is the seizing Of a last plank of hope, the use of a last desperate remedy. But "when a patient is conscious, no matter what his religion, the nurse accomplishes results that abe definitely fruitful, even to.a high degree, by encouraging.him to devout acts of faith, hope, chaiity, and contrition. In the case of non- Catholics, in particular, the nurse's spiritual assistance may be badly needed, .because very often they have no one to help them prepare for their meeting with our Lord. For this reason, I again recommend the splendid work of the Apostolate to Assist Dying Non-Catholic.~.1 1For further information about the Apostolate to Assist Dyin~ Non'Catholics,' see REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS,. I, p. 338; or write for sample brochure and prayer cards to one of the following addresses: (a) Rt. Rev. R. J. Markham, S.T.D., Comptora Road, Hartwell, Cincinnati ! 5, Ohio. (b) Sisters of the Poor of St. Francis, St. Clare Convent, Hartwell, Cincinnati 15, Ohio. (e) Sister M. Carmelita0 R.S.M., Cdnvent of Merclr, 1409 Freemarl Avenue, Cincinnati 14, Ohio. Ques ions and Answers I ¯ Our (ionsfitufion~ prescribe a half hour of' private spiritual reading. Is that requisite fulfilled when we have reading in common and one person. delegated to do so reads for the duration of half an hour? Yes, the common performance of.an act will always sat.isfy the obligation of the coristitutions requiring the private performance, of such an act. Thus on special occasions, such as feast days, or on the day of m6n.thly recollection, it may be desirable to have some special reading appropriate for the feast or monthly recoll~ctibn. Sin~e such. reading may not be available for all because c~f the lack of°books, the reading held in common would satisfy .the obligation of private spir-itual reading¯ The question, might be rai~ed whether the superior could oblige the Sisters to have, rea.ding .in common when the Constitutions requi,re private reading. We think that this might be done occa-sionally, as indicated above, but not habitually. If the superior d~sired to have some. particular book read for the community because of its spedai spiritual value, she might invite the Sisters to attend the common reading of that book over a period of time, but she could not strictly oblige them to be present at the common reading. In s6me cbmmfinifies the Sisters wffh temporary vows are referred to as "professed novices," Does this imply that they may be classed with and mingle with the n6v;ces rather than ~;th" the perpetually professed Sisters? The.t~rm "professed novices" is a misnomer. If they. are pro-fessed they. are not novices, and if they. are novices they are not pro-fessed religious. The custom of having the religious professed of temporary vows remain in a class by themselves, and of giving them special additional training in the stiiritual life, is most praiseworthy, though not required byCanon Law. A better name for them is that of "junior professed" whereby they are distinguished from the "sen-ior professed," that is, those religious who have taken their perpetual VOWS. The Codeof Canon Law is meticulous in its u~e of the terms 60 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS "novice". arid "professed religious," and' this use should he re'rained in order to°avoid many misunderstandings. ~ The answer to our question is given in canon ~640 § 1 which tells us that "the novitiate shall be, as far as possible, "separated from that part of the house inhabited by the professed religious, so that, Withbut a'special cause and the permiSsion of the superior or of the master, the novices ma~, not have comm,unication with the professed religious, nor these latter with the novices." The canon makes no distinction between religious whb have taken temporary vows, and those who have maiie p~ofession of perpetual, vows, as it frequently does in other cases. Hence we can only conclude that the. professed of temporary vows are included in °th~ prohibition. What is the mean;nq of the statement in a recent issue of the Review " (111, 371)that the Epistle to the Hebrews may be the work of another writer than Paul~ at least ;n part? It means that the literary form of theEpistle may be the world of ¯ someone other than Paul. Catl~olic critics are permitted to hold this view, with deference, of course, to any further decision of the Church. For further explanation confer the introduction to the Westminster Version of the Epistle to the' Hebrews, or sde the Commentary on the Ne'w Testamerit prepared by the (American) Catholic Biblical Association. Our constitutions prescribe our makincj the Stations of the Cross ;n common every Friday. Do we ejaln any indulgences, if the congregation, which consists of some thirty S;sters~ remains ;n the pews and the superior alone proceeds from station to stati6n? Although this question was answered in Volume I, page 424 of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, we shall give here the substance of that answer for the benefit Of tbosd who may not have that volume. On February 27, 1901, the Sacred Congregation of Indulgences granted to the Marist Brothers the favor whereby they could gain the indul-gences of the Way of the Cross if only one person (for example, a Brother of the community) made the round of the stations, the rest of the community remaining in their places. The condition laid down in this grant was that there was a lack of space in the community 61 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS chapel for hll the religious to move from station tO station. On May .7°, 1902, this same privilege was extended to the chapels Of all reli-gious ~vomen, under the same ~onditions. Is it being "more ~athollc than the Church" to keep the. Lenten fast, if the blshop.has dispensed from the obligation of fasti~g"for'the duration"? The dispensation takes away the obligation imposed by the gen-eral law of the Church: and even those who are able to fast and who would normally be obliged to do. so are exempted. The dispensa-tion does not affect obligations imposed bn religious, by their rule, and it does not change the. fact that fasting is a good penance when prac-ticed accor.ding to the norms'of prudence. Fasting, even "during the duration," is very much in tune with the spirit of the Church¯ The Ldnten liturgy is full of references to fasting. Would it be incorrect to have flowers on the altar during the Benedic-tions of the Blessed Sacrament which occur from Passion Sunday to Easter~t The prescriptions of the~ rubrics forbidding the placing of flowers on the altar during penitential seasons, apply only when the Mass or o~ice of the season is said. Even then flowers are allowed on the altar by way of exception on the occasion of the First Communion Of children: and in honor of St. Joseph during the month of Ma~ch (S.R.C., d. 3448 ad XI). Hence it seems reasonable to allow them during the Benedictions of the Blessed Sacrament which occur during Passiontide. Could you suggegt, through the pages of the Review, a book of medi-tations suitable for boys in a'mlno~ seminary? We r, egret our inability to suggest such a book of meditations, and request our readers whohave knowledge of such a book or' books ¯ to communicate it to us sO that we may publish it in this column. 62 Book Reviews DO I REALLY BELIEVE? Meditations on the Aposfl.es' Creed. By the ,Reverend Henri Lebon, S.M. Translated from the French by the Reverend Peter Resch, S.M. The Abbey P~ress, St. Melnrad, Ind. $2.25. This book of meditations should receive an enthusiastic welcome, especially from religious. It consists of ~ s~ries of seventy-four medi-tations based entirely on the articles of the Apostles' Creed. The theme, of. co.urse, is not new; many meditations have been based on. the Creed. But this series is possessed of a unique spirit. It is the~ spirit of the Founder of the Society of Mary, the venerable Father Chaminade. Father Lebon.has captured this spirit hnd edited it. ¯ Father Chaminai:le, in his work of catechising and training young religious, found himself constantly stressing faith as the bed-rock of all Christian per.fecti0n. Indeed he was convinced that defection from religious vocation could be traced to a lack "of lively faith. So he found it exceedingly~ profitable to base many medita-tions on the Apostles' Creed. The book follows faithfully the traditional form'of preludes, division of matter fok thought, followed by examen, affections, and resolutions. However, into that form the author succeeds in weaving a wealth of apt illustrations from personal experience. The Holy Fathers speak too from e;cery page. And there are constant quota-tions from both the Old and New Testaments. ---W. J. O;SHAUGHNESSY, S.J. LENT: A Liturglc.al Commentary on the Lessons and Gospels. "By the Reverend Conrad Pepler, O.P. Pp.x -I- 406. B. Herder Book Co., St. Louis, 1944. $4.00. ¯ This bodk of very serious Lenten reflections has an advantage for religious communities in that the daily portion offered is .of greater length, closer to fifteen minutes, than the sparse outline contained in most manuals. A further merit is that its reflections on penance and the Passion are brought clearly into line with the day's Holy Sacrifice. Undoubtedly every religious, as the sombre impressiveness of Lent looms on his prayer horizon each year, ha~ felt a thirst of soul 63 BOOK REVIEWS Review for Religious .for. a richer understanding of the Le~nten liturgy. How fine it would be if those reflections on sorrow for sin and union with the suffering Christ, which common consent.dictates as the atmbsphere of the Forty Days, might, unfold naturally out of the venerable solemnity of each day's Mass, obviating that unwanted disunity in the morning's stint of prayer! Hence the value of, Father Pepler's achievement. It would be no small injustice to this meditation book to judge it too' ~arrowly in the light of its subtitle, "A LiturgicalCommen-tary." 'The author uses the liturgical text. He wrestles earnestly with it to make it subserve the orderly plan of reflections he has pro-posed to himself as likely to be most profitab!e to the reader:' whereas the task of a commentator is to fol[oto his text, adapt him-self to it, "make all his explanations serve it faithfully. Moreover, Father Pepler is di,tinctly patristic, rather than modern or scientific, in his attitude toward both Scripture and the liturgy. The Jacob incident, like the whole of Scripture, "is not intended to signify itself, for that is some material fact, but a hidden truth which ~is tO be soughtunder the symbolism" (p. 126). Thd author's Augus-tinian emphasis on the "mystical" accommo'dation of Sclipture, though not precisely what we look .for 'in a modern "commentary," " is satisfactorily handled for purposes of devout meditation.': --R. G, NORTH, S,J~ A REALISTIC: PHILOSOPHY. By K. F. Relnhardt, Ph.D. Pp, xli-I- 268~ The Bruce Pdbllshincj Company, Milwaukee, 1944. $2.75.' In this "Science and Culture" book," Dr. K. F. Reinhard~ of Stanford University presents a brief account of Scholastic philos-ophy, and shows how it works into political and economic philos-ophy. Philosophers should read this book to see how their thought furnishes principles of ac'tion most appropriate, to reestablish peace and justice. Those who are working for internationfil order and social justice should read it for its clearand rel.atively simple presen-" tation, of the 0principles through which alone these ends can be achieved. Dr. Reinhardt is well qualified to handle the interrelations be-tween these fields. He has a doctorate in philosophy to give him a solid background in this field; his practic.al experienceas an active member ~of the German Centrist party, as editor and publisher, 64 January, 1945 BOOK REVIEWS qualifies him to speak on polit.ics and economics. Scholastic thought, as.it appeari in this necessarily brief compass, is shown tO be realistic and logical. The author's main effort in the earlier section of the book is to show the realism of the "perennhl philosophy"; .that it ft, in fact, the only true realism, since it alone deals 'with all reality. Philosophy is of course never light reading. Dr. Reinhardt does "well in avoiding technical terminology and Latinism. His vigorous and concrete style carries the educated reader along through pages of closely packed reasdning. Those who are interested in the ploblems which are treated here. but who have felt themselves excltided from the technical literature on the subjects thr6ugh lack of formal training in them, will profitably and gladly read this eminently worth-while book. The book is implemented with a glossary of technical terms and bibliogr~aphy: there is an index.--G. P. KLUBERTANZ, S.J. SPEAKING OF HOW TO PRAY. By Mary Perkins. Pp. xll + 276. Sheed and Ward. New York. 1944. $2.75. Saint Teresa, who loved intelligent persons, would have loved ¯ Mary Perkins, for Mary Perkins is a Very intelligent person. More than that, she. is able to explain what she understands~ in clear and non-technical language. She has written a very sound and valuable book, which should enable any reader to comprehend better" than he did before the meaning of life and the way to live. The title is not very revealing. The book is much more than a disc.ussion of how to pray. It sets forth God's blue print for the universe and for each man, and points out the orie.m~thod of carry-ing out the divine idea. Part I, about a fourth of the book, is ;an amazingly fine syn-thesis of theology, ~given the brief compass allotted to it. God's pur-pose in creating the world, original sin, the Incarnation, the redemp-tion, and the Church are discussed and related in such a way that the whole o.rganism of~Christian revelation, stands forth clearly. The remaining chapters, which make up Part II, describe the life each Christian is called to live in the Church so as to achieve the closest possible union with Christ, and through Christ with God, our ultimate end. This section of the work is extremely practical; it shows us how to utilize the means of: union which Christ offers us in the Church,: especially the Mass, the sacraments, the divine office, 65 BOOK REVIEWS Reuieu~ for Religious and prayer, b6th vocal and mental. The author fully appreciates the wealth of Catholic liturgy, and is in complete sympathy with the objectives of the liturgical movement that has given a renewed impetus to Catholic life in recent decades. Anyone who follows the plan here attractively presented is on the road to sanctity. For this is the.Church's own plan, and the life outlined is the life of the , Church. The book should not be read rapidly. Otherwise a certain unrelieved monotony in the style will pail. A chapter each day, read slowly and reflecti'bel'y, would be ideal. An excessive fondness for capitalization of words which need not, by any. rules or. usage, begin with capital letters, and the d~vice of splitting words into com-ponent elements, such as "will-full," "super-natural," "norm-al," and a host of others, may serve to attract the attention of some readers, but will probably irritate others.--C. VOLEERT, S.d. WITH THE HELP OF THY GRACE. By the. Reverend John V. Mat-thews, S.J., S.T.D., Macj. Acjg. (Pont. Gre9. Univ.). Pp. 114. The Newman Book Shop, Westmlnsfer, Maryland,' 1944. $1.50. This book is, in substance, the treatise On Actual.Grace taught in seminaries. As such it Will be of interest to the student of the-ology, for laymen and for religious. It takes up in turn the meaning of Grace, its source, a few fundamentaldivisions, a definition of Actual Grace, its supernatural character, its nature, necessity and dis-tribution, Grace and freedom of the will. To these questions are added such distinctive chapters as: :'Can Actual Grace be seen or touched? . When may Actual Grace be expected?" . "How great a gift is Actual Grace?" Certain sections of the formal treatise on Actual Grace are omitted. For example, no mention is made of the highly controverted subject of the reconcili~ition of Actual Grace with the freedom of man's will. Discussions of this nature are not considered pertinent to the purpose of the "book. The topic of each chapter is propose~l in the form of a question. The body of the chapters PrOceeds in the catecbetical method of question and answer. To these are appended Scripture quotations in support of the truth proposed. But the book is more than a cate-chism, as some of the questions run through two pages or more. Chapter questions serve as a striking way of approach t'o a truth put in thesis form in theological manuals. They remind one of the very January3, 1945 BOOK REVIEWS effective yet simple problem method of St. Thomas. The primary purpose of this book is to convey to the reader'a fuller knowledge of Actual Grace. 'This is as it ought to be, for appreciation and solid devotion presuppose understanding. ToO little has been said and .written in explanation of Actual Grace. Too much of the little said has left minds without a grasp of basic ideas. To accomplish his aim .the author bends every effort. His insistence throughout is on clarity and ~implicity, even to the deliberate sacri-rice of literary style. But th~ book is not all purely informational. A certain propor-tion of appreciation joine~l to.instruction 'is obtained by the intro~ .duction ~it the end of each chapter, of what is called a "Practice." 'This "Practice," a word used for want Of a better one~ includes fur-ther explanations, applications, comments and exhortations. In them occur such expressions as: "Dear Reader," "which could bettei have been omitted. This book offers no surprises for those who know their Actual Grace. "For others it has both limitations and "advantages. The method adopted by the author limits the richness and power of pres-entation to which Actual Grace, or, for that matter, any doctrinal subject lends itself. On the other hand, the bbok is a simple and unmistakably clear explanationof fundamentals. As such it merits the highest rating. :It can serve as a valuable aid for individual study, for the prepa-ration of sermons and for teaching in High School and College. With its help, many more souls can come. to a fuller knowledge and appre-ciation of Actual Grace.-~L. A. CORESSEL, S.,J. HUMILITY OF HEART. By Father Caietan Mary Da Bergamo, Capuchin. Translated by Herbert Cardifial Vaughan. Pp. 211. The Newman Bookshop, Westminster, Maryland, 1944. $2.50. This book of 153 paragraphs contains "Thoughts and Senti-ments on Humility." Written in Italian by one who led the humble life of a Minor Capuchin, the book made a profound impression On Cardinal.Vaughan who, as we are told in the introduction, "For more than thirty years had known and studied ihat Work and it is scarcely an exaggeration" to say he .had afade ito during the last four-teen years of his life, his constant companion, his vade mecum." To the Cardinal we are indebted for the present excellent translation of Father Cajetan's treatise on humility. BOOK REVIEWS " Reaiew [or Religious The book is divided .into six chapters. The first of these gives us a clear idea of. humility, its necessity, its excellence and its motives and arouses in us a fervent desire to practise it. In the four succeeding chapters we have treatises on apractical examen on the virtue of humility, humility towards God, towards our neighbor, and towards oneself. Finally, there is the chapter "Moral Doctrine on the Vice of. Pride and the best Us~ to be made:of the Practical-Examen." " Each of the 153 .paragraphs furnishes ample matter for one or more meditations. Containing sublime and practical reflections/the book shows Us how to obtain that humility of heart wherein "the soul," as Father Bernard Vaughan, S.J., tells us in his introduction, "will find a sovereign remedy for its many ills, a matchless balm its many wounds, while' a soul-beauty all its.own wilbspring up in

Issue 47.1 of the Review for Religious, January/February 1988. ; R~vw.w ~:oR R~L~C~ff)us (ISSN 0034-639X). published every two months, is ediled in collaboration with lhe facuhy members of the Dcpartmcnl of Theological Studies of St. U)uis University. The edito-rial offices are located a~ Room 428:3601 Lindcll Blvd.: St. [~uis, Me. 63108-3393. R~v~w R~a.ffm~us is owned by the Missouri Province Educalional lnslilule of the Sociely of Jesus, St. [~uis, Me. 01988 by R~v~w FO~ R~JG~OUS. Single copies $3.00. Subscriptions: U.S.A. $12.00 a year: $22.00 for two years. Other countries: add $5.00 per year (surface mail); airmail (Book Rale): $20.00 per year. For subsc~iptioh orders ur change uf address, write: REVIEW ~'o~ RELIt;IOUS: P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Philip C. Fischer, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read M. Anne Maskey, O.S.F. Acting Editor Associate Editor Review Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editors JanuarylFebruary, 1988 Volume 47 Number I Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor shuuld be sent to R~:wt:w FOa R~:L[t:mus; Ruom 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence abuut the department "Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Rich-ard A. Hill, S.J.; J.S.T.B.; 1735 LeRoy Ave., Berkeley, CA 94709. Back issues and reprints should be urde'red frum Rt:\'~t:w voa Rt:L~t;n~us; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. "Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, M! 48106. A major pnrtion of each issue is also available on cassette recurdings as a service for the visually impaired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New Yurk, NY 10010. Review for Religious Volume 47, 1988 Editorial Offices 3601 Lindell Boulevard, Room 428 Saint Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Philip C. Fischer, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read M. Anne Maskey, O.S.F. Acting Editor Associate Editor Review Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editors REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is published in January, March, May, July, Septem-ber, and November on the twentieth of the month. It is indexed in the Catholic Periodical and Literature Index and in Book Review Index. A microfilm edition of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is available from University Mi-crofilms International; Ann Arbor, Michigan 48 ! 06. Copyright© 1988 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. A major portion of each issue of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is also regu-larly available on cassette recordings as a service for the visually im-paired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. The Consecrated Lives of Apostolic Religious Today Mary Linscott, S.N.D. Sister Mary is on the staff of the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes (CRIS), specializing in the area of constitutions and general chapters. Her previous contri-bution to these pages was "The Service of Religious Authority: Reflections on Gov-ernment in the Revision of Constitutions." Sister Mary resides at her motherhouse, Suore di Nostra Signora di Namur; Largo Berechet, 4; 00152, Roma, Italy. When a group of sisters came to my office recently to discuss a theme for a presentation, we had little difficulty in finding one, and the focus seemed to sharpen almost of its own accord. The topic of religious con-secration was an evident subject for at lea~t three main reasons: I) its in-trinsic importance; 2) its importance in renewal; 3) its importance as be-ing at the heart of much of the crisis in religious life since the Second Vatican Council. It is also the key to future development. We concentrated on the consecration of religious, and more espe-cially of sisters whose institutes, are dedicated to works of the apostolate. We assumed as a starting point, that all religious of whatever style of life are both contemplative and apostolic by the fact of their vocation and profession. They express the contemplation and the apostolic effective-ness differently in accordance with the founding gift of their institutes or of the branch of the institute to which they belong, but the dimensions of contemplation and of apostolate are common to all. Having agreed on this, we addressed ourselves to those religious who express their contem-plation and apostolate in an active dedication to works of mission. For the sake of brevity, we called them apostolic religious. 3 4 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 Three lines0of thought emerged: 1) the challenge to sisters of apos-tolic life twenty years after the Second Vatican Council; 2) consecration as the heart of apostolic religious life; 3) living that consecration in the Church today. The Challenge to Apostolic Religious Twenty Years After Vatican II A Matter of Identity The challenge facing many apostolic religious is a matter of identity. The fruitful period for the foundation of religious congregations of sis-ters dedicated to apostolic works was approximately from the end of the French Revolution to the first third of the present century. Emigration, the exploration of new continents, the consequent expansion of the Church, the needs created by the industrial revolution, and the political and social developments of the nineteenth century, all called for a Chris-tian service inspired by the works of mercy. The need was met largely and often heroically by institutes of sisters who responded to the call and founding gift of God by undertaking works which expressed the grace ,' he gave: works of education, health care, social rescue, pastoral serv-ice. At that time, few other people were concerned about these areas of need. The sisters were identified, exteriorly at least, by their works, their dress, their convents, their mode of life. They were easily recognized, usually respected, and sometimes put on a pedestal. But whatever the re-action to them, their own identity was secure. They knew what they were about and what they had come to do. Their future seemed predictable, and a young woman presenting herself as a postulant could have a rea-sonable expectation of what her life of serv.ice would be like. The fact that security of works has changed is a natural historical de-velopment. Evolution is necessary and inevitable. Some religious who identified their vocation with what they were doing, certainly had a cri-sis over this. But even the extraordinarily rapid rate of change which has marked the evolution of apostolic works in the past thirty years, was not enough in itself to challenge the religious of apostolic life as they have been challenged since 1966. The issues are deeper. Two great insights of Vatican 1I have had a profound effect on the sense of identity of the apostolic religious: the universal call to holiness, stated in Lumen Gentium, chapter 5, numbers 39-42, and the criteria for renewal of religious life, ~;tated in Perfectae Caritatis, number 2. The universal call to holiness blurred the traditional notion of religious life as a state of perfection, and the criteria for renewal sent religious back to the gospel, .the primitive inspiration of their institute and the changed Consecrated Apostolic Lives conditions of our times with unexpected results. Let us look briefly at these two insights of the Council since they have both obliged sisters of apostolic life to go tothe roots of their identity and to find these in their religious consecration. The Universal Call to Holiness Originally chapters 5 and 6. of Lumen Gentium were conceived as a single entity so that the universal call to holiness actually did embrace all the members of the Church with no chapter distinction between laity and religious. Even in the present separated presentation, the thought of the two chapters is unified and continuous. Lumen Gentium sees~the Church as the people of God, chapter II) hierarchical (chapter III) lay (chapter IV) and called to holiness (chapters V and VI). The Code of Canon Law follows approximately the same pattern, dealing first with Christ's Faithful and then with the hierarchy and institutes of consecrated life. The decree on the Apostolate of Lay People (Apostolicam Actuosi-tatem, 18, XI 1965) develops much more richly the role of the laity in the Church, and Gaudium et Spes opens.up clearly and strongly, the enor-mous role that is theirs precisely because of the call to holiness. The emer-gence of the laity is the logical fruit of chapter 5 of Lumen Gentium ~nd it is not surprising that some of the best writing in preparatio.n for the coming Synod on "the vocation and mission of the laity in the Church and in the world twenty years after the Second Vatican Council" uses terms that a few decades ago would have been thought proper to relig-ious. The concept of the laity as the people of God and the exploration of the depths of, baptismal consecration havebeen slow to leaven the think-ing of the Church and, like all great truths, may have been liable to ex-agg,~ ration in the process. There has been error both by defect and by excess. One school of thought has argued that, if all are called to holi-ness, no way of life is in itself more holy than another; baptism is every-thing, and there is no consecration~beyond that of baptism. Th~is would cut the ground from under all forms of what the Church specifically calls '"consecrated life." Another school of thought has taken the line that, if all are called to holiness, then all, in some obscure way, are called to echo or model the way of life long recognized in the Church as a ~'state of perfection." This confuses the style of life with the substance of ho-liness and moreover does not do justice to number 31 of Lumen Gentium which insists that "their secular character is proper and peculiar to the laity." 6 Review for Religious, January-February 1988 In practice, a remarkable renewal of the laity is actually going on. This is not simply a matter of effective lay movements such as St. Egidio, i'Arche, the Focolarini, the neo-catechumenates and charismatic groups, all of which are especially attractive to young people, but also of a ground swell in favor of the laity. There is a quality of spirituality, of mission, of responsibility in the Church, of active participation that was not known before the Council l Whereas formerly the lay person was identified negatively as one who is not a c!eric or a religious now the nega-tive description is complemented by something much more positive; the laity are "the faithful who by baptism are incorporated into Christ, are placed in the.People of God, and in their own way share in the priestly, prophetic~.and kingly office of Christ, and to the best of their ability carry. on the mission Of the whole Christian people in the Church and in the world" Lumen Gentium .31). The sense of identity is much surer, and it is very clear that one does not have to be a religious to be called to holiness, .to be in .mission in the Church and to be responsible for many of the things that religiOus of apostolic life have done since their foun-dation. This has been a challenge.for many. if all are called to holiness and our work can be done by others, why be a religious? Some Effects of Renewal At the same time as the movement connected with the laity, there has been the parallel movement for the renewal of religious life. Perfe~tae Caritatis (n. 2) called for a renewal and an adaptation of religious insti-tutes in the changed conditions of our times. It is a matter of history that the adaptation, which was the easier and the more evident of the two un-dertakings, happened with great rapidity. In some cases it took place be-fore the implications of true renewal were grasped. In many instances it was not so much an adaptation as a complete transformation which moved an institute away from the expression of its founding gift that had been visible, identifiable and a lived tradition. Adaptation was necessary but the Council assumed an adaptation resulting from and in conformity with the renewal of basic values in religious life. Renewal was to, give a focus to the adaptation~ and criteria of discernment to guide it. With-out such parameters, the attempt to be one with the changed and chang-ing conditions of our times could only involve religious in an endless spi: ral of charige to the point where their identity would no longer be in them-selves but in their conformity to current conditions. The ada.ptations of the past twenty years have gone very far. In a re-action to being identified by their works, many institutes in the early 70s Consecrated Apostolic Lives / 7' laid a heavy emphasis on being rather than on doing. Then a counterac-tion, stressing the idea of mission without adequately defining it, moved back to doing, although this was expressed in new terms, often with a strong social emphasis.~ The shifts were evident in most aspects of apos-tolic religiouslife: There was a far more immediate insertion into soci-ety than .in the past: an active presence and outreach characterized by soli-darity with and preferential option for the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized. The types of work done, while not giving up the traditional health, educational and pastoral services where these remained neces-sary, included a wide variety of new ministries, often in the fields of hu-man promotion and some times of socio-political involvement. Forms of community changed. There were fewer large, institution-like convents but a multiplication of small, loosely structured, inconspicuous resi-dences with a relatively short life span. Structures of government cailed for participation and shared responsibility. Prayer had to be adapted to the new forms of life and work and often became largely individual. For-mation was sometimes uncertain because the life itself was not clear. Too much was left to the Choice of the person entering. The dramatic reduc-tion in numbers posed a problem in itself, and there was a lack of confi-dence on the part of many sisters with regard to their own future. Unless there was a strong grasp of the root values of religious life and a genuine renewal of these, the adaptations of the late 60s and 70s could bri.ng sisters to the point of asking serious questions about their idi~n-tity as religious. The crisis was sharper for sisters of apostolic life since their apostolates brought them into close contact with the crisis that the Church was living at the same time in her effort to be open to the world and be a Church of the poor. Those same apostolates also brought to-gether the sisters and the laity. More than one religious asked: what is the difference between me, who am a sister of apostolic life, and my sis-ter at home, who is a professional Christian laywoman?'It is not prayer; it is not work; in many cases it is not dress; it is not home conditions or lifestyle. The question: "why be a religious?" was being posed from adifferent angle. Some sisters left religious life because they could not answer it with any degree of integrity. Convinced that all share the same call to holiness, the same baptismal consecration, that all take part in the same mission of Christ, that we build the same body of Christ in the com-munion of the Church, that we are all members of the priestly, prophetic and royal People of God, and not seeing much evident difference in the works by whi(h religious and laity express all this, these sisters virtu-ally asked whether there was a difference at all. I~ / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 This is the crux of many a vocation crisis for apostolic religious. The answer in individual cases is never easy because the question itself im-plies that there is already doubt and insecurity. The important thing is the basis on which the doubt and insecurity are met. Two points matter. One is to su[gport and encourage all that is said of the dignity and great-ness of the lay vocation. Religious do not find their own identity at the expense of the laity or by playing down the-laity. On the contrary. The stronger and greater the lay vocation, the more it can help religious to develop their own, and all that the laity have by baptism is also the basis of'the Christian life of.the religious. The second point is to make the ques~ tion concrete and positive. In one sense: "How are we different?" is the wrong question if it is a defensive attempt to fix on what separates us. We should rather ask: "What is it that makes us religious? What does it commit us to? How do we live it?" Many sisters who, possibly could not put that essential specification into words are yet s~ufficiently con-vinced to give their lives because of it--and that speaks for itself. When we do try to put it into wgrds, it comes to the Christian call to holiness and to union with Christ in mission in the Church expressed, not in secu-larity as is the case with the laity, and not through ordination as is the case with the c.lergy, but through religious consecration: a consecration of the whole person which is a new expression of baptism and which is effected by public vows accepted by the Church and made in commu-nity. Our identity, our raison d'etre, our place in the Church have their roots in our religious consecration. For many of us this consecration is specifically apostolic. Consecration The Nature of Our Apostolic Consecration The new Code of Canon Law is very clear that consecration is the basis and specific characteristic of our life as religious, and it has two fine a~ticles to this effect. The first is canon 573.1 which says: "Life consecrated through the profession of the evangelical counsels is a sta-ble form of living in which the faithful follow Christ more closely under the action of the Holy Spirit and are totally dedicated to God who is su-premely loved. By a new and special title they are dedicated to seek the perfection of charity in the service of God's kingdom, for the honor of God, the building up of the Church and the salvation of the world. They are a splendid sign in the Church, foretelling the glory of heaven." The second is canon 607. I: "Religious life, being a consecration of the whole person, shows forth in the Church the marvelous marriage established Consecrated Apostolic Lives by God as a sign of the world to come. Religious by their consecration consummate a full gift of themselves as a sacrifice offered to God,. so that their whole existence becomes a continuous worship of him in love." All the important elements are there: the reality of a consecra-tion to God which takes the whole of life; the rootedness in baptism; the newness; the response of love to the love of God which calls to a rela-tion which is mutual gift like marriage; the commitment to a personal fol-lowing of Christ more closely; the form of the consecration which is by public vows; its public nature; the ecclesial dimension which is in the Church and for the building up of the Church; the stability and specific-ity; and the fact that it is for others: a witness to.the fact of God, of heaven, of the reality of the invisible things of faith that is for the good of all God's people. For us, sisters of apostolic life, there are two other very important articles: canon 673 which states that the apostolate of all religious consists primarily in the witness of their consecrated life and canon 675 which makes clear that, for institutes dedicated to apostolic works, apostolic action is of the very nature of the consecration. Such action is to come from union with God. It is to confirm and foster this union and is to be exercised in the name of the Church and in commun-ion with her. Let us look at some of these ~lements more closely. . Consecration involves, at least implicitly, choice by God and the dou-ble idea of separation for him and dedication to him. In the Old Testa-ment, it came to mean a declaring sacred, a setting aside a reserving or separating out for God which recognized his holiness. In the case of per-sons, Yahweh himself consecrated as, for example, in the wonderful call of Jeremiah (Jr 1:5) whom he foreknew, loved, called and set aside for his ~own service even before he was born. In the new dispensation, Jesus is consecrated and sent (Jn 10:36): "For them do I consecrate myself" (Jn 17:!9). His Church is a consecrated nation, "a people set apart to sing the praises of God" (1 P 2:9). From this consecrated nation God° freely chooses and calls certain ones, as he did the prophets and apos-tles, to live their sharing in his covenant in a way which involves a fur-ther or new consecration. This may be sacramental, in the case of priests; secular, in the case of members of secular institut+s; religious, when it is made through religious profession. In each case it is an unmerited gift of God which, like love, cannot be rationalized. It is something that God works in us and to which we respond. The woman called to be a relig-ious is invited by the Father to a closer following of his Son, is given a particular intimacy with the Lord and is transformed by the Spirit in a-unique relationship of love given and love returned consciously, freely, Review for Religious, January-February 1988 totally. She is separated for and dedicated to this and she gives her life to it in joyful hope and gratitude. She finds in it the inexhaustible source of her own growth in holiness and of her effectiveness and fruitfulness at the service of others. Such a consecration is deeply rooted in baptism and is a fuller ex-pression of the baptismal commitment. Baptism, by which we receive the fruits of the redemption in Christian initiation, establishes a relation with God which is trinitarian and ecclesial. Any further bond with God will be marked by the same characteristics. It can only develop further the relationship of baptism. That is why religious consecration is a dedi-cation; not to the following of Christ to Which we are already bound by baptism, but to the closer following; not to the love of God and neigh-bor because that is already contained in baptism, but to God supremely loved and to service as a pledge for life; not to being Church because we are already fully members of the Church by baptism, but to taking that particular place and role in the Church which are indicated by our religious profession. The consecration is rooted in baptism yet it is new. It is not given to all the baptized and is not an automatic consequence of baptism. It is new because it binds us to new dimensions of the bap-tismal consecration. It is new because it is made with awareness and choice; new as a response of love to a particular call; new because it com-mits us to constant ongoing conversion; new because it constitutes a new iife for God in Jesus Christ (see Redemptionis Donum, n. 7). This new consecration has a particular character: it is marked by a love that is mutual gift--the love of choice and self-giving which is the 10ve of one spouse for another. The Code of Canon Law chooses the im-age of "the marriage established by God as a sign of the world to come" as its description of religious life. From the depth of the love of Jesus comes the call'to Consecration, and this saving call by God's grace, as- -sumes in the depth of the person called, the actual form of profession of the evangelical counsels. ~In this form is contained the answer of the religious to the call of Christ's love: a love of self-giving responding to the divine self-giving. This is the heart of religious consecration: a mu-tual surrender of love which embraces the whole person. The words of Isaiah: "I have redeemed you, you are mine" (Is 43: I), seem precisely to seal this love which is a love of total and exclusive consecration to God. However, mysterious as it is from many points of view, religious con-secration is no abstraction. It involves a particular way of life here and now in a form approved by the Church. Of its very nature such-a way Consecrated Apostolic Lives of life wiil include prayer, mission, service and communion with others who have the same consecration in a particular religious family. It is in a down-to-earth community, in the Church and world as they are today, and in accordance with a specific set of approved constitutions in a given institute that we live our religious consecration. Moreover, consecration takes place through the profession of public vows. The vows are public by their nature and they pledge those who make them to a fraternal life in common (see can. 607). Not only do they set apart and dedicate the consecrated person to God but, as a chief means of fostering this new relationship, they incorporate the person into a religious institute which has its own law and which encourages growth in consecration in its own way. We sometimes talk about religious consecration generically but, as a matter of fact, it is always both specific and concrete. There is no such thing as vows made in general. They must be according to the constitu- .tions of a given institute. In their turn, the constitutions express the found-ing gift given by God to a person or group: Francis, Dominic, the seven founders of the Servites, Mary Euphrasia Pelletier, or Julie Billiart. Each of these lived their own consecration in a way which attracted others, and the institutes which they brought into being are channels for the'~work of the Holy Spirit continuing the gift of God in later generations. Fidel-ity to the identity which is rooted in the gift of God is, therefore, of high importance to any institute. It is transmitted through the consecrated lives of the members and through the consecration of new members, for the consecration itself reflects something of the specific grace, purpose, na-ture and spirit of the religious family in which it is made. It is clear that, although religious consecration involves a stable way of life, it is not a once and for all act. It is the beginning of a new phase of the inner journey to union with God, but it requires a lifelong growth that we call formation, and structures of support and order that we call governmept. We deepen our consecration all our life long. Nor is con-secration self-regarding. It is directed to the fulfillment of God's kind purposes and so is:for the sake of the whole Church. It benefits all God's people. The present Holy Father has expressed this very beautifully when he said that by the fact of consecration the heart of the religious is sealed with the sign of the biblical spouse (see Sg 8:16) and at the same time opened to all the sufferings, needs and hopes both of individuals and of the world. Receiving the love of the Father through the heart of Jesus, the religious enters in a particular way into the economy of the redemp-tion: the transformation of the entire cosmos through the human heart from within. This transformation takes place through the love which con- Review for Religious, January-February 1988 stitutes the very substance of religious consecration. It is by their conse-cration itself, then, that religious take part in the most complete and radi-cal way possible in the shaping of the new creation which must emerge from the abundance of the Paschal Mystery. (see Redemptionis Donum, nn. 8 and 9). This is their deepest sharing in the saving mission of Christ. The consecration of the apostolic religious, however, has a special note. In their case the deep, consecrated sharing in Christ's mission has an expression in apostolic and charitable activity which is of the very nature of their religious life. This activity is a "holy ministry entrusted to them by the Church, to be performed in its name" (Perfectae Carita-tis,. n. 8). It is a ministry closely connected with the founding gift and identity and rooted in consecration. To accomplish it, the entire relig-ious life of the members should be imbued with an apostolic spirit, and all their apostolic activities with a religious spirit. Here we touch the heart of apostolic religious consecration in practice. The apostolate is not something added on to our life of consecration: it is essential to that life. Everything in us~must be "imbued with an apostolic spirit." There is nothing outside it. It embraces the whole of life. We are apostolic, not because of What we do or do not do, but because we are consecrated in such a way that all is done as one sent by God in the name of Jesus and in the power of his self-giving love. The complementary side of thee coin is equally important. The works that we undertake to fulfill the "holy ministry entrusted to us by the Church" are not simply professional ac-tivities. By the fact of consecration, they are to be "imbued with a re-ligious spirit." We are consecrated for God, for the Church, for his peo-ple, not simply to do works which, however good, can be paralleled by many a generous person,° whether Christian or not. Our service is to be a sign of Christian vocation, witnessing to realities that are unseen but eternal. That is why our apostolic action must always proceed from un-ion with God and must confirm and foster that union. We are apos-tolically effective to the extent to which we live ourconsecration. The Place of O~r Apostolic Consecration in the Church Our consecration as apostolic religious is an ecclesial reality, exist~ ing only in and for the Church, the sacrament of salvation of the Christ who is consecrated affd sent. The Code says that we exist to'build up the body of Christ (can. 573.1). Certainly, our consecration is mediated through the Church. The public vows of religious are recognized and re-ceived by ecclesiastical authority, and the life to which they give rise is a divine gift to the Church which does not exist outside her. The Church r(cognizes, fosters and encourages the establishment and growth of re- Consecrated Apostolic Lives ligious institutes. She has the responsibility of discerning gifts and of ap-proving the individual constitutions according to which consecration by vows is made. She also gives the particular apostolic mandate according to which we have a specific, visible and public share in the saving mis-sion given to her by her founder. Our consecration commits us to a dou-ble service in the Church. In the first place, by a free expression of God's will, we are called to do and be intensively, exclusively, publicly and with our whole lives what all Christians are called to do and be by the universal call to baptism described in Lumen Gentium. Our consecration by vows in community frees us from many preoccupations and respon-sibilities of daily life in the areas of possessions, affectivity and choices precisely in order that we may be completely given to this one priority. If we are not living for the sake of others, we are not living our religious consecration because it is for them every bit as much as for ourselves that God has given his gift. We see a kind of parallel in civil life. All citizens have a responsibility for public o.rder and the well-being of so-ciety. Usually all strive to keep the peace. But some do it as a service to the others which is a life commitment. They do it publicly, exclu-sively, giving all their time and energy to it and, in some cases, life it-self. They are not more citizens than those who have chosen other ca-reers, but they express their citizenship in.a specific way for the benefit of all. God has always acted in a similar way with his people. All share the covenant; all are a royal,, prophetic, priestly nation; all are a conse-crated people set apart for God. But it is precisely ,because of this uni-versal call to holiness that God has called individuals and groups to im-age the covenant, to recall it, to live it in a way that is a constant re-minder, so as to help their sisters and brothers to be faithful to it. This call from among the people of God and for the sake of the people of God is not merited but free. It does not argue personal sanctity and does not imply any form of superiority. There were kings who failed, reluctant prophets, unfaithful priests, and apostles who betrayed or denied their Lord. But there is aneed for persons in the line of the prophets and apos-tles who are called by God, set. apart and dedicated to him, and who give up everything to follow him more closely. They focus the common call of God's people and keep it before the eyes of all as a challenge, encour-agement and truth that give meaning to life. The first service that results from religious consecration stands in this tradition. The second service is the more obvious one of apostolic works. There is an intimate connection between the founding gift which originated an institute, the consecration by which members are incorporated into the "14 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 institute, and the works which express the institute's corporate sharing in the mission of Christ. The three cannot be separated. In recognizing an'd approving an institute and mediating the consecration of its mem-bers, the Church acts on a discernment which she has made of the action of the Holy Spirit responding to.the needs of God's people. This divine action usually involves a perception on the part of the institute's foun-dress of some aspect or attribute of God which enables her to see human needs in a particular way and to respond concretely. My own foundress' wonderful awareness that God is good made her want to share her per-sonal experience of his goodness with the people of her rural area of north-east France who had never he~ird of him. This corresponded with the des-perate need for social and religious formation which followed the French Revolution. The result was a sharing in Christ's mission by an aposto-late of catechesis and education. Educational works are not one option among many .for Sisters of Notre Dame. They are the apostolate by which we share and continue St. Julie's founding insight and they are mandated for us by the Church because of this. Most apostolic institutes can trace the relation--founding gift, consecration, apostolic works-- pretty clearly. For example, the very name, Sisters of the Good Shep-herd, is a summary in itself. The Sisters of Mercy are another case in point. So are the Sisters of the Good Samaritan and the Little Sisters of the Poor. In each case, the Church is enriched by a concrete service in an area which she herself has approved and which has its roots in a di-vine initiative continued in consecrated life. Such a service is a matter of faith as well as of professional 'competence. It has a solid ground of continuity as well as diversity in its ongoing development. Both in itself and through the forms of service to which it has given rise, religious consecration is a witness in the Church to the reality of things hoped for and believed but as yet unseen. Consecration is a re-sponse of love in faith. The apostolic religious, by the fact of her conse-cration, asserts her conviction about the reality of God, the truth of Je-sus Christ, the presence of the communicating Spirit. She gives her life to this. In full consciousness of her personal inadequacy, she accepts the responsibility of being salt and light, sign and reminder. She accepts it, moreover, corporately in community with others shar.ing the same un-merited gift, and in a stable way--not simply when she feels like it, or when things go w~ell, or for a certain time, but for better or for worse as a life commitment. The ChurCh has the right to count on the witness and works of consecrated religious. Consecrated Apostolic Lives The Place of Consecration in Our Lives At this point it might be helpful to sum up briefly the place of our apostolic religious consecration in our lives as individual members of our institutes. What does it commit us to? First, to a closer following of Christ, .personally and loved above all, and, in him, to a continuous wor-ship of God in charity. This involves a life like that of the apostles: not a knowing about the Lord but a knowing and loving the Lord himself, taking on his mind and heart in the ordinary things of every day, letting ourselves be transformed by him until to live is Christ (Ph 1:24). This deep love of the person of Jesus gives meaning to our consecrated lives and the foundation of any apostolic spirituality. It is expressed in the vows and it alone can ensure the poverty of heart, the surrender of love and the free obedience that we strive for through our vows. Secondly. we are committed to a sisterly life in common precisely because the un-ion with Christ through love also unites us among ourselves. Commu-nity is characteristic of the religious form of consecrated life. It is the expression of a spiritual bond, a communion, which is Christ among us, our hope of glory (Col 1:27). This bond reflects the Church a~ commun-ion: the aspect so strongly brought out at the 1985 Synod of Bishops. It is also the bond of apostolic following: of sharing the same mission of Christ, in the same way and under the impulse of the same Holy Spirit. This bond is stable, and has its concrete expression in commu-nity as our form of life. We commit ourselves in the third place to a shar-ing in Christ's mission which is corporate, personal and ecclesial. We each accept our personal Part in the mandate which the Church gives to the institute as a whole and we carry out our own mission under the author- ~ity of our institute and according to its traditions. Fourthly, we commit ourselves to fidelity to our own religious institute as God's gift to the Church and to us. This means fidelity to its nature, character, purpose and identity, to its way of life, to its spirit, to its mission, apostolate and works. Such fidelity has to be both honest and creative, respecting both the need for continuity ant] the necessity for change. Finally, implicit in all this is that we commit ourselves to Christ's goal and to Christ's means: prayer, service and the cross in the very apostolates that we do with him for the Father's glory and the salvation of the world. Our con-secration requires that our works come from and lead to union with God. That is one reason why our commitment in faith is a source of confi-dence, joy and hope. Review for Religious, January-February 1988 Living Our Apostolic Consecration Today. The Conditions of Our Times (Perfectae Caritatis n. 2) Perfectae Caritatis pointed to the conditions of our times as one of the three major criteria of renewal. They certainly play a great part in the way that the apostolic religious lives her consecration today. Some sisters bemoan them, others exult in them, others a~ain try to escape them or pretend that they are not there. One good way to approach them is to remind ourselves that we are not living our religious life in 1988 by chance. It might seem easier to have been a "Mother of the desert," or a seventeenth-century pioneer, or even one of our pre-Vatican II sis-ters, sure of her predictable horarium and occupations. However, the fact is that it is here and now that we are living our religious consecration because that is God's choice for us. Of all the possible periods of his-tory, this is the one that his love found best for us. It is not a mistake or an oversight. We know and have believed in his love and this is how he shows it. Our first response has to be a wholehearted Yes to the fact that we INe in our own times. This is our hour. We do not have any otfier, and if we do not accept it,'something will be forev~r lost to God's glory and to the Church of Christ. It is here in this place, now .in this time, with these sisters, in this Church, in this society that each of us carries on the saving work of Christ to which our consecration c6mmits US. What are our times? Certainly they are a period of very rapid change, not to say upheaval, both in the Church and in the world. The years since the Council bave seen significant shifts in long-accepted values and atti-tudes and the raising of questions probably unthinkable in a previous gen-eration. Moral problems are complex. Instant communication has brought nuclear issues, violence, the uncertain striving for world peace, questions of human dignity,~ world hunger, armaments into many peo-ple's homes. Computer technology is easing work on the one hand and on the other posing some deep problems about the future of human de-velopment. One thing is sure. The clock will not turn back. These are our times with their hopes and fears and challenges. We have to know them if we are to live our consecration according to the mind of Christ, because they raise questions about the adaptation of our style of conse-crated life and work. Four areas have been particularly affected by social and ecclesial de-velopments since Vatican II: community, works, formation and govern-ment. The extent of the pressure has varied from culture to culture but Consecrated Apostolic Lives / 17 the general lines are worldwide, and I will confine my observations to the English-speaking world as being the one I know best. Community has moved from the accepted model of a more or less en-closed life with its own traditional .interpretation of being-in-common through uniformity of timetable, prayer, presence, habit, to a present state of considerable diversity. There have been successive phases. Im-mediately after the Council,there was a false dichotomy between com-munity and apostolate and, in reaction to this, the tendency to absolu-tize either one or the other. Then there was the cry for small communi-ties. In the late seventies, by a misunderstanding, anything that was termed "monastic" was considered nonacceptable for apostolic life. Then there were cluster communities, intercongregational communities, international communities, and the cases of sisters living alone. Much of the discussion centered on structure, size, location, style of living and form of government. All these are important, but the considerations need to go deeper if we are to renew,community in a way that corresponds to our times. What is needed is a living witness to the possibility of unity among people. The quality and evidence of community living: that is, the fact of persons living like the apostles did, united to Christ, and to each other because of him, is part of the good news that we bring. Com-munity exists as the expression of communion ir~ the Lord. For this rea-son it is an obligation for religious; notan obligation which is imposed, but an obligation of love which flows naturally from our consecration. It is by the values of consecration and corporate mission that commu-n. ity life is to be evaluated. Certainly, there are changes in the require-ments and possibilities of community life, but probably what needs prayer-ful reflection is the connection between present.trends in community styles and structures and the v~alues of consecrated religious life that these are meant to promote. The touchstone is our consecration: the basic ele-ment which determines the.raison d'6tre., the purpose, the relationships and the nature of community. It is not a~clearcut area. There are good apostolic reasons for many of the changes that are taking place: new needs evident in both the Church and society; much greater specialization and professional mobility; fewer sisters; less stable corporate com-mitments because of the variety of demands; a different kind of outreach to the needy and the marginalized. But the criterion for discernment in decisions that have to be made must first of all be the consecration in which religious community is rooted. What kind of community are we building? What values are we trying to support? If the bottom line is our consecration, our communion in Christ will be such that the witness of Review for Religious, January-February 1988 our community living will be an apostolate in itself. "By this all shall know that you are my disciples, that you have love one for another" (Jn 13:35). If the communion of consecration does not solve all the struc-tural problems, it gives the one sure context for the evolution of com-munity. Something similar has happened in regard to works, and this is not separate from but closely related to developments in community. Ours is a corporate mission: a joint sharing in the one mission of Christ which is an ecclesial mandate taken up by the fact of our consecration to God in a parti.cular institute. It has both the strength and the limitation of its specificity. It is strong because it commits the whole institute to a cer- (ain direction: the service and works which express its founding gift. It is limited because it requires us to forego other kinds of works which are not part of that gift or which are more properly done either by the clergy or by the laity. One of the difficult things to foster in recent years has been the poverty of heart that can accept the limitations of consecrated service for what they really are: fidelity to God's will as expressed in the founding gift and lived tradition, and not some kind of failure in gener-osity. We do not look for variety of works for its own sake. We are not called to act as if all the social, political, economic, educational, pas-toral or medical good in the world depended on us. We are not seeking our own fulfillment. But we are living our consecration to the Christ who was sent in ways which are much more sophisticated than they were twenty years ago. We need a good deal more specialization. We find our-selves called by a wider range of needs. We have more collaboration with other religious, with the laity, with public bodies. We find ourselves faced by increasing demands just when our diminishing numbers and ris-ing median age seem to give less possibility of meeting them. Here it is the mission to which our consecration commits us that is the stable cri-terion for discernment. What are we sent to do? For whicl~ service in the Church of today did the Lord prepare our particular institute? That is where our fidelity must lie. It is our fidelity to our institute's part in Christ's mission that determines our corporate decisions and, within the corporate identity, the works of the individual religious. With regard to formation, I want to make only one remark at this point: namely, that the conditions of our time are one important element in the formation process. We donot carry on our formation in a vacuum or, please God, in some airborne way that is out of touch with reality. The young women who come to us come from today's society with its attitudes, values, habits and ways of acting. It is twenty years since the Consecrated Apostolic Lives Second Vatican Council, so very few of our candidates will have expe-rienced the often healthy security that marked pre-Vatican II religious life. Although conditions change from one culture to another, most young women have known only a rapidly changing world and a suddenly changing Church. Why come to institutes in process of changing their lives and revising their constitutions? At the same time, older sisters, em-bracing or resisting or avoiding the changes of the past twenty years, have been faced by the challenge of an ongoing formation which has to take into account the conditions of the times while it deepens and fos-ters growth in all the areas of consecrated life. Alike for the candidate and for the golden jubilarian, the focus is consecration. The candidate is preparing for it. The older sister is deepening it by her daily ongoing formation in community. How do we ensure this process today? How do we set formation in the late 1980s squarely in the perspective of our con-secration to the God who sends us in mission? Finally, government has been greatly affected by the values, particu-larly the political values and principle~s, of our times. Democracy, par-ticipation, subsidiarity, consensus, shared responsibility, collective de-cision making, due process appear in some shape or form in most drafts of constitutions. There is a stress on collectivity and leadership and on the gifts of the individual sister. All this is a curious amalgam of much that is good in the tendencies of our times but it has three striking char-acteristics: it usually avoids with great care any clear authority, organi-zation and general structure, all of which are necessary if government is to work; it makes no a~;sumption of faith, but seems to aim at effi-ciency of function rather than efficacy of purpose; it does not necessar-ily relate the government structures of an institute to its founding gift and tradition, yet this relation is critically important. The influences on gov-ernment have real potential for good but they cannot be accepted uncriti-cally or simply because they seem to be the trend of the times. How do we discern which ones will be helpful? Allowing for the existence of our own traditions and of the general law of the Church, which processes and structures will best promote our religious life and service? Again it comes down to which ones will support and foster our consecration in mission. It is evident that values have to be clear and deeply accepted, but the touchstone for decisions is consecration. Response to Our Times What we offer to the men and women of our time is the dedication to God, to the Church and to the saving work of Christ in our world that is contained in our consecration. It is a self-giving which witnesses to "20/Review for Religious, January-February 1988 love through service: a witness of faith which makes us signs of the God we cannot see, and of the invisible realities that everyone hopes for. It need not be dramatic. Most of the time, it seems very ordinary and rou-tine. But we must be deeply convinced of its necessity and validity. God has chosen each of us before the creation of the world to live through love in his presence and to continue actively the mission of Christ in our world here and now. These are his "kind purposes" (see Ep 1:5). We have, therefore, three centers of focus in our one consecration: Christ, the Church, and the world, and it is from these interrelated centers that our style of response to our times takes its shape. I suggest that the Church and society today need among religious~ not so much planners, as contemplatives; not so much professors as proph-ets; not so much public servants as apostles. It is witness rather than words or works which speaks in our time. It is therefore as contempla-tives who are one with Christ, as prophets who hear and communicate his word in the Church and as apostles sent in our own world that we live our consecration, whatever our work may be. That is the heart of our response. We are to be contemplatives, not because of a lifestyle that is en-closed, but because we have committed ourselves by our vows to live always the particular response of faith, hope and love by which we open ourselvesto the revelation of the living God and to communion with him through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit in every aspect of our lives. The contemplative dimension of our consecration is basically a reality of grace. It is a gift of God by which we know him as Father (see Jn 14:8) in the mystery of the Trinity dwelling within us (see Jn 14:23). By it we savor what Saint Paul calls "the depths of God" (I Co 2:!0) and. by the gradual purification of the paschal cross all our lives long, we come more and more to meet God in everything and in everyone, to serve him in our sisters and brothers, to. love, adore and praise him in the daily round of our duties. Our consecration commits us to this: to live, be and serve in the perspective of God no matter what our workg may be. Our joys and our sufferings, our immediate tasks and the responsibilities which take time, attention, patience and professional competence are very much part of our lives and are the occasion both of our apostolic .effectiveness and of our personal growth, but we can never afford to let them obscure the vision of faith by which we witness to the reality of what we hope for: to the truths that we cannot see. It is in this contem-plative faith suffusing our lives and publicly expressed as the basis of Consecrated Apostolic Lives our consecration that we find the conviction of the validity of our life and of the value in the Church and world of today. We also serve as prophets. Individuals were called from among the people of Israel to listen for God's word, to hear it and communicate it. They were members of a pro.phetic people at the service of that people and they were one of God's ways of keeping the people faithful to the covenant. In the Church, too, the Lord of history has called some, for the sake of all, to a prophetic role among his people. Jesus is the grea~t prophet: the one who is both message and messenger. In him is the full-ness of the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of prophecy. It is in him and to him that we are consecrated as religious. In that consecration there is a distinct sharing in his prophetic mission. We are to be united with God o in our contemplation but, both individually and corporately, we are also to listen to his word, to recognize it in our own times, to speak it in the way that we live and serve and relate to others. This is no easy matter. A look back at Jeremiah or Isaiah or Jonah or Ezekiel will remind us that we cannot talk lightly about being prophets. It is significant that none of the prophets wanted the role. Moses objected. Jeremiah re~proached the Lord. Jonah ran away. Yet something of their vocation is ours, and we have to face the devastating challenge to complete poverty of heart that they recognized and feared. What does it involve? In the first place; a humble acceptance of God's choice and of God's message. Itis his teaching through Scripture, through the Church, through a tested discern-ment of our own situation properly approved, that we are to speak by words, by action and by life. We do not preach our own .message, we do not decide to whom we will go nor with whom we will work; we do not choose where we will give witness. We do not have an eight-hour prophetic day; it is a calling that takes our whole life. We forgo our own security to depend on God. We accept the cost of prophecy: the suffer-ing, the likely rejection, the misunderstanding, the self-giving that may cost life itself. We are sharply aware of our own inadequacy and defi-ciencies, of our inability to be and do anything without the power of Christ acting in us. And most of the time that power acts in secret. The most effective prophets are often the ones who are least a~iare of their prophetic work. But the very fact of our vows, publicly professing val-ues that speak pr.ofoundly to sex, possessions and self-determination, the fact of our life in community, which speaks to the segregation, aliena-tion and marginalization of so many people, and the fact of our service. in mission given out of love, not out of compulsion, all make us a part of a presence and action in the Church that is distinctly prophetic. Review for Religious, January-February 1988 As apostles, we are sent to carry the good news. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. He is alive now and among us. We have met him; he knows and loves us and all those whom we serve. The fruits of our con-templative faith and our prophetic calling are in our apostolic mission. "As the Father has sent me, I als0 send you" (Jn 20:21). This is why t.he element of missioning: of sending and bei.ng sent, is of so much im-portance in our religious life. We are sent into the world, sent to our works, sent to our communities. We accept the" sending, which is the most effective expression of our obedience, with the same love and free-dom as Christ accepted his, because he makes it possible. Through the Church and through the" mediation of our own institute structures we con-tinue in our own times the work of the Christ who was sent. This is a critically important value in setting up p.rocesses of missioning today. Christ, the Church, and the world combine in the consecration of the apostolic religious to give a commitment to God in community in mis-sion which, in, the concrete reality of the conditions of our times, is a witness eloquent in itself. It has to be lived with full generosity and fi-delity if its potential, is to be realized. Rooted in consecration and ex-pressed in apostolate With the rest of our community, it can be a truly prophetic witness and it is on this level above all that we have something very valid tb bring to our times. Conclusion Despite the questions with which we began these reflections, it must be clear that the consecration of sisters dedicated to apostolic works has a particular place in today's Church. It is by vowed consecration lived in community and approved by theChurch, that we are religious at all, and it is as religious that we receive our particular sharing in the Church's mission. This sharing involves witness to God and a service to our sis-ters and brothers in Christ, that can take many forms but the forms have to be consonant with our consecration, with our founding gift and' tradi-tions, and with the Church's mandate. Our life needs love, faith and fi-delity; it needs a constant sensitiveness to Christ, to the Church and to ~he world; it needs a firm conviction as to its own validity. All these are components of the formation we receive and in which we continue to grow. So long as that growth is centered on what is essential to our life: the vowed consecration in community to the Christ who Was consecrated and sent, not to condemn the world but to save it, we will be increas-ingly what God intends us to be in the Church: witnesses of faith, signs of hope, evangelizers through service. The side-effects of this will come of their own accord: the quiet evidence of a way of living that offers al- Consecrated Apostolic Lives / 93 ternate values to those of sex, money and power; the long-term impact on society of educat.ional 'or pastoral works that consistently operate on Christian principles; the witness of service willingly given for reasons that have nothing to do with professional advancement, ambition or per-sonal gain; the existence in the Church on a permanent and reliable ba-sis of persons and institutions who are channels of God's love in action mirroring the presence among us of Christ the teacher, Christ the healer, Christ the reconciler, Christ the Good Shepherd. This is what we are about today as apostolic religious. May the Lord who consecrated us and began his good work in us, bring it to its completion (see Ph 1:6) for it is only in him that we bear fruit for the Father's glory (Jn 15:8)and he has promised to be with us, even to the end of time (see Mt 28:20). The One Prayer of Jesus David P. Reid; SS.CC. Father Reid, whose interests are "peace, family and the relationship between life and religion,;' teaches New Testament at the Washington Theological Union. He is especially grateful to Sr. Margaret Therese Evans, S.N.D., for encouraging him in seeking publication of this article and for editing its text. Father Reid may be ad-dressed at: Washington Theological Union; 9001 New Hampshire Avenue; Silver Spring, Md 20903-3699. The power to praise is itself your gift. ~,.very prayer is ultimately some shadow and some part of the praise of God. To be able to praise God, of course, is itself God's gift. The fact is we do not pray on our own strength; we pray out of discovering a strength within us. We just hope that our presence, our attempt, is itself prayer. In other words, we come with a tremendous sense of humility into the act of prayer. We hope that our effort at doing certain things re-ally is prayer offered to God. There is only one "pray-er": that is Jesus. Anything we do is a par-ticipation in the one prayer addressed to God through Jesus. When we go to pray, we can be mindful of the Japanese Buddhist in a shrine in Kyoto, or the Hindu taking care of a poor man on the streets of Calcutta, or all the people of the world wanting to pray. In the light of the Gos-pel, we believe that we all share but one prayer: the prayer of Jesus. All the prayer of the whole world reaches God through Jesus because God's ultimate revelation to the human is Jesus, the Christ. We enter into a stream, a wide stream of life. We can have a great sense of solidarity with our human family of brothers and sisters through-out the world as each tries to pray in his or her respective way. Some- 24 The One,,Prayer of Jesus how or other, the prayer of each is nudged this way and that, is cele-brated this way or heard that way. Somehow or other the prayer of each is taken by Jesus and offered to the Father. When we pray we hope that we have heard the prayer of Jesus and that we are releasing his prayer into the world. As we enter into prayer, his prayer is released through us into all the nooks and crannies of this huge, complicated world of hu-man beings. "The power to pray is itself your gift." Who is this gift of God? Je-sus! The power to pray is Jesus. Theologians speak about the "anony-mous Christian" and about the convergence of all things towards God as the "omega point." We, even with our.feeble efforts, are a part of that wide drama. Sometimes it is hard to keep .our footing in this mar-velous procession through Jesus to the Father. We want to bail out. But we were never asked to succeed. Rather we have been invited to become pari of the prayer who is Jesus. "Accept my effort, Good God, and make it part of the prayer of Jesus." Deep down we know that all we do is to offer ourselves. The point is made clearly each time we pray at ,.the Eucharist: "Pray, brothers.and sisters, that our offering may be ac-ceptable . " Our offering is united to the offering of Jesus. The of-fering of Jesus is lovingly accepted by the Father. It becomes a sacrifice. We do not presume to call our offering a sacrifice. Only God makes holy. Only God makes a sacrifice. Only God's action accepting our of-fering makes it a sacrifice. Jest]s' prayer, acted out in his loving self-donation on the cross is totally and completely acceptable to God. Jesus is God's gift. Jesus is God's power to pray. Only in his power do we pray to God. Only his prayer fully resonated with the Father's desire to redeem the world. Perhaps all of us experience problems with prayer. These can be prob-lems of all shapes and makes; at times, problems of faith, at other times, problems of discipline. It will help to solve.some problems to underscore the humility and honesty with, which we come to prayer. We place ~ur-selves in the presence of the praying Jesus. The evangelists portray Je-sus in prayer with the intention of inviting us to be with him. The sim-ple statement: "I prayed this morning," may in fact be too proud. All I did was place myself alongside of the only pray-er there is, Jesus. This is the most exciting and beautiful part of prayer. Recall the scene in Luke's gospel where the Pharisee and the publi-can pray. One of them trots up to the front of the temple and pours out his prayer, while the other one i~ depicted as hanging back, terribly con-scious of the small offering that he is making; he knows that this whole 96 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 thing of praying could fall apart in his hands at any moment. I suggest that this reaction is central to the experience of prayer. "I must decrease, he must increase." We come to pray with a deep sense of our frailty but secure in our awareness that Jesus is the pray-er to whom God has re-sponded. God raised Jesus from the dead, sure sig~'J that God heard the prayer of Jesus. His whole life was prayer because his whole life led to the response of God in raising him up. In prayer we are asking that we be heard as was Jesus. This brings a beautiful unity to our prayer and a deep consolation. All the many ways we pray are efforts to enter :the prayer of Jesus. It would be unwise to evaluate the various ways of praying and declare one way better than another. Each comes from our broken lives at a par-ticular moment and is offered through Jesus who likewise knew many ways to pray to his Father. We give a very concrete interpretation to the idea that we should pray always. Many persons have experienced a whole new creativity in prayer by choosing to call up6n this gift of God in a whole.variety of situations. The gifts of God are not to be compared but only identified as God's gift for this time and in this place and in these circumstances of my life. So it is wise not to compare gifts of prayer but to marvel at the way in which God enables us to pray as we need at any given time. This is true also of the prayer of dryness, even the "prayer of distraction" if we are permitted to coin such a term. Distractions in prayer are a big problem. The problem is not, how-ever, that we have distractions but how we handle them. When we find ourselves distracted, we must re-read the distraction. We must put our-selves in touch with the feelings that were experienced in the distraction. It could be that the distraction is what God wants us to bring to conscious-ness and sur~'ender to him in this prayer. When we offer our distractions to God often we are offering our real selves at that moment. We are "praying from the gut." That's what~.~God wants. God wants our real lives, here and now made part of ever-being-prayed prayer of Jesus. Our distractions are putting flesh on the prayer of Jesus now. How? We are enfleshing his prayer in the midst of that distraction. We are taking the prayer ofJesus and allowing it to become part of our world. It may mean praise, it may mean glory, it may mean healing, it may mean contrition. All the more power,fully therefore do we conclude our time of prayer with the simple refrain: "tht:ough Jesus Christ our Lord." As I conclude my prayer'with this refrain I am greatly consoled. It is not just a nice way to end a prayer; itis the only way both to begin and to end. Often I am distracted during'those prayers at the Eucharist when we recall all The One Prayer of Jesus / 97 those for whom we pray. And before I know where I am we are praying the final doxology. If I trust Jesus praying in me, I can abandon myself in that final sweep as our prayer reaches out to God in the outstretched arms of Jesus: "Through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory is yours, almighty Father, for ever and ever." As the Amen of the community resounds in my ears, I can letgo of my frailty and recognize again that all our strength comes from our being rooted in God. If God could be so "distracted" as to take up his abode in our midst, we can see our distractions as an invitation to take up our abode in God. So our i~sue then is to be very much in touch with the prayer of Je-sus, to believe deeply that we are baptized into his prayer. That prayer is going on inside of us constantly. To take time to pray is to tap into that deep vein, that deep thrust of life which is going on inside. We are in Christ. We are profoundly in Christ.~We are far more in Christ that we shall ever imagine. To pray is to come home to ourselves in the depth to which we are being plunged into Christ. To live is to belong to the community of praise. Now what is Jesus Christ doing in his prayer in the midst of us? He is leading us into the community of the praise of God. We become part of his prayer because his prayer is access to the community of praise. In the imagery of the Letter to the Hebrews, it can be said that Jesus leads us into the Holy of Holies. We are ushered into the presence of God. The wildest dreams of the Old Testament people are fulfilled. Many longed for the joy of going to Jerusalem. Three times a year the pious Jewish person went up to the Holy City. These visits were the high points of the year. All the remainder was lived in the valleys of expectation. Hear the psalmist say it in words of unspeakable beauty: For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the ,house of God than dwell in the tents of wickedness (Ps 84:10 RSV). For them the annual pilgrimages to Jer.usa!em expressed a hope that God would grant such a request: access to God's presence in the midst of the community of praise. They set out for Jerusalem hoping and pray-ing that.they could make the journey and then be .found not unworthy to enter into the very presence of God. Only the high priest could enter the Holy of Hblies once a year. That is what it meant to be alive: to be given access in the community of praise to the very presenc.e of God. 91~ / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 This image of the community of praise is a very powerful image. To develop it I suggest a reading of the healing of the Samaritan leper in Luke's gospel. The story is known to all: On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Gali-lee. And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their'voices and said, 'Jesus, Master, have mercy on us." When he saw them he said to them, 'Go and show your-selves to the priests." And as they went they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned b_ack, praising God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then said Jesus, 'Were not ten cle-ansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" And he said to him, 'Rise and go your way; your faith has made you whole" (17:11-19 RSVi. A painful part of being a I~per was that one was denied access to the community of praise. Jesus sent the lepers off to thd priests to be read-mitred to the community of praise. They discovered that they were healed while on the way there. The Samaritan did nbt need a priest to declare him readmitted. In a daring move, he stepped out in faith and declared that the new situation~ in which he now stood was indeed the community of praise. He rejoiced and praised God. " Jesus' purpose in preaching the kingdom of God was to direct peo-ple °again to the community of praise. He had come from that~commu-nity of praise and he ,was leading people back to that community of praise. He would give us access to the community of praise to the glory of God. And th'e proclamation of the kingdom was to overcome the things that held us back from that 9ommunity. Call it Satan, call it the reign of Satan, call it whatever you will. But he set himself very directly against those things that held back people from allowing that formula of praise to really resonate in their hearts. It is interesting that the person healed is not only a leper; he is also a Samaritan. There was only one thing worse than being a leper in a Jew's eyes; that was being a Samaritan. Here there is one, both a Samari- ,tan and a leper, who finds that all that Jerusalem ever stood for is right here now before him as he praises God for the gift of Jesus. It is won-derful! One finds a whole new redefinition of Jerusalem, of temple, of Samaritan and of what it means to belong to the community of praise. How lovely i~; thy dwelling place, O Lord of Hosts. My soul longs, yea, fainis for the ~ot~rts of the Lord; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God iPs 84:1 RSV). The One Prayer of Jesus In all of the gospels, but especially in Luke, there is an emphasis put on the response of the people to a miracle performed in their midst. It is part of telling the story to underscore the reaction of the participants. Here Luke gives a story which outdoes all others in presenting this reac-tion of praise. The favorable reaction is proportionate to how much the person felt bound by the particular malady. Every miracle restores a per-son to the community of praise; the story of the Samaritan has as its spe-cial purpose to point out that Jesus restores one to the community of praise by removing the blocks that hold back people from access to God. The purpose of the miracles and the purpose of recounting the miracles is less proving that Jesus was divine than illustrating how Jesus gave ac-cess to the Divine. Only God can give access to Godself and Jegus as God's beloved Son rejoiced in giving to humankind access to his Father. Such access is life. Jesus restored the dead to life as a pledge of the Father's power at work within him to lead us all finally to the praise of God's glory forever. Jubilate Deo As our singing in harmony fades and dies Jubilate Deo the music of the silence rises from within our hearts set free by the Spirit who loves to play in the stillness of united hearts. Noel Davis 257 Abercrombie Street Chippendale, N.S.W. Australia 2008 A Word About Praising John Sheila Galligan, I.H.M. Sister John Sheila resides at Mary Immaculate Convent; 10th and Moore Streets; Phila-delphia, Pennsylvania 19148. Without doubt, even a cursory reading of Scripture reveals that the theme of praise pulses in the depths as well as on the surface of the biblical tra-dition. We are swept along at an almost breathless pace as explicit prayers of praise, invitations to praise, and reflections on various aspects of the act of praising come to the fore. With enthusiasm and confidence the Psalmist proclaims resolutely: "I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall be ever in my mouth" (Ps 34:2). God himself praises his gen-tle servant: "Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom my soul delights" (Is 42: 1). In the Gospels these words are reit-erated in reference to Jesus: "This is my beloved Son, on whom my fa-vor rests. Listen to him" (Mt 17:5; see Lk 9:35; Mk 9:7). A close ex-amination of the countless references to "praise" shows that praise is not merely an emotional outpouring, but a theological statement of depth ¯ and seriousness. Throughout Scripture the central meaning of praise seems to indicate the human person as receptive and responsive: recep-tive to the discernible presence of God, responsive in the expression of wonder and awe. Praise is a key element in the life of the spirit. Abraham Heschel, a noted Jewish theologian, makes an incisive comment: The secret of spiritual living is the power to praise. Praise is the harvest of love. Praise precedes faith. First we sing, then we believe. The fun-damental issue is not faith but sensitivity and praise, being ready for faith. ~ 3O A Word About Praising Little do we think about the nature of praise--though nowhere does the might of the spirit appear so openly, so directly and tangibly present as in the act of giving praise. What does it mean--to praise? Surely, an examination of the nature of praising and its place in our lives would be an enriching endeavor. Praise: Its Nature Several passages from the writings of the acclaimed Christian apolo-gist and literary critic C. S. Lewis offer substantive material for reflec-tion and application. The theme of praise is etched into his works with a laser-like intensity of conviction: conviction crystallized in his experi-ence. An understanding of its determinative importance in human life per-meates his works. The tenor and thrust of Lewis' insight are most fully developed in a chapter of his book Reflections on the Psalms. There he affirms that praise is an expression 9f approval, a positive affirmation.2 To praise God is to acclaim, magnify, honor, and glorify him. Praise is a commin-gling of wonder, awe, adoration, and thanksgiving. To praise is to ac-knowledge lovingly and accept gratefully not only what God is in him-self, but what he is for the human person. Authentic praise involves ex-altation, sensitivity to the sacred, awareness of indebtedness to God. It seems to be born when the mystery of God and the mystery of the hu- ¯ man person meet. Praise, Lewis maintains, is th~ dynamic response of a creature who knows himself or herself to be the object of God's infinite love. Lewis personally gave "praise" for coming to this discovery after a slow and hesitant faith-struggle of more than thirty years. With. straightforward sim-plicity he writes of his conversion: The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape?3 Here again we see that praise is essentially a receptive and respon-sive attitude, the diffuse and grateful conviction of being known and loved by God. Lewis draws our attention to the fact that praise is a response to an objective value and, therefore, an expression of the will. As such, he sug-gests it is not just something sentimental, nor does it primarily refer to a special intensity of feeling. Rather, it concerns the extremely solid and sober matter of responding to an objective good. Praise is the "correct, 39 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 adequate, and, appropriate response" to someone or something that de-serves it.4 Therefore, the Psalmist can state, "Praise is rightfully yours, O God" (Ps 65:2). In every conceivable case praise signifies much the same as approval.5 We find that the Psalms frequently issue an invita-tion to praise with a "because" as they proclaim the reason for honor and praise: "Praise the Lord, for he is good; sing praise to our God, for he is gracious; it is fitting to praise him" (Ps 147:1; see Ps 33:1). Thus, the issue of praise is not primarily our feelings and our words; the issue of praise is God." Essentially then, to praise is to discover a value, appreciate it, and in some way express this appreciation. Overtones of ampler meaning emerge from Lewis' attempt to clarify the meaning of "appreciation." The word appreciation for him, means to "love and delight in. ,,6 The beginning of praise is appreciation--and the beginning of appreciation is a sense of humble awe in the face of the mystery of the enduring love and goodness of God. In the light of this we could perhaps say that praise is a form of the truth to be grasped by the spirit. Lewis stresses, too, that to praise is to forget the self and break down the walls of self-absorption and resistance to God. Praise is fueled by love; therefore, selfishness smothers praise. With a dash of daring and characteristic dry humor, Lewis points out his discovery that "the hum-blest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits, and malcontents praised the least.''7 Praise and Creation: Matter Really Matters Not surprisingly, Lewis constantly affirms the sheer "goodness" of all that God has created. There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature .He likes matter. He invented it.8 This marvelous truth is illustrated with a clear and steady focus through-out Scripture and in consequent theological reflection. "God saw that it was good" is a refrain repeated seven times within the first thirty-one verses-of Genesis (see Gn 1:4,10, 12, 18,21,25,31). Heschel's comment is apt: The biblical words about the genesis of heaven and earth are not words of information but words of appreciation. The story of creation is not a description of how the .world came into being but a song about the glory of the world's having come into being: "And God saw that it was good" (Gn 1:25),9 A Word About Praising The whole earth is full of God's glory. Psalm 148 calls us to recog-nize the wonder of God's work and express it in word. Because God has clothed creation with loveliness, the Psalmist sings: "All "your works praise you" (Ps 145:10). We find the theme frequently in poetry, per-haps most beautifully expressed in the Canticle of the Sun by St. Fran-cis. Throughout his works Lewis indulges his delight in the reality of the world with i~nthusiasm and zest. Readers find themselves immersed in powerful imagery and scenes which create the memorable impression that matter really matters. Lewis constantly celebrates the "profusion of pleasure" which lies about us. Always he extends the marvelous in-vitation: Come out, look back, and then you will see--this astonishing cataract of bears, babies, and bananas: this immoderate deluge of atoms, orchids, oranges, cancers, canaries, fleas, gases, tornadoes and toads.~° in the. mystery of creation he sensed the presence of God. It filled him with wonder and gratitude. According to Lewis, not to praise what God has crea~ed is not to see. He would agree with Elizabeth Barrett Browning's pertinent observation in the poem "Aurora Leigh": Earth's crammed with heaven And every common bush afire with God; And only he who sees takes off his shoes-- The rest sit around and pluck blackberries. The world is "crammed" with the marvelous. Yet our perception is frag-ile and lacks intensity. We can be blind and deaf and dull. Therefore, Lewis is adamant: We may ignore, but we can fiowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with him . The real labor is to remember, to at-tend. In fact, to come aware. Still more, to remain awake. I I Lewis' insights are unambiguously positive. He urges us to rejoice in the "joy, pleasure and merriment which God has scattered broad-cast.''~ 2 He thrilled to the genuine delight which one should discern in the patterns of pleasure that God has created. The inexhaustible fecun-dity of the "glad Creator" provides a riot of light and color, taste and smell. ~3 Even Sci'ewtape, the senior devil in Lewis' Screwtape Letters, attests tO the truth that God "is a hedonist at heart . Out at sea, out in his sea, there is pleasure and more pleasure. He makes no secret of 34 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 it; at his right hand are pleasures forevermore." 14 Praise and the Present Moment: Time Touches Eternity Without doubt, Lewis roots praise, in an appreciation of what is "ex-traordinary" in the ordinariness of the present moment. An intuitive and pervasive perception of the fact that every moment is significant, draw-ing its power from God's presence and efficacy in it, under,,lines Lewis' assertion that the "Present is the point at which time touches Eter-nity." ~5 That God's loving and caring presence is~prismed through the present moment strikes the core of his understanding of the nature of praise and its intimate connection with Providence. This notion is crucial in the great theological vision of Julian of Nor-wich, whose statement "All shall be well" is rooted in the reality of "All is well.''~6 A splendid text in Romans also embraces the vision: "We know that God makes all things work together for the good of those who love him" (Rm 8:28). Reality and actuality exist only in the present moment. Because of this, Lewis exhorts us to reflect upon the question, "Where, except in the present, can the Eternal be met.9''~7 A disciplined and intelligent grasp of the art of appreciatipn of the present moment permeates Lewis" works. In his science-fiction novel Perelandra we are told that Maleldil (God) is in every place, "even in the smallness beyond thought." Realizing that a glimpse of God's hand at work in the zigs and zags of our experience can be bewildering, yet providential, he writes: The pattern is so large that within the little frame of earthly experience there appear pieces of it between which we can see no connection, and other pieces between which we can . Before the world was made, all these things had so stood together in eti~rnity that the very, signifi-cance of the pattern at this point lay in their coming together in just this fashion.~8 And in a letter to his friend Arthur Greeves, he shrewdly observes: The great thing, if one can~ is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptionsOof one's own or "real" life. The truth is, of course, that whht one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life--the life God is sendingone day by day. 19 Thus, a realization that the present moment is enlivened with an incar-national intensity and. vision is crucial to spiritual growth. And in the won-der of this awareness we respond with. praise. To prai~se thi~ singularit.y A Word About Praising of the moment is the fruit of spiritual maturity. Praise and Joy: The Serious Business of Heaven Praise, according to Lewis, is an outburst of the heart, an act of buoy-ancy and spontaneity. Praise transmutes feeling into delight. He urges us to remember that praise is the "mode of love which always has some element of joy in it.''2° It is immediately apparent that here Lewis is as-serting something that strikes at the heart of the meaning of praise: In human experience praise is intimately intertwined with joy. In short, we are confirmed in our sensing that profound joy can generate praise and praise is the springboard for joy. Again Lewis observes that "all enjoy-ment spontaneously overflows into praise."2~ He states, "I think we de-light to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses, but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation . The delight is incomplete until it is expressed.' ,22 The richness of this state-ment rests on its suggestiveness as well as on its explicit message. It brings to the fore that fact that a sense of admiration, permeated by love, is drawn to completion in praise. Praise and Suffering: A Sacrifice of Praise If a primal and central quality of praise is joy, what are we to under-stand in Scripture's invitation tooffer the Lord a "sacrifice of praise" (see Heb 13:15; Ps 50:14; Ps 54:8)? It is a remarkably powerful and some-what unsettling image. Perhaps further exploration of the truth that a proper and healthy awareoess of our "dependency" on God is the most fertile soil for growth in spiritual maturity would be helpful. We have already noted that a reverently' surrendered heart is the wellspring of praise. Nothing so ham-pers the capacity to praise as the desire to control and the temptation to manipulate. The focus of praise is not the self; therefore, praise is part of an asceticism. :Lewis comes to grips with this notion in the summary statement: The proper good of a creature is to surrender itself to its Creator--to en-act intellectually, volitionally, and emotionally, that relationship which is given in the mere fact of being a creature . In the world as we now know it, the problem is how to recover this self-surrender.23 "Self-surrender" demands courageous fidelity to the demands of disci-pleship. It urges that we cut through all the swaggering and petty indul-gence of the ego, .that we crack the hollow of self-reliance. The death 36 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 to self that constitutes surrender becomes an instrument of hollowing and hallowing, a means of rooting our security in God. Bluntly challenging, this "self-surrender' '--and almost more dismay-ing than comforting! A superficial reflection might give the impression that this is a negative kind of experience, with no connection to the act of praising. 'Delving more de.eply, we find yet another level of meaning. For praise must flow out of and then back into the reality of a silent sur-render to the mystery of God's love for us--love most fully exemplified in the crucified and risen Christ. In reality, there are no deep expressions of love, no deep experiences of love that are not in some way the consequences of a sacrifice of self. We may deny it, ignore it, or repress it, but deep down we know it is true. Yes, we are involved in a paradox here. Marvelously concrete, Le-wis states: "We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the suf-ferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to him; throwing away all defensive armor."2'~ Through offering a "sac-rifice of praise," we are drawn out of the shallows of life to greater depth, to newness of life. God provides us with situations in which we must be more faithful, more patient, or more loving th~in we ever imag-in( d being before. This draws attention to our experience of contingency and limitation. Our fickle natures shy away from offering a sacrifice of praise because the "sacrificial" element hurts. Lewis' insight is on target: "We shrink from a too naked contact [with God], because we are afraid of the di-vine demands upon us which it might make too audible.' ,25 The rich in-terplay between love and suffering is acknowledged in his assertion that Christianity is "hard and tender at the same time. It's the blend that does it; neither quality would be any good without the other,''26 To be poised and ready to plunge into living out this surrender is to desire conformity to God's plan for us. Thus, "obedience" is at the heart of offering a sacrifice of praise. In his book Perelandra, the man Ransom jolts us with the challenging question: ".Where can you taste the joy of obeying unless He bids you do something for which His bid-ding is the only reason?''27 The paradoxical meaning of offering a sacrifice of praise is evidenced in the experience of great joy. A deeply appreciative perception of truth, beauty, or goodness triggers a reaction, or rather a response, in which the feeling of joy is linked with a feeling of lack. Lewis develops this notion by describing his moments of greatest joy as experiences of :'in- A Word About Praising consolable longing."28 Our inability to rest in such moments, to grasp and cling to and somehow claim them, reveal them as an anticipation, a,preparation for full enjoyment of their source: God. Lewis. reminds us that we have "a root in the Absolute''29 and therefore he can state, too, that "all joy reminds; it is never a possession."3° God's design is to keep us on tiptoe, to nourish our thirst for himself with little "glimpses" into what will some day be forever. The painful lack that is constitutive of these '"patches of Godlight" in the woods of our experience"3~ summon us to move beyond. To offer a "sacrifice of praise" is to allow our innate appetite for the Infinite, our thirst for God himself, to dislodge us whenever we are inclined to settle down. Praise and Adoration: Fused Moments of Felicity Authentic praise sometimes goes beyond the scope of emotion; it is the threshold to the transcendent. Thus Lewis speaks of praise in con-nection with what spiritual theologians would call contemplative prayer. He notes that praise is intimately linked with what he calls "Apprecia-tive Love." This love rejoices in exclaiming, "We give thanks to You for Thy great glory." Appreciative love, Lewis writes, "gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist." and he adds that God "can awaken in man, toward himself, a supernatural Appreciative Love. This is of all gifts the most to be desired."32 In an-other place he calls this special love "the gift of adoration.''33 In such a profound and pervasive spiritual experience, knoffledge 'and love are so intimately united that they can actually be identified with each other. To understand what happens here is to enter into the lovely land of the mystique of the heart. "Praise" at such moments involves ~imazement, not understanding; awe, not reasoning. Seized and refreshed by.the overwhelming spell of the loveliness of~God's words and works we exclaim, "How right it is to love You!" (Sg 1:4). In the smallness beyond thought we discover a level where we are stunned by the ineffable: "Who can utter the mighty doings of the Lord or utter all his praise?" (Ps 106:2). There are insights that lie beyond the power of expression; the heart perceives more than the word can convey. At such moments the human person deeply expe-riences the disparity between desire for expression and the means of ex-pression. We are stunned at the inadequacy of the spoken word to inter-pret the heart's knowing. In a sense, then, the highest form of praise is silence-~creative si-lence pervaded by an awed sense of the grandeur of God. A reverential and sacred silence best expresses our admiration and love. This kind of Review for Religious, January-February 1988 silence touches the face of the Father, embraces Christ, and experiences the reality of the Spirit. Even though a loving heart has no words, it cannot contain itself. St. Augustine gifts us with a memorable image: "Love grown (old is the heart's silence; love on fire, the heart's clamor" (En. in Ps 36: 14). He gives us a rich and comprehensible description of the heart's clamor, the melody of the heart: This kind of singing is a sound which m~ans that the heart is giving birth to something it cannot speak of. And who better to receive such "jubi-lation" than the ineffable God--ineffabl~ because you cannot talk about him. And if you cannot talk about him; and it is improper just to keep silence, why, what is there left for you to do but "jubilate"--with you, r heart rejoicing without words, and the immense breadth of your joy not rationed out in syllables (En. in Ps 32:8; see En. in Ps 99:5). In this marvelous fusion of thought and feeling, in the heart's rejoicing without words, praise and wonder are born. In her poem Interior Tree Anne Morrow Lindbergh echoes Augustine. She describes one of those rare moments of ecstasy, one of those inexpressible "joy touched with glory" (see I P 1:8) moments when a whisper of eternal truth overwhelms one with its beauty: Fused moments of felicity, When flame in eye and heart unite Come they from the earth, or can they be The swallow of eternity? Authentic praise springs like a song from the depths of our hearts~. It steps beyond the act of giving thanks because it often becomes an ex-pression. of adoration. In an act of ardent praise we turn to God in de-light, attend to him with loving appreciation. Therefo.re, Lewis can fit-tingly link up praise as we know it on earth with the idea of the ultimate joy of praising God in heaven: If it were possible for a created soul fully to "appreciate," that is, to love and delight in the worthiest object of all and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul should be in supreme beatitude.34 In saying this Lewis follows a very ancient Christian teaching which can be traced back to the writing of Augustine. Delving into his works, we find he mulled over the meaning of heavenly beatitude: There it will be our whole task to praise and ~to enjoy the Presence of A Word About Praising God . . . all our sorrows will be taken from us, and nothing will remain but praise, unmixed and everlasting (En. in Ps 86:8). He states it again with typical depth and clarity: What shall we do? . . . What will be there? What business shall we have? . . . What activity? . . o This will be our activity, the praise of God (En. in Ps 85:23). The tenor and thrust of this vision introduces into the meaning of praise the essential components of love and joy. Here Lewis writes with com-pelling suggestiveness: The Scotch catechism says that man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify him, God is inviting us to enjoy him.3'~ Lewis' vision is baianced; therefore, he moves beyond the present exis-tence-- calls us to reflect upon the untold resources Of meaning in the es-chatological dimension of praise. Conclusion This exploration into the nature of praising reveals that if we seek to grasp the reality of praising in its full breadth and depth, we must strive to live in the light of the truth of who God is and who we are. What elicits, inspires, and sustains pra.ise is the word of God, the Scripture. Fed by this word the response of praise will become the leitmotif and ba-sic tenor of our lives. Its ordinary, transcendent, and eschatological di-mensions will mold the soul-line, the inscape of our hearts. The contemporary milieu, with its unhealthy emphasis on utilitari-anism and materialism, continues to strangle and corrode our sense of wonder. Its hollow hedonism tends to smother~radical amazement and appreci~ation and their consequence--praise. Perhaps we have bartered a sense of wonder and praise for facts and function and gradually numbed our senses and darkened our vision. Even 'so, the human person has the capacity and power to grasp the lasting values of beauty, harmony, tenderness, and truth. Little wonder that Augustine invites us to glory in the splendor of the truth and good-ness of praising with our whole being: Sing praises with your whole being; that' is, praise God not only with your tongue and your voice, but with your conscience, with your life, with your deeds (En. in Ps 148:1-2). 40 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 This straightforward invitation underlines the truth that praise is a way of understanding, insight into a way of "being" in touch with God. Scrip-ture invites us to sing praises with our "being"--to sing praise like David, of whom it is written: With his every deed he offered thanks to God Most High, in words of praise. With his whole being he loved his Maker and daily~had his praises sung (Si 47:8). NOTES t Abraham J. Heschel, Who is Man? (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1965), p, 116. z C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (Glasgow: Collins, Fount Paperbacks, 1977), chapter IX, pp. 77-83. 3C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early L~ ife (Glasgow: Collins, Fount P.aperback,, 1977), pp. 182-183. 4 Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, p. 78. 5 Further clarification on the etymology of the word praise is helpful. Praise is de-rived from the Latin pretiare, "to prize," which in turn derives from pretium, "the prize." To prize something is to value it highly, to appreciate it. Appreciation is a.n essential element of all praise. See Paul Hinnebusch, Praise: A Way of Life (Ann Arbor; MI: Servant Books, 1976), p. 247. 6 Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, p. 81. 7 Ibid, p. 80. 8 C, S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan Paperbacks, 1960), p. 65. .9 Heschel, Who is Man?, p. 115. ¯ ~0 C. S. Lewis, Miracles (New York: Mac~nillan Pape~'backs, 1978), p. 66. I~ C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1964), p. 75. ~z C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmill~in Paperbacks, 1962), p. 115. ~3 Lewis, Miracles, p. 114. ~4 C. S. Lewis, The Screwiape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast (New York: MaXimilian, 1961), pp. 101-102. ~5 Ibid, p. 68.~ ~6 See Julian of Norwich, The:Revelations of Divine Love, trans. James Walsh (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), Chapters 34, 35, and 82. ~7 C. S. Lewis, "Historicism," in Christian Reflections (Glasgow: Collins, Fount Paperbacks, 1981), p. 146. ~8 C. S. Lewis, Perelandra (New York: Macmillan Paperbacks, 1965), pp. 147- 148. ~9 W. Hooper, ed.,'They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur: Greeves (1914-1963)(New,York: Macmillan Paperbacks, 1979), p. 49 I, December 20, 1943. A Word About Praising Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, p. 90. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, p. 80. Ibid, p. 81. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, pp. 90-91. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1971), p. 170. 25 Lewis, 26W. H. novich, 27 Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, p. 114. Lewis, ed., Letters of C. S. Lewis (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jova- 1966), p. 250, July 17, 1953, to a lady. Perelandra, p. I 18. 28 Lewis, Surprised by Joy, p. 65. 29 Ibid, p. 177. 30 Ibid, p. 66. 3~ Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, p. 91. 32 Lewis, The Four Loves, p. 191. 33 Ibid, p. 178. 3,~ Lewisr Reflections on the Psalms, p. 81. 35 Ibid, p. 82. Expressing the Feminine: In Search of a Model Marietta Ger~iy, O.S.B. Sister Marietta is a member of the Department of Religious Studies at the Univer-sity of Dayton where she may be addressed at 300 College Park; Dayton, Ohio 45469- 000 I. In The Flight from Woman (1965) Karl Stern wrote about the defeminiza-tion of society caused in part by the scientific revolution of the last three hundred years. The rejection of feminine wisdom, he explained, contrib-uted to a dehumanization which has affected us relationaily. Today a movement flows from deep within the unconscious, that in-vites us to value and express our total personhood, to act in a holistic manner. The strong opposition to the feminine in our culture and tradi-tion is one of the reasons for this movement and for the corresponding interest in rediscovering feminine images. Whenever individuals or the human race are imperiled, something begins to stir within and move them toward the fullness of graced human living. Today we are becoming aware that both femininity and masculinity are innate in each of us and that both are to be valued and given expres-sion. Just as in a musical creation there can be a melody and counter-melody which alternate in prominence, so our femininity and masculin-ity ought to alternate in prominence. Even though in music these melo-dies can stand alone, the presence of the other enhances and creates a fuller, stronger, more pleasing effect. So if either masculinity or femi-ninity is suppressed or dormant, our manner of communication will be less effective or even less destructive. This, in fact, has been the situ-ation in our Western culture. Now that the sleeper, femininity, is awak-ening, new energies are being activated. When activated, those energies 42 Expressing the Feminine / 43 begin to personify themselves and to seek expression. How this creative power will manifest itself will depend in part upon our fantasies, our crea-tive imagi.nation which needs to be stimulated by the symb.ois and mod-els of both our culture and our Christian heritage. A musician receives inspiration hearing a number of different interpretations of the same com-position, yet her own performance flows from her inner well of sensitiv-ity. In such a way the new awakening of our femininity urges us to look beyond ourselves in a new way to reflect upon the lives of people in our tradition, to search for ways of expressing this femininity, ways which resonate with and enhance our own imagination. Virginity Regina Coil draws attention to an ancient understanding of virgin-ity. In her article "Challenging and Reclaiming Symbols" Coll states that at one time the word "virgin" meant "a woman who had grown, to some kind of integrity and wholeness." ~ Esther Harding in Women's Mysteries writes that it meant being "one-in-herself."2 Helen Luke is on to the same sense as she indicates virginity "is so thin a concept when confined to the physical plane."3 It takes On a full and beautiful mean-ing when the older and broadermeaning is recovered. The ancient mean-ing is significant today because it applies to both men and women. It calls for a unified way of being and of relating. It calls for non-fragmentation. David Knight writes about virginity in a similar manner by suggesting that virginity is an active and harmonious oneness of our bodies with every other part of our being.4 He states that virginity means a refusal to respond out of only a part of ourselves, a refusal to promote separateness or disintegration; it is an intense .yearning for integrity. Knight further indicates that virginity accents our unity with others, not an easy task when we have built up our egos and relied on our false identities. Alienation of selves, building of walls, setting ourselves apart; above, over and against, insensitivity and a lack of intrapersonal and in-terpersonal connectedness are violations of this integrity. And so our past exclusionary emphasis on personal autonomy needs to be modified. Hans Urs von Balthasar also speaks of virginity as unity as experienced within someone who is free of division. Such an approach also seeks to retrieve the lost meaning of this important reality. This emphasis on unicity invites us to let go of all that holds us back and prevents the release of energies so necessary for a full life. A musi-cal analogy says it well: for music to be music the musician must involve the entire physical, mental and emotive self in expressing the music. Just as the musician must be totally involved to render the music in an aes- 44 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 thetic manner, we too must be totally involved, be fully alive in order to be effective relationally. Today's movement toward the rediscovery of the feminine is a move-ment toward the fullness of personhood which ought to render us more cap~ble of unrestricted responses. Femininity This present movement toward the feminine is flowing from our new consciousness. Today femininity is being acknowledged and valued. Be-cause of this, various modes of expressing femininity are being sought. Does Mary as Mother present an image for the expression of femi-ninity that can be honored today? Before addressing that question a clari-fication or description of femininity is necessary. F.J.J. Buytendijk de-scribes it as that adaptive dynamism (which) does not elicit any resistance and leads to the discovery of quality and .stature, to encounter with things as they are, and thus to the discovery of value. This discovery, however, is never complete; there is an inexhaustible wealth of value in being that never ceases to elicit a meditative and tarrying contact with being.5 Openness, receptivity, creativity, gracefulness and tender caring are considered characteristics of this adaptive dynamism. This adaptive dy-namism or femininity, according to Buytendijk, manifests itself as a way of being-together-with that is both giving and receiving, that is recipro-cal, and 'not one-sided. This adaptive dynamism is not to be equated with the female sex, though it is woman who is capable of giving the clearest expression of femininity, just as man gives the clearest expression of masculinity. No individual existence in the concrete is exclusively masculine or ex-clusively feminine. It is not possible for an existence to develop so en-tirely according to one mode that it lacks all traces of the other. Mascu-linity and femininity are both possibilities of human existence as such, understood in terms of consciousness or an approach to reality, which is necessarily intentional and equally necessarily a "togetherness" with other being.6 When we are dealing with real people, all that we often can see is a predominance of masculinity or femininity. However, full human dig-nity flows from a balanced harmonization of botlq dynamisms. Without a balance of masculinity we would have a feminine imbal-ance getting lost in a chaos of pathic connection without any ability to stand apart or to objectify. Unbalanced masculinity may be described as Expressing the Feminine the projection of a world of hardness, of stubborn resistance, of precipi-tousness. ~On the other hand, this masculine capacity for expansiveness, functioning in a supportive role, provides a precious balancefor our femi-nine capacity of being~together-with, of connectedness. Motherliness Forms are being sought today for expressing our adaptive dynamism, femininity. This femininity is not to be limited to one form or manifes-tation. A variety of forms is possible, one being motherliness. Motherli-ness is best characterized as a fostering, supporting, cherishing, caring manner which flows from a receptive, adaptive dynamism. It is a man-ner of being that sets aside the temptation to analyze, to plan, to project. It can be described as a presence which receives the other into self and sees and feels with the other. Feeling, though essentially involved, is not all tfiat is involved. "Motherliness" or "caring presence" is basically an empathic presence. It is a receptive presence that invites an inner trans-formational change. If "caring" is truly motherly, the one cared for will feel ~he recognition of freedom and will grow under its expansive sup-port. "Motherliness" need not smother. The one cared for will be free tO respond as herself, to follow her own interests without fear and anxi-ety. Motherliness, as a respectful, careful togetherness in selfless giving, fos-tering, nourishing, cherishing and caressing, is always the powei'.ihat everywhere elicits the unfolding, the realization of hidden potential of what is good, tender, fragile or subtle, whether in human beings or in nature or in culture. This is what happens in human relationships of friendship and love, in real education and in loving work.7 Buytendijk speaks of motherliness as caring, as feminine fruitful-hess. 8 The transformational effect of caring can only happen if the car-ing person conveys that he values the intensity of the connection with the other and if the caring person is genuine. A Contemporary Model: Mary Today's renewed interest in rediscovering our feminine images, in-cluding our scriptural Marian images, flows from our new consciousness, our movement toward the feminine. 19Iodels and images are needed to stimulate our imaginations, to aid in the shaping of our feminine energies. A variety of models is needed because femininity can be expressed in various ways. Mary, as repre-sented in Scripture, is one of those models. 46 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 The images of Mary as the attentive, Virgin, Mary as Woman, and Mary as Mother are receiving renewed interest and are taking on a new meaning. The ancient meaning of virginity as a holistic and integrated way of being is expressed by Mary. She possesses a unity which can help other people find their unity. In the Magnificat we see the fullness of her re-sponse: decisive, responsible, total and caring, a response that made and continues to make a difference to the world. This way of Understanding virginity can give us reason to pause and give the image of Mary as Vir-gin further consideration. The representation of femininity through motherliness can be seen in the scriptural passages which presentoMary as a "caring presence," a presence which encourages a change of heart, a personal togetherness where there is a call of one heart to another, a call to the other in the freedom of each to realize self. Some of these passages are Mary's visit to Elizabeth (Lk 1:39-45), the Magnificat (Lk 1:46-56), Mary at the wed-ding feast at Cana (Jn 2:1-12), Mary at the foot of the cross (Jn 19:25- 27), and Mary gathered together with the disciples in prayer at the birth of the Church (Ac 1: 12-14). Each presents Mary manifesting this genu-ine way of being-together-with, of acting holistically, and with integrity. These scriptural representations, as well as others found in tradition, can serve a dialogic function in our movement toward the rediscovery of the f+minine. By pondering them in our hearts we too might conceive creative ways to shape our lives in response to the invitation from the unconscious to accept our femininity, to live out our total personhood. NOTES ~ Regina Coil, "Challenging and Reclaiming Symbols," Religious Education 80 (1985), p. 381. 2 Esther M. Harding, Woman's Mysteries: Ancient and Modern (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 197.1), p. 125. 3 Helen M. Luke, Woman, Earth and Spirit (New York: Crossroad,. 1981), p. 48. '~ David Knight, The Good News About Sex (Cincinnati: St. Anthony Messenger Press), pp. 30 I-312. 5 F.J.J. Buytendijk, Women: A Contemporary View (New York: Newman.Press, 1968), p. 299. 6 lbid, p. 299. 7 Ibid, p. 357. 8 Ibid, p. 355. Collaborative Leadership in Apostolic Ministry: Behavior and Assumptions David Coghlan, S.J. Father Coghlan reaches management and organizational behavior and works as a proc-ess consultant with groups on planning and change. He may be reached at the Col-lege of Industrial Relations; Sandford Road; Ranelagh; Dublin 6, Ireland. The ~zontext of religious apostolic leadership has changed a lot over the past twenty years. Twenty years ago religious had a very definite pre-dominance in institutions of ministry. They were dominant numerically. They were the sole formulators of policy. They created the culture of the institutions. Lefidership was exercised in an autocratic manner that did ¯ not readily allow for dissent or question. Since Vatican II there has been a gradual~change. Religious life has been renewed, in terms of spiritual-ity, structures, and culture. The number of religious has declined, chang-ing the way religious are present in their ministries and provoking ques-tions about the future of particular ministries. On the level of values there has been growth in an appreciation of the ministry of the laity. Overall there has grown a neff focus of ministry---evangelization--with its en-couragement of a greater openness to the contemporary world and the articulation of the integral relationship between faith and justice. Lead-ership too has changed. In research on leadership there has been a move-ment away from a focus on the person of the leader toward a focus on the process of leadership. Leadership is no longer understood in terms of personal traits but in terms of a process between roles, a group, and a situation. In the religious-life context terms like "collaboration," "sharing ministry" are prominent. Decision-making appears to have be- 47 48 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 come a group activity, with, perhaps, the consequent role of the formal leader sometimes ambiguo.,us. It is the purpose of this article to chart the issues of leader behavior so as to clarify the implications in the develop-ment of contemporary apostolic leadership in an environment of change. Patterns of Leadership Styles Thirty years ago an article written on leader behavior posed the ques-tion, "Should a leader be democratic or autocratic in dealing with sub-ordinates-- or something in between?" That article became a standard text on the complexities of how leaders behave. ~ In the article the di-lemma of leader behavior is presented in terms of a scale, with points on the scale related to the degree of authority used by the leader and to the amount of freedom available to the group of followers. The extreme left end of the scale represents the leader behavior that maintains a very high degree of coAtrol in decision-making, while the extreme right of the scale represents the leader releasing a high degree of control. The points in between represent varying degrees of the use and release of control. On the extreme left point.of the scale the leader makes the d~cisions and informs the followers. The definition of the problem, the diagnosis, and the selection of a solution from among alternatives is done by the leader. He provides no opportunity for the followers to participate di-rectly in the process. Coercion may or may not be implied. Further to the right of the autocratic position is where the leader, rather than sim-ply announcing a decision, persuades the followers to accept it. This ap-proach might assume a resistance to the decision, hence the persuasion. The next point to .the right on the scale is where the leader Presents his idea and invites questions. The followers get the opportunity to under-stand more fully the leader's thinking. The leader is still in control of the decision-making process. The point to the right of this is where the leader presents a tentative decision which is open to cha0ge. The leader continues to have the initiative of defining the problem and choosing the solution, but he is open to influence. This is more or less the midpoint of the scale--all the points to the left are those where the leader's use of authority predominates. The points to the right are those where the followers have an increasing degree of freedom in terms of a decreas~ing use of power by the leader. To the right of the midpoint is the point' where the leader presents the problem, invites sflggestions, and then makes the decision. Here there is a critical change. The leader no longer presents a solution. The followers get the opportunity to suggest solu-tions, from which the leader may select. Giving the followers more free-dom is the point where the leader defines the limits of the problem- Collaborative Leadership / 49 solving process and gives the followers the right to make the decision. The point on the extreme right of the scale is where the leader permits the group to make decisions. The question then follows: How does the leader decide where his be-havior should be located on the scale? How autocratic must he be? How democratic can he be? There are three areas to be considered in answer-ing such questions. Fir~;tly, there is the leader himself. The leader must ask himself questions about his own values, needs, motives, skills, goals, and assumptions about subordinates. His value system and assumptions about people, particularly his subordinates and how they are motivated, are significant elements in leadership behavior.2 Th+ leader needs a de-gree of self-awareness to be in touch with what personal needs are being met in a particular leadership style. The leader's tolerance for ambiguity is another key element. The leader's self-image and self-knowledge are the ground on which an individual style of behavior is built. Secondly, there is the group of subordinates to be considered. The leader, besides looking at himself, must look at the group he is leading. He must con-sider the expectations, motivations~, knowledge, experience, competence, skills, and goals of the subordinates, and how they are interested in and committed to the issues. There is the added complication of the effect of the leader on the group, intended or unintended.3 What a ieader per-ceives to be flexibility the group may perceive to be inconsistency. So leader will need to be clear on °the impact of his behavior, particularly an unintended impact.4 Thirdly, there is the situation to be considered. The leading of~groups does not occur in a vacuum. There is the effect of the nature of the issue to be considered. An issue that has far-reaching effects on the life of the group may require a more participa-tive approach .to a particular decision than would a practical decision that has a less significant effect. There is the amount of time available to be considered. Some emergency decisions can often be appropriately made in an autocratic manner because there is not the time for consultation. The organization or wider cultural context may set limits to the ways de-cisions are made. In a context where participation is perceived as hav-ing a high °value, autocratic decisions may not be appreciated or permit-ted. In summary, there are three areas to be considered in the decision on choosing an appropriate leadership behavior. There are the leader's own values,, assumptions, skills, and self-confidence. There is the actual group of subordinates, with its level of experience, skills, and commit-ment. There is the situation, whicl~ includes the organizational context, 50 /ReviewforReligious, January-February 1988 the amount of time available, the nature of the issues, and the cultural assumptions. The effect of the leader on the group is a significant fac-tor. From a sensitive balancing of each of these three areas, the leader chooses what is appropriate behavior. This requires the leader to be self-aware and have diagnostic skillsin the areas of organizations, groups, and individuals in relation to particular tasks. The emphasis on "appro-priate" is the emphasis that emerges from the definition of leadership that is , ontin, gent on the process between a specific role, the group that is constituted as followers, and the situation. Leadership is situational. The Dilemma of Contemporary Apostolic Leadership The above framework for understanding the choices of behavior a leader has in contemporary apostolic ministry has very cleai" uses. There has been a definite movement from the autocratic, nonconsult~itive style of former generations to a more participative, collaborative style. This has grown out of a number of factors. From Vatican II there has devel-oped a new sense of the ministry of the laity which has opened up ques-tions of how the laity can be colleagues in ministry with religious. Re-ligious themselves, because of the renewal of religious life and the de-cline in numbers, have reviewed their approach to their apostolates. There.remains a~dilemma. The search for the appropriate point on the leadership behavior scale is a real search. There is a discomfort with an apparent slide to the right along the scale from autocracy to abdication of power. There is an ever-growing sense in religious, through renewal of the charism of each congregation,' that the values the religious stand for are central to a congregation's ministry. Religious do not want sim-ply to hand over their apostolates, for they value the mission they have in those apostolates. They want their mission to continue, perhaps with-out them, and certainly not in the same way as formerly. That isthe first area from which an appropriate choice is made. The leader values the mission of the~congregation and wants that to continue to be enshrined in the new situation or in a new structure. At the same time the leader values c'ollaboration and the s.haring of ministry. Sharing is an activity that implies mutuality. Ministry can perhaps only be shared with those who are willing andable to be in a sharing relationship. Therefore, the group with which sharing is hoped for must be evaluated in those terms. Thirdly, there is the situation. The decline in the numbers~of religious must be faced. The state of the world demands an urgent response. The issues are deeply significant. So the choice of appropriate lehdership style is made in the weighing up of the values of the leader, the assess-ment of the group, and the nature of the situation. In those terms it seems Collaborative Leadership that the choice is that of a collaborative style, that is, of a position some-what to the right end of the scale discussed, but not at the extremity. I am attempting to clarify what is actually happening so that relig-ious, by having a framework, can understand it. My hypothesis is that, in seeing that the choices are not simply the two extremities of the scale, the dilemma can be intelligently faced and appropriate choices made. Organizational Leadership A great deal has been written on leadership in organizations over the years. Famous leaders of organizations have written their autobiogra-phies to share with the world how their particular approach to leadership was successful in their organizations. In abstracting from all these ac-counts it seems that a leader of an organization has three roles.5 The leader is an "organizational leader," by which is meant that he leads the organization in a general management role. This typically in-volves being responsible for the accomplishment of the organization's stated plans. It means creatively maintaining and developing the organi-zation's capabilities in its external and internal domains so that achieve-ment of its taTsks is possible. The organizational leader integrates the mul-tiple functions and specialist areas within the organization. These are com-plex tasl~s and require all the qualities of efficiency that are accepted as being a core ingredient of a high management role. Secondly, the leader is a "personal lead+r," a leader of people. He must be personally able to create loyalty. He personally stands for and promotes the values of the organization, and so his actions must be congruent with those val-ues. It is his behavior as leader that forms the culture of the organiza-tion. Thirdly, the leader is the "architect of purpose." In this role he is the custodian of corporate objectives,'establishing and presiding over the setting of goals and the allocation of resources, and making choices from strategic alternatives. He defends the organization from external threats and internal erosion. The instillation of purpose in place of im-provisation and the substitution of planned progress instead of drifting are the most demanding tasks of the leader of the organization. It requires great intellectual capacity to con(eptualize corporate purpose, and it re-quires creativity to recognize strategic alternatives. It requires a critical capacity to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of proposals on paper. A novel system in an American company is one where the pension of the retired chief executive officer is reviewed five years after he has re-tired. The rationale is that after five years the co .mpany will know how good a leader he was when he was in office! 52 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 There is a parallel in relation to religious apost61ic leadership. A ma-jor superior or a director of an apostolate has those same roles. He is an organizational lead,r, a personal leader, and the architect of purpose. He is entrusted with thb effective administration of the organization, be it a region, a school, or a hospital. The organizational leader role is exer-cised in the day-to-day desk work, the eternal round of meetings and re-ports, all working to keeping the organization in operation and fulfilling its mission. As personal leader there is the maintenance of the charism and values of the congregation. The personal care of one's fellow relig-ious is akey responsibility of a major superior. As architect of purpose, the apostolic leader integrates the processes of planning and renewal in terms of the congregation's charism, the needs of the external environ-ment, and the internal resources.6 It involves going beyond the immedi-ate arid everyday decisions and emergencies to thinking strategically about a future to be created. These three roles of high-level leadership can be applied to the di-lemma of leader behavior. The choice of leader behavior in terms of the scale of options and in terms of the three areas of consideration is fun-damental to the roles of organizational leader, personal lead

Issue 43.5 of the Review for Religious, September/October 1984. ; REvll!w I:OR RE~.lt;~Ot~S (ISSN 0034-639X). published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at .Room 428:3601 Lindell Blvd.: St. Louis, MO 63108. R~=.vlt.'.w FOR RE~.~t3~ot~s is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus. St. Louis, MO. @ 1984 by Rl~vll:.w FOR RE~.mlot;s. Composed. printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, MO. Single copies: $2.50. Subscription U.S.A. $10.00 a year: $19.00 for two'years. Other countries: add $2.00 per year (postage). For sub~ripfion orders or change of address, write Rt:v~t:w ~,oR Rt:l.w,~ot~s: P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Review Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor Sept./Oct., 1984 Volume 43 Number 5 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REVIEW FOR R~-:tAGtOOS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; Jesuit Community; St. Joseph's University; City Avenue at 54th St.; Philadelphia, PA 19131. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from R~-:v~.:w ~'oR Rt-:t.t~;~oos; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. "Oul of print" issues and articles not published as reprints arc available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. "On the Strength of His Word": A Meditation on Priestly Spirituality Joseph Ratzinger Oh the occasion of the golden jubilee celebration of Joseph Cardinal H~Sffner, Archbishop of Cologne (October 30, 1982), Cardinal RatTJng~r offered this meditation on the priesthood which many have found helpful. The text is based on the translation which appeared in L'Osservatore Romano, 2 April, 1984, pp. 13ft. Cardinal Ratzinger is presently Prefect of the S. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where he may be addressed: 1 -- 00120 Vatican City The past twenty years have witnessed a great deal of reflection and much heated discussion about the priesthood. But in spite of everything, the priest-hood proves to be longer-lived thari anticipated by many of the premature arguments put forward by certain persons who would want to abandori it as a sacred misunderstanding, replacing it with an understanding based on the concept of a merely functional "temporary service." We are gradually°coming to comprehend the presuppositions which at one time allowed such arguments to appear almost incontrovertible. Overcoming these prejudices also enables "us to understand more profoundly the biblical witness in its inner unity--of Old and New Testament, of Bible and Church. We are thus no longer forced to rest content with stale water from cisterns that sometimes trickles away amid conflicting h3ipotheses and sometimes collects in brackish little pools. Instead, we have accessto the living fountains of the faith of the Church of all ages. As far as I can see, the future will have to face precisely this question: How are we supposed to read the Scriptures? During the years when the canon of the Scriptures was being formed--which were also the years when the Church and her catholicity were taking shape--it was primarily Irenaeus of Lyons who had to deal with this question, whose answer decided whether ecclesiasti-cal life was possible or not. In his day, Irenaeus saw clearly that to divide the 641 649 / Review for Religious~; Sept.-Oct., 1984 Bible in itself, and to separate Bible and Church from each other was the basic principle of a Christianity of conformism and rationalism, the so-called Gnosis, which threatened the very foundations of the Church at that time. This basic twofold division was preceded by an inner division of the Church itself into communities which created their own ad hoc legitimacy by a selec-tion of sources. The disintegration of the sources of faith calls forth the disintegration of fellowship or communio--and vice versa. Gnosis attempts to put forth such a division or separation as being the epitome of rationality--divide the two Testaments, separate Scripture from Tradition, distinguish between educated and uneducated Christians--but in truth, Gnosis is a sign of decay. On the contrary, the unity of the Church renders visible the unity of that whence she lives: the Church lives only when she draws upon the Whole, upon the multiform unity of Old and New Testa-ments, of scriptural tradition and the realization of the Word in faith. Once one has bowed to this other logic of disintegration, then nothing can really be put together properly any more.~ It would be inappropriate to the solemn joy of this day were we to enter more deeply into the scholarly disputation just h!nted at--though this dispute must be settled before one can discuss details of the biblical testimony, for instance on the subject of the priesthood. The very joy of this day is itself something of a locus theologicus. The fifty years of priesthood that we celebrate is a reality which speaks for itself, and which gives a concrete context to these reflections. On this occasion, then," ! thought it better not to attempt a scholarly lecture upon the priesthood, but instead to offer a spiritual reflection, one in which 1 should like to explain a few scriptural passages which have come to be important to me personally, and to do this in a meditative way, without any special system or claim to scholarship. The Priestly Image in Lk 5:1-11 and Jn 1:35-42 The first text I have chosen is Luke 5:!-11. This is the wonderful "voca-tion" account which tells how Peter and his friends, after a night of fruitless labor, on the strength of the Lord's word put out to sea once more. They catch a shoal of fish so great that the nets almost break, whereupon :Jesus utters his "call": ~'You shall become a fisher of men!" I have a very special affection for this passage because above it there shines the dawning light of a first love, of a beginning full of hope and readiness. Every time 1 recall these verses 1 remember the fresh brightness of my own beginnings, of that joy in the Lord of which we spoke in the phrase from the old psalter with which we began Mass: "I will go unto the altar of God, to the God who giveth joy to my youth" (Ps 42:4)--to the God in whose nearness the joy oI~ being young is constantly renewed because he is life itself, and hence the source of genuine youth. But let us return to our text which reports that the people pressed upon On the Strength of His Word / 643 Jesus because they wanted to hear the word of God. He is standing on the seashore, the fishermen are washing their nets, and Jesus gets into one of the two boats beached there--it was Peter's boat. Jesus asks him to put out a little from the land; he sits down and teaches the people from the boat. Simon's boat thus becomes the cathedra of Jesus Christ. Afterwards he says to Simon: "Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch." The fishermen have spent all night toiling in vain. To them it seems quite pointless to lower the nets again in the early morning hours. But for Peter, Jesus has already become so important, indeed so decisive, that he replies: On the strength of your word--"At your word I will let down the nets." The word of Jesus has already become more substantial than what is apparently real and empirically certain. That Galilean morning, whose fresh scent we can almost breathe in this account, becomes an image of the new dawn of the Gospel after the nights of fruitles~ness into which our own actions and: desires repeatedly lead us. And when Peter and his companions return with their heavy cargo-- which required the help of their partners because the abundance of the gift threatened to break their nets--Peter had completed not merely an outward journey, a work of merely human hands. For Peter, this had become an interior journey whose extent is framed by Luke in just two words. The Evangelist reports that before the great catch of fish, Peter addressed the Savior as Epistata, which means "teacher," "professor," or "master." Upon his return, however, Peter, falls on his knees before Jesus and no longer addresses him as Rabbi but as Kyrie--"Lord." In other words, Peter now addresses Jegus as God. Peter had. traveled the road from "Rabbi,' to "Lord," from "Teacher" to "Son." At the completion of this interior journey he is capable of receiving a vocation. At this point the parallels to the first "vocation" account in Jn 1:35-42, practically force themselves upon us.2 There we read that the first two disci-ples, Andrew and an unnamed companion, ~follow Jesus after hearing the Baptist exclaim, ".Behold, the Lamb of God !" They are struck on the one hand by the consciousness of their own sinfulness evoked by this exclamation, on the other hand by the hope which the Lamb of God represents for the sinner. One senses that both of them. are still uncertain; their discipleship is still hesitant.~ Without saying any more, they follow him discreetly, apparently not yet daring to address him directly. And so he turns to them and says, "What do you seek?" Although the reply sounds awkward, a bit shy and embar-rassed, still it comes directly to the. point: "Rabbi, where do you live?" Or, more acurately translated, "Where are you staying?"--where is your abode, your shelter, your real residence, that we too may arrive there?" Here, we must remind ourselves that the idea of "abiding" or "residing" is one of the key concepts of St. John's Gospel. The Savior's reply is normally translated "Come and see!" This corres-ponds with the conclusion of John's second "vocation" account involving 644 / Review for Religious, Sept.-Oct., 1984 Nathanael, to whom Jesus says, "You shall see greater things than these!" (Jn 1:50). The meaning of this "coming," in other, words, is becoming perceptive; "coming" means to be seen by him--and to begin seeing with him. As a matter of fact, above his abode the heavens, the hidden sphere of God, are open (Jn 1:51); there man stands in God's own radiance. "Come, and you shall see!" also accords with the Church's "communion psalm": "O taste and see that the Lord is god!" (Ps 34:8). It is only the approach, the "coming," which leads to seeing. Tasting allows the eyes to be opened. Just as the tasting of the forbidden fruit in Paradise once "opened the eyes" in a fateful manner, so too it is true here in the opposite sense that tasting what is true also "opens the eyes," so that one realizes and "sees" God's goodness. Seeing takes place only in coming into Jesus' abode. There can be no vision without the hazard of approaching, of "coming." St. Johweven notes that "it was about the tenth hour" (1:39), in other words very lat~, a time at which one would think it no longer possible to make a beginning--and yet an hour at which urgent and decisive events do take place. According to some apocalyp-tic calculations, the tenth hour is considered the hour of the "last days."3 He who comes to Jesus enters the definitively final age; he makes contact with the already present reality of the Resurrection and of the kingdom of God. "Seeing," therefore, takes place when one '~approaches," and John the Evangelist makes this clear in the same fashion that we noted in St. Luke's account. When Jesus addressed them, the two responded by calling him "Rabbi." But when they return from staying with him, Andrew tells his brother Simon, "We have found the Messiah, the Christ" (Jn 1:14). In approaching Jesus ~and remaining with him, Andrew had traveled the path from "Rabbi" to "ChriSt," he had learned to see the Christ in the te~icher--and this is somethingwhich can only be learned in "abiding." Thus does the inner unity of the third and fourth Gospels become evident: both times the experi-ment of living "on'the strength of his Word" is undertaken, and both times the interior pilgrimage follows a course which permits vision, "seeing," to arise out of "coming." All of us began our joul-ney with the Church's full profession of faith in God's Son. But such an approach "~n the strength of his word," such an entering into his abode, is in our own case, too, the precondition for our vision or "seeing." And he alone is capable of calling others who is himself able to see cleai'ly, instead of merely believing at second hand. This coming or approach, this venturing out "on the strength of his Word" is, today and always, the indispensable prerequisite of the apostolate of priestly ministry. Again and again we shall find it necessary to ask him: "Where are you staying?" Over and over again it will be necessary to approach Jesus' abode from within. Again and again we shail have to let down the nets on the strength of his woi'd, even when it seems quite pointless. It is constantly necessary to regard his Word as more real than all that we otherwise would consider valid: statistics, technol-ogy, public opinion. Often it will seem as though the tenth hour had already On the Strength of His Word / 645 struck, and we shall have to postpone the hour of Jesus. But in precisely this way it can become the hour of his nearness. The two Gospel accounts have some other traits in common. St. John depicts the two disciples as being struck by the Baptist's proclamation of the Lamb. They obviously know from experience that they are sinners. For them this is not some sort of alien religious phraseology, but rather something that stirs them from within, something that is very real to them. Since they realize this about themselves, the Lamb becomes a sign of hope for them, and this is why they begin to follow him. Something quite unexpected occurs when Peter returns to shore with his great catch of fish. We might have expected him to embrace Jesus because of the successful fishing operation, but instead Peter falls on his knees. He does not hold fast to (he Savior in order to possess a future guarantee of success, but actually tries to drive him away because he fears the power of God: "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man!" (Lk 5:8). Where man experiences God, there he recognizes his own sinfulness, and it is. only when he really knows that he is sinful--and has grasped the malice of sin--that he.also .comprehends the call to "repent,~ and believe the Gospel!" (Mk 1:15). Without conversion, it is not possible to press forward to Jesus and to the. Gospel. There is a paradox of Chesterton's which expresses this rela-tionship quite accurately: one can recognize a saint by the fact that he knows he is a sinner.4 The fact that our experience of God has grown pale is evident today in the disappearance of our experiential awareness of our sin; and vice versa: the disappearance of this knowledge alienates us all the more from God. Without falling into a false anxiety, we should once again learn the wisdom of the psalmist's word: lnitium sapientiae timor DorninL Wisdom, genuine under-standing, begins with the correct fear of the Lord. We must once more learn this fear in order to acquire true love and to grasp what it means to be able to love him--and to grasp as well .that he loves us. Hence this experience of Peter, of Andrew and of John is a basic prerequisite for the apostolate and thus also for the priesthood. Conversion--the very first word of Christian-ity-- can be preached only by one who has himself been touched by its neces-sity and therefore has grasped the greatness of grace. In these fundamental elements of the spiritual path of the apostolate which are becoming evident here, are the outlines of the basic sacramental structure of the Church, and indeed of the priestly ministry itself, also becoming clearer. If the sacraments of baptism and penance correspond to the experience of sin, then the mystery of the Eucharist corresponds to "coming" and "becoming perceptive," to entering into the abode of Jesus. Indeed, in a sense which we could previously not even imagine, the Eucharist is Jesus' abiding with us. "There you shall see"---the Eucharist is the place where the promise to Natha-nael applies, where we can see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending (Jn 1:51). Jesus dwells and "abides" in his sacrifice, in that act 646 / Review for Religious, Sept:-Oct., 1984 of love with which he conveys himself to the Father, and through his vicarious love he also gives us back to the Father. The communion psalm whi~:h speaks about tasting and seeing also says: "Come ye to him and be enlightened" ([Douay] Ps 33:6). Communion with Christ means communication with the true light that enlightens every man who comes into this world (see Jn l:9)P Let us consider another point common to both gospel accounts. The superabundant catch of fish begins to burst the nets. Peter and his crew cannot master the situation. Thus we read in Luke 5:7 that they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. "And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink." The call of Jesus is simultaneously a calling together, a call to syllabbsthai, as the Greek text puts it: "to take hold of together," to stick together and assist one another, to combine the efforts of both boats. St. John's Gospel expresses the same idea. Returning from his hour with Jesus, Andrew cannot remain silent about what he has found. He calls his brother Simon to Jesus, and the very same thing happens to Philip, who in his turn calls Nathanael (Jn 1:41-5). Vocation tends toward together-ness. Vocation makes disciples of us, and cries out to be passed on. Every vocation has a human element as well: the element of brotherliness, of being stimulated by another person. When we think back over our own lives, each of us knows that he was not struck by a thunderbolt direct from heaven, but that at some point he had to be spoken to by a person of faith, to be borne up or carried by.others. Of course a vocation cannot persevere if we believe only at second hand, "because So-and-So. says so." Perseverance is possible only if, led by our brethren, we ourselves find Jesus (see Jn 4:42). Both aspects necessarily belong together: being led, being spoken to, being ¯ carried, just as much as our own "coming and seeing." It therefore seems to me that we ghould once again develop much more courage to address one another, to speak to one another, and not ,to deprecate positive reactions to the testimony of others. As one of faith's components, "neighborliness" belongs to ihe humaneness of believing, and within this framework one's own encounter with Jesus must mature. Hence it is not only "taking along" and "leading toward" which are important, but release as well, abandonment to the distinctive aspects of a special call--even when these special aspects turn out to be different from what we had intended for the person concerned. In St. Luke's account, these insights are broadened out into a complete vision of the Church. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, are there called koinonoi of Simon, which here must be translated as "partners?' In other words, these three are described as a fishing partnership or cooperative, with Peter as head and principal owner.6 And it is first of all this group which Jesus calls, the koinonia (fellowship or communio), the partners in Peter's coopera-tive. In Simon's call, however, his profane vocation is reformed into an image of the new which is to come. The fishing partnership becomes the communio On the Strength of His Word or fellowship of Jesus, and Christians will form the eommunio of this new fishing boat, united by the call of Jesus and by the miracle of grace, which bestows the riches of the sea after long and hopeless nights. Just as they are united in the gift, they are also united in their joint mission. St. Jerome gives a beautiful interpretation of the title "fishers of men" which actually be~longs in the context of an inner transformation of Peter's profession into a vision of what is to come.7 Jerome says that to draw fish out of the water.means to tear them away from the n~tural element in which they live and thus to deliver them up to death. But to draw men out of the water of this world means to withdraw them from deadly surroundings and from a starless night, giving them instead air to breathe and the light of heaven. It means transferring men into the natural environment in which they can live and which is simultaneously light, enabling them to see the truth. Eight is life, because the natural element or environment from which man lives at the very deepest level is truth, which is simultaneously love. Of course, the man who swims in the waters of the world does not know this. Hence he resists being drawn up out of the water. It is as though he believes he were an ordinary fish which must die when pulled up out of the depths. And as a matter of fact. it ~s indeed a death sentence. But this death leads into the true life in which a man really arrives at being himself. To be a disciple means to let oneself be "caught" by Jesus, by the mysterious fish which descended into the water of this world, indeed, into the water of death; who himself,became a fish in order to allow himself first to be caught by us, so as to become the Bread of Eife for us. He allows himself to be caught so that we can be caught by him, and find the courage to let ourselves be pulled along with him out of the waters of our habits and comforts. Jesus became a fisher of men by taking the night of the sea upon himself, by himself descending into the Passion of its depths. One can only become a fisher of men when one applies oneself to the task the way Jesus did. And furthermore, one can only become a fisher of men when one trusts in the bark of Peter, when one has entered into fellowship or communio with,Peter. A vocation is not a private matter, merely taking up the cause of Jesus at one's own expense. The field of a vocation is the entire Church, which can exist only in f~llowship with Peter and thus with the apostles of Jesus Christ. Priestly Spirituality~ in Psalm 16 (15) Since I want to stress the unity of both Testaments in'Scripture, the second passage I wish to discuss is taken from the Old Testament, from Psalm 16 (or 15, according to the Greek enumeration). We older priests once used the fifth verse of this psalm almost like a motto for what we had undertaken when we were made clerics in the rite of tonsure. Every time this psalm recurs (it is now part of Compline on Thursdays) 1 am reminded how I tried at that time to comprehend the rite of tonsure itself by imderstanding this text, so that, once 6tll~ / Review for Religious, Sept.-Oct. 1984 understood, I could carry out and live the rite. Thus, this verse became a precious beacon for me, and it remains today a symbol of what it means to be a priest, and of how priestly existence is realized. The Vulgate text reads: Dominus pars hereditatis meae et calicis rnei. ~ Tu es qui restitues hereditatern meam rnihi. The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup: It is thou that wilt restore my inheritance to me. This sentence makes Concrete what had been said earlier in verse 2: "I have no good beyond Thee!" and it do+s so in a very worldly turn Of phrase, in a pragmatic context that does not appear to be theological at all--in the lan-guage of the occupation and distribution of land in Israel as this is described in the book of Joshua and in the Pentateuch.s The priestly tribe of Levi was not a party to the distribution of the land among the tribes of Israel. The Levite ¯ received no land because "the Lord himself is his possession" (Dt 10:9; see also Jos 13:14) and "I [Yahweh] am thy portion and inheritance" (Nb 18:20). In this passage it is primarily the concrete matter of sustenance which is being dealt with: the Israelites live from the land which is assigned them. The land forms the physical basis of their existence. Through the possession of land, therefore, each individual has, so to speak, his very life apportioned to him. It is only the priests who receive their livelihood, not from tilling their own soil, but from Yahweh himself who is their sole source of life, even of physical life. To put it concretely, the priests live from their portion of the sacrificial victims.and the other cult offerings, in other words from that which has been given over'to God and in which they, as ritual ministers, are entitled to share. Thus two different types of physical livelihood are first of all expressed hire, but both of them neces~sarily lead to a deeper level when viewed from the standpoint of Israel's typical thinking in terms of totality. For the individual Israelite, the land is not merely a guarantee of support. It is his way of participating in the promise which God gave to Abraham and thus his inti-mate involvement in the God-given context in which the Chosen People live their lives. It thus simultaneously becomes the warrant of sharing in God's own vital power. The Levite, in contrast, possesses no land, and in that sense remains without security because he is excluded from earthly guarantees. He is directly and immediately "cast upon Yahweh" and upon him alone, as Psalm 22 says (verse 10). Although in the case of the occupation of the land the guarantee of life can somehow be disconnected from God--at least in the superficial sense of offering an independent type .of security, so to speak--this is impossible in the Levitical form of life: There, God alone is quite directly the warrant of life-- even one's earthly, physica! life depends upon him. If worship were to cease, the very basis of physical life would also disappear. And thus .the life of the Levite isat once p~-ivilege and hazard. Proximity to God in the sanctuary is the sole and direct source and focus of life. On the Strength of His Word / 649 At this point, I think a digression is in order. The terminology of verses five and six is plainly that of the occupation of the land and the different type of sustenance allotted to the tribe of Levi. This means that our psalm' is the song of a priest who expresses therein the physical and spiritual center of his life. The person praying here has not merely interpreted the legal stipula-tions- the external lack of properly, and the living from and for worship in the sense of a certain type of guaranteed livelihood--but has lived all of this in the direction of its real foundation. He has spiritualized the law, gone beyond it toward Christ, precisely by realizing its true content. For us, two things are important about this psalm. First of all, it is a priestly prayer, and secondly, we can here clearly observe how the" Old Testa-ment internally surpasses itself in the direction of Christ, how the Old Cove-nant approaches the New and thus renders visible the unity of salvation history~ To live, not from possessions but from the cult, means for this wor-shipper to live in God's presence, .to locate his existence in the interior approach to him. In this regard, Hans-Joachim Kraus quite rightly points out ¯ that in thiS text the Old Testament reveals the beginnings of a mystical com-munion with God which develops out of the special nature of the Levitical prerogatives? And so Yahweh himse]-f~aa~ becpme the "land" of the worshipper praying this psalm. The next verses clarify what this means in terms of concrete, everyday life. Verse 8 says: "I have set the Lord. always before me." Accord-ingly, the suppliant lives in God's presence; he keeps the Lord constantly before himself. The next phrase varies the same idea by saying: "For he is on my right hand." The core content of these Levitical prerogatives thus proves to be the bei.ng in God's company, the knowing that God is at one's side, asso-ciatirig with him, contemplating him and beipg contemplated by him. Thus God .actually becomes the "land" or the "landscape" of one's own life; thus we dwell and "abide" with him. And at this point the psalm makes contact with what we discovered earlier in .St. John's Gospel. Accordingly, to be a priest means to come to him, to his abode, and thus to learn how to see; to abide in his abode. The precise manner in which this occurs becomes more tangible in the verses which follow. Here, the priest praying the psalm praises the Lord for having "given him counsel," and he thanks the Lord because he has "inst_ructed him:in the night season." With this turn of phrase, both Septuagint and Vulgate texts are plainly thinking of the physical pain which "instructs" men. Education or "instruction" is conceived as a person "being bent into the proper shape" for a truly human existence, and this cannot take place without suffering, In this context, the term "instruction" is intended to be a compre-hensive expression .for leading man to salvation, for that series of transforma, tions ~by which we are changed from clay into the image of God, and thus become capable of eternal union with him. The external rod of the disciplinar-ian is here replaced by the sufferings of life in which God leads us and brings 650 / Review for Religious, Sept.-Oct., 1984 us to dwell with him. All of this recalls that great psalm, of:God's Word, Ps. 119, which we now pray during the week in the hora media. It is actually constructed around the basic statement of the Levite'sexistence: "The Lord is my portion" (v. 57; see also v. 14). Thus we find in abundant variety the basic ideas in which Psalm 16 expounds this reality: "Thy testimor~ies., are my counselors" ( 119: v. 24); "it is good :forme that 1 was afflicted, that 1 might learn thy statutes" (.v. 71); "I know, O Lord, that thyjudgments are right, and that in faithfulness thou hast afflicted me" (v. 75). Only then can one grasp the profundity of that petition which recurs like a refrain throughout the psalm: "O teach me thy statutes!" (vv. 12, 26, 29, 33, 64). Wherever life is so truly centered upon God's Word, there it comes about that the Lord "counsels" us. The words of' Scripture are no longer some remote generalities,~but speak quite directly into my life. The Scriptur.es step out of the distance of history and become words addressed to me in person. "The Lord is my counselor"i my very life becomes a word of his. And thus Psalm 16:11 comes true: "Thou dost show me the path of life." Life ceases to bea dark m'ystery. We begin to grasp what it means "to live?' Life opens itself up, and in the midst of all the tribulation of "being instructed," it becomes a joy. "Thy Statutes are.my songs," says Psalm i 19:54, and here in Psalm 16 the situation is not different: "Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices" (v. 9); "In thy presence there is fullness of joy, in thy right hand are pleasures for evermore" (v. II). When we succeed in reading the Old Testament in the light of its central core, and accept God's Word as the landscape of life, then we touch upon him whom we believe to be God'siliving Word. To me it seems~no mere accident that in the ancient Church this psalm became the great prophecy of the Resurrection, a description of the new David and of the definitive priest Jesu~ Christ. To learn to li~,e does not mean to inaster some sort of technique, but rather it ineans to pass beyond death. The mystery of Jesus Christ, his death and his resurrection rise resplendent wherever the suffering of the word and its indestructible 61an vital are experienced. It is therefore unnecessary to make any more applications to our own spirituality. A fundamental component of priestly existence is something resembling the Levite's "apartness," his lack of land, his being ci~st exclusively upon God. The vocation account in St. Luke which we considered earlier closes with the pointed words: "They forsook fill and followed him" (Lk 5:! I). There is no priesthood without such an act of abandonment. Without this sign of uncompromising freedom, the call to imitation is impossible. l think that this point of view renders highly significant, Jindeed makes indispensable, celibacy as being the abandonmerit of an earthly land of future promise, of life in one's own family, so that the basic state of being delivered up to God alone remains intact and becomes quite concrete. This, of course, implies that celibacy m]akes demands on one's entire lifestyle. Celibacy cannot On (he Strength of His Word / 651 fulfill its purpose if, in all other areas, we simply follow the rules of possession and procedure customary in life today. And above all, celibacy cannot last if we do not positively make "settling down with God" to be the center of our lives. Both Psalm 16 and Psalm 119 strongly.emphasize the need for constant meditative association with the Word of God, which cannot become our "homestead" in any other way. The community aspect of liturgical piety which necessarily belongs here is suggested by the reference in Psalm 16 to the Lord as "my cup" (v. 5). In Old Testament diction, this surely refers either to the cup of wine which went r~und at cultic meals, or to the cup of fate, the cup of anger or, of salvation.J0 In this prayer, the priest of the New Testament can find a sp~ci,al reference to that chalice through which the Lord has become our "land" in the most profound sense: the eucharistic chalice in which he distributes himself as our life. Priestly life in God's presence is thus concretized as life in the eucharistic mystery. At bottom the Eucharist is the "land" which has become our portion and of which we may weffsay: "The lines have fallen for ine in pleasant places; yea I have a goodly heritage" (v. 6). And here, two remarks, of fundamental importance emerge. Two Basic Conclusions from th~ Scriptural Texts The Unity of the Two Testaments ~. In my view, aparticularly important aspect of this priestly prayer of the Old and the New Covenant is the fact that here the. inner unity of the two Testaments, the unity of biblical spirituality and its basic manifestations in life, become visible, indeed capable of being lived out in practice. This is so signifi-cant because one of the principal reasons for the exegetically and theologically motivated crisis of the priest's image in recent~times has been precisely the separation of the. Old Testament from the New: Their relationship was seen only in the dialectical tension of opposites, namely "Law" and "Gospel." It was generally agreed that the New Testament ministries had nothing at all to do with the offices in the Old Testament. The fact that one would[ portray the Catholic concept of priesthood as a reversion to the Old Testament was itself regarded as an ironclad refutation of the Catholic idea. It was claimed that Christology meant the definitive abolition of all kinds, of priesthood, the destruction of the boundaries between the Sacred and ~he Profane, and the renunciation of the significance of any history of religions and their ideas of priesthood. Wherever it was possible to point out links between the Church's concept ofothe priest and the OJd Testament, or ideas borrowed from the history of religions, this was done as a sign that Christianity had gone astray in.the ecclesiastical ai'ea; it was urged as proof against the Church's doctrine on the priesthood. But this in fact meant that we were cut off from an entire stream of sources, from biblical piety and indeed from human experience itself. It meant that we were banished into a worldliness whose rigid "Christo-monism" 659 / Review for ReligiousI Sept.-Oct., 1984 actually dissolved 'the biblical image of Christ. This .in .turn is related to the fact that the Old Testament itself had been falsely construed as ~etting forth an opposition between "Law" and "Prophets," whereby "Law" was identified with the cultic and the priestly, while the "Prophetic" element was equated with criticism of cult; and with a pure ethics of humanitarianism that finds God in one's neighbor, not in the Temple. On this basis it was of course possible to refer to thi~ cultic element as "legalism" in contrast to prophetic piety, which was characterized ~is "faith in grace." The result was that the New Testam+nt was relegated to the realm of the anti-cultic, of the purely'humanitarian. In view of this basic attitude, every approach to priesthood :ffas condemned to remain fruitless and unconvincing. The real discussion with this entire~ complex of ideas has not yet taken place. He who prays°the priestlyPsalm 16 along with the other related psalms, especially Psalm 119, will become quite aware of the factthat the supposed ,opposition in principle between priesthood and prophecy of Christology simply collapses upon itself~ This psalm is in fact both fi priestly and a pro-phetic prayer, in which the purest and most profound elements of prophetic piety come to the fore~-but as priestly piety. Since this is so, the psalm is a Christological text. Since this is so, Christianity has since its earliest days regarded this psalm as a prayer of Jesus Christ, which he dedicates anew to us so that we may be permitted to pray it anew with him(see Rv 2:25-29). In this psalm, the new priesthood of Jesus Christ expresses itself prophetically, and in this psalm we can see how in the New Covenant the priesthood, proceeding from Christ, continues to exist in the unity of all salvation history, and indeed must continue to exist~ On the basis of this psalm we can understand that the Lord does not abolish the Law but fulfills it and conveys it anew to the Church, truly "storing it away" in the Church as an expression of grace. The Old Testament belongs to Christ, and in Christ, to us. The faith can live only in the Unity of the Testaments. The Sacred' and th~ Profane And that brings me tO my secofid remark. Once we regain the Old Testament, we must also overcome the disparagement of the Sacred and the mys-tique of the Profane. Naturally Christianity is a l~aven, and the Sacred is not something closed and final but something dynamic. Every priest has been commissioned to "Go, the~refore, and make-disciples of all nations!" (Mt ¯ 28:19). But this dynamism of being sent out, this inner openness and breadth of the Gospel cannot be transposed into the slogan: "Go ye therefore and yourselves become part of the world! Go ye into the world and confirm it in its worldliness!" The contrhry is the.case. The~:e is a sacred mystery of God, the mustard seed of the Gospel, which is not identical with the world but is rather destined to penetrate the whole world. Hence we'must Once more find the courage to acknowledge the Sacred, the courage to distinguish what is Chris-tian-- and that, not in order to separate or to differentiate, but to transform, to On the Strength of His Word /653, be truly dynamic. In an interview given in 1975, Eugene lonescu, a founder of the "Theatre of the Absurd," expressed this with the total passion typical 6f the thirsty, seeking men of our day. 1 quote a few sentences: The Church does not want to lose her customers, she wants to gain new ones. That results in a type of secularization, which is really miserable . The~world is losing itself and the Church loses itself in the world, the parish priests ate stupid and mediocre, leftist petty bourgeois. I have heard a parish priest say in chu.rch, "Let's be happy, let's all shake hands . Jesus wishes each of you a very good day!" It will not be long until someone sets up a bar for communion of bread and wine, and servessandwiches-and Boujolais. To me, that seems unbelievable stupidity and com-pletely non-spiritual. Brotherliness is neither mediocrity nor fraternization. We need the Supra-Temporal, because what is religion or the Sacred? All that remains is nothing; nothing solid, everything is in motion. What we really need, though, is a rock;" In this connection I recall some of the stimulating sentences to be found in Peter Handke's new work, Over the Villages. For example: "Nobody wants us, and nobody ever wanted us. Our houses are trellises of despair standing in emptin~:ss . . . We are not on the wrong road, we are not on any road at all. How forsaken mankind is."~2 I believe that when one hears these voices--voices of men who quite consciously live in the world of today, living, suffering; singing--then it becomes clear that one cannot serve this world with banal officiousness. Such a world does not need corroboration, it needs transformation--the radicality~ of the Gospel. A Concluding Thought: Giving and Receiving (Mk 10:28-31) By way of conclusion, 1 would like to touch briefly upon one more text: Mk 10:28-31. There, Peter says to' Jesus, "Lo, we have left everything and followed you." St. Matthew makes explicit what was obviously the point of the question: "What then shall we have?" (19:27)~ We have already spoken about relinquishing or abandoning, which is an indispensable element of apostolic, priestly spirituality. Let us therefore turn at once to Jesus' astonishi'ng reply. He does not rejrct Peter's question out of hand, as one might expect~ He does not reproach Peter because he expects a reward, but rather admits that Peter is right: "Truly, 1 say to you, there is no one who has left house, or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the Gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life" (Mk 10:29-30). God is magnanimous, and if we look at our lives honestly, then we know that he has indeed repaid every abandonment a hundredfold. He will not allow us to surpass him in generosity. He does not wait for. the world to come in order to repay, but even now gives in return a hundred to one, though in spite of this the world remains the scene of persecutions, sufferings and tribu- 654 / Review for Religious, Sept.-Oct., 1984 lations. St. Teresa of Avila expressed this statement of Jesus in the simple formula: "Even in this life, God repays a hundredfold,"~3 All we need is the courage to b~gin by giving our "one,"as Peter did when, on the strength of the Lord's word, he put out once again in the morning--he gave one, and received back a hundred. And so I think that in all our pusillanimity we should constantly beg our Lord for this same courage, and for the faith and confidence that lie therein. And we should thank him for those upon whom he has bestowed this courage, those whom he gives to us as signs of encouragemefit, in Order to invite us to make ouy own leap into the hands of his mercy. NOTES ~From the vast literature on "lrenaeus and Gnosis" see most recently H. J. J~schke, Irenaeus yon Lyon "Die ungeschminkte Wahrheit"(Roma, 1980). 2For the following remarks concerning John 1:35-42. 1 am indebted to the fundamental sugges-tions of C. M. Martini, "Damit ihr Frieden habt. Geistliches Leben nach dem Johannesevange-lium" (Freiburg 1982), pp. 204-9. 31bid, p. 207. 4Cited by ,,Cardinal Suenens "Renouveau et puissance des t~n~bres," Document de Marines 4 (1982), p. 60. On this subject see pp. 37-61 in Suenens" book as well as K. Hemmerle, ~Das Haus des barmherzigen Vaters" (Freiburg. 1982), pp. 17-25. 5The standard translation renders Ps 33:6 (34:5), in light of the Hebrew text, as "look tohim and be radiant," whereas the Lalin Vulgate, following the Septuagint, renders it "Come ye to him and be enlightened." It was precisely the phrase "ye shall be enlightened" which called forth a very strong echo in the philosophy and theology of the Church Fathers, and we are quite justified in regarding this verse in the Septuagint version as one of the key phrases of Christian liturgy and theology. We are of course confronted here with the question of the specific rank to be attributed to the Greek Old Testament. This problem must be reflected upon anew. Noteworthy in this regard is H. Gese, 'tZur biblischen Theologic" (MLinchen 1977), pp. 9-30, esp. 27 ft., and see also P. Benoit, "Exegese und Theol0gie" (Dfisseldorf 1965), pp. 15-22. ~On this see F. Hauck, Koinon~s Ktl.: TWNT 3(1938), pp. 798-810, here especially pp 799, 802, 804. 7JerOme, "In Ps 141," ad neophytos. CChr 78, p. 544. sOn what follows, see H. J. Kraus, "Psalmen I" (Neukirchen-Vluyn 1960), pp. 118-27. '~lbid. p. 123: ~°See H. Gross-H. Reinelt, "Das Buch der Psalmen I" (Diisseldorf 1978)~ pp. 88 ft. ~E. Ionescu, ~Gegengiffe~ (Miinchen, 1979), pp. 158,159. ~2P. Handke, "~lber die Drrfer (Frankfurt, 1981), p~. 94 ft. ~3"Libro de vida," 22/I~ and see U.M. Schiffers, ~Gott liebt beherzte Seelen," Pastoralblat! 34 (1982), p. 294. We Priests Are More Necessary Than Ever John Paul H In the month of February, Pope John Paul twice took up themes of priesthood. Frorfi Februa.ry 13-16, some four hundred priests attended a national convention addressed to the theme, "The Eucharist and the Problems of the Life of Priests Today," spofisored by the Italian Episcopal Conference's Commission for the Clergy, on the last day of which the Holy Father addressed the cqngregants. , ~ ~ Then, on February 23, 1984, to conclude a special Holy Year celebration with priests, the Holy Faiher ¢oncelebrated Mass in St. Peter's Basilica with more than four thousand priests and bishops from, all over the world. This Mass was also marked by a renewal of commitment on the part of all present. The texts of these addresses appeared originally in L'Osservatore Romano, 5 March, 1984. pp. 6 and 8. Beloved Priests: Among the satisfactions that I have been granted to experience during the course of this Jubilee Year, one of the greatest is to be able to meet with the members of the ;clergy, with my confreres.in the priesthood. Very gladly, therefore, in welcoming the request of the organizers of your convention, I am here among you to let you know in a tangible way that the pope is near you, follows you in your work, shares your joys, your anxieties, your fears, at such a significant time for the life of the Church. Your meeting in Rome has taken, place in the deeply spiritual climate of this year of grace that is now approaching its end, and I sincerely rejoice in knowing that you have been engaged during these days in reflection on a theme of such great common interest, "The Eucharist and the Problems of the Life of Priests Today," a theme intended to foster that ever greater commu- ,656/ Review for Religious, Sept.-Oct, 1984 nion of sentiments and works, that spreading of ideas, that ,exchange and comparison of experiences, which today especially are indispensable for adapting, the exercise of the priestly ministry to the needs, the aspirations, and the development of the ecclesial community. To you, therefore, my greeting, my encouragement and my blessing. But you ce~rtainly are expecting also a word about the specific Subject of your reflections in order to know, through the pope's voice what the Church expects of you today, that you might live ever more effectively and authenti-cally the gift of yourse.lves to the Lord and to souls. This I will very gladly do, expressing to you above all my appreciation for "the objective of your conventiori, which very opportunely coincides with the aim of the Jubilee Year, whose goal, namely, to profit in a more intense way from the benefits of ~he Redemption, is none other than a new, urgent appeal to conversion addressed to all the faithful, and in. particular to priests. If conversion for a priest means returning to the grace of his vocation it-self' in order continually to rediscover the dimensions of the priesthood and to acquire new thrust in his evangelical dynamism,, what greater theme for ~eflection can be offered than the one which makes us bet'ter understand the vital and pr~ofound relationship that unites the priesthood to the Eucharist and the Eucharist to the priesthood? The priest cannot be understood without the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the reaSon for our priesthood. We are born priests in" the eucharistic celebra~.t~on. Our principal ministry and power is oi'dered to the E~cha~:ist. The Eucharist could not exist without us; but without the Eucharist we do not exist, or we are r.educed to lifeless shadows. The priest therefore can never r.e~ach complete fulfillment if the Eucharist does not become the center and root of his .life, so that all his activity is nothing but an,irradiation of the Eucharist. It is important to recall these truths at a time when we hear insidious voices that tend to disregard the primacy of God and of spiritual values in the life and activity 6f the priest. And this happens in the name of adjusting to.the times--which instead is conforming to the spirit of the world, sowing doubts and uncertainties about the true nature of the priesthood, its primary func-tions, its right place, in society. ,Beloved brothers, never let yourselves be influenced'by these theories. Never believe that the yearning for intimate conversation with the eucharistic Je.sus, the hours spent on your knees before the tabernacle, will halt or slow down the dynamism of your ministry. The exact opposite is true.What is given to God is never lost for man. The profound demands of spirituality and the priestly ministry remain substantially unchanged throughout the centuries, and tomorrow, just as today, they will have their fulcrum and their reference point in the eucharistic mystery. It is the grace of ordination that gives the priest the sense Of spiritual fatherhood, through which he presents himself to souls as a father and leads Priests are Necessary / 657 them along the path to heaven. But it is eucharistic love that daily renews his fatherhood and makes it fruitful, transforming him ever more into Christ and like Christ, makes him become the bread of souls, their priest, yes, but also their victim, because for them he is gladly consumed in imitation of him who gave his life for the salvation of the world. In other words, a priest is as good as his eucharistic life, his Mass above all. A Mass without love, a sterile priest. A fervent Mass, a priest who wins souls. Eucharistic devotion neglected and estranged,a priesthood that is in danger and fading. But the centrality of the Eucharist in the life of the priest goes well beyond the sphbre of personal devotion. It constitutes the directing criterion, the permanent dimension of all his pastoral activity, the indispensable means for the authentic renewal of the Christian people. The Second Vatican Council wisely reminds us: "No Christian community can be built up unless it has its basis and center in the celebration of the Most Holy Eucharist. Here, there-fore, all education in the spirit ofcommunity must originate" (Decree Presby-terorum Ordinis, 6): Therefore, if we want Christian love to be a reality in life;,if we want Christians to be a community united in the apostolate and in,the common attitude of resistance to the powers of evil; if we want ecclesial communion to become .an authentic place of encounter, of hearing the Word of God, of .revision of life, of becoming aware of the problems of the Church, every effort must ,be made to give the eucharistic celebration its entire power to express, the event of the salvation of the community. This involves a pastoral program-mingthat will'incorporate the Eucharist into.the dynamics proper to human life, to .personal land communal living: A good catechesis would certainly render the ecclesial community a great service by shedding light on and exter-nalizing the lifestream that exists between the Mass celebrated in Church and the Mass lived out in one's daily commitments,. This is how the eucharistic celebration will be the expression of the living faith of a community that discovers and relives ithe experience of the disciples on the way to Emmaus who recognize their LoCd and master in the breaking of bread (Lk 24:3 I). This is the witness that the Church demands of you today; beloved priests. Always offer this witness readily and generously, in serenity and happiness. It is a beautiful thing.that this commitment is reaffirmed by -you here before the pope, in response to the common expectations of the Jubilee Year, so fruitful in graces. I encourage you to resume your work in the sacred ministry with a spirit of faith and sacrifice: I will pray for you to Mary most holy, Queen of Apostles, that she will help you to persevere in your holy .resolutions, and as she proclaimed the greatness of the Lord through the gift of the Savior and kept every word in her heart and served him with love and complete dedication, so may you also beable to express your joy in thanksgiving for the Eucharist you celebrate by ever.more deeply rooting your life andyour apostolate in it. With my apostolic Blessing. 658 / Review for Religious, Sept.-Oct., 1984 II The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; He has sent meto bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captivesr and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor (Is 61:1-2). Dear, brothers in the grace of the Sacrament of the Priesthood: A year ago I addressed to you the letter for Holy Thursday (1983), asking you to proclaim, together with myself and all the bishops of the Chu. rch, the Year of the R(demption: the extraordinary Jubilee, the Year of the Lord's Favor. Today I wish to thank you for what you have done in order to ensure that this Year, which recalls to us the 1950th anniversary of the Redemption should really be "the Year of the Lord's Favor," the Holy Year. At the same time, as I meet you.at this concelebration, the climax of your Jubilee pilgrim-age to Rome, 1 wish to renew.with you and make still more vivid the aware-ness of.the mystery of the Redemption. the livingand life-giving source of the sacramental priesthood in which each one of us shar~es. In you who have gathered here, no.t only from Italy but also from other countries and continents, I see all priests: the entire presbyterate of the univer, sal Church. And I address myself to all with the words of encouragementoand exhortation of the Letter to the Ephesians: Brothers, "I. beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called" (Ep 4:1): We too--who have been called to serve others in the spiritual renewal of the Year of the Redemption, need to be renewed, throfigh the grace of the Year, in our blessed vocation. I will sing of your steadfast love, 0 Lord, forever (89:1). This verse of the responsorial psalm of today's liturgy reminds us that we are in a special way "servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God" (1 Co 4:!), that we are men of the divine economy of salvation, that we are conscious "instruments" of grace, that is of the Holy Spirit's action in the power of Chri.st's Cross and Resurrection. : . What is this divine economy, what is the grace, of our Lord Jesus. Christ-- the grace which it was his wish to link sacramentally to our priestly life and to our priestly service, even though it is performed by men who are so poor, unworthy? Grace, as the psalm of today's liturgy proclaims, is a proof of the fidelity of God himself to that eternal Love with,which he has loved creation, and in particular man, in his eternal Son. The psalm says: "For your steadfast love was established forever, your faithfulness is firm as the heavens" (Ps 89:2). This faithfulness of his love--his merciful love--is also faithfulness to the Covenant that God made from the beginning with man, and which he renewed many times, even though man so many times was not faithful to it. Priests are Necessary / 659 Grace is thus a .pure gift .of,Love, which only in Love itself, and in nothing else, finds its reason and motivation. The psalm exalts the Covenant which God made with David, and at the same time, through its messianic content, it shows how that historical Cove-nant is only a stage and a foretelling of the perfect Covenant in Jesus Christ: "He shall Cry to me, 'You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation~'" (Ps 89:26). Grace, as a gift, is the foundation of the elevation of man to the dignity of an adopted child of God in Christ, the only-begotten Son. "My faithfulness and my steadfast love shall be with him and in my name shall his power be exalted" (Ps 89:24). Precisely this power that makes us become children of God, as is spoken of in the Prologue to Saint John's Gospel--the enti~:e salvific powder--is con-ferred upon humanity in Christ, in the Redemption, in the Cross and Resurrection. And we--Christ's servants--are its stewards. The priest: the man of the economy of salvation. The priest: the man formed by grace. The priest: the steward of grace! I will sing of your steadfaJt love, 0 Lord, forever. Our vocation is precisely this. In this consists the specific nature, the originality of the priestly vocation. It is in a special wayrooted in the mission of Christ himself, Christ the Messiah. "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound., to comfort all who mourn~' (Is 61:!-2). In the very heart of this messianic mission of Christ the Priest is rooted in our vocation and mission too: the vocation and mission of.the priests of the New and Eternal Covenant, It is. the vocation and mission of the proclaimers of the Good News: - of those who must bind up the wounds of human hearts; - of those who must proclaim liberation in the midst of all the many afflictions, in the .rriidst of the evil that in so many ways "holds" man prisoner; , - of those who must console. This is our vocation and mission as servants. Our vocation, dear brothers, includes a great and fundamental service to be offered to every human being.t Nobody can take our place. With the Sacrament of the New and Eternal Covenant we must go to the very roots of human existence on earth. Day by day, we must bring into that existence the dimension of the Redemption and the Eucharist. We must strengthen awareness of divine filiation through grace. And what higher prospect, what finer destiny could there be for man than this? 661~ / Review for Religious, Sept.-Oct,. 1984 Finally, we must administer the sacramental reality of reconciliation with God, and the sacramental reality of Holy Communion, in which the deepest longing of the "insatiable" human heart is met. Truly, our priestly anointing isdeeply rooted in the very messianic anoint-ing of Christ. Our priesthobd is ministerial. Yes, we must serve. And "to serve" means to bring man to the very foundations of his humanity, to the deepest essence of his dignity. It is precisely there .that--through our service--the song "of praise instead of a faint spirit" must ring out,'to use once more the~words of the text of Isaiah (61:3). We Act with the Power of Christ Dearly beloved brothers! Day after day, year after year, we discover the content and substance which are truly inexpressible of our priesthood in the depths of the mystery of the Redemption. And I hope that the present Year of the extraordinary Jubilee will serve this purpose in a special way! Let us open our eyes ever wider--the eyes of our soul--in order to under-stand better what it means to celebrate the Eucharist, the sacrifice of Christ himself, entrusted to our priestly lips and hands in the community of the Church. Let us open our eyes ever wider--the eyes of our soul--in order to under-stand better what it means to forgive sins and reconcile human consciences with the infinite Holy God, with the God of Truth and Love. Let us open our eyes,ever wider--the eye~ of our soul--in order'to under-stand better what it means to act in persona Christi in the name of Christ: to act with his powers-with the power which, in a word, is rooted in the salvific ground .of the Redemption. Let us open our eyes ever ~wider--the eyes of our soul--in order to under-stand better what the mystery of the Church is. We are men of the Church! "There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the One hope that belongs to your call, one Lord,'one faith, one baptism,one 15od and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all" (Eph 4:4-6). Therefore: seek "to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Eph 4:3). Yes. Precisely this in a special way depends on you: "to maintain the unity of the Spirit." At a time of great tensions that affect.,the earthly body of humanity, the Church's most important service springs frbm the ':unity of the Spirit," so that not only she herself will not suffer division coming from outside but she will also reconcile and unite people in the midst of the adversities 'that increase around them andwithin themselves in today's world. My brothers! To each of us "grace was given. ~ according to the measure of Christ's gift., for building up the body of Christ'~ (Ep 4:7-12). May we be faithful to this grace! May we be heroically faithful to this Priests are NecessaO, / ~ grace! My brothers! It is a great gift that°God has given to us, to each of us! So great that every priest can discover in himself the signs of a divine predilection. Let each one of us basically preserve his gift in all the wealth of its expressions: including the magnificent gift of celibacy voluntarily consecrated to the Lord--and received from him~for our sanctification and for the build-ing up of the Church. Christ is More Necessary Than Ever! Jesus Christ is in our midst and he says to us: "1 am the good shepherd" (Jn I0:I 1-14). It is precisely he who has "made" shepherds oLus too. And it is he who goes about all the cities and villages (see Mt 9:35), wherever we are sent in order to perform our priestly and pastoral service. It is he, Jesus Christ, who teaches ~!. : preaches the' Gospel of the kingdom and heals every human disease and infirmit3~'(see ibid), wherever we are sent for the service of the Gospel and the admihistration of the sacraments. It is precisely he, Jesus Christ, who ,continually feels compassion for the crowds and for every tired ahd exhaiasted person, like "sheep without a shep-herd" (see Mt 9:36). Dear brothers! In this. !liturgical assembly of ours let us ask Christ for just one thing: that each of' us may learn to serve better, more clearly and more effectively, his presence as Shepherd in the midst of the people of today's world! This is also most importan~t., for ourselves, ,so that~we may not be ensnared by ttie temptation of "uselessness," that is to :s0y.the temptation to feel that we are not needed. Because it is not true. We,~are more necessary than ever because Christ is more necessary than ever! We have in our hands--precisely in our "empty hands"---the power of the means of action that the Lord has given to us. Think of the~word of God, sharper than a twg-edged sword (see Heb 4:12); think of liturgical prayer, especially the Prayer of the. Hours, in which Christ himself prays with us and for us;' and think of the sacraments, in particular the sacrament of penance, the true life buoy for so many cofisciences, the haven towards which so many people also of our own time are striving. Priests should once more give great importance to,this sacrament, for the sake of their own spiritua.l life and that of the faithful. There is no doubt about it, dear br6thers: with the good use of these "poor means" (~bu! divinely powerful ones) you will see blossoming along your path the wonders of the infinite Mercy. And also the gift of new vocations! With this awareness, in this shared prayer, let us listen once more to the words which the Master addressed to his disciples: "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest" (Mr 9!37,38)~ 669 / Review for Religious, Sept.-Oct., 1984 How relevant these words are in our time, too! So let us pray! And let the whole Church :pray with us! And in this pra.yer may there be manifested awareness, renewed by the Jubilee, of the mystery of the Redemption. Renewal of Priestly Promises During the concelebrated Holy Year Mass for priests, after the Pope's homily, the Hol.v Father led the priests in the renewal_of their priestly promises. Following is the form that was used. Dearly beloved brothers: Through a most special gift of Christ, teacher, priest and shepherd, you have been called to the Order of Priesthood. Every day you must make yourselves more worthy of this vocation of yours and renew your commit-ment to the service of the People of God. May the Spirit of Holiness always assist you, that you may be able .to fulfill with his help what through his gift you have promised with joy . Therefore, during this Jubilee celebration of the Holy YeAr of the Redemption, do you, ministers of Christ and administrators of the mysteries of God, recalling the day of youro,priestly ordination, intend to renew the promises you made before the bishop and the People of God? Priests: 1 do. Do you intend to unite yourselves intimately to the Lord Jesus, model of our priesthood, denying yofirselves and strengtfiening the commitments which,, urged by the love of Christ, you have freely assumed toward his Church? Priests: I do. Do you intend,, in particular, to strengthen the holy commitment of celi-bacy, as a testimony of iovb for Christ with an undivided heart .and as a guarantee of interior freedom for a fuller ecclesial service, in joyful e~xpectation of the kingdom promised? Priests: ! do. Do you intend to be faithful dispensers of the mysteries of God ihrough the celebration of the Eucharist and the other liturgical actions, and to fulfill the ministry of the Word of Salvation after the example of Christ, head and shepherd, letting yourselves be guided not by human interests, but by love for your brothers and sisters? Priests: 1 do. Then addressing the deacons and seminarians, the Holy Father asked: And you deacons and seminarians, who have generously accepted Christ's call to follow him more closely in order to become ministers of the New and Priests are Necessary/663 Everlasting Covenant. do you intend to persevere, with his help along the path you have undertaken? Deacons and Seminarians: 1 do. And the Holy Father asked the faithful present: And do you, dear faithful, do you intend to pray always for your priests, that the Lord may shower upon them the abundance of his gifts, that they may be faithful ministers of Christ the High Priest and lead you to him, the only source of salvation? Faithful: 1 do. Then to the whole assembly, the Holy Father said." Do you also intend to pray for me that I may be faithful to the apostolic service entrusted to my lowly person, and become among you more everyday a living and authentic image of Christ the High Priest and lead you to him, the only source of salvation? All: 1 do. The Holy Father then concluded: May the Lord keep us in his love and lead all us, shepherds and flock, to eternal life. All solemnly sang: Amen! Amen! Amen! Psychosexual Maturity in Celibate Development by Philip D. Cristantielio Price: $.60 per copy, plus postage. Add ress: Review for Religious Room 428 6301 Lindell Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri 63108 Cruciform Obedience Boniface Ramsey, O.P. This is the third of Father Ramsey's articles on the vows of religious perceived through a Christocentric focus. These three articles will be brought together and offered as a single reprint, the details of which are given elsewhereSn this issue. ~ , Father Ramsey continues to reside in the Dominican House of Studies; 487 Michigan Avenue~ N.E.: Washington, DC 20017~ n two previous issues of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS I discussed the vows of poverty and celibacy from a Christocentric perspective.~ In this issue I would like to complete a trilogy by speaking of obedience from very much the same~ perspective. Of the three great vows, there is little doubt that obedience is the most difficult both to execute and to reflect upon. Probably it has caused more suffering than either poverty or celibacy. For whereas th6 Struggle attendant upon poverty and celibacy may be waged complet~!.y withiia the person of the religious who is fighting to subdue his or her passions, ob~lience is the vow that, so to speak, intrudes another person (the superior) in(o the life of the religious--a person who, at least in times pa~t~ was understood to have a quasi-universal control over one's life. How often this control was abused, and on what flimsy pretexts! Even.the superior:s own sanctity was no guarantee that he or she might not act in the most arbitrary fashion. And from this arbitrariness there was usually little recourse. Small wonder that a desire to escape out from under the excessive "demands of obedience and to regain a sense of one's own independence has been the primary cause for many choosing to leave religious life. This is the case, moreover, even where obedience, is not objectively abusive, or even p~rceived as such, for obedience can hardly be perceived as not touching upon human autonomy, a strong rei~lization of which is absolutely necessary to proper human behavior and to self-respect. 664 Cruciform Obedience / 665 Frequently it happens that, when no other means of expression seems possible, this independence or autonomy is asserted by the religious through acts contrary to poverty or celibacy, which are then mistakenly understood to be the person's problem area. This suggests that obedience is the most basic of the vows, and indeed maybe it is. It is a classical teaching, in any event, that poverty and celibacy in fact touch upon rather narrower aspects of the human personality than does obedience? Whether this remains true even when poverty and celibacy are construed as broadly as 1 have tried to construe them in my two previous articles is a moot point. What is certain is that poverty and celibacy deal with relatively easily recognizable specifics, whereas obedience is occupied with something far less tangible, or at least with an area of our nature with which we are much less familiar--or are much more hesitant to face. It must be said from the start that the reason why obedience is so difficult is that human life is so radically marked by disobedience. "1 find it to be a law," Paul writes in Romans (7:2 i-23), "that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members." In The Oty of God Augustine ~emarks that the original sin was one of disobedience impelled by pride. The result of this-original diSobedience, he goes on to say, is a terrible disharmony within the human person: In a word. what is the punishment for that sin of disobedience but disobedience? For what other human misery is there but the disobedience of a person to himself--so that, because he did not wish what he was able to do. now he wishes what he is unable to do? For in paradise, even if he was unable to doall things before the sin. y~t he did'not wish to do whatever he was unable to do: and therefore he was able to do everything that he wished to do. But now, as we recognize in his offspring~ and as Holy Scripture testifies, a human being is like vanity. For who can count how many things he wishes to do that he cannot do, since he is not obedient to himself--that is, since his very mind and his flesh (which is inferior to it) do not obey his will? For. despite himself, his mind is greatly afflicted, and his flesh suffers and grows old and dies. And we would not be suffering unwillingly whatever else we suffe.r if our nature completely and every respect obeyed our will.3 Whoever has not lived this conflict, to a greater or lesser degree, has not lived reflectively. Disobedience, then, is part of human nature. According to Augustine, the very illimitable desires that contribute to human transcendence and that set the human being apart from other earthly creatures~ are, on their shadow side, stumbling blocks and provocations to overweening demands that cannot be satisfied and that must qualify as the urgings of disobedience, of sin. Sad to say, as tragic as this disharmony is, we nevertheless learn to live with it. It is a disharmony that is, after all, part of us and familiar to us. We could hardly imagine living with those overweening demands, not stifled (which would render us inhuman), but under control--in that state of tense 666 / Review for Religious, Sept.-Oct., 1984 and watchful virtue that the Greek Fathers referred to as apatheia. So radi-cated in our nature is this disharmony that we purposefully and self-right, eously pursue the wrong things as though they were good for us. So radicated is it that--the upshot is--to correct it is to act contrary to our nature, a process that causes intense pain. We are like a man whose broken leg has been set improperly. The man learns to walk with a limp and can, indeed, go about with relative ease, yet the limp in turn becomes responsible for 'a gradual deterioration in other areas of the body. For health to be restored, to the extent possible, the leg must be broken again and reset. Learning obedience is like breaking and setting a limb that has already been broken and set once before. This is surely the insight of the Desert Fathers, e~pecially as it is,implied in a narrative such as the following, which dates from the fourth or fifth century: It was said of the abba John the Dwarf that, having gone off to Scet~ to an old man of Thebes, he remained in the desert. His abba took a dry stick and planted it and told him: "Water this every day with a flask of water until it bears fruit." But the water was so far away that he would leave in the evening and return in the morning. After three years, though, it came to life and bore fruit. And the old man took the fruit, carried it to " the church'~ahd said to the brethren: "Take and cat the fruit of obedience."4 The story of the dry stick is a famous one, perhaps even a frightening one, for it seems to smack more than a little of the arbitrary exercise of authority that we mentioned earlier. The distinction betWeen the old/nan of Thebes and a neurotic novice-master or novice-mistress might be hard to discern from the outside, but presumably the motivation is different. Whatever goal the latter may be pursuing, the old man of Thebes was concerned with the painful restoration of human nature, the resetting of a once broken limb, and John was his willing disciple. The story of the 'dry stick compels us to confront the mysterious and unavoidable link there is between obedience and suffering. What we hear of John the Dwarf and his three years of toil imposed by his abba is no more than what we hear of Jesus himself, whose own suffering and death are so frequently ex'pressed in terms of obedience. Jesus' agony in Gethsemane is nothing other than the struggle to be obedient to his Father: "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt" (Mt 26:39). So it is also characterized in the great hymn of Philippians: "And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross" (Ph 2:8). It appears likewise in the Letter to the Hebrews: "Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered" (Heb 5:8). The difference, of course, between Jesus and John the Dwarf or any other human being is that Jesus' obedience was not therapeutic or restorative, since he was without sin and its tragic effects, whereas our obedience is precisely for the sake of our sinfulness. Yet even for Jesus to drink deeply of the cup of human nature, his obedience had to entail suffering, as ours does. Based upon the model of Jesus himself, we may say that to be obedient is Cruciform Obedience / 667 to submit to the cross, with all its mystery and suffering. We may also say that the cross is the thing outside of us, the thing which is representative of God's will and which intrudes disturbingly upon us. Inasmuch as it is identical with God's will it is an objective good, the objective good. It is, indeed, the great objectivity that we refuse because of our own self-centeredness. It is the great objectivity to which we must conform ourselves and which we must put within ourselves if we are ever to have peace, as expressed in the words of Dante: "In his will is our peace.'~ And it is the process of interiorizing what is presently exterior to us that does us violence and causes us pain. This means shoulder-ing the cross--not the cross of our own choosing (which, after all, would be the product of our subjectivity) but the ineluctable cross of God's choosing, for only in that cross is his will, and hence our peace, certain. In the case of John the Dwarf the cross was an adherence to the absurd demand of the old man of Thebes. In the case of Jesus it was a willingness to set his face to go to Jerusalem (see Lk 9:51), with what that implied of suffering and death, because this was the Father's destiny for him. Perhaps religious men :and women today, in contrast to religious men and women of twenty or more years ago, think of obedience for the most part as a vow that is rarely exercised. Itcomes up when a person is transferred from one assignment to another, and even that is usually done with consultation. Oth-erwise superiors make demands with relative infrequency, and they hardly dream of asking the very difficult, never mind the absurd or the impossible. Obedience is invoked almost exclusively as a functional necessity, and so it has come to be seen: it is required for the smooth operation of a religious house or an apostolate--entities that ordinarily run themselves'without the intervention of a "higher authority." But the view that religious obedience is an occasional or a functional thing is as erroneous as the view that poverty and celibacy are occasional or functional. Obedience, instead, like poverty and celibacy, is a constant disposition. In my previous articles 1 suggested that poverty and celibacy represented an attachment to Christ as human and as desirable respectively; consequently they are dispositions that have a quality of permanence and that are always operative. Obedience too is a constant and always operative disposition, spe-cifically with regard to the will of the Father, which in turn implies the cross. For, in Jesus' own experience, the cross was not merely at the end of his life but rather was the end to which his whole life was directed; it colored his life and, we might even say, gave it its meaning. If.we think of the Father's will as something constantly set before us to be accomplished---because therein consists the only restoration of our dishar- " mony and thus the only possibility of our happiness--we shall no longer conceive of oi~edience as a sporadic or occasional thing. Where do we discern this will? The traditional answer, of course, is that we discern it in the laws and customs of the Church, in Scripture as it is properly interpreted, in the constitutions and customs of one's particular religious con- 661~ / Review for Religious, Sept.-Oct., 1984 gregation, in the daily schedule or horarium, in the demands of one's assign7 ments, in the will of the superior as that is legitimately expressed, in the promptings of one's own conscience, in requests that are made of us and that it is possible for us to fulfill without difficulty. Similar things could be added along these lines. But these are by no means the only instances of the divine will, as though it were concerned only with some things and not others. The divine will is expressed in every aspect of reality, in every objective thing that occurs, that it behooves us to accept and somehow take into ourselves. Thus we must hearken to and obey the reality of other people's personalities, which are not our own and hence are often h~rd to appreciate; the outcome of elections and other such processes in which we may have taken positions opposed to the prevailing view; accidents that could not be avoided; the weaknesses that burden us as we get sick or grow old; the vagaries of the weather and of other natural phenomena. These things too are manifestations of God's will that are proper subjects of our obedience, that it profits us nothing to complain about or rail against. In them, indeed, there is a loving design for us. Although the "objectivities" mentioned are all unpleasant or at least diffi-cult, and one or two even tragic, we could as well say that God's will is also expressed in the many good things that befall us--in friendships and successes of various sorts, for example. Yet since these are so often things that we ourselves have had a hand in bringing about, or that we would gladly have brought about if we could, they do not have the same quality.of objectivity as do the others. Nor is there question of bending our will to them, and for that reason there is perhaps no question of obedience either. According to this way of thinking, then, we could characterize obedience in terms of "patient endurance." It is the vow by which the religious person promises to accept the reality that can be identified with the divine will, and that inevitably brings with it the cross. Moreover, the religious makes this promise in the firm conviction that in enduring or accepting this total reality, he or she will find the peace that the world cannot give (see John 14:27). All of reality, the whole of the universe, is in fact permeated with the mystery of the cross: This is a theme common in the earliest Church, and expressed strikingly by lrenaeus at the end of the second century when he writes: And because [Christ] is himself the Word of God almighty, who, in his invisible form, pervades us universally in the whole world, and encompasses both its length and breadth and height and depth--for by God's Word everything is disposed and adminis-tered- the Son of God was also crucified in these, imprinted in the form of a cross on the universe: for he had necessarily, in becoming visible~ to bring to light the universal-ity of his cross in order to show openly through his visible form that activity of his: that it is he who makes bright the height, that is, what is in heaven, and holds the deep, which is in the bowels of the earth, and stretches'forth and extends the length from east to west, navigating also the northern parts and the breadth of the south, and calling in all the dispersed from all sides to the knowledge of the Father.6 Cruciform Obedience / 669 Where Christ is, there is the cross: it cannot be avoided; it is wriften even across the face of our joys. Do we not acknowledge the dominance of the cross in our lives, do we not symbolically submit ourselves to it when we sign ourselves with it from forehead to breast and from shoulder to shoulder? The principal .objection to what has been said thus far must surely be that it appears to foster passivity--a kind of mindless, heedless acceptance of and submission to Whatever comes one's way. It must be added, then, that Jesus' own obedience to his destipy, which was the reality of the cross that constantly intruded into his life, was not mindless or fatalistic. We know from the gospels that Jesus was always aware of what he was doing and that he approached this painful destiny in complete freedom. He offered himself freely to the Father, although not without a struggle, as the episode in Gethsemane tells us, to conform his will to the Father's. The sovereignty of Jesus' obedience is wonderfully manifested in the most ancient depictions of the'crucifixion, dating from the fifth century, where he is shown on the cross as a figure in.complete possession of himself--not hanging in agony but erect, and with a noble and peaceful countenance. Yet it is important to realize, asthe gospels inform us, that Jesus endured suffering on the cross. The ancient artists only stressed, one aspect of the crucified one. Moreover, it was Jesus' custom to make his disciples conscious of the sufferings that lay before them, so that they too might be free to accept the cross or not. It is clear from his example, therefore, that Jesus did not consider obedience to be an abdication of self. That Christian obedience is not passivity is still more clearly illustrated from the fact that, in numerous instances, Jesus actually resisted what other-wise might have been construed as his "destiny." That is, he often spoke against those who opposed him rather than simply bear their provocations in silence. This resistance on Jesus' part introduces an element of complexity into the practice of obedience. It suggests that there are times when religious obedience may be modified by some sort of resistance. When this may legiti-mately occur is problematic; it is a classic instance of the conflict between conscience and authority, particularly inasmuch as the authority here con-cerns the subject of areligious vow. This is, nonetheless, in keeping with the doctrine of the divine permissive will, which teaches that God permits evil to occur and to run its course, evenif he does not countenance it. This pe.rmissive will, to the extent that we may call it a will at all, may in many circumstances be resisted--although if Matthew 5:39 is to be taken seriously, it ought not always to be resisted. One thing, however, is certain in this regard: one may not resist an author-ity merely because it imposes something that is difficult or painful upon the one who is expected to obey. Suffering in and of itself, unless it is qualified in some significant way (if it were seen to be unbearable, for example, or if it would somehow radiate out to others who ought not to be affected by it), is insufficient reason for opposing an authority. If one were to resist an authority 6711 / Review for Religious, Sept.-Oct., 1984 merely on account of the foreseen suffering (assuming its bearability and so forth), one would in effect be seeking to empty obedience of its content, and one may no more seek to do this than to empty Christianity of the cross. In fact, Jesus' own resistance, his refusal to endure certain unjust situa-tions, hastened his destiny rather than delayed it, and Jesus himself seems to have known this~ What this suggests, while not condoning passivity, is that the authority has the benefit of the doubt vis-a-vis the person placed under obedience. The-presumption on the part of the one who obeys should be that the assignment imposed is to be carried out except under certain unusual circumstances. On the other hand, the person in authority ought not to misperceive the desire to talk about an, assignment, or about any other imposed obedience, as a sheer unwillingness to obey. For the superior is also obliged to obedience, and specifically to the obedience of ministry--which includes listening. In sum, we are left with this, that religious obedience partakes of the mystery of the cross--"mystery" at least in part because it is so often absurd and inexplicable. Although human insight may show us that there is in each of us a terrible disharmony that causes us suffering, nothing but faith can tell us that the divine plan which includes the cross is a plan for our good, and one that will :ultimately bring us peace and harmonY. Indeed, only faith tells us that the things to which we must submit are from God, since we ~would often just as soon avoid them by asserting that they have nothing to do with God at all--that they come from superiors who do not understand "us, or that ~they represent situations that ought to be~changed instead of endured. Only this kind of faith will make obedience work. For the truth is that we must be obedient anyway to objectivity and reality as these have been under-stood in .this essay. We cannot control other people's personalities, or the weather, or our own health and well-being. We cannot avoid the cross, which is omnipresent, unless we choose to retreat into an imaginary world of our own making; and even then it is doubtful that we would succeed in our escape! The wisest thing that we can do is to set our faces to go to Jerusalem, for the cross is best borne willingly. Conclusion Two themes have been common to these three essays on poverty, celibacy, and obedience. The first theme is that of the Christocentric ~nature of the vows of religion. The person of Christ is the specific ;reason for a Christian and a religious to choose to do even what he or she might otherwise have decided to do--since poverty, celibacy, and obedience can make sense quite apart from the Christocentric context. But they make sense only to the extent that any-thing without Christ makes sense to the Christian--they cry out for comple-tion, for Christ is Alpha and Omega. In the case of obedience, we may translate "Christocentric" as "staurocen-tric'-- a word we have coined from stauros, meaning cross. The distinction Cruciform Obedience / 671 between Christo- and stauro-centric is a very fine one. In fact, the cross, thus understood, cannot be conceived apart from Christ. It is true that Christocentric seems to emphasize the person of Christ in a way ~hat staurocentric does not. In poverty and celibacy as I have written of them, we seem to touch Christ directly as the object of our love and desire, whereas in obedience it is the will of God, symbolized by the cross, which is the goal of our actions. In commenting on this, three observations must be made. Firstly, in embracing the cross we do the same thing that Jesus did and love the same divine will that he loved. We imitate him. Secondly, before Jesus was crucified it was possible, indeed proper, to think of the cross solely as something horrible. But since his crucifixion he has stamped this instrument of suffering ineradicably with his own personality. Finally, the divine will is not something abstract or impersonal, as though we were obeying a computer. Rather it is identified with God himself, who is personal, and whose personality is love (see ! .In 4:8). For these reasons, then, we can say that obedience, like poverty and celibacy, has its focus in a person--whether the person is seen as Christ, or as God.This focus is absolutely necessary for the religious, for it gives a meaning to life that nothing else can. We live ultimately for persons. The second theme common to these three essays and to the three vows discussed in them is that of mystery. In large part we are speaking here, not of a good that is fully able to be grasped by the intellect alone, but of one that must be perceived and pursued by the emotions as well. But when we speak of the emotions, and of things susceptible to the emotions, we are immediately in the realm of "mystery," as 1 Sugge'sted at the conclusion of the essay on celibacy.7 Because the intellect cannot grasp fully the divine mystery, love must make up--to the extent that this is possible--for what the intellect cannot seize. This divine mystery, in turn, has for its subject, not a project or an ideal, but rather the divine personality--for only a person has the infinite depth and infinite capacity for change that defines the mysterious. Projects and ideals, on the other hand, are soon exhausted. If this depth and inexhaustibility are central to the human personality, as anybody who has ever been in love realizes, how much more central are they to the divine personality! This is the truth that the vows must affirm and mirror: in the end, we do not commit ourselves to Christ or God for any other reason than himself. And this reason is inexplicable to anyone who does not love, who has not seen the mystery, and has not been seized by it.8 672 / Review for Religious, Sept.-Oct., 1984 NOTES ~See "The Center of Religious Poverty," in 42 (1983) 534--544, and "Christocentric Celibacy," in 43 (1984) pp. 217-224. 2See; e.g. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 2-'~, q. 186, a. 8. 3De cir. Dei 14.15. 4Apophthegmata Patrum. De abbate Joanne Colobo I (PG 65.203), 5One may also recall the motto of Pope John XXIlh "Obedience and peace." 6Proof of the Apostolic Preaching 34, trans~ by J. P. Smith, in Anciem Christian Writers 16 (Westminster, Md., 1952)pp. 69-70. 7See "Christocentric Celibacy," pp. 223-224. ~This essay, completed on the day of his ordination to the priesthood, is dedicated to Kevin Kraft, O.P, Christ the Center of Our Vowed Life by Boniface Ramsey, O.P. Father Ramsey's three articles on the vows of religion are available as a single reprint: i - The Center of Religious Poverty ii - Christocentric Celibacy iii - Cruciform Obedience Price: $1.75 per copy, plus postage. Address: Review for Religious Rm 428 3601 Lindell Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri 63108 The Renewal of Contemplative Orders Thomas Keating, O.C.S.O. Abbot Keating was formerly abbot of the Trappist monastery in Spencer, MA. His last article in our pages, "Cultivating the Centering Prayer" (January, 1978) was written while there. Presently he resides at St. Benedict's Monastery: Snowmass, CO 81654. Part I: Monastic World Views The monastic vocation is a personal intuition into the mystery of Christ's invitation to follow him along the radical lines proposed in the Gospel. One may not be able to articulate the reason why one wants to be a monk or nun and yet have a true call from Christ. Or again, two people may articulate entirely different motives for wanting to enter a monastery, and both may .have a true call from Christ. The reason for this,is the fact that monastic values can be articulatCd in more than one world view or conceptual frame of reference. Obviously, one's response to the monastic call has to be expressed in somoframe of reference, but it must always be kept in mind that no one set of structures fully expresses'the mystery of that call. It would be a mistake, therefore, to identify the mystery of the monastic vocation with any one particular set of symbols or structures. Many cloistered monks and nuns in monasteries of the contemplative lifestyle are unaware that a radical shift in Western thinking has taken place over the last fifty or sixty years. This shift is centered in the development of historical consciousness. In the words of David Tracy, "This phenomenon can be described as man's realization that individually he is responsible .for the life he leads, and collectively he is responsible for the world in which he leads it."~ A significant part of this change of perspective is due to the discoveries of modern science, the development of historical criticism, and the shift in philos-ophy and theology from a static world view to an evolutionary one. Paul Tillich has given the names heteronomic and autonomic to the two compre- 673 674 /~Reviewfor Religious; Sept.-Oct., 1984 hensive world views that are polarized in contemporarythinking. The tension arising from these opposing world views appears in the Church at large, but especially in religious and monastic life, where tensions within the Catholic world community tend to be emphasized. The conflict is not merely between liberal and conservative positions, but is much more profound. It arises from the unquestioned assumptions of two completely opposite ways of looking at the world and at oneself, each of which lays claim to one's deepest loyalties. The heteronomic world view, which was commonly held by the Catholic community until fifty or sixty years ago, is essentially a negative world view; or to be more exact, it is an other-worldly world view. It sees the sacred as opposed to the profane. Thus it seeks to reject the profane in order to find God, and as a consequence, emphasizes the value of renunciation. The present world is perceived as a sinful environment which has to be rejected. In a monastic milieu, this conviction translates into an attitude of determined separation from the world and the studied avoidance of any involvement in the society of one's time and in its problems. Since the primary focus of this world view is eternity, preparing for the life to come is conceived as the principal, or even the only, duty of a monk or nun. In either case, it follows that the legitimate pleasures of life must be renounced in order to find God. Thus, austerity of life and ascetical practices become the norm of spiritual progress and the touchstone of genuine dedication to God. This world view, developed and exemplified by the monks of the fourth century, had a significant influence on the spirituality of the Church as a whole. The formation of the liturgy; for instance, was influenced by this viewpoint. Catholic education was imparted and still, in large part, is imparted 'from this viewpoint. Most young people applying to monasteries today, however, are influ-. enced, at least in some degree, by the autonomic world view. The autonomic world view is the result of the gradual secularization of religious symbols, rituals, and institutions, together with the development of the historical con-sciousness. In this perspective, the profane is sacred. Renunciation of the good things of human .life is regarded as unrealistic or irrelevant. The positive aspects of the present world, rather than its evident evils, are emphasized. Time is the opportunity to change both ourselves and the society in which we live. Our personal decisions and actions make history and the future. Conse-quently, we have to assume personal responsibility for what happens to us and to the world. We are part of a process (evolution), and in order to reach true personal fulfillment, we have to take into account the well-being of the com-munity in which we live. Moreover, the community for which we are respon-sible is gradually extending itself, through mass communication and travel, to embrace the whole human family. The development and the shaping of the world community is, therefore, a profoundly religious and contemplative con-cern. Eternal life is not only in the future, but immanent in time. Moreover, there is a strong tendency to reject the patterns and lifestyles of the past as The Renewal of Contemplative Orders / 675 adequate paradigms for the future: Translated into a monastic milieu, this world view has a genuine attraction for the fundamental values of monastic life, but tends to distrust the tradi-tional structures in which they were enshrined. It rejects any kind of isolation, while esteeming the value of true solitude. Permanent commitment is a special problem for people~ with this perspective, because they feel a responsibility to adjust to the future as it becomes present. To commit oneself in advance to a single lifestyle or to one expression of monastic values seems to them a refusal to take,,responsibility for themselves and for what God might some day call them tO do. They want to be free to respond to the future in ways that may be new or even incompatible witha particular:monastic lifestyle that, in principle, can never be changed. Each of these world views has much to recommend it. Each sees the truth from a particular cultural perspective. Neither can claim to be a complete view of the mystery of the monastic vocation. Both have limitations which must be transcended in order to reach human integration and the fullness of the christian life. It is interesting to note that during his'monastic lifetime, Tho-mas Merton seems to have moved from a heteronomic to an autonomic world view, and then to have'transcended both. Such is the impression given by his. remarkable essay, "Final Integration," in Contemplation hi A World Of Action, Chapter 13. Elsewhere he writes, "Historical consciousness and con-templation are not incompatible, but. necessary." Father Raimundo Panikkar has discerned another world view in addition to the heteronomic and autonomic world views delineated by Tillich.2 He calls it the ontonomic world view or the contemplative dimension of life. It is a higher perspective, rather than a synthesis of the heteronomic and autonomic world views. It ~is a state of higher consciousness (faith) that integrates the sacred and profane by perceiving the presence of the sacred in ordinary events and .in the most secular of situations. It flows from the awareness of the universe as a unity. Its fundamental attitude is complete detachment--freedom from compulsions, prejudices, and preconceived ideas. The contemplative dimension is a vision of reality in which the "egoic" or false self is no more. The ultimate experience is non-duality. Panikkar characterizes it by the term "tempiternity,'.' which/he identifies as the experience of eternity-and-time in each passing momentand event. To find the eternal in time is the crux of the experience. ~ Translated into a monastic milieu, this experience of mature contemplation must lead to action, even if it is only to transform the local monastic environ-ment. The Contemplative monk seeks to discover what he is, not what he will become. He seeks to cultivate the core of his humanness, which is more than historical existence. Thus, the ontonomic world view is a form of transhistori-cal consciousness. It is outside and above political considerations and histori-cal concerns. At the same time, it does not take a merely negative posture toward institutionalized injustice or the whole evils of contemporary society, 676 / Review for Religious, Sept.-Oct., 1984 but offers a positive alternative by establishing a lifestyle based on the con-templative dimension of, the Gospel. Thus, fuga mundi becomes, not flight from a world that is evil in itself, but flight from the "system" by refusing to be a part of a political or social establishment that supports institutionalized evil. Here is one example of how these world views operate in monastic com-munities. The contemporary monk, influenced consciously or unconsciously by the autonomic world view, feels that he cannot reach his own unique spiritual development without the well-being of the human community of which he is a part. F~or him, a strict, rule .of silence means isolation, not solitude. One of the older monks, having entered the monastery fifter a Catholic education that emphasized the heteronomic approach to life, may look upon him as one who has an exaggerated need for contact with others. For this older monk, picnics and community gatherings with. casual conversa-tion and banter are clearly mitigations of the rule of silence. He cannot wait to get back to his private room, to his books, or to his prayer, because his expectation is that he can attain union with God only through the renunciation of ordinary human society and its legitimate pleasures. The older monk believes in loving his brothers width his will. He may be embarrassed by feelings of affection, and even feel a du.ty to confess them as sins or imperfections. The new arrival, for his part, regards the older monk as simply incapable of relating. This polarization of attitudes becomes acute on the .occasion of commun-ity meetings. The older monks tend to make speeches while the younger, consumed with frustration, try in vain to engage them in genuine dialogue and interaction. These and similar situations can be poignant as well as just plain painful. Each monk, coming from his own respective world view, is completely sincere, motivated by loyalty to what he understands to be the structure enshrining the values that are to lead him to union with Christ. Consequently, the same community event or decision of the supe~rior will be interpreted positively or negatively according to one of these two basic monastic world views. Neither seems to beable to separate the religious symbol, ritual, or behavior pattern from the value wi~ich is being expressed in and through them. To be able to do so, of course, would require't,he kind of profound conversion that is presupposed by the ontonomic World view, or the contem-plative dimension of life. This perspective is able to express monastic values in different structures or with different symbols without being tipset. It recognizes intuitively that the value is what matters, not how it is expr~essed in particular circumstances. It can move ,from one symbol or set of symbols to another, and still express its total dedication to monastic values. Because it is not bound to ex.press these values in a particular way, it does not judge others or their observance critically. It can adjust to the signs of the time, recognizing with ease when iexceptions are called for, and acknowledging the primary impor-tance of flexibility in applying the common rule to individual circumstances, The Renewal of Contemplative Orders / 677 The contemplative dimension is the goal of monastic structures and obser-vances. Those who have espoused the heteronomic or autonomic world views in their early monastic experience may move beyond their own particular world view as life advances, and come finally to embrace, or at least tolerate, the other. Ultimately, those in the heteronomic or autonomic monastic world views are both calledto transcend the limitations of their respective world views and to reach the contemplative dimension. The contemplative dimension is to live not only in God's presence, but also out of that presence. In other words, the presence and movement of God become the source of one's moti-vation both in prayer and activity. The contemplative dimension can express itself inside of existing structures or create new structures when circumstances call for them. It is not so much the structures that are important, but the motivation which prompts them. In the Gospel~ motivation is everything. The contemplative dimension can infuse life into the most stagnant of structures. The question, however, may be asked whether this is always the best use of this incomparably creative energy. Perhaps enough has been said to see a fundamental root of the problem of mutual understanding and communion in communities of contemplative life today. It is not a question of persons in the community having a liberal or a conservative temperament, di.sposition, or set of convictions. That is to be expectedin every human grouping. It.is rather a question of two deeply held perspectives regarding the essential rfionastic values, based in large part on one's early religious training and cultural conditioning. It was possible in days gone by to enjoy the blessings of unity when everyone shared the heteronomic world view. It is impossible today to avoid or suppress the ideas and attitudes that are characteristic of the autonomic world view. 1 have seen monks enter the monastery with the heteronomic world view, pass a number of years living and articulating their monastic experience in that frame of reference, and then change radically, reacting against the heteronomic'world view with all the force that is characteristic of a profound conversion. Such change is all the more acute in those who have repressed their talents and legitimate feelings for the sake of the heteronomic world view. There is really no solution to this polarization as long as it remains on the level of conceptualization. The same events, directives of superiors, or deci-sions by the community will continue to be interpreted in two opposing wa~,s. The heteronomic world view sees as disaster what the autonomic world view perceives as a great step forward. Similarly, what the autonomic world view considers regression, is interpreted by the heteronomic mind-set as a retu,rn to fundamentals, or to "the good old days." Some might think that monks and nuns who are deeply committed to these world views should live in separate monasteries, at least as an experi-ment. Actually, though, if we could recognize our own conscious or uncons-cious commitment to one of these monastic world views, and accept the fact that the other is also legitimate, we could live together with a certain mutual 67~1 / Review for Religious, Sept.-Oct., 1984 enrichment--provided, of course, that our objective was not to obliterate the other, but to transcend our own world view and attain to the higher perspective of the contemplative dimension of life. The superior in monasteries today has to be someone who has great sympathy for both the heteronon~ic and the autonomic world views and can see the values and the limitations of each. Unfortunately, the monks will judge the superior's decisions according to their own respective viewpoints, and thus everything the superior tries to do will be a source of dissatisfaction to one side or the other. There needs to be a massive re-education of the members of contemplative orders if they are to understand the dynamics that areat work in their communities today and which are really .outside anyone's control. These dynamics are what Pope John XXIII called the "signs of the time." The two opposing world views are not going to go away. We have either to adjust to them, separate, or tear each other apart. The formulation of new constitutions is not going to solve this problem. In fact, the efforts to stabilize constitutions could prudently be postponed until more fundamental issues are resolved. One. of these, of course, is how to train the young. If postulants and novices in contemplative orders are oriented toward the contemplative dimension from the beginning of their monastic lives, and can be persuaded that genuine monastic values can be incarnated in more than one way, it: will then be possil~ieto emphasize the right things in their formation and avoid diverting their energies with useless regulations or conceptual conflicts. There must be serious discipline. This consists primarily in perseverance in contemplative (non-conceptual) prayer. Neither liturgy nor any other practice can supply for this. Silence and solitude initiate the dynamic of self-knowledge and the purification of the psychological unconsciousness. This shotald be fully understood by those undertaking the contemplative way of life. Contemplative prayer will enable them to adjust to this dynamic, persevere in its difficulties, and benefit from its insiglits. Two hours of such prayer every day seems like a suitable norm for postulants and novices. In communities where the work is more demanding, the divine office--and not contemplative prayer--should be reduced. For contemplatives, liturgy can only be an effec-tive means of formation in dialogue with silence and prayer in secret. Part II: Principles Monastic formation is not an assembly line. ~Monks and nuns cannot be mass-produced. The monastic environment is a choice of means designed to facilitate growth in the contemplative dimension of the Gospel. It is aimed at self-transcendence and transformation in Christ. Each monk and nun in a particular monastery is in a different place in the spiritual journey. Only great sensitivity on the part of the community toward the spiritual and human growth of its members can adequately meet this situation. Newcomers to Renewal of Contemplative Orders / 679 monastic life, of course, must submit to the same rule for the first few years of their initiation. But to apply this principle to the whole of life, even into old age, is another matter. In contemplative orders right now, the big question is not new constitutions, but .whether the observances as we practice them lead the average monk and nun of our time to that level of spirituality which Father Merton called "final integration." Without a certain number of persons living on that level in a monastery, the Rule cannot be properly observed. Institutions have an uncanny ability to be blind to whatever challenges them to constructive change.: This tendency increases in proportion to one's close-ness to the center of administration. Survival is an instinct in every human institution, as it is in individual human beings. Only those who have expe-rienced deep purification are free of this compulsion. When the inspiration of a charismatic founder or group of founders is no longer present, the second generation tries to preserve their spirit and insight by means of rules and customs. These work well so long as the spiritual understanding of the observances perdures. But if this spiritual understanding peters out, observances begin to be practiced merely externally, and may come to be experienced as a straight jacket. In a lifestyle as severely restricted as a cloistered monastery, such an environment could even become neurosis-prone. This can occur when monks or nuns start keeping~the rule for the wrong reasons, or isolate themselves from the concerns of the local and world church and community. Monastic rules, including St. Benedict's, were composed without the knowledge we possess today of the psychological and sociological factors involved in human development and in the formation of community. Monastic founders had extraordinary insight into these matters, but they did not have at their disposal the experience and research of the last century in psychology and sociology. The renewal of the contemplative orders has to take these new insights into account., 0 The renewal also has to take seriously the work of historical criticism. To separate the essentials of monastic life from its cultural conditioning in the course of the centuries and to re-express these essentials today is no small task. Still, it has to be done if monastic life is to be a viable alternative for people in the twenty-first century. Moreover, these essential values have to be expressed not only in a con-temporary way, but in ways appropriate to different cultures. As new monas-teries spring up in. various parts of the world, great sensitivity must be shown to the culture in which they are inserted. Established monasteries also: need to develop a keen sensitivity to the particular cultu.res of which they are already a part because these are ev.olving at a constantly accelerating rate. Such sensitiv-ity requires a certain level of interior freedom and a capacity to evaluate the ¯ signs of the time. To ascertain where we stand in this regard, communities might ask them-selves such questions as these: 6~11~ / Review for Religibus, Sept.-Oct., 1984 i. Do we provide space for people to grow, to make mistakes, to relax, to get a different perspective, to relate normally with their peers, to grow in responsibility, and to respond to the needs of others? 2. Can damaged persons find healing and human growth in our community? 3. If in our community there is evident lack of healing and of human and ¯ spiritual growth, is there som~ething in our way of life that makes this happen? 4. Do we develop the human and spiritual gifts of the individual members of the community, and are they then used for the good of the community? 5. Does self-support require draining a certain number of people by over-work, excessive responsibility, or by leaving them in jobs which they expe-rience as drudgery without hope of relief?. 6. ls stability in the community an absolute ora relative value? Should there be more opportunity to serve in other houses or to,experience other forms ~of Christian service for a limited time? ~. 7. What do we perceive as the goal of our contemplative way of life? is it personal salvation, penance, intercession for others, contemplative prayer, eremiticism, strict observance, togetherness, or what? 8. Are the present structures of our order the right ones for our time, culture, and circumstances? In particular, does the liturgy as we do it truly express our prayer, or is it cast in a mold that is excessively dualistic and historically conditioned? ¯ 9. Why are there so few potential superiors in the average monastery of contemplative orders? More important than any answers we might come up with, is the level of honesty and openness to truth that would permit communities to raise such intimate and personal questions in the first place. James W. Fowler3 shows how the development of Christian faith corresponds to the various stages of human growth. Basing his reflections on the work of Piaget and Kohlberg, Fowler points out that the level of faith development in a particular commun-ity is normally dependent on the communal ideal which the majority have embraced. The community tends to raise its members to this level, but does not encourage them to grow beyond it. This is not a deliberate and explicit refusal, but a subtle coercion exercised on everyone to accept the approved level of development as the norm. This dynamic is evident in certain charismatic communities which tend to discourage their members from practicing con-templative prayer even. when the attraction of grace is clear. Fowler mentions that most of the Christian churches in the United States which he investigated were at the level of faith in which religious symbols were inseparable from their accepted meaning by the community. By'religious symbols, he means rituals, practices, and behavior patterns that give the group its identity and express its value system. In these communities, it is difficult for ~ individual members to separate religious symbols from the meaning give~n them by the group as the expression of their common values~ and to ri~-express these values in other forms. The Renewal of Contemplative Orders / ~1 It is easy to see how a monastic community, which has the responsibility of fostering the interior freedom of its members, would be greatly hindered by a hidden agenda which effectively prevented them from moving beyond the letter of the Rule or the common observances. The common good of a monastery is not the exercises of common life as such, but the growth of bach of the members toward self-transcendence and transformation in Christ. The martyrdom of conscience, which Anthony of Egypt identified with the monas-tic vocation, may require some monks and nhns to express common, values in other forms--for instance, as hermits, pilgrims, teachers of contemplative prayer. Monks and nuns in the Benedictine-Cistercian tradition often have hesita-tions about the principle of personal growth because of their conviction, based on their experience, that the complete surrender of oneself to the common life is a tremendous leap forward in the spiritual journey. This view of stability maintains that changes in attitudes and dispositions, considered as ascending levels of faith, will take place interiorly in the course of one's monastic lifetime, without having to make any significant modifications in one's external obser-vance or environment. The question may be asked, however, whether this is always true. ISertain external changes could facilitate interior growth during a period of crisis. If everyone in the community is really growing, periods of crisis for one or other member will not be exceptional, but of frequent occurrence. However, for appropriate modifications of observance on behalf of the particular needs of individuals to be fully accepted and supported by.the community, the superior ¯ has to be a person in. whose discernment the community has complete confi-dence. Alternatively, there must be a level of communication that is so well established and free-flowing that persons at different stages of growth can easily understand and accept each other. Whether a large community (more than twenty) can develop or maintain such a degree of communication is a question that should be studied by contemplative orders. Most s6ciologists would have serious doubts about it. As a. further consideration, it would.seem that leadership in monastic communities today has to be an "enabling" rather than a ,determining" kind of leadership. Members of the community have to be encouraged to function on their own initiative, taking responsibility for themselves and for the group: This level.~of regponsibility obviously requires effective communication. A superior should be one of the group as much as he can. He should be intelli-gent, but not someone who inspires either awe or dependency. He should be supportive, affirming, straightforward, and open to new ideas; not someone who prefers things to people, or good order to human needs. No one should exercise religious authority who has not first come to terms with °his own solitude and isolation, for only then can he understand and relate to the solitude and isolation that others may feel. The monastic milieu is not a place where people are to be changed, but where they can change themselves. 6112 / Review for Religious; Sept.-Oct., 1984 Two principles of renewal deserve special consideration in the formation of the young' in our time. These are: flexibility in regard to observances, and emphasis on the contemplative dimension of the Gospel. How the latter is to be carried out should be the subject of study and dialogue in each monastery becahse, without a plan and practice to foster this contemplative dimension, observances will be useless. There is a fairly widespread notion in monasteries that contemplative prayer and monastic observance~are somehow incompatible. Unless this mis-conception can be dispelled by adequate education and formation, the future of these communities is extremely uncertain. , Flexibility is the most practical means of approaching individual needs at different stages of the spiritual journey. By comparison, Fowler writes, the institutional approach to the good of individual members is a buckshot approach. It presumes thatthe same religious symbols are always going to be neci~ssary for ~everyone for the whole of each one's life. Experience, on the other hand, points to the fact that most persons need to,be detached from particular religious symbols at a certain point in their spiritual journey in order to make further progress. Opportunities for human growth should be provided in cloistered monas-tic life as a necessary foundation for spiritual growth. To begin with, the contemplativ.e dimension of the Gospel cannot develop normally without a certain spontaneity. It is necessary for the members of every community to get to know one another on the human level early in their monastic lives. If there are several no.vices or temporary professed, they should have the chance to discuss monastic;values among themselves, without the novice master or dean being present. For a limited :period of time they could benefit from a "gut-level" exchange of feelings about one another and the community, moderated by a qualified facilitator. The sense of belonging is indispensable for the health of every community. This is not easy in a large group. This is probably why Benedict, with his far-sighted wisdom, recommended deaneries (a community of communities) for expanding monasteries. Sub-group structures are not divisive if their pur-pose is well understood and accepted by the community. At the very least, the opportunity to speak with one's peers in small informal groups and one-to-one should be encouraged. Friendships, both within and outside the community, can be enriching, especially'when they are supportive of one's i;piritual journey. At the same time, periods of stricter silence, as during Advent and Lent, or for a week or two every few months, might be introduced to provide the experience of a deeper and°more extended silence. Intensive periods of silence and prayer open up new areas of insight and hasten the process of purification. The rules of enclosure could also benefit from greater flexibility. Work-shops can be stimulating and broadening for those who are interested in a particular subject or craft. With the introduction of cassette TV, programs of genuine value izould help to educate and bring the community together. Uni- 7he Renewal of Contemplative Orders versit'y life tends to be a special kind of environment, somewhat withdrawn from the real world, but the genuine need of training professors, completing a monk's education, or developing particular talents, justifies this experience. Besides educational motives for modifying the strict interpretation of the rules of enclosure, permission to go home for an annual family visit instead of having the. family come to the monastery could be beneficial for the monks and nuns--as well as easier on their families. To allow selected persons to live in the community as residents for a prolonged period of time is already being done in some monasteries with good results. Interaction with dedicated per-sons in other walks of life is stimulating as well as broadening. Retreats for both sexes and varying degrees of participation in the liturgy are presently common practices in a number of contemplative communities and should be encouraged. The need for physical exercise is obvious in our day when monasteries of men and women have had to replace manual work by machinery. Factory work and the sedentary employment that is forced upon a community by secretarial demands do not provide the kind of psychological space that used to be provided by labor in the fields or in the woods. Modern forms of earning a living are less simple and usually demand more in the way of mental concen-tration. New ways of providing for the balance of activities prescribed by the Rule of Benedict have to be found or invented. It may look strange for monks to be playing sports, running around in jogging shorts, or takirig'long hikes; but. if they do not get enough good exercise to replace the manual: work of the past, they are going to find themselves in a constant state of tension. Com-munity or small group picnics, celebrations, outings, and trips can also pro-vide useful relaxation and strengthen the bonds between the members of the group. A change of pace in the horarium would be helpful from time to time, like the opportunity for a day of solitude without any structure once or twice a month. The annual retreat c

Issue 28.2 of the Review for Religious, 1969. ; EDIT~)R R. F. Smith, S.J. ASSOCIATE EDITORS Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Augustine G. Ellard, S.J. ASSISTANT EDITOR John L. Treloar, S.J. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS EDITOR Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Correspondence with the editor, the associate editors, and the assistant edRor, as wel! as books for review, should be sent to ~EVIE~,V FOR RELIOIOUSj 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63~o3. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; St. Joseph's Church; 32t Willings Alley; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania ~9~o6. + + + REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Edited with ecclesiastical approval by facuhy members of the School of Divinity of Saint Louis University, ~be editoria| ot~ices being located at 612 llumboldt Building; .539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63103. Owned by the Missouri Province Edu-cational Institute. 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Questions for answering should be seni to the address of the Questions and Answers editor, MARCH ~969 VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 ANDRE AUW, C.P. The Evangelical Counsels: Ways of Becoming Free- Many years ago a young man walked into a Jewish synagogue and at the time for the readings, arose, took the scroll that was handed to Him, and read the follow-ing lines: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me Because the Lord has anointed me To bring good tidings to the afflicted, He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, Toproclaim liberty to the captives, Andthe opening of the prison to those who are bound. The young man, of course, was Jesus Christ, a man sent by God to be a liberator of men: And His mission was never more beautifully described than in those words of Isaiah which he read to the assembly: "He has sent'me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to .those who are bound." The mission was one of liberation, of enabling men to become free. If it is true that our mission as religious is the same as Christ's mission, then it is important thatwe .examine the vows, and the counsels on which they are based, in the light of freedom. And so I have chosen to do this, tO discuss the vows as possible means of liberating us as persons, so that we can help others to become liberated. I would like to begin this consideration of the vows with a personal reflection that might serve as a frame-work for my approach. For the past five years I have been working with a great variety of groups: college students, married couples, priests, religious--men and women of all faiths or of no faith. And I have been surprised at the consistency of their impressions of re-ligious, Gradually I have been able to weave together a fabric + ÷ ÷ Andre Auw, C.P., writes from the Center for Students of the Person; P.O. Box 2157; La Jolla, California 92037. VOLUME 28," 1969 .175 Andre Auw, C.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS from their attitudes and responses. It is a fabric that is not pleasant to touch. I have the impression that their one dominant way of evaluating us is ~in terms of free-dom. For the most part they see us as terribly unfree. They see us as dedicated, well-intentioned men and women, who are, nevertheless, imprisoned by our way of life, trapped by our traditions, hemmed in, and, as the c.ollege students say, "hung up" by our systems and legal prescriptions. The most vocal expression of these feelings has come from the college student groups. And perhaps that is why my initial reaction to this consistent message was one of annoyance and irritation. I found myself rather defensive at what seemed to be an adolescent smugness on the part of these students, and at what appeared to be a. very unfair and unbalanced evaluation. Not all reli-gious are so rigid, unfree, trapped, and hemmed in. That was my initial reaction, But when I reflected a little more I discovered that I was reacting to things I did not want to believe could be true. And when I could be more honest with myself, I had to admit that this is the very image that many religious, including myself, have projected. My pondering also gave me some other valuable in-formation. Not only were these people telling me things about myself that I found hard to hear. They were also trying to tell me things about themselves which they found hard to bear. They were speaking of their fears. Seeing me unfree they were reminded of their own fear of never becoming free enough to be a mature loving person. They thought of their fear of being swallowed up in an impersonal, computerized society, of their fear of .being trapped by outdated traditions and hemmed in by unreasonable laws. All of their fears and frustrations which have been spilling out in bloody streaks from Watts to Washington, D.C., from the lawns of Berkeley to the halls of Columbia, were freshly underlined. It seems that they had turned toward, me, a religious, in hope, but finding me unfree, had turned away from me in sadness. They felt they must search elsewhere to find someone free enough to be able to show them the way to freedom. ¯ And so it seems to me to be a vital need to consider the vows in the light of freedom, to measure them by the manner in which they measure up as liberating forces in our lives. Nietzsche once said: "If they¯want me to believe in their God. they are going to have to sing better hymns for me; they are going to have to show me that they are men who have been liberated." Mod-ern man is saying the same thing to us today. He knows the message of Christ is essentially ]iberative, and be wants to see how well that message has liberated the religious who call themselves witnesses, before he will. consider buying it. In order to understand the vows as ways of becoming free we should understand what we mean by .freedom. It is not the ability to do whatever pleases me. That is narcissism. St. Paul has described it beautifully in the following instruction to the Galatians: "You should be free to serve one another in love" (Gal 5:14). And Doctor Carl Rogers spells that out a little more sharply when he talks about "a freedom which. [man] courageously uses to live his potentialities., which assists [him] in becoming human, in relating to others, in being a per-son." This is a freedom which makes us responsible lovers, concerned about responding sensitiveIy to others and not inhibited by the shadows of our own fears. How can the vows be ways of enabling us as religious to possess this kind of freedom? Let us examine them separately. First, poverty. What is there about this way of being a.nd living which can be liberating for us? In view of the definition of freedom as the ability to serve my brother in love, I would see poverty as a statement of value. For me, the true spirit of poverty is a way of being which can help me to tell my brother that I consider him more important than the material possessions I can acquire. And by not being so dependent upon .having things I am truly freer to share myself with others. Not needing to satisfy so many of my own desires, I can be more open and responsive to the needs of others. This is certainly the accent that we find in Scripture. Having things or not having things is of secondary importance in New Testament reflection on poverty. The emphasis is not on having, but on being: being able to "be" for others. The tragedy of the rich man Dives in the Lazarus story is not that he was wealthy, but that his wealth had made him insensitive and in-capable of meeting the needs of his suffering brother. There is, I feel, a parallel today in the attitude of people towards the poverty of religious. I do not be-lieve that intelligent people are harshly critical of us be-cause we possess large buildings and bank accounts. But they are severely critical when our buildings or our money keep us aloof and uninvolved in serious social issues. They can tolerate our need for some kind of. status but they cannot forgive us when we are incapable of service. As religious we need help in order to appreciate pov-erty as a way of freeing us from the paralyzing effect of accumulated material possessions. Freeing us from the demands of our own egos, so that we can walk--or even + + + The Counsels VOLUME 28, 1969 177 4- REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS run--to meet the needs of others. And so that we can do this without wanting a lot of "extras." When we do not have this spirit, something rather ugly happens to us even though we do not consciously promote it. We become very protective of our own in-terests. Speaking in another context, Charles Davis re-ferred to this self-service: The official church is racked with fear, insecurity and anxiety, with a consequent intolerance and lack of love. And what frustrates any effort at remedy is the perpetual dominance of the system over the person., the system always comes first. I would like to hope that I could become a different kind of religious, one who is seen as valuing the human person above any thing or system. I would like to be seen by those whom I serve as poor in material posses-sions, but rich in caring, unselfish as I serve them, and sometimes even a bit joyous in the sharing of myself: what I am and what I have as a Christ-person. This is the kind of witness that modern man needs and wants. He is terribly frustrated and unhappy with his accumulated wealth. He finds the things he possesses getting in the way of his relationships with the people he loves. And he does not know how to free himself. He needs people who can show him a new set of values and a new way of being with people. And finally, in regard to poverty, it is worthwhile re-calling that when Christ, after the miracle of Naim, was asked: "Are you the Messiah?" He responded not by pointing to the miracle of new life given to a dead man. Instead, He said: "Go and tell John what you see., the poor have the gospel preached to them." That was, and is still, the sign par excellence of the messianic liberator. It is the sign that shows people what Christ and His message are all about. Next let us examine obedience as a way of becoming free. I especially like Father Van Kaam's concept of obedience. It is taken from the root meaning of the word, "obaudire," which means "to hear." For me, obedience can be a wonderfully freeing thing when it is understood as a sensitive listening to the heartbeat of the Christian community. I think I would also add, a responsive and responsible listening. This means that those in authority and those under them have a need to listen to one an-other, to listen together to those they are committed to serve. It is responsive, and this implies a kind of generous spontaneity which is far removed from docile acceptance of an order. And it is responsible, which implies the recognition of an obligation that stems from a love com-mitment. For many the word obedience conjures up fantasies of force and control and restriction. How then can obedience be seen as a liberating force? I believe that one factor which can truly make obedience liberating is the factor of trust. The social and behavioral scientists have done con-siderable work in the area of authority relationships and they have discovered some interesting facts. They have found that when a climate of trust exists in a group, the people who are in positions of authority, are more re-laxed and do not feel a need to maintain tight kontrol and supervision. They are inclined to be open to sug-gestions for change. Those who are working for them tend to produce better and to assume responsibility for the welfare of the group as well as for the work they must do individually. One of the elements which Doctor Jack Gibb isolated in groups where authority relationships were poor was the attitude on the part of those in positions of leadership. These leaders held two assumptions regarding those who worked for them: that they were not to be trusted, and that they were irresponsible. Unfortunately, in many cases, these assumptions became a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy which created the very conditions that man-agement sought to avoid. There may well be similar assumptions on the part of religious superiors. We have had a long heritage of pro-tectiveness, and it is hard to effectively break away frown these patterns. Undoubtedly the atmosphere of trust is much better now than it was ten years ago, but there most likely is still a great deal of work to be done in religious communities in this area. Our obedience can be lib-erating for us only when, together, we can begin to as-sume that we can be trusted and that we can be re-sponsible for ourselves. Paradoxical as it may sound, a person must be truly independent before he can surrender himself to another. Thus I, as a religious, must experience your trust and my own responsibility before I can surrender my needs and desires in such a way that together we can listen sensi-tively to the needs of the community we serve. It is then, and only then, that I can find it possible to accept a diffi-cult assignment or perform unpleasant tasks as a respon-sive and responsible lover. Doctor Carl Rogers has said that in order to be a really effective teacher a person must have a profound trust in the human organism and its potentialities. Otherwise he will cram the student full of all the information he thinks is good for him rather than help the student to learn what is important for him. Having worked with Doctor Rogers I can state that this is not mere theory for him; it is the way he functions with people. He pre- + + + The Counsels VOLUME 28, 1969 179 ÷ ÷ ÷ Andre Auw, C~P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS' fers to be gullible, to take people at face value, .and to believe the things they say to him. And oddly enough, people are so warmed by this kind of unconditional ac-ceptance that they soon stop telling lies and cease trying to impress. They find they no longer have to hide their refil feelings, and it is a very wonderful experience for them. By experiencing the trust of a loving person they were.able to begin to surrender a bit of themselves. I believe it is this kind of trust which is needed to transform our understanding of obedience. Obedience should not make us docile conformists, but responsible lovers. Today more than ever before we need a concept of obedience which will enable, us to assume responsi-bility for our actions and our lives. We need greater power to freely surrender our self-centered desires and needs. The example of Peter in the New Testament seems to be a striking illustration of the kind of obedience I am talking about. Peter began his authority relationship with Christ feeling very insecure. He made a great many mistakes, yet each time he did so, Christ confirmed him as a person by making him feel that He still trusted him. The peak experience for Peter came during the meet-ing with Christ outside the palace of the high priest. Peter, ashamed at his betrayal, finally found the courage to look at Christ, and that loving glance of the Master made Peter aware that Christ still believed in him, still trusted him. It was only after this that Peter felt secure enough to accept the responsible task of shepherding the flock for Christ. It was Christ's trust of Peter that made' possible the entrusting of the flock to him. And it was this same trust that transformed Peter into a re-sponsive and responsible lover. This is a way of being that modern man wants to dis-cover very badly. He finds it so hard to reach beyond the limits of his own ego. He is searching for someone who can show him an obedience which is an exercise of responsibility freely chosen, and yet something binding and demanding because that is the way of love. Modern man needs to experience this kind of trust-filled loving so that he too can become free to love. He wants to be able to say in the words of The Little Prince: "I am re-sponsible for my rose." That would be for him the state-ment of a truly obedient man, rejoicing in an obedience which is richly liberating. Finally we come to the vow of celibate love. I have chosen to discuss it under this title rather than that of chastity because I believe this best expresses, the real meaning o.f the vow. There has been so much written on celibacy in the past year that I iliad it difficult say something which will ,1 not be excessively redundant. Perhaps the best approach will be to share some of my reactions to recent articles that I have read. Frankly, I am not impressed byo being told that I am an eschatological sign because I am a celibate. I really do not think that the men and women who come in contact with me are go.ing to experience a love that. is redeeming simply by being aware that I can point to a way they will love one another in heaven. They need to know how to love here and now. I am not denying the theology of eschatological witness; I am saying that it is not a good enough reason to justify my be!ng a celibate. But perhaps the thing that disturbs me most about recent discussions on celibacy is the somewhat naive as-sumption that the celibate way of life "ex se" or. auto-matically will produce good results; that it will make us better lovers. Anyone who has worked closely with re-ligious in different communities 'knows that this simply is not an assumption based on fact. The fact is that we find it hard to be generous and warm lovers, in com-munity as well as out of community. And for me that is the very heart of the matter: being able to love others humanly, warmly. One of the most beautiful compliments that I.have re-ceived is a statement that has poignantly sad overtones: "You know you don't seem like a priest; you're so hu-man." What kind of celibacy is it that 'contributes to such an image? On the other hand I am equally disturbedby propo-nents of some undefined "third way," who speak so un-realistically of married love. Marriage can be just as de-humanizing as celibacy, as any counselor knows. Sexual expression :without sexual integration can be just as dev-astating for married persons as the lack of sexual expres, sion without-sexual integration can be for celibates. Neither marriage nor celibacy guarantees any(hing in the way of mature loving. However, both can be Ways of becoming free in order to grow as lovers. Both demand sexual integration as a prerequisite for personal fulfill-ment. And botl~ take a great deal of work and pain and perseverance and patience.' What then is there about the celibate .way of loving which can be for a religiousa liberating experience? First of all, I believe that celibacy, lovingly and. freely embraced, enabIes me to say to those I am committed to serve that I can love them in a way which is rich and deep and truly human, but in a way which is not demanding. And this is a magnificently freeingkind of awareness. It means that when I have accepted my sexuality and be-gun to integrate if, I can add another dimension to my VOLUME ~'St 2.969 "~, ; ISt 4, 4, Andre Auw, C.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 18~ relationships. I can show people what it means to love someone just ~for himself. Not for his usefulness or phys-ical attractiveness. Not for his fine mind or remarkable talents, but just for himself. I can show him a way of loving and living which inte-grates se~xuality in a way that is different from married people. "It is a way which recognizes the splendor of sexuality, but which at the same time chooses to refrain from sexual .expression. I can show this person how to love both men and women warmly and deeply, with tenderness and even affection, without the overriding fear of automatic sexual involvement. And this, I believe, is precisely the kind of loving that modern man is hungry for. He is very confused by his sexuality, and it has become for him the alpha and omega of his existence. Deep within him he senses that ful-fillment iiavolves more than sex, but he finds it hard to translate this vague inner feeling into the language of everyday living because he does not find enough lovers who think much differently from the way he does. Modern man can learn a great deal from a religious who appreciates his sexuality enough to give it just enough importance in his life, but no more than that. How much it can mean for the confused modern to experi-ence a love which accepts him not for anything he has, but only for what he is. This alone is enough to be redemptive for many men and women. It seems as if there is in the heart of man a yearning for the model lover who is strong enough in serf-mastery to be free to be a kind of savior for others. In the folklore of most nations and tribes there are redemptive figures who, most often, were celibates during the time of their inessianic mission. We have only to recall the mythical warriors of the Far East and of-Indian culture, the many versioned prince myths of the early Middle Ages, the knights of King Arthur, and even in our own coun-try, the man of the West, the hero of the desert and prairie. Let us think of this last figure [or a moment. In story and song he has been pictured as a man of great physi-cal and moral strength. But primarily he is a man on a redemptive mission, living only for others. He rides into a town, bringing his honesty and integrity. He is manly; but also gentle with women. He is compassion-ate toward the poor and helpless. He stamps out evil and plants the seeds of goodness and truth. He brings sal~cation to a village. And when his redemptive mission is accomplished, this celibate lover accepts the love that people can give him in return for his, but he never de-mands it. Then, 'his work finished, he rides of[ alone to anbther ~¢illage and other people who need his kind of loving in order to be redeemed, to be liberated. In a similar way the modern religious celibate ac-complishes his redemptive mission. What he really gives to others is a portion of his own gift of freedom. He too will have to "ride" alone, but only in the sense of not having a single exclusive love relationship. For as he grows in his own mature sense of .freedom he ,will 'be enriched by many deep and beautiful love relationships. And this too becomes a gift to be shared with others, the gift of knowing how to put love and sexuality into a splendid and yet practical perspective. The task of integrating these two elements is always a difficult one. But one insight is very important. A sister, during a weekend workshop with .married couples, ex-pressed it well. She said: "You know, before this Week-end I had planned to leave my religious community. But now, I'm not so sure. You see, I thought my problems were the problems of a celibate religious, and I dis-covered that they are the problems of a woman. I found married women with the same basic problems, and they are making better adjustments to. them than I have been doing." This is so very true. Most of our problems are ,not the result of our celibacy but of our humanness. Neither marriage nor sexual intercourse will resolve our ten-sions. These will be resolved when we learn how to be-come truly human and loving. Then it will be possible for the celibate way of life to be rewarding for us and redeeming for others. It is then that we can demonstrate to others a love that is most beautiful because it is least demanding. Celibacy will not automatically make us great lovers, but a lover who understands and values his celibacy can be a model lover for others, a lover who is free enough to be able to free others. Certainly it is this kind of loving that is needed so desperately today by modern man who no longer feels lovable or loved. It may well be that only when he .ex. periences such undemanding love will he be ~onvinced of the genuine value of Christ's love. It may be that he will be able to believe in the celibate lover of Calvary only after he has come to believe in other celibates who can surrender, as He did, one of the most priceless gifts that God has given them. Perhaps .then, when he sees us free enough to surrender our sexuality for his sake, he may come to believe that he really is worth sav-ing and that God does care about him after all. It is a knowledge that many men still seek when they come ih contact with celibate lovers. These, then, are some of my reflections on the vows as ways of becoming free. I would like to understand the vows as ways of enabling us to be free enough to make it possible for others to believe in themselves. I would.like ÷ ÷ ÷ The Counsels,~ . VOLUME' 28~' 1969" '° :. ,183 + to think that we can be free from the obsessive need to accumulate things, free to surrender ourselves to others, free to love deeply and warmly. And that is why I feel that we must seek new insights concerning the vows. A young high school student, talking, about religious life and the vows, was asked what kind of religious com-munity he would have if he were to start one tomorrow, The young man said: "Well; I don't think I would make them take any vows." But then he paused and reflected on that, and he added a sentence that sums up the whole meaning of the vows and the religious life. He said: "Unless it would be possible to take a vow., to love." If that were truly the spirit behind our vows, they would be, for us, ways of becoming free. Finally, it is well to remember that the way of the vows is the way of Christ Himself. It is the way of a man with a mission to set men free. And the men of Christ's time were not so very different from the men of our day: angry, restless, rebellious, indifferent, frightened, and insecure, yet searching for a Christ-person who would be their liberator. Christ walked into their midst, heard their cry, and showed them a way of life that was for them a way of freedom. He showed them how to be free~ from the de-humanizing demands of the law and tradition, free from the imprisoning fear of what people might say, free from the overconcern about food and power and sex. Christ showed them a way of poverty and obedience and celibate love. Today we, as .religious, stand in the place of Christ to continue His redemptive mission, to be His witnesses. If we can find better ways to be what we say we are, then we too can arise in the assembly and announce to the world that we also have been sent to "bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound." And hopefully, people will hear us not because of what we say, but because of what we are: witnesses. Perhaps the following lines spell that out for us in clearer language: A witness is A man who stands out Because he is not afraid to stand up A man who outreaches others Because he reaches out to other.s Andre Auw, C~P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 184 A man who lifts others up Because he bends down to their weakness A man whose heart has grown great Because he has learned to become small A witness is all this and more He is a man who walks across the wastelands Of human lives And uncovers hidden springs A man who opens windows everywhere To the sunlight and springtime fragrance Of the risen Christ And passing through the doors of seILfilled hearts He lights and leaves behind An everlasting flame Ultimately a witness is a man who does all these things Because He is not afraid To love. The CoUnsels VOLUME 28, 1969 I85 CARL J. PETER Culture and the Vocation Crisis Carl J. Peter teaches theology and lives at Curley Hall, Box 49; Cath-olic University of America in Wash-ington, D.C. 20017. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS A change has occurred in the way young men and women view the prospect of becoming a priest, lay brother, or nun. At the very least they manifest less en-thusiasm or inclination along these lines. One may ask when this began or indeed inquire whether it has not just begun. Few, I think, will challenge the proposition itself. This change of attitude is very definitely evidenced by those who have matriculated in the Catholic school sys-tem. One encounters it in the Mary and Johnny of whom but a few years back while they were still on the primary level in parochial schools, we asked why they could not read. All of this is true and will be conceded by those who regard the situation as healthy no less than by those who regard it as disastrous. Religious Convictions and the Young The change in question has causes that are closely connected with religious conviction or its lack. There is an obvious hesitancy on the part of youth, an unwilling-ness or an unreadiness to embrace as a state of life the ministry of the gospel in its traditional form. But it is a great oversimplification, I feel, to assign as a total ex-planation a weakening or loss of faith. In some cases, + precisely the opposite is true. + At least many of the young people involved are any- + thing other than lacking in generosity. Interest in im-proving the lot of tbeir fellow man characterizes their mental and emotional outlook. Here is where the diffi-culty lies. In ever increasing numbers they fail to see this humanitarian interest connected with the life of the priesthood, sisterhood, and brotherhood. One may contend that this is because of the present conditions in which these callings are lived and exercised, because, for example, so much of a priest's time and 18fi energy is spent in activities that have no apparent con- nection with the betterment of mankind or at least one that is very minimal. Devoting each Monday to counting the collection; running off the Sunday bulletin on the rectory or parish duplicator; keeping the books for the school hot lunch program--the instances could be multi-plied. Now it is surely a mistake to associate a priest's work exclusively with such activities. But to ask young people to ignore this aspect is expecting a bit too much. A large part of the problem with regard to vocations is that prospective candidates see too much activity on the part of the cleric or religious" too little connected with making mankind's future better than its past. Liturgy and a Life Choice But this is not all. Even in cultic functions associated with the administration of the sacraments, there is real difficulty. Whether humanity is genuinely better off be-cause of all this divine worship is a question posed over and over again. Here it is not a matter of poorly or sel-dom exercised functions of the priest but rather the im-portance pure and simple of such fimctions in the world at all. Many adults recognize this and conclude that the vocation crisis connected with such questioning is really a crisis of faith. My contention, however, is that at least some of these difficulties and doubts in the religious realm are caused by a cultural change that affects the entire world of man in all its facets. The crisis of vocations is connected often enough with a corresponding crisis of faith. This is not so much because many have simply ceased to believe but rather because the atmosphere in which they have grown up and live demands a choice between conflict-ing values, religious ones included. As a result, young people find it both harder to reject the latter outright and yet more difficult as well to embrace them fully. The reason is that our day is one of cultural transformation with all that this involves. If this is anything other than self-evident, it is nevertheless important. The Meaning of Cultural Change To make the statement that culture has a great deal to do with the unrest experienced by youth and indeed believers in general is hardly a novelty today. It is intro-duced into the present context with the hope that it will be more than a mere repetition. To achieve this will re-quire making an effort to clarify what is meant by cul-tural change. Only then will others be able to judge whether this is in fact what is taking place with profound religious consequences. Such explanation is precisely what is lacking in a number of other attempts to trace the believer's troubles to this same source. Vocation Crisis VOLUME 28, 1969 18'/ Carl .I. Peter REVIE%' FOR RELIGIOUS Examples may be of help. Leslie Dewart has con-nected the present plight Of Christianity with a retention of Hellenism or Hellenistic culture.x There is nothing to be gained from adding one more name to the list of critics of The Future of Belief.2 It is, however, a far from easy task to determine what he means by Hellenism. And yet this is quite important for his contention. Something very similar is true of Bishop John Robin-son. 8 He contends that the present difficulties of Chris-tianity are in great part connected with the fact that fundamental truths are being rejected wholesale because they are presented in a "supranaturalistic" mode of thought: The latter is surely a cultural phenomenon, but one that is extremely vague. It seems to involve a world picture with God outside the physical and psychic uni-verse but intervening now and again. To retain such a world picture, he writes, is incompatible with being a truly modern man. Meaningful truths fall under the weight of their utterly unacceptable trappings that bear witness to a dead culture. But here precisely is his problem. God, for Robinson, is not intended to be the product of a culture. Yet if one cannot tell what you mean by the latter, you do run the risk of having others hard pressed to determine whether you really stand for a God who endures despite a cultural change. At this point some are probably wondering whether it is not precisely a crisis o[ faith that must be dealt with. Perhaps it is. But to no small degree it is first of all a cultural crisis leaving its marks on all of us. Bishop Robinson may not have been successful in explaining what he means by a change of culture. He has never-theless described well the period in which we are living. It is the age of the overlap, the period in which some-thing very new is still in the process of emerging. Ours is a period of tension or dialectic. Hopefully a beneficial synthesis will be the outcome. One thing is sure; neither of the two extremes in the present picture culturally is likely to remain as is. Both are going to be modified and remarkably so. But it is the present state that must be analyzed, again with the observation that understanding what is happening is a first step toward dealing reason-ably and effectively with the situation. Good practice depends on an accurate assessment of what is involved. Dewart and Robinson call attention to the pangs in-volved in the change through which we are living. Both are agreed on this. An old culture is in the process 1 Leslie Dewart, The Future of Belie[ (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966). '-' See the remarks of Jaroslav Pelikan and Bernard J. F. Lonergan in Theological Studies, v. 28 (1967), pp. 352-6 and 336-51 respec-tively. s John A. T. Robinson, Honest to God (London: SCM, 1963). of dying. It does not offer a form that religious belief will find viable in the future.4 In my opinion they are correct; the. cultural state we are now in cannot last. Indeed it takes no prophet to see that it will not. An-other thing is equally sure. Things will not revert to the way they were before all this began, whenever that was. The present situation makes that abundantly clear. Culture and Values Our age is.witnessing a remarkable conflict of values, and they are not directly religious in nature. At least they can be and are embraced by those who avowedly profess or practice no religion at all as well as by various types of believers in a Supreme Being. Now if this is true, it is also a prerequisite for understanding the cultural crisis of the present. For what 3[ mean by culture involves at0 the very least values and indeed a'more or less connected set of values. My contention is that we are living in a period of.history where there is a particularly fierce struggle between two opposing sets of purely human values. If some sort of synthesis is the most likely and desirable outcome, still, living in the overlap can be confusing. Two sets of values compete; each has something ~o be said for it, something to commend it. For many this is stimulating, but for no small number, ever increasing knowledge, acquaintance, and experience preclude, decisions on a clear course of action. In fact at times the result is paralysis or choices no sooner made than regretted, commitments given and then retracted. But if a convict of values can lead to these practical consequences, what sort of values are in question? The Good and Its Modes Getting things done or a sense of practical "know-how" has from the earliest days been a characteristic of our country. Indeed, it was very quickly identified ~with Yankees and their ingenuity. To put this another way, achievemerit and performance are values long esteemed by our society. And yet as ea'rly as the War between the States they were sought after in two radically opposed ¯ ways. Preservation of a heritage was the performance one section of the nation desired; improvement, refine. ment, elimination of defects and evils inspired the other. Concretely the value of performance, know-how, or achievement was realized in two conflicting ways. Given the question of freedom and human dign.ity, it is dear ~For a case along the same line but developed with heavy dependence on American Pragmatism as a philosophical basis, see Eugene Fontinell, "Religious Trtith in a Relational and Processive World," Cross Currents, v. 16 (1967), pp. 283-315. 4- 4- 4- ¥ocation Crisis VOLUME 28, ,196~ Carl ~ J.~ Peter REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 190 that a moral issue was at stake. But there were other as-pects as well; for instance, strict or loose construction of the Constitution. Both forms of interpretation were religiously' neutral if not secular. Both likewise had ref-erence to the value of performance. But the way the lat-ter was realized in North and South led to tension, strife, and conflict. The situation afterwards was never the same again. There is something in this history that repeats itself. Clinging to tradition and the progress achieved in the past claims the allegiance of certain minds and hearts. It is likely true that this will always be the case. Still others are no less moved by the desire to strike out and move ahead in man's endless effort to better his~lot on this planet. Education offers another example. The value of a teacher's performance is judged in terms of pedagogical goals. Some maintain the educator aims at handing on truth, with the supposition that humanity has already achieved it in a way that can be improved but never fundamentally surpassed. By instinct and. reasoned con-viction others look for the teacher or professor to en-gage together with the student in a quest for truth. The assumption is that there is always more worth looking for and in comparison with which the knowledge at-tained is partial and incomplete. Now neither of these attitudes toward pedagogical goals is directly religious. Neither is exclusively demanded by Catholic faith. But the adoption of either as a value has religious implica-tions. An illustration may be of assistance. A question arises that is new and demands some sort of response or answer. Before doing anything else, the man or woman influenced by the value of preserving truth will attempt to solve the present case by recourse to precedents. Only too often this involves making the present in its unique-ness conform, whether it really does or not, with norms that were established earlier but without the slightest intention of binding all future generations. The value of preserving truth and past achievements translates itself religiously into that of fidelity. If the past has no claim to direct our own religious history, then there was no uniqueness in the event we call the Incarnation. Then God has not involved Himself irrevocably and finally in the history of man long before 'our day. When one re-gards0 education as a process of passing on certain truths, he is predisposed to be concerned religiously with the fidelity of God and man. A cultural value, namely pi:eserving the accomplishments of the past, can and does have profound religious consequences in thought and action. But education can also be conceived of as performance involving an unending quest [or truth. In this case, when one makes the transposition to a religious level, the goal is a search for the God who even after revelation in Jesus is still a mystery and to know whom is really to be yet groping even when one gropes with the aid of infallible direction. St. Paul offers a good example of this. In his Epistle to the Romans he spends three chapters (9-11) studying the will of God as concretely realized in the plan of salvation for Gentile and Jew. Interpreting the hist6ry of his own day as God's saving providence, he obviously presupposes that man can .know the divine will. And yet he concludes with a hymn proclaiming "that no one realiy knows the mind of the Lord. All subsequent Christian theology has been an at-tempt to grapple with the great mystery that God remains even after He reveals Himself to man. His ways are mysterious and yet sure, free and yet faithful. To em-phasize one over the Other leads to a lopsided theology. But why would one be inclined to do this? The reason is clear enough. There is a tendency to do so, one deriving from culture today especially. That culture is complex; it evokes diverse responses, some calculated to preserve the truth and goodness that have already been achieved and others aimed at improving both in the future. The result is cultural tension with theological consequences of the first order. When a question arises on a religious or doctrinal level, for those inclined to revere the past it is not a matter of being faithful pure and simple. There is a cultural fac-tor inclining them to their position. Others are more ready to strike out [or the new and unknown. Here it is the mystery of God and His dealings with man that will enthrall them. What has been said of Him in the past, even in infallible "utterances, is true enough but insuffi-cient. Their great law is: "Thou shalt not have strange Gods before me." They do not wish to worship idols rather than the true God; and it is no less idolatrous to worship one's image of God than it is to adore wood, or stone, or precious metals. Here again, however, the inclination is not purely religious; it is cultural. These are the men and women who in any event are more moved by a goal that is worthwhile and possible than by achievements that are already a fact but with clear defects. ,4pplication to Present Conditions It is in the realm of attitudes that one must look for evidence of culture or values held in esteem or disrepute. Our culture involves an ambivalence of attitudes with regard to the present in its relation to the future. ÷ ÷ ÷ VOLUME 28° 1969 .!. ÷ Carl I. Peter REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 19~ Contemporary forms are generally considered inade-quate in the long run to meet humanity's needs of the near future. If one insists that this is not true in the religious sphere, youth is expected to assert that m6- rality and faith are somehow not part of the changing world. This is only too evidently false. It is also discourag-ing. If true, it would surely follow that from neither could man hope for much improvement. When the past is loved too much and present values, cherished too intensely, the inevitable result is that fewer and fewer young people will spend their lives ina performance directed to preserving it. This attitude has been wide-spread and is showing its effects. The cultural cry of more and more of the young is "On to the Future" by radical change of the present. Confronted with the evils man has injected into his world, they find an attractiveness in this value. That it conflicts with the former is obvious. That the result is confusion, tension, unease, unwillingness or inability to commit oneself fully to one or the other is not sur-prising. Neither value is directly religious. Each has religious implications and does sometimes presuppose a lessening or even loss of religious commitment. But to concentrate on this would be to try to cure a symptom. Our whole society knows it must change and change radically. And yet unless we learn from the past, from its successes as well as its failures, we shall grope with-out any guidelines or the slightest assurance that what we learn today will help tomorrow and not hinder, Man's leap forward came.from a spirit of adventure and a lack of willingness to be content with the status quo. This is true of man whether he professed a religion or not. Youth today knows it. They look for a willingness to take this risk in religion and its leaders. But they also realize that man's advance has been accompanied by a multiplication of evils in the form of wars, famine, and untold human suffering. It was paid for in the form of untold labor and often shortened life spans "of pioneers. Today many of them are asking whether progress at such a price and with such attendant evils is worth it after all. It is a question of values and attitudes. Not a few seem to choose neither content-ment with the past nor striving to improve the future, at least not by joining existing organizations to achieve this. In the sense of the two alternatives, they seem to be opting out as close to altogether as is possible. Among their eiders, those who cling to the past do so not wholly because of faith, and those who strive to ob-tain the improvement of the future surely are not so motivated solely because of basic religious conviction or its lack. It is in both cases a cultural response elicited by the world in which they live. To be cautious is a value; to be adventuresome no less so. Neither in itself is reli-gious. Those inclined to esteem the former expect it most of all in religion; those who prefer the latter look for it above all in the area of faith and faith-inspired life. There is a crisis all right, but one stemming fi:om a com-plex culture or set of opposing values, each of which has something to be said for it. How easy it would all be if it were otherwise. It would be a mistake to overlook this when considering the situation of young men and women choosing or living out a religious vocation. Maximum E~ciency versus Involvement There is another pair of values related to achievement. Is the latter the work of one or many? Some are loners and find it hard to be any other way. But today it is extremely difficult to stand alone in achievement. The individual source of inspiration, one overseer or director iqith the power to make decisions--this leads at times to unquestionably greater efficiency and permits the de-termination of responsible agents in various fields. For some this is still a most desirable good. Society needs the great man as leader; the Church, the truly independent bishop and pope. But for others worthwhile goals are achieved only in the close cooperation of many laboring in a basically similar frame of mind despite difficulties. This implies the initiative not only of the leader but of many cooperating and participating as fully as possible in the endeavor. Neither attitude is basically religious. This is again witnessed in the pedagogical order. Why do so many professors today have such trouble with classes when they employ the lecture system? The latter is surely not something religious or irreligious. Nor is it that professors lecture without the ability of their predecessors. And yet in ever increasing numbers, courses based solely on this method are being phased out be-cause they are not being heard or listened to. The teacher who simply lectures today has to be a lot better than one who did the same fifty years ago just to accomplish as much. The reason is simple. To such an approach there is opposition that is neither religious nor irreligious but rather cultural. It arises from the conviction that truth and other values are to be sought not solely or primarily through the energy of one man directing the receptivity of others but through the combined efforts of many. The planning of seminary curricula is taking note of this. So must the charting of course for a parish or diocese if they are to achieve their respective goals. To think that papal primacy, episcopal collegiality, or lay initiative will not be affected by this cultural factor is disastrous, especially in dealing with prospective vocations. If this ÷ ÷ ÷ Vocation Crisis VOLUME 28, ].9~9 Cad ]. Peter REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]94 is obviously hard for some to accept, it is important nonetheless. Achievements of the Paso Some men and women tend to concentrate on the good that has already been attained and are pleased with past efforts as well as optimistic about the state of the union, whatever union may be involved. Others view past achievements with guarded reserve or more often criti-cism, positive or negative. These are human attitudes not particularly connected with religion more than with politics or economics. But they do affect the way one re-gards formulations of Christian faith. Have the conciliar determinations helped or are they, though true, in their own way very limited? As regards present institutions, few adamantly deny they have accomplished some, indeed tremendous good. But what of the defects? They are pres-ent as well. Revelation does not direct attention to either exclusively. The way one evaluates other things will have a great deal of influence here. But that is clearly in the realm of rational attitudes more or less con-sciously adopted; namely, culture and not religion di-rectly as such. Analysis or Comprehensive View Is it the big picture or the details that are most im-portant? There is no divine law answering this. In terms of values, is it generality and simplicity in viewing a phenomenon as a whole or rather attention to its com-plexity that matters? Emphasis on the latter assures that whatever is said or decided today may well have to be modified tomorrow. Decisions taken may have to be reconsidered or retracted. Contrariwise one may aim at certain values that at least as goals do not change but are ever more closely approximated. The affective con-sequences of both approaches are clear enough. Com-mitments in the one frame of reference can hardly be irrevocable; in the other they can surely be so. On a practical religious level, are all decisions subject to re-call at will, for example, to the existence of a God, an after-life, the imperative of working to make life better [or others? Or are they simply the best one can give here and now? It is clear that conflicting cultural values have in this instance created tension in human life, not least of all in its religious sphere. Certainty and Conjecture To continue, is certainty a value above others, or is statistical probability all man can ~chieve in most in-stances? But certainty is popularly connected with hope.-- one does not hope unless convinced there is a good chance o~ getting or doing or being what is hoped for. And yet probability is likewise connected with hope; one does not hope for what is already a sure thing, somethingpr~deter-mined and open in no way to chance. To what does one aspire, the certain or the probable?. The Marxist experiences this. Should he hope for the classless society or not? If he does not because he feels that it is certain to come about, lethargy.will likely result. But if its appearance is not inevitable, his efforts alter all may be futile, all of which need not but may lead to despair. As to the Christian, must he hope that the divine kingdom come? If its advent cannot be frus-trated, what need to hope; if otherwise,, why hope when alter all sheer chance may reign supreme?. Antithetical Ideals I have tried to indicate certain human values in two connected sets. They deal with the practical, .the order o~ doing and achievement. Preservation of the past through the work of the leader who sees and inspires others to grasp the whole picture wi.th optimism c6upled with caution and deliberate pace regarding change--this is one set. And yet there is another in competition: the improvement o~ the future through the.cooperation o[ many in thought, action, and suffering, with attention to the manifold of details accompanied with criticism of past failures and a sense of urgency for future reme-dies. These interconnected values art both vying for man's acceptance at the present time. He has opted for neither. Confronted by them both, he is very often at a loss; now this and now that seems better. They affect the very depth of his being and yet are religious only in the sense of having to do with the meaning of life, a mean-ing he has to choose freely. Still his relations with or-ganized religion cannot but be affected by this tension, unrest, and hesitancy. Because religion is obviously con-nected with these values though by no means identical with them, he is probably as interested as at any time in his history with religion as an academic discipline but as disinclined as never before to see any religious organi-zation as offering a permanent way of life for himself. This has affected the attitude o~ many toward religious vocations in particular. In my opinion it justifies the proposition that the so-called vocation crisis is only indirectly a crisis of faith and directly one of culture. Religious Ministry in the Overlap More is called for today than detached analysis in this area. This is especially true in the case of those who are convinced that an increase in the number of religious vocations is o~ great importance for the Church and the 4- .4- 4- Vocation Crisis VOLUME 28, 1969 195 rest of humanity. As a result it may not be out of place to offer a number of suggestions. They will deal with atti-tudes that can be fostered with the aim of encouraging priestly and religious vocations during the period of the cultural overlap. First of all, in both of the competing sets of values, practical certainty is present and operative. The certainty of conviction makes men cling to the past; it drives others to strive for the future. This is certainty at least strong enough to be the guiding rationale and emo-tional factor for living a whole li~e. Too much certainty with regard to the past was an error. A great price has been paid for it. Today, youth is actually afraid of being certain and yet often paralyzed because uncertain. The man who strives for change is doing so only because of a practical conviction that striving is important, worth-while, possible, and not futile. In this sense, certainty is no more missing in him than in' his counterpart. If this impression can be conveyed to youth, the certainty of basic truths of faith will be less repellent. Secondly, another value found in both sets is persever-ance. It is because of a deep-rooted conviction that does not change that the men of science change hypotheses. A religious conviction once thought over and adopted need not shut a man off Lrom the way other men adopt in living. It should not make him closed. Indeed he can be open precisely because he has made a fundamental decision. No one is more closed than he who has made no decision at all regarding the meaning of life. Fre-quently such a man's desire to be open precludes his doing anything of lasting significance. To be con-temporary is not to be a Hamlet. To be ever ready to learn more regarding life's meaning is not to be ready to change one's mind because of simple discouragement or the realization that difficulties will in all likelihood never be completely removed. The applicability of this lesson to the realm of priestly and religious vocations is obvious. It will not, however, be grasped unless one re-calls that these are matters not merely of faith and revela-tion but also of culture. Carl 1. Peter REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS i JOSEPH E. MULLIGAN, s.J. The Religious Dimension of Human Love The current experimentation with various styles of religiou~ dress is certainly a welcome development in the post-conciliar Church. It is becoming clear to Cath-olics and non-Catholics alike that today's sister is very much a woman of the twentieth century, a woman con-secrated to God and united with Christ and at the very same time intensely concerned about the joys and problems, successes and failures of the present world. She is sensitive to the needs of modern men and women, open to new trends in human thought'(such as personal-ism and Christian existentialism)~ efficient in her use of modern means of serving humanity, and orientated to the near and distant future in her apostoli.c thinking. Au courant styles of religious dress do not insure that all this will be true of every sister who dons the new garb, but at the very least it can be said that the new fashions do not militate against the entirely proper "new image" now being created by today's sisters both young and old. Updated religious habits may even foster an interior aggiornamento where it is lacking or lagging; and where the Spirit has already begun to "renew the face of the earth" so that the love enkindled by Him can shine forth for all to see, the sister will welcome the external change as a true sign of the interior renewal which is under way. While the new fashions serve this purpose of bringing today's sister visibly into the twentieth century, they also serve to bring out the distinctly feminine quality of the Christian charity which fills her heart and inspires her life of service. This important point is receiving its due attention by psychologists, counselors, and theologians; here we need only mention the fact that the changes in the dress o[ religious women are closely associated with the emergence, in their own consciousness and in that of all the world, of their God-given and God-beloved ÷ ÷ ÷ Joseph Mulligan, &J., is a member of Bellarmine School of Theology; North Aurora, Illinois 6O542. VOLUME 28, 1969 ÷ Mulligan, $.1. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 198 femininity. How important it is that the feminine, ma-ternal dimension of the love of God, whom we always address as Father and whom we almost always think of in masculine terms, be incarnated and effectively com-municated to the human family. In this connection we readily recognize (it is not a question of "admitting," as if grudgingly) the truth of a point suggested by a famous psychologist: that in Christian piety a tender devotion to Mary fulfills a profound need of the human heart and soul, namely, to relate to a heavenly Mother. It is true, of course, that God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son manifest many of the qualities ordinarily associated with human mother-hood: tenderness, mercy, compassion, and above all, love which is given profusely without demanding a com-mensurate response. But it is Mary who, in the religious consciousness of the faithful, is the Mother par excellence, showering upon her children her maternal love and re-ceiving from them, often though not always, their love and trust in return. The religious woman has a position in the divine economy of salvation analogous to that of Mary. In the eminently feminine charity shown by the religious teacher, nurse, home missionary, and others, the human family can see and feel the maternal qualities of the boundless love of God for them. The sister can bring this love directly into the classroom, hospital, or home--and in this the sister can be more effective than Mary in com-municating the love of God to men. For Mary is present to her children only in times of prayer, and the experi-ence of her love requires faith; the sister can be present to the human family in all situations of life and in very concrete ways which are perfectly visible to "natural" eyes. Adaptations in dress, then, are worthwhile and valu-able in at least these two important respects: in placing sisters visibly in the midst of the twentieth century and in accentuating the distinctly feminine characteristics of their love and service to mankind. In most instances the adaptation of which we are speaking has taken the form of a reduction or lightening of the habit to the extent that some sisters have only a 'veil of some sort (or even less) as the external symbol of 'their consecration to God and their special union with Christ. This trend is entirely praiseworthy, as we have stated above. How-ever, the question soon arises about the necessity of re-taining any distinctive signs. Should. the nursing sister simply wear the same uni-form as that of her colleagues in the profession? Should the teaching sister wear a variety of styles readily oh, tainable at the downtown department store? Should the i home missionary don a smart and comfortable business woman's suit? In the opinion of this male observer, the answer is a qualified "no." This is undoubtedly the opin-ion of the vast majority of sisters: there is deep value in the external symbols of one's religious profession. Pre-cisely what forms these symbols should take in order that they be appropriate for our modern age'is a matter which will have to be handled largely through experi-mentation; developments to date have been in the right direction, but certainly not definitive (perhaps we should expect and accept constant adaptation in this matter, as in the liturgy). Though all agree on the necessity of retaining symbols, be they ever so "modernized," it may prove worthwhile to review one of the most substantial reasons for our insistence upon retaining externals of some sort. To this writer, one of the most cogent "arguments" for the existence and activity of God is the astounding love which breaks out (who can say how often?) in this world of ours. This love can be "astounding" even if it be only a kind word at the right time, a friendly "hello" offered in passing, or a thoughtful gesture only slightly out of the ordinary. The more dramatic or "heroic" act of love--such as the total personal commitment of marriage or of the religious life--is all the more revela-tory of the power of God operative in the hearts of men. Experience teaches us that there is something wonder-ful in a person who has risen above the childish and petty egocentrism which in various forms infects hu-manity. And in divine revelation we have a clear state-ment of the truth to which experience opens us: "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." Though this writer finds this train of thought most interesting and helpful, many in our modern world find it something less than immediately exciting. The con-nection between human love at its best and the power of God very often goes unnoticed. Deep, strong love (in many cases of a calibre worthy of imitation by many a nominal Christian) abounds in the heart and soul of a great number of men who consider themselves "atheists" or "agnostics" or "secular humanists" but who probably qualify as "anonymous Christians." We have good reasons as well as strong inclinations to consider these noble hu-man persons as brothers of Christ and sons of God, heirs of the same eternal life which we Christians hope to at-tain (see Mt 95:31--45). The modern man who is truly Christlike in his charity is surely a brother of Christ and a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is indeed the Spirit of Love. Such a person need only be brought to an explicit awareness of his true position before God. Whether this Human Love VOLUME 28, 1969 199 J. E. Mulligan, S.I. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 2O0 exp1icitation is absolutely necessary for salvation, is a theological question which we cannot take up here; that it is.desirable and beneficial for the person, that it is the will of God, and that it is the proper task of the mission-ary Church cannot be doubted. How then is the connection between great human love and the power of God to be drawn clearly in the minds of men? How will men of good will come to real-ize their true religious identity? Surely this wonderful moment of recognition can follow immediately upon a strong experience of being loved with a love surpassing the powers of our wounded human nature. Who can know the unsearchable ways of God, the ways in which He can make His presence known in the hearts of men? What we can know, however, is that God has estab-lished in His Church certain "ordinary" ways by which men should be able to see the connection of which we are speaking, that is, the religious context of all genuine human love. The liturgy, for instance, consists basically of ritual acts of human love, no less authentic for being ritual, set in an abundantly sacred context; the religious life as a visible institution is meant also to be a sign Of the intimate link between love and Love. The woman who loves her neighbor with a striking love and who clearly derives the sustenance for this extraordinary love from her union with God stands as a powerful sign of the connection with which we are concerned. The religious proclaims to the world that love, and especially continuing growth in love, depends upon our cooperation with the Spirit of Love whom Jesus Christ pours forth upon humanity, thereby accom-plishing the work of redemption. If this proclamation is to be effective, however, two elements must be safe-guarded and nurtured: the fraternal love must be sincere and genuine, or else it will strike no one and will fail to touch off the wonder which points to God; secondly, the person showing this genuine love must also show some clear sign of her relationship with God, or else her love will be viewed as nothing more than the highest flowering o[ the human spirit. A true combination of both these elements can be nothing short of overwhelming. The student will be deeply struck one day, perhaps far in the future, by the inestimable service given him by the sister in the seventh grade; and he will ask him-self whether her union with God, somehow manifest, might have had anything to do with her capacity to love so generously and so constantly. The patient in the hospital will find kindness and competent care in the person of the nursing sister at a time when he is most in need of these precious gifts; he will undoubtedly find himself wondering whether her slightly distinctive uni- form may signify a Power greater than herself gently assisting her human heart. The family in Appalachia or in one of our big city ghettoes, olSpressed and exploited by an unconcerned affluent society, will be touched by the "no strings attached" help given by the visiting sister; the family will see that this remarkable woman is in love with both God and them at the same time, as if the one love is identical with the other. This, then, is one reason (to this writer the most im-portant and most meaningful) for retaining some form of distinctive religious dress. By all means, let sisters continue to experiment with new styles in an attempt to find more appropriate twentieth century symbols of religious profession. Also, let sisters continue to try on new and appropriate fashions which will not bushel-basket that femininity which is absolutely essential for incarnating the love of God in all its breadth and beauty. However, for the reason which we have suggested in the latter part of this article and for other reasons which may be equally cogent, let us not throw out the baby (appropriate and necessary symbolism) with the bath (outmoded and "sexuality neutralizing" costumes). The religious must be in tune with the times, di.stinctly masculine or feminine, a living proof of the connection between true human love and the Spirit of Love. 4, VOLUME.28, 1969 201 THOMAS DUBAY, S.M. Biblical Concept of Virginal Love Thomas Dubay, S.M., teaches at Russell College; 2300 Adeline Drive; Burlingame, Cali-fornia 94010. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 202 Half an eye trained on recent ,religious thin.king in-forms one that a great deal of literature has appeared in the last decade on the psychology of loving in the Chris: tian context. For the most part this has been a praise-worthy effort to broaden the place and sharpen the orientation of human love within the ecclesial commu-nity; yet one still frequently finds considerable diver-gence of view among, religious men and women as to how the generally agreed upon norms are to be prac-ticed in concrete situations. We wish in this essay not simply to tread over worn terrain but to suggest some specifics, specifics stemming from Scripture and virgin-ity. We primarily envision religious women, although with some modifications what we say concerns men as well. Philosophical Roots Even though our main intent is Biblical and practical, we may preface our discussion with several philosophical considerations. In the long run practical solutions to knotty problems are no better than their (often merely assumed and unexpressed) theoretical substructure. At the same time speculation must always be in touch with experience, with concrete, here and now reality. Because she is a person, a human person, a feminine human person, the sister must love warmly. Her love must appear, be visible. Why? Because virginal love is incarnated, not angelic. It is human and a witness to humans. For a reason we shall point out later this is to say that it is affectionate. But because we are at the moment dealing with philosophy, not theology, we may leave the witness aside. Virginal love is incarnated and therefore affectionate because it is human love--steeped in supernatural moti-vation, of course, but still human. In fact, it cannot be anything else but' human. No being can act otherwise than as it is. We never expect a duck to perform as a camel. A woman can love only as a woman, a human being ot the feminine sex. Now human nature is in-carnated spirit, a dual reality, material-spiritual. Man is not monistic. Merleau-Ponty's negation ot a fundamental dualism in man is an oversimplification of human exist-ence. Man is not merely a body-subject, an I-body. The profound dualism in his sense-intellect knowing, to cite one example, is an irreducible pluralism that renders a human monism an inadequate explanation of available evidence. Human love, therefore, must also be dual,, it it is to be tully human and not something else. Like its source, the person, man's love must be rooted in spirit but shown through matter, conceived in soul but en-fleshed in body. Affectionate love is simply love incar-nated. It is a love that appears. One need not syllogize to its existence. As a daughter of Eve the religious woman does not loveproperly and fully until she loves affectionately. She is no exception to the roots of reality, no metaphysical oddity. She loves as she is. There is yet another reason why the virgin's love for 1hen is warm, composite, incarnated. It is a reason rooted in the deepest center of her being. She is good, a person good, and goodness tends to pour itself out. She is a social good, so she must pour herself out into others and receive these others back into herself. A woman (and a man, too, but not quite so pronouncedly) is never satis-fied until she loves. She cannot be satisfied unless she loves, for until she loves incarnatedly she is violating a law of being: goodness goes out; person goodness loves persons and shows it. This ontological factor works in the opposite direction as well. Because she is good and beautiful, the sister re-quires that her goodness and beauty be acknowledged, recognized in a way she can see and experience. To say this psychologically, she needs a strong self image, a self image she can derive only from others, from their appreciation and shown love. This is to say once again that deeply rooted in her human make-up is a need to receive affection. What we are implying, then, is that the religious woman's consecration does not exempt her from the laws of human nature or from the metaphysical structure ot the real. Scriptural Roots But still more must be said. There are supernatural reasons as well as natural ones tot saying that religious are to love warmly. Christian love is human love. It must therefore be affectionate. Shakespeare was pointing in the right direction when he observed that "they do Yirginal Love VOLUME ~'8, 1969 203 ÷ ÷ ÷ Thomas Dubay REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 204 not love that do not show their love." x Christ himself was affectionate. He embraced children for no other verifiable reason than to love warmly and to show it. He "looked with love" on the rich young man, which is nothing other than to gaze affectionately. He wept at Lazarus' tomb, a remarkable display of feeling in a man. He who could fearlessly castigate the Pharisees could also correct Martha tenderly by repeating her name twice as a preface to his admonition. The letters of Paul, Peter, and John are replete with expressions of endearment and concern. Where could these originally rough men have learned this Christian way of loving if not from Christ? The Master had already made it clear that a Christian ¯ can be detected in the world by his observable love. Men are to see how we love, be struck by it, and con-clude from this sight who we are.2 Affectionate love can be seen. Cold or neutral love may not be noticed even when it is proved by deed., witness the merely efficient nurse. In any event merely willed love does not draw men as the Christian is to draw them. If the reli-gious is a gospel woman, she is an affectionate woman. She may be nothing else. Practical Implications So much for basic principles. They are plain, hardly subject to hot dispute. Not so, however, with concrete situations, problems, objections. Even a casual acquaint-ance with convent life makes clear that the whole area of close love relationships has been, and still often enough remains, subject to misunderstanding, to excess, to de-fect. One underestimates the complexities and depths of human nature if he believes that in this matter ~pecifics are as easy to handle as generalities. Because we think we recognize the difficulties inherent in our subject, our intent here is modest. We wish to propose some real questions and to suggest, for whatever value they may have, some honest answers. - How does a consecrated woman show a warm love in a manner appropriate to her state? Our first reaction to this question is to note that ordinarily a woman is a better judge of feminine warmth than a man is. And if she happens to be at the same time a holy woman, she knows by a kind of instinct how to love rightly. Yet a man may presume to suggest a few guides. Obviously enough, marks of affection vary greatly with the situa-tion of the recipient. A sister rightly embraces a first-grade boy who has fallen down the staircase, but she is The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 1, Scene 2. Jn 13:M-5. likely to show her concern in another manner toward a twelfth-grader beset with a teenage problem. The New Testament offers many examples of what a holy, adult affection is like. There is the cordial, warm greeting,8 the holy kiss,4 the affectionate embrace,~ the loving gaze,n a warmth of manner in speech,r a kindly gentleness in the face of a brother's faults,s a tenderness and love in correcting others,9 a deep interest in the in-dividual and his concerns,1° an openness to all,ix a com-forting of those in trial and sorrowA~ Peter sums it all up in saying that our love is to be sincere and intense.~3 A prayerful study of these texts and many others like them will disclose to mogt of us that we have a long way to go before we love as Christians are supposed to love. Because the virgin is a model of evangelical life, she may not be anything but affectionate. The program of how this is to be done is plain enough in the Gosp.els and Epistles. She will find its implementation a lifetime task. She ma~ find it helpful to, work at this task in her par-ticular examen, taking as her specific guides one Scrip-tural theme or text at a time. Doing this she cannot help becoming a lovable woman. Is there not danger to chastity in this warm love? Yes, of course, there is danger, just as there is danger in the pursuance of any good, even the spiritual goods of the intellect. But one may not always solve "excess prob-lems" by removing the possibility of excess through a radical uprooting of the good. When the Master re-flected on the risk of worldliness in His apostles, He did not meet the problem by shutting off the possibility. Rather He explicity declared that they were to remain in the dangerous situation, in the world, but were to be kept free from being tainted by it.14 It is interesting, too, ~hat nowhere (as far as we can find) does the New Testa-ment indicate a concern about the dangers found in a holy affection. Perhaps the reason is that the genuine SRom 1:7; 16:3-16; 1 Cor 16:19; Phil 4:21-3; Col 4:7-18. ~Lk 15:20; Rom 16:16; 1 Cor 16:20; 2 Cor 13:12; 1 Th 5:26; I Pt 4:14. ~ Mk 10:16; Acts 20:37-8. ~ Mk 10:21. ~Rom I:11; 1 Cor 4:17; 15:58; 16:24; 2 Cor 7:~,I~; 10:I; Phil 1:7-8; 4:1; 1 Th 2:7-8,20; ~:1-7; 1 Tm 1:2; 1 Jn 2:1,7,12,14,18,28; ~ Jn 1,5,11; Jude ~,20. s Eph 4:2,~2; 2 Tim 2:24-5; 1 Pt 3:8-9. ~ Lk 10:41; 1 Cor 4:14; 2 Cor 2:4-8; Gal 6:1; Col ~:12-~. xo 1 Cor 12:26; 2 Cor 12:14-5; Phil 2:17-8; 1 Th 2:11. ~x 2 Cor 6:11-3. ~2 Cor 1:3-4; 7:6-7; 1~:11; £ph 6:22; Col 2:1-2; 1 Th 5:11; 2 Tim 1:16; Phlm 20. xs I Pt 1:22. :~Jn 17:14-7: "They are not oI the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not pray that thou take them out of the world, but that thou keep them ~rom evil." ¥irglnal Love VOLUME 28, 1969 205 ÷ ÷ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 206 man of God and the holy virgin know plainly enough-- because their honesty bares the deceitful motive--why really they are affectionate and how their love is ap-propriately shown. Warm affection is risky for the fool-ish virgin, the worldly virgin, but not for the wise and prayerful one. On the contrary, for the latter this kind of sisterly love protects and fosters her dedicated chastity: "Everyone should remember--superiors especially--that chastity has stronger safeguards in a community when true fraternal love thrives among its members." ~g If a sister is a woman of deep contemplative prayer, we need have little fear that her warm love for others will pose any proximate danger to her purity or to theirs. If she is not a prayerful woman, the opposite may well be the case. May a sister [oster a close [riendship with a priest or layman? At the outset of this article we already im-plied our affirmative reaction to this question. The ex-ample of Christ's love for Martha and Mary and that of the saints for persons of the opposite sex (for example, Teresa and Gratian, Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal) demand this affirmative response. And so does com-mon sense. Sexual love neither is co-terminous with geni-tal- sexual love nor requires it. The sexes are comple-mentary not only on the physical level but also on the emotional, intellectual, volitional, and supernatural lev-els. an The fact that the consecrated woman benefits from masculine influences (such as teaching, spiritual direc-tion) in her formation (and do not men profit £rom feminine influences in theirs?) suggests that she may grow as a religious woman through friendship with a man. Now all of this is being said with increasing frequency both in print and in private conference. But something else has also to be said. And it is rarely said. That this kind of close friendship be advisable demands conditions and qualifications. Not any apparently good male-female relationship may be said to correspond to that of Teresa and Gratian or Francis and Jane. We have already in-dicated what some of these qualifications are. Most of us would agree that a sister should show a sincere warmth toward all men and women, but we are not agreed as to what overdemonstrativeness may be. For our part we cannot share the view that embracing is a suitable sign of affection between religious persons of the opposite sexes. The current multiplication of tragedy that scan-dalizes the faithful and ruins consecrated lives plainly ~ Vatican II, Decree on Religious LiIe, n. 12. ~ See Chapter 3 of von Hildebrand's Man and Woman for a help-ful explanation of this complementarity. shows how naive this view really is. Some people learn only by personal disaster that they are like the rest of men. A propensity toward physical demonstrativeness suggests strongly that the friendship is not on the high-est supernatural level, that it is not thoroughly immersed in God, in a mutually deep prayer life. Unreasonably frequent or protracted conversations and deliberate ro-mantic daydreaming likewise cause one to wonder whether there is question of the love of the Holy Spirit. The virgin is concerned with the things of the Lord that she may be holy in body and in spirit and that she may .pray without distraction. In our view that priest or sister ~s naive who feels that long and frequent visits, kissing and embracing are conductive to the love of the Chris-tian virgin. If this is what "the third way" means, there is no third way. Even aside from the obvious.question of chastity, one may wonder regarding this type of relation-ship how intently the religious can be concerned with the things of the Lord, how deeply she can be committed to her life of contemplation and apostolic action. From the positive point of view a sister may rest as-sured that her love is fully virginal if the thought of the other suggests to her mind the thought of God; if the relationship really helps her to a deeper prayer life, a perfect observance of her rule, an evangelical spirit of detachment, a more profound loyalty to her own vir-ginal vocation and to the members of her own commu-nity, a ~niversal warmth toward others; if their con-versation or correspondence is concerned mainly with God and His affairs. If these norms for virginal love are correct, one may speculate that this sort of friendship is not at all as common as may be supposed. Is affectionate love compatible with the detachment demanded by the New Testament? Twenty years ago many of us would have returned an unhesitatingly nega; tive answer to this question or we would have at least felt inclined to such an answer. Today we more easily understand that warm love and evangelical detachment are reconcilable, although not too many are able to bar. monize new psychology with old spirituality. The prob-lem here, of course, is not a clash between oldness and newness but between sound psychology and twisted spir-ituality. Both affectionate love and gospel austerity are as valid today as they ever were, for the New Testament plainly teaches both of them over and over again. The simplistic mind is uncomfortable with complex dualities and it seeks to resolve a paradox by denying one pole of it. Two decades ago it was common to deny that warmly shown love was proper in a religious, while today it is popular to say that detachment is passd. Yet the New Testament teaches both the .one and the ÷ ÷ ÷ Virginal VOLUME 28~ 1969' " ÷ ÷ Thomas l~bay REVIEW FOP. RELIGIOUS 208 other. It is the same Christ who demands that we re-nounce all things (Lk 14:33) and who embraces children warmly (Mk 10:16). The same John teaches that we must die like grain buried in the ground (Jn 12:24-5) and yet deals with the recipient~ of his first letter with remark-able terms of endearment (1 Jn 2, passim). The first letter of Peter warns against "selfish passions" (1 Pt 2:11), encourages a joy in sufferings (4:12-3) and at the same time urges intense brotherly love shown with a "kiss of love" (1:22; 5:14). The same Paul who cautions against superfluities and himself has nothing (1 Tim 6:7-8; 2 Cor 6:10) also loves his Christians with the warmth and tenderness of a deeply affectionate father (passim). Nowhere in the new revelation do we read the least hint of a clash. Why? Simply because affectionate love is by no means the same as selfish love. On the contrary, it is often a crucifying love. Showing affection to an attractive person is a delight, to a dull or cold individual it is a thorn. Moreover--and this is important and not always under-stood-- we should not see a dichotomy between loving God wholly and our neighbor warmly. Even less should we suppose an opposition. Precisely because Christian love is both one and incarnated but with several objects (God, ourselves, angels, neighbor), it must be warmly shown. This is why St. Paul looked upon the Romans as "God's beloved" (1:7). Because they were God's dear ones, they necessarily became Paul's dear ones in a virile yet intimate sense. Unshown love is a partial self-contradiction. We find this same warm affection in the most austere and detached of God's saints, for they knew what affectionate love and genuine detachment really mean. They did not live by caricature. One need only read the correspondence of an Augustine, a John Chrys-ostom, a Teresa of Avila, a Francis de Sales to see what we mean, Even John of the Cross (andwho could be remotely tempted to conceive him as lacking in detach-ment?), a man short on words but long on deeds, is said to have walked 30 or 40 miles barefooted to visit his warmly loved nuns at Beas. What we are saying, of course, is by no means opposed to the traditional detach-ment doctrine of these same saints. There is a certain in-tellectual snobbery implied in the suggestion one hears today that the goodness and value of love between the sexes, even between religious, is quite a new discovery unknown to our elders in the faith. And there is no little theological inadequacy implied in thinking that this kind of love somehow rules out an integral evangel-ical asceticism. How does One become affectionate? This apparently naive question is really a worthwhile question, one that is susceptible of several interpretations: How does a sister acquire a warm manner toward unattractive personali-ties? How does one love affectionately who feels no warmth toward anyone? How does a person deepen a warm manner she already possesses to some extent, yet not sufficiently? We shall take up each problem in turn. First, how can a sister who does love some people warmly acquire a warmth toward others whom she finds unappealing? If a woman (or man) can love some per-sons warmly and deeply, her problem is motivational, not psychological, when she is cold toward others. Ba-sically she is capable of full human love, since as a matter of fact she does love humanly the few people that appeal to her. But she does not see that the others are also lova-ble and so she is not at all inclined to go out toward them. She needs to develop a largeness of heart, an op-timism of viewpoint that searches out beauty and good-ness, the largeness and optimism of St, Paul who saw enough beauty and goodness in his new (but far from perfect) Christians that he could view them as "God's beloved." If God loves a man, that man must somehow be lovable. It is our task to find out how. The warmth is then easier to come by. Yet it is not come. by without a concomitant spirit of sacrifice. If affection is to be shown toall men and not only to a select few,~the cross of self-denial must indeed be taken up daily. Otherwise we can-not be disciples, if the mark of a disciple is a love men can see and experience. A more perplexing problem (for the person who ex-periences it) is a total lack of affectionate feeling toward others. The problem is not only perplexing; it is likely to be both deep and of long standing. Its roots go back in most cases to an early home life in which little warm love was shown. Though the adult devoid of affection-ate feelings may say she needs neither manifestations of love from others nor her own showing of it to them, she is nevertheless a psychologically starved person. She may not understand what has happened to her, but she has built walls about her person. She is encapsuled. She is dying a death. She is in a state of psychological famine, dying of lovelessness. What can be done for this person who does not know how to love humanly and in a feminine manner? She may need professional therapy. She surely" needs a friend, a close friend. She needs understanding and ac-ceptance. She needs to learn that she is worthwhile, lovable. When she is accepted, understood, loved suffi-ciently, she will slowly become capable of returning love, of warming up to others. But the process is slow. All concerned with her problem need patience, herself included. + + + VOLUME 28, 1969 209 ÷ ÷ Thomas Duba~ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 210 We may pause here to insist that the deeply felt need (even in a sister) to love and to be loved is no imperfec-tion. On the contrary, the deeper the need, the nobler the woman. It is the person who feels no need that is ill, for she is affectionately numb. On the physical level loss of appetite indicates illness, while hunger points to health and the consumption of vital energy. So also a hunger for love, real love, points toward psychological well-being, for deeply hidden in the recesses of the hu-man person is .the ontological clamor that goodness and beauty be recognized by another's love. Our final question: how does a religious who can and does love warmly develop and deepen her capacity for virginal affection? She must be herself, of course. She must grow normally as a woman with all the inner richness this implies. Genuine love is rooted. It cannot grow from the surface, from an inner vacuum. From the point of view of how this love is to be manifested the sister learns how a Christian virgin loves warmly by ob-serving those among her companions who do know how. Yet affection is not as easily taught as table manners. There is a universality about its signs, but there is also the uniquencess of the individual, and what is more unique than personal love? Still, a sister should be able to learn from the more finely developed among her companions how the consecrated woman shows her love for men. She learns, too, from her inborn reactions toward the opposite sex. Probably one reason why God made the sexes mutually attractive is that men and women learn from mutual relations how to show concern, warmth, cordiality toward members of their own sex. A normal, woman finds that affability toward men comes more naturally and easily than toward women. (And this is surely true also in the case of the man toward women.) Even though she does not show marks of love toward other women in exactly the same ways as toward men, she should learn much from the latter expe.riences, stemming as they do from her inborn feminine inclina-tion. Heterosexual love (which is not, of course, co-ter-ruinous with genital-sexual love), we may then say, is a partial model of human love in general. It is therefore a model for the virgin also, for she remains a sexual being with all the qualities and beauties this implies. The sister further develops her affectionate manner by a careful and prayerful contemplation of the gospel. After she has diligently studied her Christ embracing children for no other reason but to show warmth in His love, "looking with love" (a mysterious phrase) on a rich youth, correcting Martha in so gentle and tender a man-ner, weeping at Lazarus' tomb, she turns for further guidance to John, Peter, and especially to Paul. The letters of these virile (and before their conversion, crude) men are replete with examples of how to show affection in an adult manner. As an evangelical woman the sister should be filled with their spirit and practice. The final source from which the religious learns to love warmly: contemplation, deep contemplation, es-pecially infused contemplation. It is no accident that St. Paul reminds his Thessalonians that they "have learned from God to love one another" (1 Th 4:9). There is no better teacher of warmth and tenderness than He who could utter the divine verse recorded by Luke: "While he [a sinner] was still a long way off, his hther saw him and was moved with pity. He ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms and kissed him tenderly" (Jerusalem Bible). One cannot get more affectionate than this. In the profound center of her own being where Love is more present to her womanly heart than she herself is the sister can find out how to be a loving woman. Though her indwelling Beloved teaches without words, He pours out from her deepest center the very love by Which she loves Him and others. Through the tenderness of His inner infusions she tastes and sees how good He is. She learns from experience that those who seek the Lord want for no good thing. Her good is to take refuge in the Lord she bears in her bosom and from Him she discovers what tenderness is like. So true is it that the contemplative learns from her inabiding Beloved how to be a lover herself, that we would suspect as inauthentic any alleged contemplation that is not accompanied by a warm love for others, or, at the very least, by a sincere, persevering effort in that direction. Contemplation cannot be walled in, aseptic, sterile. By its own inner dynamism, a vertical and horizontal en. ergy, it must burst out into love for men. Together with the instruction of Sacred Scripture and the love flowing out of the sacraments contemplation is the source of deep human love. All of which is to say that the sister must be a Scriptural woman, an ecclesia1 woman, a contemplative woman, if she is going to be a profoundly loving woman. 4. 4. VOLUME 28, 1969 PLACID STROIK, O.F.M. Sanctification and Conquest in the World With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land that we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own (JFK's Inaugural Address, January 1961). Once active faith in God's presence in the world takes hold of a man it begins to give direction to his actions. Not only does God's work really become his own, but also his work becomes the work of God. It is also a fact of experience that as things are it is impossible [or God to Work in this world without us. Very often we speak of God's great gifts to us "and all His marvelous works for us. At the same time we fail to realize the vast interplay and amount of work God has put into our hands to bring these gifts and works to their full development. Just as it is theologically incor-rect and misleading to expect salvation and sanctifica-tion through purely human effort, so also it is misleading to expect salvation even as a gift to come to us without. our effort of respgnse and acceptanc.e of this gift. It is much worse and also very unchristian to think that our faith with its heavy stress on another world and on be-coming holy has somehow absolved us from effort in building this world. ÷ Reconciling Upward and Forward ElYorts Pladd Stroik, O.F.M., is a mem-ber o[ the Francis. can Friars; Pulaski, Wisconsin 54162., ' REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 212 Historically it has always been a problem for followers of Christ to somehow bring together the vertical upward effort of sanctification and the horizontal forward effort of human progress and the conquest of the world. Over and over again the questions have been asked: Are they in opposition to each other? Is one just an acciden-tal backdrop to the other? Is there any inner connection between the two? In our present day these questions are extremely fundamental and are at the basis for much of the rethinking and turmoil going on in our religious doctrines and practices. Theologians as well as scientists are fast becoming aware of man's ability in the conquest of nature, the wor!d, and human life itself. This is beginning to put traditional religious ideas out of business. At one time, God, faith, the supernatural, and grace explained a lot of what happens around us. But now, man seems to get more answers and assurance out of things like space exploration, industrial and technical development, and human relations skills. As men put more and more ef-fort into understanding and controlling the universe we touch, see, and hear everyday, there is the conclusion developing that religious ideals and ideas no longer have a place in human life. The simple reasser.tion that God is alive and that He is important is not as convincing nor attractive as a heart transplant or a flight to the moon. That simply will not do. What is needed is a fresh outlook toward the way in which the process of becoming holy is somehow harmoniously interwoven with the human effort exerted in the direction of un-derstanding, building up, and controlling this universe. Such a fresh outlook will demand that we first of all get rid of all our false notions: about God and the world being in opposition to each other; about the supernatural being the best and the natural something that is second best or a mere accidental prelude to the supernatural; about the "afterlife" .being the sole im-portant thing and "nowlife" being a burdensome punish-ment. For many of us this also means trying to under-stand the correct way in which this present earthly life is a preparation for an open direct life with God. It means realizing that the universe is not some accidental stage play wherein what we do or what we build is meaningless unless we did it with a good intention and for the glory of God. What is required is the under-standing that the final coming of. Christ, just as His first coming, is conditioned by the development of man-kind. Because the full glory of Christ is intimately hound up with mankind it is also dependent upon the development of mankind. While the establishment of the new heavens and new earth spoken of in the Apoca-lypse is something Christ alone can bring about, it does not mean that they will appear out of the clear blue sky. Rather the unification that is evidently taking place among mankind seems to warrant the idea that until this unification is complete the entrance of the new heaven and new earth will not take place. The unification of mankind is not some kind of arbi-trary arrangement of individuals. It is in a very deep sense'th+ union brought about by the power and force of ÷ ÷ Conquest in World VOLUME 28, 1969 PlacidSOtt.Foi.lM~., REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS love which is everywhere at work in the world. It is the same power which was at work on the first day of creation and is at work in the technological develop-ment of the world. It operates also in the specifically sanctifying deeds of the Incarnation, redemption, and their extensions, the sacraments. It is here that we can see the close connection between sanctification and de-velopment of the world. They are two efforts working in the same direction--the unification ~of mankind. Sanctification without the development of the world is unthinkable, just as development of the world without the painful redemptive efforts displayed and symbolized on the cross is an impossibility. The development of the world could not take place unless the effort to get rid of evil and disorganization were made as.well as the effort to see that truth, goodness, and beauty triumph. Sanctification must involve human endeavor and the op-eration of those powers which make a person to be a person, namely, his will, intelligence, and consciousness. As men use these powers in building up the world they are likewise working at their own unification. In this way the upward movement of becoming holy like God takes place while the forward movement of develop-ment of the universe is also taking place. The work of God and the work of man are constantly interchanging. We are not only becoming like God thru our work, but our work is more and more revealing God to us. Far from being in opposition, God's work of sanctification and man's work of building the universe are seen as two sides of the same coin or two paths to the same goal and destination. The sacred and the secular are closer to each other than we realize. Sanctification and Unification of the World It seems to be an unavoidable conclusion based pri-marily on man's experience .that the universe has been in a dynamic process of development and that the develop-ment is still going on. Looked at in its broadest sense, this development is best described as fulfilling the incompleteness of the creature and bringing organiza-tion and harmony to the disorder, failure, and disunity found at every level of created .being. Another way of looking at this is to think in terms of.°getting rid.of the evil, both moral and physical, that accounts for mechanical failures as well as the failures of the human will to choose the good. On this level we can see sanctification and unification working on the same broad principle. Sanctification is directed to furthering the God-centered harmonious functioning of man's powers of intellect, will, and consciousness, while unifi-cation is directed to an increasing organization of .the physical elements of the universe. In both the moral and physical sphere, mankind has had to wait for the proper time and the proper understanding of how these parts can better function together. Between the two processes of sanctification and,unifi-cation there is an exchange and an interdependence. For one thing, the harmonious functioning of man on the moral and spiritual level is obviously tied to a proper development of the physical well-being of the body. It does not guarantee good order on the moral level, but it is a condition. Health and wealth at a certain level are indispensable. We all know and experience that forced poverty has a way of crippling man's judgement of right and wrong, his sense of justice, and his esteem for his neighbor's welfare. Further, we should consider how the spread of the gospel, the development of moral value systems, and the knowledge of the sacramental means of sanctification are all dependent upon the proper use of mass communi-cations and upon a proper understanding of human re-lations and the difl~erent cultural values of a given group. On the other hand, sanctification and specifically Christian holiness and man's moral value systems as they develop and improve do assert a controlling effect on the direction and expression of physical evolution and technological advancement. For a very common ex-ample we can take the peaceful uses of nuclear energy which the moral values of nations are bringing about. Endeavor and Endurance for the Christian Today Because of the close interplay between the develop-ment of the .world and man's union with God, any religious ethic that separates the two is doomed not only to be unattractive but eventually will be proved to be erroneous. A legal morality of do's and don't's must give way to a dynamic morality of conquest. The pro-gram for a Christian today must be one that envisions union with God in and thru the world. In attaining this union, it is fundamental for Chris-tians to accept and understand that the universe by God's plan has been locked dead center on Christ. The world as we know it is headed toward Christ as its center and fullness. Every development both of material growth and spiritual growth is aimed at building up a new heaven and new earth, centered in Christ. In this conquest, the Christian consciously and all men by their very existence are called to collaborate enthusiastically, knowing that by their fidelity and obedience and also thru the work they have accomplished, they are com-pleting this universe. Each person must sincerely work at development. His + + ÷ Conquest in the World VOLUME 28, 1969 O~.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS own personal development and the conquest of the world are to be done not simply to keep oneself busy and out of trouble but because this effort is vital to the building up of the universe. All effort that promotes and directly increases the general consciousness of mankind is the best effort. The highest moral principles guiding hu-man action are not those which protect and safeguard man's rights and duties, but those Which promote the best development of the person, society, and the world. In other words, those things which are in the direction of growth of the spirit of man are good, and what is best is that what assures the highest development of the spiritual powers of the earth. If our action furthers the unification and development of the world and the peo-ple in it, it is a good action. The question comes up as to how we can determine if our action furthers growth. Basically our general goal is to increase personal responsibility, freedom, and hu-man consciousness. This is not an easy order, and that is "why emphasis must be placed on the three charac-teristics of human endeavor that will allow for the de-velopment of human consciousness and personal re-sponsibility: Purity, charity, and self-denial are three basic strengths which provide for the necessary growth. When speaking of purity it is important to under-stand it in a dynamic sense, not in any passive restrictive sense. Purity is that power which seeks to organize all our personal energies along the lines of personal whole-ness and integrity--getting rid of those elements in us which tend to pull our forces in a thousand disorganized directions. In unifying the powers of man, purity brings about a conquest and achievement which frees the person for an ever greater expression of the power of love. Purity seeks the unification of the person, while charity is directed to the unification of persons among themselves. For many of us love or charity is simply a command to avoid hurting our neighbor or overstep-ping his rights. This is a rather narrow, negative view of charity. It fails to take in the dynamic element of active furthering of the growth of our neighbor and of the whole universe. Love as energy in its widest sense is the power which draws all things together. It has a synthesizing effect. Love when it takes on the form of Christian charity is all the more powerful because it is the effort of unification, but now in Christ and thru Christ. Charity inspired by Christ is charity which moves and advances mankind and the whole universe toward Him. In the final analysis, love is not only positive and dynamic, but universal and totally directed to building up the world into a unity in Christ. For the Christian who is sincerely interested in the true progress and development of the world, the mes-sage of the cross in terms of self-denial, detachment, and renunciation is as important as seeing a computer operate an assembly line and a turbine generator light a city. He knows and experiences the detachment that must go into an enthusiastic collaboration with the whole human effort in furthering the growth of the world toward the fullness of Christ. In accomplishing any ideal, the difficult labor involved is necessarily a victory over selfishness and egotistical laziness. This detachment thru .action on the material of life is a continuation of and is patterned on the method ex-pressed in the Incarnation--immersion and insertion into the world so as to transform and lead the world to God. But experience shows us that the most radical trans-formation of people and things takes place not thru a simple laborious effort to create and produce but thru the endurance of evils and failures, stresses and painful strains including that of death. A world that is still in the process of development must of necessity have fail-ures and faults for the simple reason that it is not com-plete. Thru the plan of God and man's cooperation, the failures can be brought to serve a higher purpose. Even the impurity in a stone can be made to add beauty and tone to the final product. A moral defect thru the trans-formation of repentance can be the occasion of a greater good. All of the suffering involved in the endurance of evil and that of death has for its final aim the union of man with God in and thru Christ. Such union cannot take place without a going out of oneself. Union revolves around love and love means giving oneself to the one loved. Death in our world is the process by which the final and complete union with God is accomplished. It is the decentering of our self and centering on God. This involves a change of state, but in all development at a certain point a complete rearrangement of elements is necessary for the further functioning on a higher level. The significance of Christ's necessary death and His new form of life after it is a fact of history which is able to give validity and assurance to all men that death is not the end of all but the door to a change of life. Contemporary Man and the Future It is easy enough for modem man to exert the effort to build a new world if the dangers and ris~ are not too great. The vast development of the world which we are now experiencing is not an absolute guarantee that man's progress will always be forward and upward. The 4- ÷ .Conquest in the VOLUME 28, 1969 " 217 temptation to revolt in the face of great odds and diffi-culties is as possible as it ever was. As man becomes more complex and his consciousness more highly developed, the possibilities for further progress are just as good as the possibilities for destruction. It all depends how man chooses to use his powers--in the direction of greater growth in true Christian life or in selfish temporary satisfaction. The urgency to get out of oneself and build a better world for all men is not a call to be answered later. The forces involved in a developing universe are forces that are centered in Christ and ultimately in God the Father. Christ's invitation to be with Him and gather or else to be against Him and scatter is both a promise and a threat that either we build with Him or be cast aside into unending disorganization and disunity. Heaven and hell are as real as they are totally opposite each other. Heaven is full of life in perfect harmony. Hell is empty life in total discord. Man at every point in history must simply choose to build the earth and its spiritual forces in and with Christ or to build a "nothing" out-side Him. + 4. + P/~id O.F.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS CARLO A. WEBER, S.J. The Field oJ Combat: Neurotic or Existential Guilt There is no domain in which the acute problem of communication between theology and psychology is more evident than in the experience of guilt. Stormy en-counters on the nature and origins of the experience, its place in human development, its effects on human lives wage on without much hope of resolution, largely because the language, the symbols, and the context of the discussion are not the same for all the contestants. The field of combat is common to all; but the rules of the game are not ~he same. A split-level mode of com-munication has prevailed. Jung remarked of this en-counter that " . both appear to use the same language, but the language calls up in their minds two totally different fields of association. Both [theologians and psychologists] can apparently use the same concept, and then are bound to acknowledge to their amazement that they are speaking of two different things." And to make the issue even more complex, one can add the profes-sional legalist to the lists. For from yet another stance, the lawyer is also concerned with problems of guilt. The experience of guilt, then, is the common playing field for theologians, psychologists, lawyers. But for each, it means whatever the methodological conditioning of his own discipline obliges it to mean. For the moral theologian, it has generally suggested reprehensibility, culpability, blame-worthiness, sin. For the lawyer, it means, specifically, responsibility before the law, civil or ecclesiastical, or criminality as determined by legal can-ons. And for the psychologist, in sharp contrast, it im-plies rather a first-level symptom, the crippling expres-sion of a depreciating self-concept, perhaps the residue of a super-ego-oriented childhood training. + 4- ,I, Carlo A. Weber, S,J., is Director o[ Psychological Serv-ices; Loyola Univer-sity of Los Angeles; Los Angeles, Cali-fornia 90045. VOLUME 28, 1969 219 Carlo Weber, $.l. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 220 When the discussants in the dialogue use the same word to denote such utterly different things, communica-tion soon dissolves into futile bickering over semantics. Guilt is sin; guilt is crime; guilt is symptom. The vocal sounds one hears in the dialogue alert the same signals; but the phenomena signalized are in no way the same. In such a conversation of nonmeanings, a fruitless and frus-trating collision course is inevitable. It is like approach-ing a railroad crossing without the slightest assurance that the waving semaphore symbolizes an approaching train or an unimpeded right-of-way. One would be better off without the semaphore in such a case; and so we might be better off without the word "guilt." The "guilt-language," as the "God-language" in many instances, or the "soul-language," oi other similar efforts at non-communication might best be scrapped, that we might attempt an uncluttered look at the phenomenological realities and then allow a new language to emerge to fit the reality. Orwell's "New-speak," or Cattell's crypto-scientific system of operational definitions in psycho-metrics may, however wild they first seem, be something of the answer. We might well avoid the confusion that always arises from previous connotations to a word by introducing entirely different sound associations. The present state of affairs, then, is largely one in which the language of guilt tends to divide authorities rather than to aid communication between them. When the psychologist hears his legal associate describe a man's guilt in court and watches him step nimbly through what appears to be a maze of legal fictions, he finds the process frightfully objective, abstract, impersonal, inhuman. But the lawyer is not really describing the psychologist's "guilt." The theologian is properly horri-fied, on the other hand, when he hears the psychologist's attempts to gloss over the reality of guilt and speak of it as some neurotic myth. This, to him, is a form of "psy-chologizing"-- foggy, anarchic, and sentimental. But the psychologist is not, in fact, describing the theologian's "guilt" either; indeed, if he is loyal to his methodology, he has nothing to say of it. One could, of course, con-tinue with this litany of misunderstanding; the cross-cultural impasses are possibly as evident as the semantic circus of an international diplomatic conference. Though it may be next to impossible to draw meaning from this semantic labyrinth, we are, nonetheless, stuck with it. It is of value to note that within the verbal en-tente, orientations which have traditionally set the con-testants apart do emerge. It may be helpful to try to clarify them. For the psychologist, guilt is strictly a sub-jective phenomenon, a feeling, if you will, that can be-come almost the pervasive element of one's inner experi- ence. The psychologist, as such, is little concerned about the external, objective counterpart of the experience. His world, as a clinician, is the perceptual world, not pre-cisely the accuracy of the percepts. Whether one's feeling of guilt, therefore, is rooted in anti-social actions, or in an interiorized, guilt-ridden self-concept is not pre-cisely the point. It is now the individual's feeling; and the psychologist deals with it as such. He also realizes that the intensity of the experience is not necessarily in proportion to the quality of an external action or event. One individual may experience crushing guilt subsequent to running a red light at a deserted intersection; another may remain blandly guilt-free after bludgeoning a harm-less old lady's skull. Such a feeling of guilt is clearly not the function of some specific external action; but it is rather the correlate and the expression of his own inner awareness of his value, or rather the lack of it. The inner awareness is the point of differentiation for the psycholo-gist. For both the moral theologian and the lawyer, however, there is an objective emphasis in the philosophy of guilt. An objective norm which has been violated is the criterion according to which one assesses guilt. That norm, of course, is not the same for both. For the lawyer, it is the civil or common law. For the moralist, it is the "will of God," expressed either through canon law, or the magisterium of a teaching Church, or the Sacred Books, or the natural law. But in each case, the norm is an external one; and guilt is the function of a violation of that norm. Once that has been established, the legalist can turn his atten-tion to the degree of individual-culpability, for example, knowledge of the existence of the norm, consciousness at the moment of violation, presence or absence of over-whelming emotional or physical duress, and so forth. So long as we can reasonably assume some subject-ob-ject dichotomy, these two arrangements appear to be quite different. The moral theologian and the lawyer, both with their own specific articulation of the norm of behavior, regard guilt as the individual's posture be-fore the law; the psychologist sees it more as the individ-ual's posture before himself. That there is room for an overlapping of these dimensions is as true as the fact that the subject-object dichotomy is not crystal clear; but, with that qualification, the criteria are different, and so also are the semantic worlds built around the two points of view. Unfortunately, the tradition of morality in the West has been heavily legal since the days when the Latin rite was imposed on the Western Church. And with the Latin rite came the Roman tradition which was one of law and legal prescriptions. The language and the emphasis of Guilt VOLUME 28, 1969 Carlo Weber, $.J. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 222 the Western Church, when addressing itself to questions of mor~ility and guilt, has been on the side of law. Moral textbooks became classic examples of legal casu-istry. Room was always left, to be sure, for the "subjec-tive," as preserved in the distinction between formal and material sin; but the bulk of any discussion inevi-tably turned about a consideration of the objective or material guilt. Scarcely more than a condescending nod was given to the presence of the subjective element as the final determinant of sinfulness, with something of a begrudging acknowledgement that that aspect, after all, was the most important. But no effort at all was ex-pended, until very recent times, in attempting to provide some phenomenological map of the subjective. Perhaps the futility of that prospect obliged the moralists to turn their attention to the legal puzzle that was, after all, more intellectually satisfying and a good deal more comfort-able. One would suggest, mindful of the discussions swirling about Pope Paul's encyclical, Humanae vitae, that it is clear that the legal emphasis is still the pre[ vailing attitude of the official Church. The rupture within the Church is precisely a function of the person versus Law approaches to morality and guilt. When the law becomes the criterion for human be-havior, the stage is set for casuistic thinking :about morality. This implies a mental "set" in which one is concerned chiefly with the degree of deviation from the norm. How far, for example, can I deviate from the statement of the law and still be safe? Or, at what point of deviation do I stray from the area of safety to the do-main in which I must be classified as a sinner, if it be a moral law, or a criminal, if it be a civil law? Legal guilt is the consequence of straying outside the latitude which the law allows. In that area the legalo-moralist conducts his conceptual jousting. Only recently have attempts been made to bring about a wedding of the law and the personal in the various modes of situational ethics. And this, of course, is both the effect of the communion of psychologists and theologians and a stimulating rein-forcement for it. The norm becomes more an ideal which one strives to approach continuously throughout his life rather than a law from which one deviates. Neurotic Guilt The genesis of neurotic guilt, as described by the psychopathologist, follows a commonly described nuclear process that was most brilliantly outlined originally by Karen Horney. There are four discernible stages. The process begins with a faulty personality development in childhood. The child, whose first self-concept, as such, is the result of the interiorization of the value placed upon him by his parents, sees himself as those significant people in his life see him. If the child is rejected, un-wanted, ignored, neglected, he begins at an .early stage in psychological development to see himself as unworthy, unlovable. This is a fairly obvious situation and need not be explored at any length. The rejected child anticipates rejection' from others because that is the extent of his experience; and he can, in gross instances, unconsciously provoke rejection by hostile, abrasive conduct, precisely because of this expected response pattern. Such a child is almost bound to "always hurt the one he loves." At the other extreme of parental reaction, the child can be overprotected in his early years. The result is the absence of any process of growth into independence. The custo-dial love of the parent prevents the possibility of growth, and the child remains weak, helpless, dependent. In terms of the growth of a self-concept, the child will tend to see himself in the same manner and behave as such. No one is unfamiliar with the suffocating, devouring, .de-structive mother-child relationship, described first by Strecker, who coined the phrases "Morn" and "Mom-ism" in his classic, Their Mothers" Sons. The notion has become virtually a household word since, made even more popular with the expression of theories of a bur-geoning matriarchal society. Interestingly enough, the effect on the self-concept of the child of both rejection and overprotection is ap-proximately the same. These are simply two sides of the same coin. In either case, the child is not being valued for himself. The rejected child is not loved at all; the overprotected child is not loved, except as the mirror reflection of the mother, whose narcissistic needs are pro-jected on him. In both instances, the child disappears. This is also true, but not to the same extent, in the situa-tion where the parents' love for the child is conditional. The child is loved providing he follows certain ground rules established by the parents. Ground rules are essen-tial, of course, but they ought not to be the condition for acceptance. If they are, the child sees himself as valuable and lovable only as long as he continues to ful-fill the regulations for being loved. He ,must continue to perform the tasks prescribed; and, in time, the task-oriented process becomes a way of life. Whether the child is rejected, overprotected or conditionally-loved, the effect, in varying degrees, is the same. The child perceives him-self as inadequate, unlovable, helpless, or constantly in need of proving his value. The moral analogue to the psychological feeling of ineptness or inadequacy is the feeling of guilt. The latter is merely a translation 'of the same feeling from psycho-logical language to moral language. To say, in a psycho-÷ ÷ 4- Guilt VOLUME 28, 1969 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS logical context;.that I am weak, flaccid,, incompetent, un-lovable is the same as saying, in a moral context, I am bad, sinful, guilty. The difference here between the neu-rotic guilt and genuine forms of responsible guilt lies in the difference between the phrase "I am bad" and the statement "I do bad things." The former is a description of the basic personality of the self-depreciating neurotic; the latter a description of occasional activity. The most apt expression of the neurotic guilt feeling was given me, quite incidentally, by a woman patient, who was in-credibly scrupulous. For her, every action was a sin. In a therapy session, she remarked, rather in passing: "You know, sin is in my veins." And with this cryptic obser-vation, she sums it all up. "Sin, badness, is as much a part of me as my very blood. It describes my life, my being, my essence, as it were. And since I am, in es-sence, sinful, every action, which, in fact, is an expres-sion of my nature, must be sinful. I shall either discover it there, as the scrupulou

Issue 58.3 of the Review for Religious, May/June 1999. ; f 0 r relig i ous Christian Heritages and ,Contemporary Living MAY-JUNE 1999 * VOLUME 58 ¯ NUMBER 3 Review for Religioug is a forum for shared reflection on the lived experience of all who J~nd that the church's rich heritages of spirituality support their personal and apostolic Christian lives. The articles in the journal are meant to be informative, practical, historical, or inspirational, written from a tbeological or spiritual or sometimes canonical point of view. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: foppema@slu.edu Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ° 3601 Lindell Boulevard ° St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP P.O. Box 29260; ~,rashington, D.C. 20017 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ° P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN ~5806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©1999 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library, clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming sJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Jean Read James and Joan Felling Kathryn Riehards FSP Joel Rippinger OSB Bishop Carlos A. Sevilla SJ David Werthmann CSSR Patricia Wittberg SC Heritages and Contemporary Lfiv~ng MAY-JUNE 1999 * VOLUME58 * NUMBER3 contents 230 251 women religious Charism or Deep Story? Towards Understanding Better the 19th-Century Origins of American Women's Congregations Margaret Susan Thompson suggests that emphasis on "charism" may not be helpful in explaining the ,founding experiences of many women's communities in 19th-century America, and identifies some of the reasons why "deep stow" may be a more usable concept. The Need for Self-Criticism: Affirmative Comments Elizabeth McDonough OP suggests that the time has come for United States religious women to initiate some possibly difficult but genuinely constructive self-criticism and some corrective change of course in various aspects of postconciliar renewal. 261 266 women and the church The Annuario Pontificio: The Vatican's "Pontifical Yearbook" and a Recent Editorial Decision Larry N. Lorenzoni SDB updates a bit of history about who are included in the Vatican's "Pontifical Yearbook." Women and Canon Law Joan A. Range ASC investigates the extraordinary recent history of women entering the field of canon law. Review for Religious 286 295 mary Five Faces of Mary Robert P. Maloney CM offers five Marian faces as a way of meditating on the rich, varied tradition surrounding the Virgin Mary. The Temple and the Journeying: Mary of Sorrows Joel Giallanza CSC draws directions for our spiritual life's journey from reflecting on the traditional seven sorrows of Mary. 3O5 314 witnessing Blessed Maria Droste: A Good Shepherd Motif in Sacred Heart Spirituality Juliana Devoy RGS tells the story of Blessed Maria Droste, which gives witness to her vision of God's merciful love reflected in Sacred Heart spirituality. Echoes from My Fifty-sixth Annual Retreat Robert F. Drinan sJ shares reflections on God!s grace stirring thoughts and feelings in a retreat. 228 32O 325 departments Prisms Canonical Counsel: Visitation by External Authorities Book Reviews May-.~une 1999 227- Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. --John 14:9 Wean talk about God in some very un-Christian ways. As we "dress up" God in the various cultural and time-bound categories of our human world, we are inevitably limited, in both our reasoning and our imagining. When we get swept up into a highly intellectualized philosophical approach, we find our-selves projecting a vague abstract and sometimes fright-ening power and a childishly understood world. God without a face. Although Jesus lived within human limitations of time and culture, he dared to speak "with authority" about the reign of God in images and parables that tore down the temple curtain of separation to let people catch some glimpses of God that are new. The synoptic Gospels--Mark, Matthew, and Luke--talk of a celebra-tory invitation to a banquet, of a shepherd doggedly searching out a lost sheep, so that we come to know and relate to God with fresh affective response. But the Gospel of St. John stands out as the Gospel of the God revealed to us by Jesus as "Father." Few are the chapters in John's Gospel that do not have explicit reference to God as Father. The qualities of this Father-God tumble out. This God is the God of life: "Just as the Father who has life sent me and I have life because of the Father." Jn 6:44. This is a God who works: "My Father is at work until now, and I am Review for Religious' at work as well" Jn 5:17. This is a God who teaches: "My doctrine is not my own; it comes from him who sent me" Jn 7:16; "I say only what the Father has taught me" Jn 8:28. This is a God who cultivates growth: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower" Jn 15:1. Above all, this God is the one who loves: "The Father loves the Son and has given everything over to him" Jn 3:35; "the one who loves me will be loved by my Father"Jn 14:21. In retreat notes published as a book, The Ignatian Exercises in the Light of St. John, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini SJ reflects that a way of considering the Fourth Gospel is to see it as a gospel of prayer, It is prayer not just from people responding to Jesus as we do so often in our prayer lives, but prayer also from Jesus to the one he lovingly calls Abba-Father. From Jesus We learn how we are meant to grow in our relationship with God. And so this Gospel, in teaching a way of relating to God for the mature Christian, is paradoxically the Gospel most insistent in remind-ing us that we are still "children" who have--and who need for our very existence--a Father. We are called, in imitation of Jesus, to relate to a God from whom we have everything--all that we are and all that we would call "our own." This is the God that Jesus describes as the One apart from whose words he himself has nothing to say, the God apart from whose works he has no work to do. As Christian evan-gelizers, then, we need to follow the example of Jesus so that what we say flows from our union with this God. As Christian ministers we need to strive that all our deeds and good works flow from the baptismal grace given by God that makes us all very special children, God's sons and daughters. It is from this God we have come--a Source we call by Jesus' word Father-- and it is to this God we direct our whole life as the One we, with John, identify as Love. If we let the words of St. John enter more deeply into our very being, we will find ourselves being shaped and molded by the reality behind our personally limited understandings of God as Father and God as Love. This is the revealed God of Scripture we seek to know and make known ever better in this year dedi-cated to God the Father. David L. Fleming SJ '229 May-June 1999 MARGARET SUSAN THOMPSON Charism or Deep Story? Towards Understanding Bett@r the 19th-Century Origins of American Women's Congregatigns Since the Second Vatican Council, the term charism increasingly has become associated with the identity, and .even the integrity, of religious congregations.1 Literally dozens of published essays explore the term's meaning and significance~ A substantial number of the community websites created in recent years contain a page about-- or at least an allusion to--the group's "charism," as do postconciliar constitutions, mission statements, and voca-tion paraphernalia. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church has not been silent either, particularly during the current papacy. For example, in its 1983 document "Essential Elements in the Church's Teaching on Religious Life 'as Applied to Institutes Dedicated to Works of the Apostolate," the Sacred ~Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes used ~the term ten times, and it shows up a whopping eighty-six times in//Tta con-secrata, John Paul II's apostolic letter in response to the 1994 Synod on Religious Life. . Ironically, the word itself is not: to be found in Perfectae caritatis, the council document which treats the Margaret Susan Thompson PhD has written and lectured extensively on the history of women religious in the United States. She is associate professor of history and political sci-ence at Syracuse University; Department of History; 145 Eggers Hall; Syracuse, New York 13244. Review for Religious "Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life." In fact, its first appearance in a magisterial treatise seems to be in 1971's Evangelica testificatio. Addressing religious themselves, Paul vI speaks of the "charisms of your founders" and the "charisms of the various insti-tutes" (§§11, 32), assuming, probably with justification, that the terminology would be familiar to his intended audience. But, for those in doubt about this nomenclature, Paul cites Perfectae cari-tatis §2b, which calls upon members of religious institutes to respect their "particular characteristics and work" and "their founders' spirit and special aims" as they proceed with their groups' renewal. Paul extends the discussion in Mutuae relationes (1978), using the term nineteen times and declaring, among other things, that "the very charism of the founders (Evangelii nuntiandi, §I 1) appears as an 'experience of the Spirit'" and that "every authentic charism implies a certain element of genuine originality and of special initiative for the spiritual life of the church" (§12). By now, therefore, one would assume that the meaning of a term so widely and authoritatively used would be clear, and one might also assume that the reality of the thing known as "charism" would be easily identifiable and inherent to religious life. Indeed, this seems to be implicit in various references from the two doc-uments of the current pontificate mentioned above. The first para-graph of "Essential Elements" refers to "the founding charism of a particular institute" and later even says that, through its appro-bation of a community's canonical status, the "God-given ministry of the hierarchy" has ratified the "authentic discernment of its founding charism" (§41):2 The references in Vita consecrata are too numerous even to summarize, but here are a few of them: "charisms proper to the various institutes," "fidelity to the found-ing charism," "[an institute's] Rule and constitutions [are approved] in accordance with a specific charism confirmed by the church," and "the uniqueness of their different ~harisms' (§§19, 36, 37, 53). Surely, then, "charigm" is intrinsic to religious life. Every con-gregation must have one, unique to that particular institute and traceable directly to its individual founder., But the rationale for this essay is precisely that none of the assumptions above seems necessarily to be the case. It is my con-tention that, in much of its current usage, charism is a term of such vagueness and ambiguity as to be almost meaningless. More impor-tantly, even if we can accept the connotations that John Paul II apparently regards as definitive (and he is hardly alone in this atti- May-~tune 1999 -231 . Thompson ¯ Charism or Deep Story? tude), I would argue that a good many of the women's apostolic congregations that ministered in the 19th and early 20th century in the United States have no such thing as a "charism" according to this understanding. Thus, if, as John Paul II suggests, "charism" is an "essential element" of religious life, the very legitimacy of these congregations seems to be east into question--surely a seri-ous, perhaps even disastrous, consequence for the groups involved. What is needed, therefore, is some alternative to charism, some concept that is more in accord with the historical reality of many institutes and legitimates their experience and continued existence. It is unlikely that my consideration here will arrive at any defini-tive conclusions, but I hope to suggest some alternative ways of thinking that may prove useful in framing the historical and cur-rent context of sisters' experiences and perhaps assist in the pro-cess of religious revitalization and renewal. At the very least, from my ongoing research into women's religious life in the 19th-cen-tury United States, I think I can explain why the emphasis on "charism" in contemporary thinking about religious life is prob-lematic and historically unjustified, at least as a universal norm. Before we proceed, a few assumptions need to be made explicit. First, I believe that some congregations do have a charism and that in some cases it is traceable, at least in some degree, to an individual "founder." In other instances, its origin may lie with a founding group of individuals (a "founding generation"), while in still others a charism may have emerged later in a community's history--or a buried, neglected, or even repudiated charism may be discerned or refurbished by subsequent generations. Second-- and in this I am confirmed by the usages of several scholars as well as by both Paul vI and John Paul II--I believe there is also some-thing generic that can be called "a charism of apostolic religious life." Third, the lack of a particular charism does not render an institute (or its members or ministries) less significant, "spiritual," or legitimate than those which do have such a "gift":--just as the existence of one does not indicate superiority or greater validity. Indeed, given that the use of the term charism in connection with religious life is of such recent provenance, its application to past experience--particularly if it is considered to be some sort of uni-versal norm--actually may be ahistorically anachronistic. The word charism, of course, is Greek and means "gift." In contemporary Christian usage, it refers specifically to a spiritual gift, that is, "a free gift of grace." Moreover, virtually all Catholic Review for Religious scholars agree that a charism is not solely for the benefit of its direct recipient; rather, "it is a supernatural gift bestowed by the Holy Spirit for building up the body of Christ" or, in simpler terms, a "divine spiritual gift to individuals or groups for the build-ing up of the community." Within the context of religious life, the charism presumably is received initially by an institute's founder, who transmits it on to her followers. It is this "gift of grace" which is to imbue the community with its unique character or identity; as Richard McBrien puts it, "the unique gift of the founder., is given to every member from one generation to the next."3 Between 1727 and 1917, at least 422 Catholic apostolic con-gregations of women religious were active within the United States.4 Some were short-lived, but four hundred of them contin-ued to exist in 1917, and the overwhelming majority are extant today. Of the 422, a total of 273 belonged to one of ten large reli-gious "families," each of which could trace its birth to a particu-lar founder or pair of founders (see Table 1). Thus, each of these could be presumed to be a beneficiary of the. "charism" of the per-son or persons with whom that family began. Moreover, many of these groups also regard themselves as having their own particular founders, who "re-visioned" the familial identity in some way that imparted a special or distinct character to it.s Table 1 U.S. Al~ostolic Women's Communities andTheir Religious "Families" . FAMILY FOUNDER(S) NO. OF COMMUNITIES Benedictine Benedict, Scholastica 32 Carmelite (reform) Teresa of Avila 3 Dominican Dominic 30 Franciscan Francis 54 St. Joseph Jean Pierre Medaille 27 Mercy Catherine McAuley 65 Presentation Nano Nagle 7 Ursuline Angela Merici 30 Vincentian Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marfllac 10 Visitation Francis de Sales and Jane Frances de Chantal 15 May-June 1999 233 Thompson ¯ Charism or Deep Story? No one can or will deny that these communities have---since their founding, in most cases--been known by one of these "fam-ily names." Still, this begs some important questions. How many of even these congregations can be said to have been "birthed" into the charism of their family forebears? How many incorpo-rated themselves into a particular family with explicit awareness of the spiritual and ecclesial consequences? How many can assert with confidence that their history is one of explicit and consistent acknowledgment of and fidelity to that charism? In other words, to what extent did "charism" traditionally play a part in shaping the identities of at least some of these institutes? Alternatively, how many of them became, in fact, "generic" apostolic entities doing good work, composed of good (even holy) people, but ~undistin-guished by any familial or "particular" spiritual identity that would differentiate them clearly from others of theoburgeoning number of women's religious orders that came increasingly to "do their thing" in the United States in, the 19th and 20th centuries? Finally, most of the nearly one hundred fifty other women's congregations I have studied also assert that they have particular "founders' charisms." Are all of them justified in their claims? It naturally is impossible to provide in one article definitive answers to any of these questions. Instead, I intend to offer some representative examples from the histories of the communities I have studied, examples that I believe will demonstrate some of the major problems with the assumptions about charism that charac-terize so much of what has been said about religious life in the past quarter century. Let me emphasize thavnone of these exam-ples is unique; rather, each is suggestive of all-too-typical congre-gational experiences. Each indicates some aspect of why I believe that the notion of a "founder's?' or "founding" charism is so prob-lematic and why the notion may, in fact, do more to obscure the realities of women's religious history than to illumine it. The Most Common Scenario: Instrumentalism Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Catholic population of the United States exploded. As early as 1850, Catholics constituted the largest single body of believers in the nation, a ranking they have maintained ever since. But, hardly monolithic, they consisted of an ecer growing number of proudly distinct (and sometimes mutually antagonistic) ethnic groups, many Review for Religious of which came to the New World specifically to escape religious persecution or to preserve their cultural identities. Most were poor when they arrived in their new nation; few except the Irish spoke English. Their secular and Protestant neighbors greeted them with suspicion and often with overt hostility. Clearly, these were peo-ple with numerous and diverse needs to be met, and church lead-ers, beleaguered and fearful of "leakage" from the faith, sought ways to respond effectively. It is not surprising, therefore, that dozens of institutes were started in or brought to the United States to provide practical ser-vices, often to specific subgroups of Catl~olics. Both individual community histories by the score and various more com-prehensive works attest con-vincipgly-- and, before 1965, unapologetically--to what I call the instrumental motivation for so many foundations: to teach the ever growing number of school-age children,6 to provide healthcareand relief (primarily, of course, but not only to Catholics), and, increasingly, to work with persons from partic-ular immigrant groups who needed ministers who understood both their languages and their traditions and could both foster cultural survival and ease the pro-cess of Americanization. Others were started for equally functional purposes: to do housework for priests or to offer catechetical instruction to children outside the parochial schools. Consider, for instance, the following accounts of foundings, taken almost randomly from the 1964 edition of Thomas McCarthy's Guide to the Catholic Sisterhoods of the United States-- perhaps the most successful comprehensive "vocation book" ever published in this country:7 [Sisters of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin:] A school, but no teachers, and none to be had from any religious commu-nity in spite of numerous requests by Father Jean Harper. ¯. He decided to act upon his curate's suggestion: "We can-not obtain nuns? Then, let us make some!" And so the con-gregation came into existence . . (p. 192). Dozens of institutes were started in or brought to the United States to provide practical services, often to specific subgroups of Catholics. 235--- May-~une 1999 Thompson * Charism or Deep Story? [Franciscans of Tiffin, Ohio:] Father Joseph L. Bihn . . . founded this Franciscan community to help him care for the many children orphaned as a result of the Civil War. Three of his parishioners, Elizabeth Schaeffer, a widow, and her two daughters, formed the nucleus of this congregation. (p. 271). [Sisters of Sts. Cyril ahd Methodius:] The early 1900s was a critical period for the many immigrants from Slovakia who setded in the United States. Father Matthew Jankola of the Scranton diocese was keenly aware that this adjustment required not only the building of schools but also of secur-ing sisters to staff them. As a result of his efforts, this dioce-san congregation was established in 1900 (p. 189). [Sisters of the Holy Family, San Francisco, California:] "I have another work for you to do," Archbishop Joseph S. Alemany OP said to young Elizabeth Armer when she came to consult him about entering a contemplative order. The archbishop unfolded to the future Mother Dolores his plans for an insti-tute to give religious instruction to children who could not attend Catholic schools. (p. 295). [Little Daughters of St. Joseph:] Father Antoine Mercier, a Sulpician priest., who desired to establish a congregation of nuns who would consecrate themselves to the spiritual and material welfare of the clergy and seminarians, founded this community with the assistance of Miss de Lima Dauth, the co-foundress. On April 26, 1857, both began this eminently apostolic work of helping priests and seminarians by means of a life of prayer, self-denial, and manual labor (p. 36). [Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, Houston, Texas:] "A multitude of sick and infirm seeks relief at your hands" was the irresistible plea of Rt. Rev. C.M. Dubuis when he went to France to seek volunteers to help him in his missionary labors in Galveston, Texas. Three young women answered his appeal and with these he founded the congregation in 1866. The community, which built the first Catholic hospital in the state, has papal approval and conducts twenty-six insti-tutions. (p. 120). 236 Where, in any of these stories, can one discern a charism? Ministry, yes; inspiring service to needy people, certainly. But two obstacles to discerning a "charism of the founder" recur in each instance. First, the reason each community came into being was functional, not charismatic. And, second, at least as these accounts would have it, the initiating impulse came not from the women who would offer to respond, but from clerics--men who, by def- Review for Religious inition, were persons outside of the community itself and thus hard to recognize as part of the group's intrinsic "lived tradition.''s Random Rule Selection and the Problem of Charism Every autonomous congregation has its own constitution, but, properly speaking, only four Rules (St. Basil, St. Augustine, St. Benedict, and St. Francis) were approved by Rome, and every com-munity had to select one of these as the basis for its organization and gov-ernance. 9 This helps to explain, for example, why so many women's con-gregations belonged to the Franciscan "family"--generally speaking, it was considered the most "flexible" of the four and therefore the easiest to adapt to a variety of instrumental purposes. To assume, then, that every commu-nity designated as "Franciscan" also and intentionally embodied a Franciscan charism requires an enor-mous leap of faith; in fact, even some founders who wanted to be "Franciscan" sometimes began by organizing themselves by another Rule. Two contrasting examples will illustrate the problem. First, there is that of the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration, originally founded in Olpe, Westphalia, in 1859 (and eventually established in the U.S. in 1875). The founder, Mother Mary Theresia (Aline) Bonzel, had great devotion to St. Francis and wanted to be Franciscan, but one of her co-founders, Clara Pfaender, had previously belonged to a con-gregation which followed the Augustinian Rule. We may let the community's first historian, an unusually forthright individual, take the story from there: Aline Bonzel wanted the Franciscan Rule by all means. But seemingly she was not well acquainted with the basic Rule of religious orders . Clara Pfaender knew the Augustinian Rule from her convent days with the Sisters of Christian Charity. She felt she could write a constitution based on that Rule. Since she was the superior and responsible for admit-ting candidates into the community, it s~emed advisable, in this very beginning, that she have the liberty to employ her To assume that every community designated as "Franciscan" also and intentionally embodied a Franciscan charism requires an enormous leap of faith. 237 May-June 1999 Thompson ¯ Charism or Deep Story? full experience in religious life. Only on this basis can one explain how a community which uniformly desired to live according to the Franciscan Rule began with the Augustinian Rule, but with the intention of later converting to the Franciscan Rule. In this procedure the character of the times can readily be detec(ed. Many most likely saw basically lit-de difference whether one lived according to the Augustinian or the Franciscan Rule. The development of a specialized spirituality came later and in many instances vqry much later. As this author put it elsewhere: So many religious congregations came into being in the 19th century, and many chose their Rule by chance. Charitable activity called, and congregations were founded to fill the need to serve God and man. With some it seemingly made no difference what religious Rule was followed, for all were good and sanctifying~ . . . Foundations flourished which at first simpl); set up the aciivities and objectives of the apos-tolate and later wrote the rule and constitutions. Often enough at the very beginning it was purely accidental rather than a conscious effort that one or the other rule took hold.l° Contrast this with the experienqe of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Third Order of St. Francis (SSJ-TOSF). Their history has been recounted superbly in two volumes by Josephine Marie Peplinski; basically, the group owed its origins to ethnic conflict within the School Sisters of St. Francis. The School Sisters were predominantly German, and the founding SSJ-TOSFs were Polish members who, after many incidents distressing to them, decided in 1901 to break off and found their own congregation. They took the Rule and name of "Franciscan" with them, but their self-claimed identity was fundamentally Polish. Indeed, as Peplinski has docu-mented, part of the problem was that, for its first few decades of existence, the community's leadership was passed back and forth between two very different individuals, one of whom (Mother Mary F~licia Jasku, lski) had a real devotion to St. Francis, while the other (Mother Mary Boleslaus Rybicki) "moved the congre-gation toward a popular Jesuit interpretation of obedience and authority--military in tone." As Peplinski puts it, "She exerted great influence in developing the spirituality of the congregation throughout her lifetime . . . and afterwards through those who adopted her ideals. It is ~v0rthy to note that until 1940, fourteen years after Mother Mary Boleslaus's death, almost all of the retreat masters invited to th~ congregation were Jesuits." Peplinski describes tlie congregation during its first sixty years as a Review for Religious "Franciscan sisterhood adapted to the post-Tridentine paradigm of religious life serving the American immigrant church . A basic problem was that canon law rather than the gospel law of love was set up as the ideal." In fact, not until after Vatican II, under Peplinsld's own leadership (she led the congregation 1968-1976), did the SSJ-TOSFs make a concerted and systematic effort to dis-cover what "bein~ Franciscan:' was all about. But, while they in fact embrace a Franciscan spirituality as they enter into their sec-ond century, is it at all accurate, despite their name, to regard it as their "founding charism"?II What Happened to the Benedictines? .Peplinski's congregation was not the only one "adapted to the post-Tridentine paradigm of religious life serving the American immigrant church." What happened to the Benedictines was equally dramatic and potentially of even more profound conse-quence to what they were supposed to be all about. It is a com-plicated story, ably told from somewhat different perspectives by Judith Sutera, M. Incarnata Girgen, and Ephrem Hollermann.12 The first nuns came to St. Marys, Pennsylvania, in 1852 from Eichst~itt, Bavaria, where they had lived in a way that permitted full cenobitic, monastic observance, including recitation of the Divine Office and solemn vows according to the Benedictine formulary: stability, conversatio ("conversion of life"), and obedience, However, within less than ten years after their arrival in the United States, a complicated series of events ensued, resulting in fundamental alterations to their tradition. Stated simply, the right to take solemn vows was abrogated (because the women were unable to observe strict enclosure), pressures of "life in mission territory" (as well as the elimination of solemn vows) led to "permission" to miti-gate the requirement to recite the full Divine Office (allowing substitution of the Little Office of th~ Blessed Virgin Mary, parts only of the Divine Office, or ~ven rosaries and other devotional practices), the jurisdiction of community leaders was made sec-ondary to that of diocesan, bishops (who could, among other things, approve or reject the election of prioresses and the admission of new members--something unheard of, normally, in Benedictinism). Even the simple vows the women now professed wer~ not neces-sarily the Benedictine ones. As Sutera explains, some took the tra-ditional vows, some took the three vows common to other May-June 1999 Thompson ¯ Charism or Deep Story? communities (poverty, chastity, obedience), Others took five vows and some four (not stability, because there were rumors that the women were to be reorganized into a large congregation complete with provinces, regional novitiates, and so forth). She summarizes the consequences this way: "What Rome had done was to create a canonical anomaly, a group of unenclosed monastic women who retained the right to the designation of 'O.S.B.' This right implied some recognition that they were nuns of the ancient order rather than sisters of a later congregation despite their simple vows. However, it left them as technically neither one nor the other. [Practically speaking,] they faded into the mass of apostolic orders." 13 Sutera and Hollermann's books, especially, are potent wit-nesses to the extent to which American Benedictines struggled over the following century both to respond 'to the ministerial and apostolic demands placed upon them and to remain as faithful as they could to their Benedictine heritage. Both accounts verify the existence and persistence of Benedictine charism, however "re-visioned" in the American context, despite the many and substan-tial obstacles put in the sisters' way. Thus, when Vatican II came along, with its call for renewal in the spirit of the founders, the Benedictines had a strong foundation on which they could rely. Nonetheless, the disparate experiences of the various autonomous foundations during the years between their foremothers' arrival in the U.S. and the postconciliar period raise important questions about how, and the extent to which, "fidelity to charism" shaped the historical reality of American Benedictine sisters. If one reads the descriptions of them in McCarthy's 1964 compendium, for instance, they seem virtually indistinguishable from the plethora of apostolic institutes that surrounded them.14 "Charisms" Buried, Repudiated, or Denied At least the Benedictines had a strong tradition, never com-pletely lost, that they could revitalize when called to do so by the Second Vatican Council, Others, however, were not so fortunate, The situations of those who chose their traditions randomly, or who were founded for largely instrumental purposes, have already been discussed. But what about those who did have more charismatic founders, whose legacies, for various reasons, were obscured or even rejected? Probably the most famous such case is that of the Institute Review for Religious of the Blessed Virgin Mary, founded by the remarkable Mary Ward in 1609; not until the papacy of Pius XI! were they able to claim her officially as the founder of their congregation. But other instances pertain more directly to the U.S. Catholic experience; here I will refer to just three of them (by no means the only ones). As late as McCarthy's 1964 Guide (p. 317), the sisters founded by Margaret Anna Cusack in 1884 were identified unqualifiedly as the "Sisters of St. Joseph of Newark" and were described as having been founded by "Bishop Bagshawe of Nottingham, England . . . in 1888." Then, we are told, Bishop Michael Wigger of Newark, New Jersey, "received the community into his dio-cese shortly after its establish-ment." The latter sentence, technically, is true, but the foundation was in 1884; by 1888 the controversial Cusack had left both Newark and the Catholic Church. The myth of Bagshawe's role, as well as the rather skewed chronology, evolved largely to bury the fact that this group's founder--a woman who did, I believe, have a charism and who had a very revolutionary vision for her community--was regarded at the time of her death as an "apostate." Dorothy Vidulich has provided a first-rate account of how Cusack's community rediscovered her in the aftermath of Vatican II, officially reclaiming her in 1970 as their founder and reclaiming, too, her original name for the congregation: the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace. Since then, the group has devoted enormous effort to uncovering and taking ownership of her and their charism; nonetheless, the fact that her very connection with the institute was buried for eighty-five years (starting less than four years after it began) makes it difficult to discern the extent to which her charism ever played a meaningful role in its earlier historical expe-rience. Is the identity of this community primarily traceable to Cusack? Or, like an adopted child, must this group, like it or not, acknowledge that other "parents" may actually have been more significant in shaping their ongoing lived reality? 15 American Benedictines struggled both to respond to the ministerial and apostolic demands placed upon them and to remain as faithful as they could to their Benedictine heritage. May-June 1999 Thompson ¯ Charism or Deep Story? Which person or persons must be acknowledged as having contributed-- and how--to the congregation's actual history ? The founder of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, of Monroe, Michigan, was never, stricdy speaking, denied; her central role in the congregation's founding was, how.ever, unde-niably minimized and obscured. Theresa Maxis Duchemin was the offspring of an unwed "woman of color." Both her "race" (her mother was an immigrant to the U.S. from what now is known as Haiti) and her "illegitimate" parentage were, of course, problem-atic. So was the fact that she obscured both of them when she came to Michigan in 1845 to found the congregation ("passing" as "white")--in doing so, she left the commu- 'nity she had belonged to since 1829, the Oblate Sisters of Providence. (This group was the first African American con-gregation in the history of Catholicism. Duchemin was one of its first ,four members, its only American-born founder, and was onetime superior gen-eral of it. In the 1830s her mother, too, joined the community.) What perhaps contributed most, however, towards her role in Monroe IHM history becoming "shadowy" were her ongoing con-flict with Edward Joos (an early spiritual father assigned to the congregation by the bishop), her decision to establish a foundation in Pennsylvania (which the bishop did not approve of, and which soon turned into two), her subsequent conflicts with the .authori-tarian bishop of Philadelphia who succeeded Duchemin's beloved John Neumann, and tier resultant eighteen years of exile in Canada, during which she was forbidden contact with any of the three IHM communities she had founded. Eventually Duchemin was allowed to return to the Philadelphia foundation; ironically, however, only the Scranton one has always acknowledged her role in its begin-nings, In Monroe, meanwhile, Mother Mary Joseph Walker, who succeeded Duchemin as superior in 1859, was becoming regarded as the group's "true foundress," while Joos, who served 'as its eccle-siastical superior from 1857 to 1901, was referred to as the "beloved father." 16 How is a grouplike this to return to the "charism of the founder"? Even in the 1990s the Monroe community is ambivalent Review for Religions as to how it should refer to Duchemin: was she their "founder," their "co-founder" (along with Louis Gillet, the Redemptorist who called her to Michigan in 1845 and departed' abruptly two years later), or simply one of the "first four"? What about the "found-ing" and "formative" roles of Walker and, especially, Joos? At the time of the latter's death, his loss was apparently considered so traumatic that the then general superior "had to assure the sisters that it was possible for the congregation to continue without him." True, Margaret Brennan IHM has documented the persistence of certain very specific elements of Duchemin's spiritual legacy, even through the decades when her contribution was denied, but impor-tant questions still remain.~7 As with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, which person or persons must be acknowledged as having contributed--and how--to the congregation's actual history? "The Most Reverend Archbishop William Gross CSSR of Oregon City founded [the Sisters of St. Mary of Oregon] in Sublimity, Oregon, in 1886 . A vastly scattered flock, with . only a few religious to care for them, made Archbishop Gross determined to establish his own community of sisters."18 It seems a typical 19th-century story; unfortunately, it has almost no basis in reality. The real root of this community is a group of lay peo-ple who more than a decade earlier followed a schismatic priest of the Congregation of the Precious Blood, Charle~ Albrecht, out of Ohio into exile in Wisconsin and Minnesota (where Albrecht died) and then moved (with Albrecht's body) on to rural Oregon. There a young,girl in the group--who had been "bequeathed" to the cultish "trusteeship" of a trio of laymen ("devotees" of Albrecht, whose body during many months after his death,was kept in a cof-fin mounted above the dining table in the group's community room in Minnesota and then, quite ossified, was transported illegally to Oregon)--sought help from some Benedictine monks of Mount Angel Abbey, who put the future Mother Wilhelmina Bleily in touch with Gross, who eventually "regularized" the status of those who sought it and provided official recognition for the "sisters." Shortly thereafter he deposed Wilhelmina from the superiorship to which she had been duly elected, brought in a sister from Wisconsin to provide "formation" for the. community, and reshaped its identity completely. Although the original sisters had retained a strong devotion to the Precious Blood from their Ohio heritage, for instance, Gross refused to allow them to include this in the name of their congregation. By the 1960s, after decades of denial, May-June 1999 9A2 Thompson * Charism or Deep Story? Inappropriate reliance for spiritual grounding upon "a" founder and her or his significance can lead to a spirituality that is static or reactionary. Wilhelmina's contributions had been forgotten (and her diary, which recorded all that had happened, both before 1886 and after, lay gathering dust in the community's attic, not to be rediscov-ered until a new motherhouse was constructed in the 1970s), and the only things that remained from their roots were a red cord (on which they wore a crucifix around their necks) and a vague acknowledgment of a "devotion to the Precious Blood," one among many devotions that had been accepted without explanation for several generations29 More than either of the other two groups dis-cussed. here, the SSMO's decision to bury its past (not to mention Albrecht's body) certainly is understandable. It is also under-standable that, because of their "rescue" from the "trustees" by Gross, this really rather remark-able group has always prided itself on its loyalty to and reverence for the hierarchy. But how to imple-ment that loyalty whe, n the hier-archy charges one with "restoring the founder's charism"? In this case, what are they to do with Albrecht, with the trustees, with years of schismatic and extremely odd cultic spirituality, with the deposing of Wilhelmina, and with the clearly subordinate status that "in gratitude" the SSMOs were expected to tolerate in the Portland Archdiocese for most of the yea.rs of their existence? In this paper I have offered reasons why emphasis on the founder's charism--which has characterized so much of post- Vatican II religious renewal--deserves reexamination regarding its relevance and utility to the histories (and subsequent revitaliza-tions) of many religious congregations. Clearly, in many cases it is not something that can be easily identified, and, in some cases where it can be, that very recognition leads to problems of a dif-ferent sort. I could have discussed other issues as well: that certain congregations owe their origins to groups rather than to individ-uals, that emphasis on "formal" founders (founders who have offi-cial canonical recognition from the [male] prelates charged with 9rid "verifying" the "authenticity" of a congregation, and many of Review for Religiotts whom, for women's congregations, have erroneously been identi-fied as men) tends to obscure the cumulative and ongoing respon-sibilities that all community members have for their collective spirituality, and that inappropriate reliance for spiritual grounding upon "a" founder and her or his significance can lead to a spiritu-ality that is static or reactionary. All of these matters deserve explo-ration; unfortunately, constraints of space in the present circumstances prevent their serious consideration here. What I do offer for present consideration is an alternative approach to "charism" that may prove of value to communities that recognize some of their own histories in what I have been able to include in this essay. It is developed most fully, perhaps, in a 1989 article in Review for Religious by Bernard Lee SM.2° Lee begins with a clear assertion: The "recovery of charism" may be one of the most unsup-portable and unnecessary burdens a religious institution has ever been asked to bear, because it cannot be done. Charism is not a property. It is not a possession. It is not transfer-able, not transmittable, and not controllable. Charism is a deeply historicized social phenomenon. It cannot be dupli-cated in any other time or place. Charism has never been a movable feast. (p. 124) Instead, Lee suggests the notion of "deep story" as an alter-native to the emphasis on charism. He defines this as a category of interpretation that comes out of structuralism, which is a method for interpreting group identity. It pre-supposes that group identity is rooted in a narrative structure, that is, in recurring patterns of relationships and social activ-ities. The narrative structure of any complex and interesting group, however, is extremely elusive because it is instinctual and unconscious even more than it is deliberate and self-conscious . Deep stories are exhibited in rituals that cel-ebrate them (for example, rituals of profession), in special words and phrases that belong especially to them. Stephen Crites says that all of these things are elusive expressions of deep stories (he calls them sacred stories) "that cannot fully be told, because they live, so to speak, in the arms and legs and bellies of the celebrants. These stories lie too deep in the consciousness of a people to be directly told: they form con-sciousness rather than being among the objects of which it is directly aware." (p. 126)z' What Lee intends to suggest by all this, I think, is the con-tinuous and cumulative process of a community's identity forma- Thompson ¯ Charism or Deep Story? tion--its spiritual nature (my term), its history--which, of course, in sacred time and space, encompasses the present and future as much as the past. Thus, to turn to Lee once again, "the founder's or foundress's gift is not a community's charism. The real found-ing gift is a narrative structure that supported and reflected a charismatic event in the foundation's birth, and may do so again" (p. 129). But, as I understand this, it cannot remain static; instead, a "community of memory"--while "creatively rooted" in, or faith-ful to, its deep story--must always be on its way to the realization of a new charismatically gifted reality, one in which all members must participate and assume responsibility. I believe that the notion of deep story--as a paradigm--can help all of us cope with ongoing foundings and refoundings in religious life. Seen as participants in deep story, Wilhelmina Bleily, Charles Albrecht, and William Gross, Theresa Maxis Duchemin and Mary Joseph Walker and Edward Joos, Mary Felicia Jaskulski and Mary Boleslaus Rybicki, Margaret Anna Cusack, Theresia Bonzel, and Clara Pfaender, countless Benedictines, and tens of thousands of others, living and dead, can all find space and be "at home'--not comfortably, perhaps, or e~sily, but the Christian story, the deep story, is never easy or comfortable. It is, however, real, as real as the ongoing spiritual "gift" (dare I, after all this, say "charism"?) that has called so many over the centuries to fol-low the path of religious life. Notes ~ This essay was presented originally at the 1998 History of Women Religious Conference in Chicago. Though not every point is supported by refei'ences, this essay rests upon my decade-long research into the history of American women religious, including work in the archives of about seventy-five congregations and familiarity with virtually all the published materials on this subject, including historical and biographical works on over three hundred individual communities. On the subject of charism, I read all Vatican documents dealing with religious life, as well as approximately three dozen articles directly or indirectly on this sub-ject that have appeared in Review for Religious (U.S.A.) and Religious Life Review (Ireland). Many of the incidents and ideas recounted here are developed more fully in some of my previous publications; see, in par-ticular, "Discovering Foremothers: Sisters; Society, and the American Catholic Experience," U.S. Catholic Historian 5 (Summer/Autumn 1986): 273-290; "To Serve the People of God: Nineteenth-Century Sisters and the Creation of an American Catholic Religious Life," Cushwa Center Working Papers, Series 18, no. 2 (1986); "Women and American Review for Religious Catholicism, 1789-1989," in Perspectives on the Catholic Church in America, 1789-1989, ed. Virgina Geiger and Stephen Vicchio (Westminster, Maryland: Christian Classics, 1989), pp. 123-142; "Sisterhood and Power: Class, Culture, and Ethnicity in the American Convent," Colby Library Quarterly 25 (1989): 149-175; "Women, Feminism, and the New Religious History: Catholic Sisters as a Case Study," in Belief and Behavior: Essays in the New Religious History, ed. Philip VanderMeer and Robert Swierenga (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1991), pp. 136-163;."Cultural Conundrum: Sisters, Ethnicity, and the Adaptation of American Catholicism," Mid-America 74 (1992): 205-230; "The Validation of Sisterhood: Canonical Status and Liberation in the History of American Nuns," in A Leaf of the Great Tree of God: Essays in Honor of Ritamary Bradley SFCC, ed. Margot H. King (Toronto: Peregrina Publishing Co., 1994), pp. 38-78; and "Concentric Circles of Sisterhood," in Building Sisterhood: A Feminist History of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997), pp. 1-21. For their insights into this subject, I offer my thanks to Ritamary Bradley SFCC, Thomas J. Costello, Barbara Garland SC, James Hennesey SJ, Mary Ann Hinsdale IHM, Elizabeth A. West ICM, and many of the participants in the Sister-L internet discussion group 2 In this, SCRIS reiterates a point made in a document it issued five years earlier, Mutuae relationes: "Bishops, in union with the Roman pon-tiff, receive from Christ the head the duty (see LG §21) of discerning gifts and competencies, of coordinating multiple energies, and of guid-ing the entire people in living in the world as a sign and instrument of salvation. They, therefore, are also entrusted with the duty of caring for religious chariSms" (§9); and "It is .the duty of bishops as authentic teach-ers and guides of perfection for all the members of the diocese (see CD §§12; 15; 35, 2; and LG §§25, 45) to be the guardians likewise of fidelity to the religious vocation in the spirit of each institute . Bishops, along with their clergy, should be. firm guardians of the specific character of each religious family both in the spiritual and in the apostolic field" (§28). These passages, as well as that from EssentialElements (§41), raise some serious questions about the autonomy and integrity of religious charisms, since the implication is that they cannot be presumed to exist "authentically" until those in (external) hierarchical authority say they exist. Certainly, this is a matter deserving of substantial Consideration; but, unfoi'tunately, that is outside the scope of this paper. 3 Wilfrid Harrington, "Charism," in A New Dictionary of Theology, ed. Joseph A. Komonchak et al. (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1987), p. 180; The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism, ed. Richard E McBrien (HarperSanFrancisco, 1989), pp. 299-300. 4 These figures, as well as information included in Table 1, are derived from a detailed listing of all Catholic women's apostolic communities that I have located to date that existed in the United States between 1727 and 1917. Included in this list are com.munities which, for most or all of their existence, engaged in some form of active ministry. Thus, for May-June 1999 247 24S Thompson ¯ Charism or Deep Story? instance, contemplative Benedictines are omitted, as are purely contem-plative Visitation monasteries. In compiling these data, principal sources were: Elinor Tong Dehey, Religious Orders of Women in the United States, rev. ed. (Hammond, Indiana, 1930); Joan M. Lexau, Convent Life: Roman Catholic Religious Orders for Women in North America (New York, 1964), pp. 209-387 (Index of Orders); and Evangeline Thomas, Women Religious History Sources: A Guide to Repositories in the United States (New York, 1983), pp. 169-176 (Table of U.S. Founding Dates). Some information came from other sources, which are identified on the comprehensive list in my possession. s In that respect, they bear a similarity to the rest of the 149 U.S. con-gregations that have more individualized origins and have "founders" that they share, if at all, with only a handful of others. I shall return a bit later to the question of charism as it affects them. 6 All eight of the first indigenous communities of women studied by Barbara Misner in her landmark work, "Highly Respectable and Accomplished Ladies": Catholic Women Religious in America, 1790-18Y0 (New York: Garland, 1988), devoted most or all of their early ministerial energies to teaching. So did the vast majority of foundations initiated from abroad-- including the first in what is now the United States, the New Orleans Ursulines (founded in 1727). By 1884 the U.S. bishops, gathered at the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore and extremely concerned about "leak-age" from the faith, paid tribute to the success of these pioneers (and to their belief that the education of youth was the best way to keep people within the church) by their declaration that every parish in the country should establish at least one school within the next two years. That, in turn, increased the demand for religious teachers (the overwhelming majority of them women, and sisters), just as the "new immigration" (c. 1880-1917) from heavily Catholic eastern and southern Europe was get-ting underway. See also Gerald Shaughnessy, Has the Immigrant Kept the Faith? (New York: Macmillan, 1925); "The Pastoral Letter of 1884," in The National Pastorals of the American Hierarchy (1792-1919), ed. Peter Guilday (Washington, D.C.: National Catholic Welfare Council, 1923), pp. 280-282; Thompson, "Women and American Catholicism," p. 125. 7 This Guide (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1964) appeared in six editions, the first in 1952 and the last in 1966. The 1964 edition was selected for use here because it appeared only one year before Perfectae caritatis called upon religious to renew themselves "in the spirit of their founders," thereby initiating the whole postconciliar emphasis on "charism." It should be noted that McCarthy acquired his information from the communities; therefore, these are the founding stories that the sisters themselves had identified and transmit-ted to him for inclusion. s I have written extensively elsewhere about the fact that many of these stories bear little or no resemblance to reality. That is, communi-ties which traditionally cited clerics as founders have, since Vatican II, in quite a number of cases, identified and reclaimed women as their prin- Review for Religious cipal initiators. Nevertheless, we cannot dismiss the significance of these founding stories (often recounted and thereby reinforced for several gen-erations) either. Whether or not men actually took the principal initia-tive in founding particular communities, it did affect the self-understandings of hundreds of sisters who were taught, and who believed, that the men had done so. 9 William Humphrey SJ, Elements of Religious Life, 2nd ed. (London: Thomas Baker, 1903), p. 164. 10 p. Lothar Hardick OFM, He Leads, I Follow: The Life of Mother Maria Theresia Bonzel, Foundress of the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration, trans. Sisters M. Honora Hau and M. Clarahilda Fischer (Colorado Springs, I971), pp. 23, 30-31, 185-186. Ironically, perhaps, Pfaender later separated and founded her own religious congregation, which also was Franciscan (known in the U.S. as the Wheaton [Illinois] Franciscans): M. Brunilde Probst, The Burning Seak Mother Mary Clara Pfaender, 1827- 1882 (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1960). n The founding of the community is recounted in great detail in Vol. 1 of Josephine Marie Peplinski SSJ-TOSF, A Fitting Response: The History of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Third Order of St. Francis (South Bend, Indiana: priv. pub., 1982, 1992); material here is taken specifically from Vol. 2, pp. ix, 49-50, 239 (italics in the original). Jaskulski was superior general for 1902-1908, 1918-1928, 1940-1942 (when she died); Rybicki was superior general for 1908-1918. Both were perpetually in leader-ship, either as head of the congregation or on its council, from its foun-dation until their deaths (Ryb!cki died in 1926); their lives, spiritualities, and contrasting administrations are described meticulously in chapters 1, 4, and 5 of Vol. 2. I also have written about the SSJ-TOSF story; see esp. "Sisterhood and Power" and "Cultural Conundrum" (see note 1). 12Judith Sutera OSB, True Daughters: Monastic Identity and American Benedictine Women's History (Atchison: priv. pub., 1987); M. Incarnata Girgen, Behind the Beginnings (St. Joseph, Minnesota: priv. pub., 1981); Ephrem Hollermann, The Reshaping of a Tradition: American Benedictine Women, 1852-1881 (Vv'inona: St. Mary's Press, 1994). ~3 Sutera, True Daughters, esp. chaps. 4-5 and pp. 38, 42, 53-56. 14 McCarthy, 1964 Guide, pp. 195-197. ,s Dorothy A. Vidulich, Peace Pays a Price: A Study of Margaret Anna Cusack, the Nun ofKenmare, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C., priv. pub., 1990; orig. 1975); see also Irene Ffrench Edgar, Margaret Anna Cusack (Dublin: Women's Press, 1979); Margaret Anna Cusack, The Nun of Kenmare: An Autobiography (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1891). 16 The Monroe IHM story is told in fascinating detail throughout Building Sisterhood (see note 1, above); see, in particular, Marita-Constance Supan IHM, "Dangerous Memory: Mother M. Theresa Maxis Duchemin and the Michigan Congregation of the Sisters, IHM," pp. 31-67; Suzanne Fleming IHM, "She Who Remained: Mother Mary Joseph Walker and the 'Refounding' of the IHM Congregation," pp. 69-92; and Thompson, May-Jutte 1999 Thompson ¯ Cbarinn or Deep Story? "Concentric Circles," esp. pp. 5-8, and "Part l:The Context," pp. 25-28. L7 Fleming, "She Who Remained," p. 91; Margaret Brennan IHM, "'No Two Exactly Alike': IHM Spirituality," in Building Sisterhood, pp. 95-109; see also Rosalita Kelly IHM, No Greater Service: The History of the Congregation of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Monroe: priv. pub., 1948), esp. p. 132. L8 McCarthy, 1964 Guide, p. 325. ~9 The SSMO story is told with honesty in Wilfred P. Schoenberg SJ, These Valiant Women: History of the Sisters of St. Mary of Oregon, 1886- 1986 (Portland: priv. pub., 1986)~ I also have read Wilhelmina's diary in the SSMO archives, Beaverton, Oregon. Three of the original members of the Ohio group left it during the days in Wisconsin and became found-ing members in 1869 (one of them first superior when the group was of officially established) of the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity in Manitowoc; see M, Teresita Kit~:ell OSF, Refining His Silver: Pioneer Days of the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, 1866- 1911 (Manitowoc: priv. pub., 1979). This, among other things, serves to document the length of time that the: schismatic "cult" was in existence before the SSMO's "founding" in 1886. 20 Bernard Lee SM, "A Socio-Historical Theology of Charism," Review for Religious 48, no. 1 (1989): 124-135; see also Doris Gottemoeller RSM, "Befriending the Wind," Review for Religious 53, no. 6 (1994): esp. p. 811. n See also Stephen Crites, "The Narrative Quality of Experience," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 39 (1971). Open Wounds Be bold, twin brother. Probe the wounds doubt demands to see. The gash is but entrance to his heart. Pry it wide to penetrate the core. Review for Religious Demand and desire, too, are twins that seek to let his hallowed, hollow hands transform old hurts to quiet awe. , ~Eugene Cartier ELIZABETH McDONOUGH The Need for Self-Criticism: Affirmative Comments I n the United States the precipitous decline in numbers of postolic women religious since Vatican Council II will surely have far-reaching consequences for all segments of the church as the third millennium begins. Church-related educational and healthcare institutions will probably continue to be transferred to nonecclesial and sometimes for-profit auspices, and many Catholics may grow up unaware that apostolic congregations of women reli-gious exist as ways of life that could have appealed to them. ~ Recently, in commenting on the years of renewal in religious life since Vatican II, Sister Doris Gottemoeller RSM noted that "for the most part we have not identified and reflected on the learnings" from this experience and that "critical reflection on our present reality" has been lacking.1 She is currently president of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, is a recent past president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), was a participant in the 1994 Synod on Consecrated Life, and is one of the original members of the Catholic Common Ground Initiative. Her comments may represent a pivotal change in perspective by someone in an influential leadership position. And, since critical self-appraisal has been neither prevalent nor popular among American women religious since Vatican II, her comments may also represent a significant change at this time. Elizabeth McDonough OP has written the Canonical Counsel column in this journal since our issue of July-August 1990 and has contributed several other articles as well. Her address is P.O. Box 29260; Washington, D.C. 20017. ,~'h~y-~une 1999 McDonougb * The Need for Self-Criticism Though voices of criticism have consistently been raised about the postconciliar renewal efforts of religious life--by members of the hierarchy, by diocesan and religious clergy, by lay people, and by sisters themselves--critical reflection from without or from within has frequently been openly excluded Or quietly ignored in many, and perhaps most, women's apostolic communities. Over the years, members of women's religious communities have, in both speech and writing, lodged various objections to the general direction the path of postconciliar change was taking, a path that people now see as leading to pos-sible demise. The objections made over the years concerned, among other matters, the tendency towards having women religious governed by groups or by intermediate administrative personnel rather than by specific individuals elected to particular offices; the steady move-ment towards (so-called) total-participation chapters, which fre-quently exclude actual participation for many sisters; the general abandonment of easily recognizable identity symbols, along with the failure to maintain various community practices that many found meaningful; the increased use of open placement regarding sisters' employment, with the concomitant results of expanded apostolic diversity, an inability of congregations to make or meet institutional commitments, and the lessening of opportunities for community living. But in many women's congregations such objec-tions have not been well received by leadership or by segments of the membership. Moreover, although explicit internal objections regarding prevalent renewal patterns seem to have diminished over the years and to be somewhat rare now, it seems that members who still wish to embrace a renewed but traditional form of religious life (and who may be in their sixties, seventies, or even eighties) now channel their efforts elsewhere because of their experience of func-tional or systematic exclusion from effecting changes in internal governance. Many now direct their energies to living the remain-ing years of their vowed life by witnessing simply to the values they have consistently embraced but felt circumstantially unable to practice during much of the course of renewal. That is, they now consciously seek opportunities to live in common, to share com-munity prayer, and to minister in an apostolate traditionally related to their charism. Meanwhile, younger members--that is, mem-bers mostly under fifty--have initiated regular intra- and inter- Review for Religious congregational gatherings and networking in search of mutual sup-port and deeper religious meaning. Regarding various community renewal policies and proce-dures, then, numbers of community members have voiced explicit criticism--and by their practice have made some implicit criticism unmistakably clear too. Beyond this criticism arising from within apostolic communities of women religious, critical assessments have come also from people outside these communities. These assess-ments have been met with a similar pattern of rejection. Comments that even border on being critical have been categorically discountenanced as arising variously from arrogant, intemperate, shallow, uninformed, traditionalist, or ignorant sources. Criticism from the hierarchy and diocesan clergy seems often to have been excluded because they are regarded as hopelessly embedded in patriarchy. Criticism from religious priests seems to have been judged unacceptable because they are con-sidered to be unduly influenced by their experience of clerical advantage. And criticism from lay people seems to have been readily rejected because many of them are viewed as harboring unrealistic expectations of a lifestyle in which they do not share. Indeed, a pattern of negative reaction to critical assessmentsof what has happened since Vatican II is evident in responses to a recent article concerning possible causes for the current dearth of religious vocations in some communi-ties) It often appears that only certain internal, ostensibly self-perpetuating authorities or select special-interest groups are judged as adequately expressing the renewa! process among women reli-gious. Any suggestion from any source that any viable religious life in the future might diverge from the direction envisioned by the prevailing progressive model seems to be all too readily con-sidered as patently reactionary, as categorically negative, as arro-gantly uninformed, as judgmentally ignoring women's unique lived Any suggestion from any source that any viable religious life in the future might diverge from the direction envisioned by the prevailing progressive model seems to be all too readily considered as patently reactionary. ;'~,lay-JuJle 1999 254 McDonough ¯ The Need for Self-Criticism experience, as unfairly critical, or as an emotionally immature attachment to a former way of life) Furthermore, as postconciliar renewal has continued, it is not only critical observations that have been shunned .by women reli-gious in this country. Significant research data and pointed rec-ommendations from comprehensi'be sociological studies have also been embraced only selectively and implemented only sporadi-cally. Results from the ongoing, multifaceted, and controversial "Sisters' Survey"--as formulated and conducted under the direc-tion of sociologist Marie Augusta Neal SNDdeN--were systemat-ically distributed to participating congregations, published in several books~ and regularly reported at national meetings of major superiors from 1967 through the late 1980s. In stark contrast, amazingly little attention has been given to the more recent findings of psychologists David Nygren CM and Miriam Ukeritis CgJ. These researchers surprised participants at a 1992 Chicago workshop when, in presenting data from their study on the Future of Religious Orders in the United States (abbreviated as FORUS), they announced that many religious communities in this country had only a "ten-year window" in which to alter the present course of decline if they wished to perdure many years into the third millennium. The conferences of major superiors (CMSM and LCWR) were directly involved in the planning and execution of the FORUS study, which rendered some startling results about reli-gious in the United States. Included in these discoveries were. a lack of role clarity among religious (especially in apostolic groups of women), a high degree of cultural assimilation by religious, a general ministerial invisibility of religious, a relative dearth of effec-tive leadership in most religious communities, an apparently less-ened inclination to sacrifice among religious, and a widespread loss of institutional commitments by religious congregations.4 More than half a decade has passed since Nygren and Ukeritis projected that there was only a "ten-year window" of opportunity for the viability of religious institutes in America. During this time the FORUS findings seem to have gone largely unheeded or to have been relegated to convenient oblivion. Could it be that this study was greeted with a less than enthusiastic response precisely because its findings were unpopular among the group being assessed? For, indeed, the FORUS results did not shower unbounded accolades on the postconciliar transformation of reli-gious life in America; did not unquestioningly advocate contin- Review for Religious ued pursuit of the progressive model of renewal, and did not offer unrestrained optimism for the future prospects of religious insti-tutes. Or could it be that the FORUS findings, perceived as being all too accurate, were simply too painful to accept and conse-quently were met with at least unconscious denial at individual and collective levels in most congregations, particularly those of women religious? Over the years, religious in several areas of expertise have also sounded calls for critical reassessment of current practices in light of the manifest patterns of continuing decline in religious institutes. These calls, too, seem largely unheeded. The historical and sociological analyses of Raymond Fitz SM and Lawrence Cada SM, which appeared in the mid 1970s, got little attention after several months of popular discussion. Their work said quite clearly that probably only a small fraction of the then extant communi-ties would successfully negotiate post- Vatican renewal efforts,s Might the brief notice that Fitz and Cada's anal-yses received.be due, at least in part, to their intimation that religious con-gregations over the centuries have had identifiable lifespans, that many con-gregations did not last long after a per-vasive experience of absolute doubt regarding purpose, and that this seemed to be precisely the situa-tion at that time for thousands of religious in America? In 1983 CARA (Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate) in Washington, D.C., published a translation of the 1972 land-mark monograph of Raymond Hostie SJ, Vie et mort des ordres religieux, on which the Fitz and Cada material was directly based.6 The introduction to this booklet, by historian Dolores Liptak RSM, explains its significance, its application to ~enewal among American religious and specifically women religious. But this, too, appears to have received only scant attention within women's communities in the United States. All through the early 1990s, Eleace King IHM, of CAR& pub-lished data about--and reasons for--the steady decline in voca- Religious in several areas of expertise have also sounded calls for critical reassessment of current practices in light of the manifest patterns of continuing decline in religious institutes. 255 May-,]une 1999 McDonougb * The Need for Self-Criticism tions to progressively oriented communities along with parallel data about the constant flow of vocations to traditional groups.7 Little note, however, has been taken of these results. At the beginning of this decade, David O'Connor ST offered a balanced and readable summary of the various cultura!, eccle-sial, theological, and ideological shifts that may be contributing to the (possible) disappearance of many religious institutes in this country; but his work is rarely cited or even referenced in reli-gious- life circles.8 In 1991 I myself published what the editor of America magazine referred to as a "trenchant critique" of the then prevailing trends in religious life, while the editor of First Things described it as "a first-rate analysis of what has gone awry in the many worlds of American religion."9 This analysis and critique received an overwhelming positive response from members of reli-gious communities around the world, but it was simultaneously greeted with resounding silence from those in leadership. Albert DiIanni SM has offered thoughtful considerations based on his experience of the renewal of religious life as it currently relates to religion, to modernity, to modern psychology, to com-munity, to decreasing vocations, and to certain laicizing trends in the post-Vatican II era; but his observations have been met with either studied unconcern or strident rejectionJ° And little heed has been paid to the recent, assessment of sociologist Patricia Wittberg SC that the future of most religious communities is severely limited--if not rather bleak---precisely because a coinci-dence of internal and external factors has resulted in a collapse of their ideological framework and a lessening or elimination of their functional supports.~ Regarding postconciliar religiousqife trans-formation, are only laudatory comments able to be perceived as having any meaning and value for communities of women reli-gious in America today? In many of these communities, a pattern of dismissing with studied disdain or even open derision any factual data that leads to disconcerting conclusions about their lives has been ill too evi-dent in the response to Ann Carey's recent book, a book (widely conceded to be well documented) that details decisions and actions taken in the decades since Vatican II within the conference of major superiors for women's institutes.~2 Note, hbwever, that Lora Ann Quifionez CDP and Mary Daniel Turner SNDdeN published a book earlier in the decade that traced precisely the same era of transi-tion and detailed most of the same topics, but from a different Review for Religious perspective and with less specific documentation.13 In contrast to Carey's work, the Quifionez-Turner book was well received and has been highly touted as an accurate portrait of renewal. Yet both books present renewal as deliberately intended and carefully planned. Both books address the influence of cultural context, the impa6t of the Sisters' Survey, the effect of feminist initiatives, the disruption from internal conference conflicts, the consequences of hierarchic confrontations, and other such topics in reference to postconciliar religious life. Both books name those who were instrumental in the renewal process at national and local levels in this country. And the authors of both books offer assessments of what has actually occurred. Could the disparity in recep-tion of these two works be due at least in part to the fact that the Quifionez- Turner book evaluates these happen-ings positively while the Carey book views the results as more than slightly wide of the mark envisioned by Perfectae caritatis? To be sure, journalist Carey is a laywoman who judged the evidence she amassed as anything but complimen-tary to the renewal process and those who directed it, and she called for critical reassessment of renewal results. On the other hand, Quifionez and Turner are women religious--both former executive secretaries of LCWR and both instrumental in effecting the postconciliar transformation--who judged the results thus far as entirely positive and urged further development along the same course of renewal. It is a truism of historical scholarship that those attempting an analysis of a set of events need a realistic broad familiarity with the historical context. But does this explain why the perspective on religious-life renewal presented by those who guided it should so readily be judged more accurate or more objective or more accept-able than the perspective of someone who has carefully pored over official documentation and verifiable data and has her own lived familiarity with post-Vatican II renewal? Could it be that negative assessments of religious-life renewal from whatever source are Could it be that negative assessments of religious-life renewal from whatever source are simply unacceptable to women religiousm for whatever reason ? 257 May-June 1999 McDonougb ¯ The Need for Self-Criticism t_g_ 1 simply unacceptable to women religious--for whatever reason? For an explanation of the present situation of decline and demise, are many women religious simply incapable of looking further than a speculatively fascinating and vaguely consoling convergence of sociological circumstances that impact religious life fr0m outside? Is none of the decline and demise of the past thirty-three years attributable to decisions made and actions taken within religious communities? Have dispersed ministries and secular attire (with lapel pins) and apartment living had absolutely no detrimental effect, whether expected or not? Are women religious able to look at none of the above? And, if so, why? Though the suggestion made ten years ago by sociologist Wittberg that the behavioral patterns among congregations of women religious might "actually be dysfunctional for organiza-tional survival" appears to have been effectively ignored, it may well identify a pertinent reality that needs to be at least acknowl-edged- if not directly addressed--by religious congregations of women today.14 And perhaps women religious would also do well to attend to the warning, offered in 1988 by psychologist Donna Markham OP, that the positive perception they had of themselves did not match the perception of others--something that did not bode well for vocations.~s Indeed, with rare exception, vocations have declined steadily throughout the decade since Markham's observation, and in most communities of apostolic women reli-gious the median age has gradually increased. " True enough, religious life is not merely a functional institu-tion, and it certainly ought not to be reduced to a numbers game. But is it unrealistic to suggest that a minimal number of members is needed for a community to perdure, to serve effectively, and to hand on a religious tradition? And, when women religious look over their shoulder for younger women walking in their footsteps and see no one there, is it really unfair to surmise that what they have been fashioning since Vatican II may not be a viable form of future religious life after all? Or, again, when congregations begin realistically to project that by the year 2010 fewer than ten percent of their members will be under sixty-five years of age, is it unduly critical to suggest that someone somewhere somehow may have made some decision(s) in the three-plus decades of post-Vatican II renewal that ought seriously to be reassessed and perhaps even altered? I think not. Review for Religious Indeed, on the part of women religious in America (and per-haps elsewhere in the world, too), some possibly difficult but gen-uinely constructive self-criticism and some corrective change of course in various aspects of postconciliar renewal ought to be hon-esdy welcomed.'6 And both may be long overdue, because the real-ity at issue has import far beyond the ever-dwindling numbers of ever-aging apostolic women religious themselves. Notes 1 Doris Gottemoeller, "Religious Life: Where Does It Fit in Today's Church?" in Review for Religious 57, no. 3 (March-April 1998): 146- 160. 2 Albert Dilanni, "A View of Religious Vocations," America 178, no. 6 (28 February 1998): 8-12. 3 See various responses to the Dilanni article (note 2 above) among letters to the editor in the March and early April issues of 1998. 4 David J. Nygren and Miriam D. Ukeritis, "The Religious Life Futures Project: Executive Summary," Review for Religious 52, no. 1 (January-February 1993): 6-55; also. Origins 22, no. 15 (24 September 1992): 257-272. s Lawrence Cada and Raymond Fitz, "The Recovery of Religious Life," Review for Religious 34, no. 5 (September-October 1975): 690-718. 6 Raymond Hostie, /,qe et mort des ordres religieux (Paris: Descl~e, 1972), translated for a limited English edition as The Life and Death of Religious Orders (Washington, D.C.: CAP, A, 1983). 7 See the CARA Formation Directory for Men and Women Religious (Washington, D.C.: CARA) as edited by Eleace King IHM for the years 1991, 1992, 1993, and 1994-1995. s David O'Connor, Witness and Service (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), pp. 145-162. 9 See, respectively, Elizabeth McDonough, "Beyond the Liberal Model: Quo Vadis?" Review for Religious 50, no. 3 (March-April 1991): 178-188; editorial in America for 13 July 1991; and "The Public Square," First Things, no. 17 (November 1991). ,0 Albert DiIanni, Religious Life as Adventure (New York: Alba House, 1994). " Patricia Wittberg, The Rise and Fall of Catholic Religious Orders (New York: SUNY Press, 1994). ,2 Ann Carey, Sisters in Crisis (Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor, 1997). ,3 Lora Ann Quifionez and Mary Daniel Turner, The Transformation of American Catholic Sisters (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992). ,4 Patricia Wittberg, "Outward Orientation in Declining 259 May-June 1999 McDonough ¯ The Need for Self-Criticism Organizations: Reflections on LCWR Documents," in Claiming Our Truth, ed. Nadine Foley (Washington, D.C.: LCWR, 1988), pp, 91-105. 15 Donna Markham, "The Decline of Vocations in the United States: Reflections from a Psychological Perspective," New Catholic World 231, no. 1381 (January-February 1988): 13-17. 16 See, for example, the recent comments of Doris Gottemoeller, "Religious Life in Crisis," Origins 28, no. 36 (25 February 1999): 634- 638. The Treasure Long ago a rainbow arc'd my storm-tossed sky, and the pot of gold I found then is still bottomless. Since that serendipitous moment, faith has claimed its reality. I see with clarity--over the clouds, beyond the rains--that joy and pain alike qualify to mine the treasure, provide the coin to buy the Kingdom, here on the green earth for a time, and there in the meadows of Eternity. Anna Marie Mack SSJ Review for Religious LARRY N. LORENZONI The Annuario Pontificio The Vatican's "Pontifical Yearbook" and a Recent Editorial Decision Fourteen years ago the Religious Life Review, edited in Dublin by Father Austin Flannery OP, published an arti-cle with the catchy title "The Single Sex Church of the Annuario Pontificio." Its opening paragraphs noted the almost total absence of women's names in the church's official directory. The same article was later reprinted in Sisters Today with a milder title: "The Annuario Pontificio and Women in the Church." The Annuario Pontificio is the 4.25"-by-6.5" 2500- page yearbook of the Roman Catholic Church. Bound in red cloth with a golden papal coat of arms on the cover, it contains annually updated information about the College of Cardinals, all archbishops and bishops (with basic facts about their respective dioceses), all prelates and abbots, the secretariat of state, the Roman tribunals, congregations, councils, and commissions, the Vatican Library, the church's worldwide diplomatic representa-tives (nuncios and pronuncios), all the ambassadors accredited to the Holy See, the administration of Vatican City, all officially approved religious orders of men and Larry N. Lorenzoni SDB, a Salesian priest, served in the late 1980s as director of the documentation, information, and press office of Caritas Internationalis in Rome. Currently director of development for his province, he may be addressed at Salesians of St. John Bosco; 1100 Franklin Street; San Francisco, California 94109. 1999 261 A former noteworthy feature of the Annuario was the almost total absence of females in its pages. 262 Lorenzoni ¯ Tlse Annuario Pontifido of women, academies, atheneums, pontifical universities (six: Gregoriana, Lateranense, Urbaniana, San Tommaso d'Aquino [Angelicum], Salesiana, and the new Santa Croce), a number of seminaries and colleges, and various other institutes and cultural organizations. The Annuario closes with a hundred pages of historical notes and six hundred pages of alphabetical lists: names of all the dio-ceses, prelatures~ and titular dioceses (in their Latin adjectival form, Latin noun form, and modern Roman-alphabet form) and the names and page references of some 25,000 persons. It is a fascinat-ing book. Of the 151 living cardinals listed in the 1997 Annuario (to cite a rather significant fact one can easily cull from its pages), 4 were created by Pope John xxIII, 31 by Paul vI, and 116 by Pope John Paul II. A former noteworthy feature of the Annuario--it used to distinguish it from virtually eve .ry other directory in the world--was the almost total absence of females in its pages. The alpha-betical list at the end of the directory was conse-quently 99.99 percent male. Historical, doctrinal, and traditional considerations are essential for a proper understanding of this situation. One page from the 1985 article (in RLR) found its way to the Vatican underground and quickly became the subject of some interesting conversa-tions during my four years (1986-1990) at Caritas Internationalis, the church's worldwide charity wing. In the penthouses of Palazzo San Callisto, where the Caritas offices are located (near Santa Maria in Trastevere), lived a number of active and retired cardinals (Roger Etchegaray, Bernardin Gantin, Paul Poupard, Ferdinando Antonelli, Francesco Carpino, and Francis Arinze). I came to know best Cardinal Francis Arinze, from Nigeria, the genial president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. Occasionally I see him mentioned among the papabili and featured as a speaker on Mother Angelica's EWTN television programs. He is keenly intelligent and friendly, a good listener, articulate and ever an opti-mist. Open to new ideas, he weighs carefully all arguments against the truths of the faith and then follows them courageously t6 their logical conclusions. I remember in particular one conversation I had with him at Review for Religious Palazzo San Callisto, a conversation occasioned by some para-graphs from that December 1985 article (of mine) in RLR, which some friend had shared with him. The paragraphs are these: One glaring lacuna [in the Annuario Pontificio] is hard to understand, and even harder to accept, because of the anger it is likely to provoke today when everyone is being increas-ingly sensitized against all kinds of discrimination. I am refer-ring to the omission of the names of the superiors general of women religious where the individual congregations are listed with the address of the generalate and current information as to the number of foundations and of professed members. .This anomaly came to my attention when I needed to check the spelling of the name of the new mother general of our Salesian sisters. I had just looked up the name of the superior general of the Fathers of Mercy (whose ad I had seen in The Wanderer), so I turned instinctively to the Annuario for the answer to my question. It was not as sim-ple as I thought. For every male congregation, the name of the superior general is invariably given (and, in 99 percent of the cases, also that of the procurator general). One learns, for instance, that the Very Rev. John O'Brien is the superior general of the Fathers of Mercy (an order founded in 1808), even though the order has only seven members worldwide. Fifty-four religious orders of men have less than I00 pro-fessed members, seven have 25 or fewer, but in each case the name of the general is prominently displayed. I was chagrined to discover that in the case of the orders and congregations of women one looks in vain in the Annuario for the names of the mothers general. Some 120 of those congregations have a membership of over 1000 sis-ters. In vain did I look for the name of the superior general of the Salesian sisters, even though the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, as they are officially known, have a worldwide membership of nearly 18,000. They are the sec-ond largest congregation of women in the church, after the 34,000 Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. Such a discriminatory omission tends to reinforce all the worst stereotypes one hears about the institutional church and its treatment of women, since it conveys a number of admittedly unintentional but nonetheless inescapable mes-sages: (1) Women are of little consequence in the church. (2) The father superior of ten men is more important than the mother superior of I0,000 women. (3) Names of females, no matter how important, need not be listed in the Annuario because the church does not discuss matters of consequence with them anyway. (4)Male religious superiors are routinely consulted, and hence it is necessary to have their names listed May-June 199.9 Lorenzoni ¯ The AnnuarioPontificio in the Annuario, but listing the flames of the superiors gen-eral of women does not serve any useful purpose since very rarely does one need to know who they are and even less deal or correspond with them. (5) Sisters are supposed to accept obediently and without too many questions whatever Holy Mother Church says. Unfortunately, in the thinking of many, Holy Mother Church is often equated with male power structure. No dissenting voice was heard from those who had joined our conversation. Both retired Cardinal Francesco Carpino (a man of rare nobility, who died 5 October 1993) and Cardinal Francis Arinze agreed that the Annuario should at long last join the mod-ern age and list the names of women religious superiors alongside those of their male counterparts. But Rome moves slowly. The 16 December 1994 issue of Commonweal carried this item under its Et Cetera rubric: Speaking in support of requests by women's religious orders for an end to discrimination by the church against women, Archbishop Maurice Couture of Quebec pointed to the 1993 Vatican Yearbook (Annuario Pontificio); it lists the names of the superiors general of all institutes of men, but none of the names of the superiors general of women (Origins, November 3). Good for the archbishop, but he's ten years late. Writing in Religious Life Review for November-December 1985, our correspondent Larry Lorenzoni SDB [Correspondence, November 18] recalled turning to the Annuario to find the name of the superior general of the Fathers of Mercy, an order founded in 1808 which has seven members worldwide. The name was there: the Very Rev. John O'Brien. He also looked for the name of the superior general of the Salesian sisters, the second largest congregation of women in the church: nearly 18,000 members. No name. Some of the mes-sages conveyed (Father Lorenzoni, a kind man, says they are "admittedly unintentional but nonetheless inescapable"): "Women are of little consequence in the church; the father superior of ten men is more important than the mother supe-rior of 10,000 women; there's no point in publishing the names of women superiors because who needs to know them." I have before me the 1997 edition of the Annuario Pontificio. I see with some personal satisfaction that each religious congrega-tion of women now routinely carries, as an additional entry, the name of the mother general. The change can safely be labeled "routine" since it started with the Annuario's 1996 edition. Review for Religious No doubt, some gentle nudging by a few highly placed mem-bers of the College of Cardinals, as well as by bishops convinced that the previous practice was clearly discriminatory, helped level the field. Word eventually reached the offices of the Vatican sec-retariat of state, on which the Annuario Pontificio depends, and suitable action followed with the publication of the 1996 edition. A recent phone call to the secretariat of state enabled me to reach Angela Zanetti, a most personable and knowlegeable lady who was for twenty-six years connected with the production of the Annuario. Her new supervisor, Monsignore Fermenti, intro-duced her to me as a "walking encyclopedia on the history of the Annuario Pontificio." Here are some interesting facts from our con-versation: ¯ The first list of male religious orders (Istituti Mascbili) appeared in the 1838 edition of the Annuario. ¯ The first list of female religious orders (Istituti Femminih) appeared 98 years later, in the 1940 edition, without the name of the mother general. ¯ The two lists continued to be published (Ordini Mascbili first, Ordini Femminili second) in the years following, each order of men shouting prominently the name of the general, each order of women lacking that particular information. * At last, in the 1996 edition, for the very first time, the information concerning each religious order of women included also the name of the mother general, as had previously been done for even the smallest reli-gious orders of men. I am reminded of what Pat Paulsen, the late tongue-in-cheek presidential candidatei once said with his usual aplomb: "No one should be denied equal rights because of the shape of their skin." Subs'criptions to Review for Religious can flow b~ ordered,or renewedoby FAX; and paid forby Ma~terCard ~o'r Visd. FA~ the order form inside the back cover, or cALL our o~c~ ~wi~ "th your credit card number: IF~: 31z~-977~7362 0, ~'HONE: 314-977-7363 1999 JOAN A. RANGE Women and Canon Law Cbanon law, as a support for the life of the community of elievers, that is, the church, has a history almost as old as the community itself. Over the centuries, its formulation has not been the work of women, a fact that is readily understandable. Women did not have the status nor society the liberality for that kind of contribution. Women were, however, a vital part of the church and society: in the church as members of the various ordines that supported the living community and in society as wives and mothers2 History witnesses to this fact and those roles. Women's lives, moreover, were guided by the protection, pre-scriptions, and sanctiohs of the church's law. In church courts of the ¯ Middle Ages, women were parties to suits brought against alleged violations and also were sued for alleged violations of others' rights. The activity of women in the world of canon law is well attested to in the church's history.2 But as members who formulated the law or who addressed the church's courts (defending others or doing advocate work for oth-ers) or judged cases (even as collegiate judges), all this women never did until this century. In this century women have performed all these functions in their own right as members of the church and as canon lawyers. The future is clear for their continued func-tioning to be even more vigorous. This rather astonishing fact needs consideration. Given the absence of women in all these roles before this century, how did this change come about? Joan A. Range ASC is associate professor in the Department of Theological Studies at Saint Loui~ University. Her address is Humanities Bui_lding; 3800 Lindell Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63108. Review for Relig4ous Women's Status in Canon Law ~ Before this century, as a rule women's status was that of persons limited before the law. Mostly, women were considered--as were minors and the mentally incompetent--unable in their own person and name to bring a case before the court. This reflected Roman law, from which much of canon law is derived. When, however, asso-ciations of women became moral persons with rights and duties in the law, they were able to bring cases to court, as history shows. Besides bringing cases to the church's tribunals when their rights were being infringed or violated, women were also sued by others if the petitioner felt that his own rights were being infringed or violated by women. This was often a matter of property rights. As time progressed it might also be a matter of marriage rights as well, especially when it concerned the legitimacy of children and their right to inherit. Other than these cases, however, women's presence in~ the laws themselves usually had to do with their status within the church and society, that is, as daughters, wives, moth-ers, widows, nuns, or women of ill repute. Beginning early in the church's history, the protection of wid-ows and orphans was a great concern since these groups were socially the most vulnerable. As time passed and Roman law found its way into the church's mentality, other laws concerning women were developed to protect the virgin from marriage if she resisted, from abduction and rape, and later as a member of a community of consecrated women) Most of the legislation had to do with the women as wives and mothers, however, and especially with their ability to bear children. Laws agains.t adultery, contraception, and abortion were the most prominent since they infringed upon the husband's potency, paternity, or virility.4 Apart from these matters, women as individual persons were not dealt with in the church's laws. The 1917 Code did not always treat women equally with men, as studies testify.5 The 1983 Code, in contrast, states that the "there exists among all the Christian faithful a true equality with regard to dignity and the activity whereby all cooperate in the building up of the Body of Christ in accord with each one's own condition and function.''6 The excep-tion to this is when the nature of the case clearly indicates other-wise, such as the laws having to do with ordination.7 Women began to engage themselves in the activities of the Canon Law Society of America (CLSA) since about the middle of this century. It is that story upon which we now focus. May-June 1999 ,267 Range * Women and Canon Law Women and the Canon Law Society of America The pivotal event for the growth in female membership in the CLSA was the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).8 Before that event there were clear hints that the status of women in the world and in the church needed to be addressed.9 The council documents, too, indicated those concerns,l° In the United States, women's professional involvement in canon law began in the mid 1960s. Clara Marie Henning, the first woman to become a member of CLSA, applied for membership in 1968. She was then a student in the School of Canon Law at the Catholic University of America, from which she later received the licentiate in canon law (JCL). Other women were members of the CLSA, but their reason for membership was their position as supe-riors of religious orders, not their status as canon lawyers. Even before Vatican II, beginning with Pope Pius XrlI, efforts had been made by the church to bring about a simplification and an updating within the various orders and congregations of women religious worldwide.~ This was a remote cause for interest in canonical matters and membership in the CLSA. After the documents of the council and the implementation decrees of Pope Paul vI had been issued, there was a need and desire to learn about canon law and its usefulness in the efforts of religious congregations toward adaptation and renewal. These efforts had a significant effect on the work during the 1970s toward formulating the new and revised Code. Initially, then, the impetus for women to become members of the CLSA was that congregations of women religious might derive more benefit from canon law. Another reason for women to begin studying canon law and to become members of the CLSA was an academic one. As Catholic universities opened graduate programs in theology for lay people, some women students became interested in pursuing degrees in canon law. This interest included both the relation of canon law to theology and the historical development of canon law. The membership records of the CLSA are limited in a number of ways. For many year~ the records were the responsibility of the coordinator and were not kept in a permanent office. It was only in 1980 that a full-time director and staff began to have an office (with a permanent place for records)at the Catholic University of America. The records up to 1979 were given to the Cushwa Center for .the Study of American Catholicism and are available there as archival records. The membership records are incom- Review for Religious plete, however, because they were not systematically kept, a not uncommon omission when an organization's importance is not understood in its early days22 Nevertheless, the records show a remarkable growth in female membership after the mid 1960s. In 1968 there were hardly five women members. In 1971 the first woman was elected to national office in the CLSA.13 This event witnessed to a movement within the society to include women as active members. In 1976 there were 38 women members; by 1984 there were 139. The 1990 directory lists almost 200 women members.~4 At' the time of the 1996 direc-tory, the female membership stood at 223 out of a total of 1557 members, or about 14 percent. The history of the growth of the membership of women in the CLSA is part of the growth of la~Yomember-ship. Already in1,37 the CLSA's committee on membership was concerned with appropriate criteria. The concern was not specif-ically about women, but about qualifications that would assure that interested persons, lay or clerical, would have knowledge about the science of canon law. Before this point a potential mem-ber was sponsored by a current member and his name given to the committee on membership for its approval before being voted on by all those gathered at the national convention. That this rather cumbersome way of enrolling new members needed to be revised was a common opinion at the time. Thomas J. Lynch,~5 chair of the committee on membership, wrote in a report to the board of governors that, in the proposed revision of the constitutions (1967), the CLSA will "rid our con-stitution of any unnecessary clericalism and will also insure that the active and voting membership of the society will be composed of persons whose professional qualifications give them a special com-petence in matters of renewal and revision of law." ,6 As executive secretary, after receiving increased correspon-dence from many interested parties, James Provost laid his con-cerns about qualifications for membership before the board of Initially, the impetus for women to become members of the CLSA was that congregations of women religious might derive more benefit from canon law. Mt{y-June 1999 Range ¯ l, Vomen and Canon Law governors.'7 In 1980 a constitutional amendment was finalized requiring a person to have a degree in canon law in order to be an active member. Others could be associate members, but without the right to vote at the conventions.~s In 1995 a survey was distributed to women members at the annual convention held in conjunction with the Canadian Canon Law Society in Montreal. Its purpose was to discover the experi-ence of women as members of the CLSA. One hundred three responses were returned, with seventeen women indicating asso-ciate membership, the rest active membership. The responses demonstrated a positive experience within the society; there were a few exceptions, but even they did not indicate major difficulties. One commented that the CLSA was "one of the best kept secrets of the American Church." A tone must have been set many years ago, another respondent speculated, to be inclusive of women.19 Although there is no documentation of a policy decision that ver-ifies that statement, the facts sifice 1968 attest to its reality. The inclusion of women on committees, their election to national posi-tions as officers and consultors, and their presentations at plenary sessions and seminars during regional and national conventions-- all this has been remarkable over the last thirty years. Already in 1971 a woman was a member of the religious-affairs committee; in 1972 a woman was on the legal-council committee as well.2° Twice women have been elected vice-president/presi-dent- elect and have assumed the full responsibility of that office. This office is a challenging one for its incumbent, whether male or female, and certainly for a nonordained female. In addition to chairing the board of governors, the president's responsibilities include communications with the hierarchy of the United States, with the various dicasteries of the Vatican, with the canon-law societies of other countries, and with the members of various dioce-san offices throughout the country. The leadership of the society is challenging internally also, since most of the members are still clerics, including bishops, archbi.shops, and cardinals. Besides the increased membership of women in the society and their activity within it, the agendas of the CLSA have been modified because of the interests of the women members and the" commitment of the leadership and membership to women's issues. Already in 1970, at the national convention in New Orleans, a resolution was passed that stated: "The Canon Law Society of America instructs the subcommittee of its task force on the revi- Review for Religious sion of the Code of Canon Law to study the canonical institutions concerning the dignity, freedom, rights, privileges, offices, and obligations of women in the church and to propose those changes necessary to ensure the equitable consideration of all persons regardless of sex by the law of the church.''2~ In 1973 the society cosponsored with the Adrian Dominican Sisters a meeting of canonists and theologians at their college, Siena Heights, to address the question of the ordination of women from a variety of per-spectives?~ In 1972 the board of governors established an ad hoc com-mittee on the status of women in the church; it became a regular committee in 1973.23 At the conven-tion of 1975, Margaret Brennan IHM presented a major address titled "Standing in Experience: A Reflection on the Status of Women in the church." In 1976 a symposium was held at Rosemont College in Pennsylvania on Women and Church Law; in view of the revision going on at the time, it studied how the law addresses women. It published a con-sensus paper, signed by the twenty-four participants, with sug-gestions concerning how the church in the United States might address some of the inequities from which women suffered.24 In 1987 the members of the committee on women raised the question of its future viability. Even though it regularly invited the society's membership to present it with significant issues, the committee had little business to deal with, This was the reason for the eventual elimination of this committee. Its concerns were taken up by a new committee on the laity in the church?5 From 1988 on, some members of the CLSA were involved with the canon-ical dimensions of the U.S. bishops' Letter on Women that was eventually published in 1990.26 A resolution was taken by the society in 1992 to study the question of the diaconate for women. In 1995 the report by the ad hoc committee, "The Canonical Implications of Ordaining Women to the Permanent Diaconate," was presented to the national con-vention and accepted by the membership.27 This document received a wide distribution to other professional societies and to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB). A resolution was taken by the society in 1992 to study the question of the diaconate for women. 271 May-.Tune 1999 Range ¯ Women and Canon Law With the promulgation of Pope John Paul II's apostolic let-ter Ordinatio sacerdotalis stating that the church has no authority to ordain women, the activity of the society on some of these issues perforce ceased, and no new initiatives on this issue have been forthcoming. Some study is being done on the question of the laity sharing in the power of jurisdiction, obviously an important issue, for .lay people function more and more in various offices in the church, It remains to be seen, however, if gender-specific issues will continue to inform the society's agenda. Participation in the annual conventions also reflects the change in the presence of women. In 1967 there were no women at the national convention. In 1968 the female participants were superi-ors of religious orders. In 1969-1970 some women religious were present as well as some major superiors.2s In 1971 there were 9 women registered at the convention in Atlanta, out of 224 partic-ipants. As more and more women begame members of the CLSA, more and more of them have attended both the regional and national conventions.29 In the women's responses to the question-naire mentioned above, they noted the quality of exchange at both regional and national conventions. They are a continuing educa-tional experience for the female membership, as they are for oth-ers who attend these meetings. 272 Women's Education in Canon Law It is clear that many of the women members of the CLSA are active members with degrees in canon law. The obtaining of these degrees is a completely novel achievement in the history of women and canon law. In North America there are two schools from which a woman can receive a degree in canon law: the Catholic University of American in Washington, D.C., and St. Paul University in Ottawa. Most U.S. women have chosen one of these two schools for their canonical education. Among the European schools, most women have chosen the Angelicum, which teaches courses in English, and a few the Gregorian, which until onl~ recently taught its courses in Latin. In 1990 John E. Lynch CSP published an interesting and infor-mative article about the history of the Department of Canon Law at the Catholic University of America, "Laying Down the (Canon) Law at Catholic University.m° The occasion for the article was the centenary of Catholic University. In it he remarked that in Review Jbr Religious 1959 women were enrolling in canon law in Rome.3' That had not yet occurred in North America and not at Catholic University, but it would occur in 1967. The first woman to enroll was Clara Marie Henning, a native of Germany. After that, the numbers of women students increased gradually and now have remained con-stant for some time. The first women students, except for Ms. Henning, were women religious.32 The topics of their theses and dissertations represented the concerns of women in the early 1970s, after the close of the council: religious formation, authority, the LCWR, the legal status of women, the pastoral nature of canon law.3~ Besides this continued interest in the concerns of women religious, later tides indicate an interest in the position of lay people in the church: for example, participation in the munus sanctificandi, and ministry and the layperson.34 Still later tides indicate a broadening of inter-est: for example, the relation of canon law to civil law, and the relation of bishops to diocesan church institutions. Licentiate (JCL) theses usually presaged what those who con-tinued on to the doctorate in canon law (JCD) would write their dis-sertations about. Many of the topics arose from the first draft of the soon-to-be-revised Code: lay employees, rights and obligations of Christian parents, tribunal personnel. Also, a number of theses compared the historic 1983 revision with the 1917 Code. When women first entered Catholic University's Department of Canon Law as students, it could be presumed that they would make a difference in the classroom. After the early wave (women religious, all but one), a number Of lay women as well (and men, too) entered the ranks of students. To assess this presumption of difference, I seized an opportunity to interview the faculty of the department in December 1996: Father James Provost (chair), Father John E. Lynch CSP, Father Thomas Green, Father Edward Pfnausch, Sister Rose McDermott ssJ, and Father John Beal.3s Their reflections on the difference women make are interesting and substantiate what I consider an exceedingly important dimen-sion of women's contribution to canon law, that is, women's human-izing effect. Every one of the faculty indicated that the presence of women made the conversation within the class richer; the questions they asked and their observations were different from the ques-tions of the traditional clerical students.36 At first the women stu-dents did not know some of the vocabulary (nor did entering laymen). One of the faculty recalls mentioning the title "vicar May-ffune 1999 273 Range ¯ Women and Canon Law forane," a term completely unfamiliar to the women. But, when this and other technical phrases were learned, the difficulty was sur-mounted. Women and men, according to ~he faculty members inter-viewed, are equally intelligent. A number of them indicated that women seem to work harder, perhaps to catch up with the clerics because of the unfamiliar discourse, perhaps because of a greater personal commitment to learning the field. By and large women are eager students and indicate an appreciation for the dedication of their ifistructors. They suffered from some rather mediocre teaching, but the men suffered from them equally with the women.37 No resentment toward women students precisely because of their gender, however, seems to have marred their educational experience, Women have been elected to leadership within the student body and have functioned well in those positions. They quickly initiated social events that, rich in student exchange, aided schol, arly interests along with providing amiable relaxation. The male students in those same positions of leadership had not been as cre-ative in these important social dimensions of student life. The mission of the faculty in this department derives from their conviction that canon law is g/tided by its theological and pastoral nature. This conviction permeates the curriculum and challenges the students to understand it as an ecclesial discipline, a sister to scriptural, systematic, moral, and church-history stud-ies and influenced by the conclusi6ns of those studies, even as canon law has an influence on them. This understanding of the nature of canon law informs the entire curriculum and therefore shapes the intellectual formation of the students for their future careers as canon lawyers. In my discussions with the faculty, the question arose about the influence of feminism on canon law. In general, the faculty agreed that the agenda of feminism, as various as it is, does not signifi-cantly influence either the students or the classes. Earlier on, given especially the newness of women to the field, the place of women in the 1917 Code, and the questions about women's place in the revised Code, women's'issues had more sig-nificance than they currently have. At that time (through the 1970s) some of the female students manifested some anger due to these issues. Today, however, the nature of law seems to move the direc-tion of the students' questions and concerns much more than gen-der issues do. The women students are not angry, nor are their Review for Religious instructors. Rather, they are typical students focused on complet-ing their studies and finding positions that fulfill their educational goals. The question of secure employment in the church, with its attendant concerns, is more of an issue with them, women and lay men alike, than gender issues. However, as justice issues, gender concerns remain for both instructors and students, now usually subsumed in the issues of the role of the layperson in the church. Women's Involvement in. Writing Canon Law Perhaps the most original activity that women have engaged in regarding canon law is the actual writing of legislation intended to be incorporated within the revised Code of Canon Law. Whether or not the canons made their way into the final text of the 1983 Code is not the point here. Rather, it is the activity itself, utterly newin the history of the church as far as I have been able to determine. How did this creative effort on the part of women begin? Sister M. Luke Tobin SL, president of the CMSW from 1964 to 1967, was invited in 1964 to be an official observer at the Vatican Council during the 1964 and 1965 sessions. This invitation itself indicated that the council fathers wanted the participation of women in the process of developing the church's self-understand-ing in the modern world?8 The law of the church, canon law, needed to express this new self-understanding ,as well. In the United States, women religious felt that their experience of their own lives as women religious was an important contribution towards an appropriately revised Code of Canon Law. This activ-ity would engage many of the members of the CMSW during the late 1960s and the 1970s. The board of CMSW began in 1965 to consider writing the regulations for ~governing the lives of women religious in the Code of Canon Law)9 It initiated a project for accomplishing this. Committees were formed in the several regions to write proposed canons dealing with the various aspects of religious life: the vows, authority, community life, formation, apostolate, prayer, and so forth. At the annual conventions of the CMSW from 1967 to 1971, the committees gave reports about the progress of their work. Eventually the conference published a document containing the proposed norms. It received a wide distribution in this country May-June 1999 275 276 Range ¯ Women and Canon Law and abroad, going to all the religious congregations and to the bishops.4° As this endeavor continued, the confidence of the women grew; they recognized the possibilities of the project. Moreover, they sought assistance from canonical experts to assist them in this unique activity. The CLSA was instrumental in assisting the various committees in this endeavor. Father Paul Boyle CP, a canon lawyer, was out-standing in his leadership in this area for women religious.4' Already as president of CLSA, he had communicated his vision of including women in the revision process. Later, as executive sec-retary, he increased his activity along this line. The recognition by the canonists of women's lack of education in canon law led to the establishment of summer institutes for a number of them. Certificates were earned and credit gained for these educa-tional endeavors. Father Kevin O'Rourke OP assumed the respon-sibility for these institutes by sponsoring them, developing them, enlisting the faculty for them, and negotiating their locations. They were held in different Catholic colleges in the country. A number of the graduates of these programs later completed their education in canon law at pontifical schools of canon law. Besides this educational assistance, the CLSA, following Paul VI's Ecdesiae sanctae (1966) implementing the conciliar document Perfectae caritatis, developed institutes to assist women religious in managing the process of renewal in their congregations. Pope Paul's decree instructed communities to hold general chapters to write their constitutions and to somehow engage the entire con-gregation in that effort. Experimentation, too, was mandated. Experimentation and writing canonical documents were some-thing for which most religious communities needed assistance. These endeavors of the CLSA were empowering experiences for the women and their religious communities. Hitherto the women were by and large ignorant of canon law and canonical procedures. They were, however, well-educated, intelligent, competent leaders within their religious congregations and deeply committed to the renewal that the church had mandated. The assistance of the CLSA empowered them and many other women in their congregations. Enthusiasm to recover the origins of their congregations, to learn about the remarkable women who had founded them, to encounter the Word of God through a knowledge of the Scriptures, and to assess the needs of the world through a study of the "signs of the times" generated an enormous energy within these communities.42 Review for Religious The results of this monumental effort have not yet been com-pletely assessed. Many studies today record it, some positively, other negatively, but it is still too close chronologically for it to be judged adequately.43 The energy, however, remains within reli-gious communities, smaller and older though they may be. Initiatives in forming new kinds of religious communities con-tinue in the church as well.** The renewal enterprise conducted among the CMSW, the reli-gious communities, and the CLSA is one of the finest stories to come out of the post-Vatican II Church. It included not only these organizations, but also the hierar-chy of the United States. There was an extraordinarydemonstra-tion of mutual encouragement and support among these diverse orga-nizations regarding the revision of the Code of Canon Law. The pos-sibility of participating together in the revision of the canons that governed the life of women reli-gious was realized through this " effort. The Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM) was obviously interested in the same endeavor.4s The Canon Law Society of America responded to the announcement by Pope John XXIII as professional canon lawyers whose expertise was not sim-ply in the practice of law, but in developing it through the proposed revision process.46 These three organizations joined in this endeavor with an unusual demonstration of cooperation. Besides these, the bishops' conference in the United States became the conduit through which the efforts of the organiza-tions were channeled to the Pontifi(al Commission for the Revision of Canon Law, whose responsibility it was to finally formulate the revision. Communication among these organizations was full of enthusiasm and respect. There was no hint of competitiveness, no turf war, no condescension toward women, who were at that time uneducated as canon lawyers. What was desired from the women was the expression of their experience of their own lives and their reflection upon that experience. The mutuality of this common endeavor is one of the finest examples of how women and men can work together to accom- Experimentation and writing canonical documents were something for which most religious communities needed assistance. 277 May-.~une 1.o99 Range * Women and Canon Law plish something for the benefit of all. As the process of revision continued, difficulties emerged, of course. When the canonical text, the Code itself, and the communities' constitutions were finalized and promulgated, the energy that had informed the orig-inal process waned. The vitality of experimentation, of developing powerful and inspiring texts, of consulting all the members of communities in that effort, of creating a vocabulary that resonated with the language of the documents of Vatican II and with the pat-rimony of individual communities--all this vitality wound down as perhaps it inevitably had to after final, authoritative texts were promulgated. As rdigious communities developed their constitutions during these years, their experience shaped their identifies in a remarkable way. The expressions within many of these constitutions were utterly original as documents for identifying and regulating the lives of women religious. In the process of havin~ their constitu-tions reviewed, both the Congregation. for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life and the individ-ual congregations had much to learn. Although by now most of the problems have been resolved, there are still some communities that do not have their constitutions approved. This phenomenon bears the marks of the encounter between creative initiatives, orig-inal expressions of religious life, and traditional modes of canon-ical expression. The Code defines the constitutions of religious communities as' their particular law. The universal law within the Code presents the guidelines for the constitutions, but does not provide their content. Nevertheless,.the originality of many of these documents from religious communities presented new difficulties for both the congregations themselves and the Vatican officials, who had never seen such documents before. This encounter has been very instructive for all the institutions involved. With the promulgation of the revised Code of Canon Law in 1983 and with the finalization of their constitutions, women are no longer engaged in writing the law that regulates their lives. Periodically constitutions need to be resubmitted to the church for approval. Calls for change and for dispensations are part of the regular communication between the Vatican and women's con-gregations. But creativity and initiatives no longer inform the legal expressions of women religious. Extraordinary documents, though, still emerge from congregational meetings addressing the issues Review Jbr Religio~ts that women religious face at the end of the second millennium. How these documents influence the legally binding texts remains a question for the future. Past, Present, and Future This article has investigated the extraordinary entrance of women into a