September 4, 2007
Mark Raper SJ
President, Catholic Religious Australia
speaks to
Religious in Hobart
In the history of religious life, the last story is yet to be told. Religious life has contributed vitality to the Church since the beginning and will continue to do so, even though the future for some communities may seem limited. Change and transition are a reality for all today. There is a perception that our Church is polarised - between those who would build the Kingdom of God in the world and those who seek comfort in the identity of the Church as a communion apart. The Church has a radical social agenda but a conservative governance structure. Faith and service of the poor are at the heart of the mission of Jesus (Luke 4), and of the mission of religious. Religious have a prophetic role within the Church. Religious charisms are kept alive by living out and telling our stories which echo the person of Jesus and his prophetic mission.
introduction
In a scene from the old TV series, Taxi, one of the drivers, lamenting the state of world affairs, approaches Louie, the petrol pump attendant, a character with a philosophical bent, and asks, "Louie, what is your view of the human race, from an outsider's point of view?"
I am here not as an outsider, but as a friend. "There is no better mirror than a good friend," goes the saying.
On one occasion Charlie Brown had gone to Lucy for counselling. There are two different types of people on an ocean liner, she says, those who want to put the deck chairs on the front and watch into the future, where the boat is headed, and the others want to be at the back and look where they have come from. What sort are you, Charlie Brown? Charlie Brown replies, "I just seem to have trouble opening my deck chair." Surely congregational leaders fall into such categories, and many of us have trouble even getting into an adequate position from which to look either forward or back!
I am asked to speak on the prophetic role of religious. To be prophetic means to interpret the present and to attempt to point out the implications of how we live today for the future of human society. As Thomas Moore said, "We are condemned to live out what we cannot imagine."
A particular question for us today, as many of our institutions of our institutions are in transition, especially as they pass from religious to lay leadership is: How do religious congregations sustain their prophetic mission and identity, in their lives and in their institutions, during our time of transition?
personal introduction
First, may I outline my own background. Throughout the 1990s I lived in Rome and before that, during the 1980s, in Thailand, all the time working with refugees: ten years before and ten years after the 1989 Berlin Wall collapse and with it the fall of historical socialism. Among the questions that concerned me over those years with forcibly dislocated people, include the search of peoples for reconciliation: truth, justice, reconciliation, for example in Rwanda, El Salvador, or Cambodia. Before reconciliation can be imagined, there must be justice. Before justice is achieved, the truth must be told. But I learned in Rwanda especially that before considering the truth, one must first bury the dead, and let their spirits find rest before any next step can be taken. Now in Darfur we can see starkly that to keep peace, peace has first to be won.
When I was in Rome there was a review of Caritas Internationalis, with which we worked closely. The conclusion was: Caritas has a radical social agenda, but a conservative governance structure. Isn't that the case for so many elements in the Church? How true it is for us religious.
Fundamental to our mission and identity as religious is the relationship between the Church's social and its religious mission. As religious we help the Church fulfil its mission in contemporary society. It is important that we have a clear answer to the question: Does the social mission take the Church into areas that are foreign to its religious mission? Is the social mission of the Church one of its many tasks, or is it central to its identity, the very goal of the Church?
As a Provincial I have three roles, and it is the same for many of you. First I am a church leader, second I am the equivalent of a CEO of large institutions, and thirdly I am the spiritual father for the members of my province. Within this there are clearly many types of leaders, many methodologies to follow. Some manage through a grand plan, others through building capacity and relationships. It is important that we know there are options and that we choose a style the suits the needs, the opportunities and of course our capacity. Eventually, however, leaders have to lead.
your experience of preparing for the future
Our abiding reality is that we are changing. Change is a constant. But understanding this change is a slow and lengthy process. Profound realities only gradually yield their significance. "Experience is only half an experience", said Johann Goethe. Tonight I offer a few ideas simply to provoke your own reflection on your experiences. Experience, if accompanied by reflection, is a great teacher.
the future for Religious life
There are two views and styles of conversation about the future for religious. As for Charlie Brown on the ocean liner, there are those who look to the future, and those who look back. The first group includes those religious who believe their communities have a real future. They may be unsure what that future is. But even as they age, diminish and change, they are not dying. International congregations often display this buoyancy. Although their numbers may be shrinking in Australia, in other parts of the world they continue to grow.
Other communities, particularly the very local ones, display a different style. They may not have received novices for twenty or thirty years and their average age now nears 70 or more. They may question the future of their community and need to plan actively and responsibly for the real possibility that they will diminish. The felt experience of this group may urge many to believe that religious life has also run its course.
Does religious life have a future? History says yes. The last chapter of the history of religious life has not been written. There have been many forms of religious life, accentuating diverse features at diverse times, such as asceticism, obedience, poverty, the cloister, types of commitment (vows) and forms of living (in the world or in community). Some congregations have been around for many centuries and have negotiated many cultural shifts over the centuries. Religious have brought great life to the Church needs us. Francis brought a sense of poverty. Benedict contributed an understanding of prayer. Ignatius gave the sense of mission. Mary MacKillop's gift to the Church is on of loyal service in time of need.
Vatican II called religious life the prophetic dimension of the Church. Religious, it said, make the life of the Church more vigorous and its work more fruitful. The Council called religious to re-imagine ourselves. We were asked to return to the Gospel, the source of all Christian life, and to the original inspiration behind our particular religious community. We were also called to adjust to the changed conditions of our time.
In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar we find an eloquent call to be attentive to our times and to its cultural movements:
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures. (Act IV, Scene 3)
Our time is too short to consider the currents in our society and culture that pull us, and the needs that cry out to us. The poverty of so many; the way Africa is regressing while China and India are dominating global economies; globalisation as a reality and an orientation; rapid changes in the means of communication and the consequent impact on human relationships; the concern we feel for our environment, the damage to the ecology and the need for alternative energy sources; the masses forcibly displaced as migrants and refugees; militant Islam; those who suffer HIV/AIDS; the plight of indigenous peoples; the bio-tech revolution. These needs speak directly to our prophetic mission.
But tonight I would speak more of the 'changed conditions' within the Church. We might count the growth in the number of lay people who offer leadership of mission in the Church; the actual growth in the institutions that were originally inspired by religious, especially in health care, education and social services; and the numerical diminishment and ageing of religious. These changed conditions also include the stigma of abuse, which marks many sectors of the Church today. Like the Church as a whole, religious communities are buffeted by the cultural and historical forces at work in society. Moreover our contemporary culture does not offer support for a lifetime commitment. A lifetime vocation is a rare concept today.
Today there are many ways of service and ministry for lay people. Forty years ago Lumen Gentium (30-38) saw that the Church of the future is the Church of the Laity, and that lay and religious roles are complementary. Many religious now recognise that part of their role is to help develop lay leadership in the Church. This transition is more complex than changing shifts - it must be thought through well. Religious will continue to have a role in the Church. Our question today for laity and religious together is: "How can we best serve the needs of people through the Church?"
Transition is a fact of life for religious congregations, whether because of the diminishment in numbers of religious, or simply because of the complexity of our times. A successful transition needs a strategy for enhancing and sustaining the original inspiration of the congregation. Different congregations have approached the communication of their own inspiration (or charism) and their mission to their co-workers in different ways. Many congregations are now engaged in arrangements of union or fusion with sister communities, or of transfer of authority for their institutions. In the transitions affecting our ministries, I have identified five trends or approaches that are observable in Australia. You may see others.
1. Integration: In this approach laypersons are invited to take leadership roles in mission within the corporate ministries of a congregation. In our Australian Jesuit Province, for example, are about 150 Jesuits. The number of active members diminishes by around five a year, mostly through ageing and its consequences. Yet our ministries count around 2000 laypersons who are either employed or volunteers. We invite all of these to join the mission of the Province. Some respond with great alacrity and energy to this invitation and give themselves to the Province's ministries as a vocation. Around half of our Jesuit ministries are now under lay leadership. This strategy requires clarity about our mission and solid formation, even theological formation about this.
2. Partnerships: Some congregations have seen that they cannot continue to run their institutions alone. So they have entered into associations and cooperative partnerships with other congregations. Sometimes these arrangements involve transferring the assets of one congregation into the safekeeping of another congregation so that they can continue to be used for mission. When the original inspirations of many groups flow into partnerships, it can lead to confusion. We again need to be clear about the mission and so about the values and characteristics of the new organisation.
3. Transfer: When they foresee that they may not be able to continue to be responsible for an institution or for a network of institutions, some religious congregations create new juridical persons and set up trustees that will govern this new body. The Christian Brothers, for example, have done this with their schools in setting up Edmund Rice Education Australia (EREA). The Sisters of Charity are also exploring such arrangements for their health care and education institutions. In transfers, much work needs to be done to focus and to express freshly the mission and values that inspire the new body, and to recruit the people who can drive the project.
4. Networks: Some new ministries are effectively cooperative expressions of a religious inspiration. They take advantage of the corporate identity, existing institutions, and networks of a religious congregation. The Jesuit Refugee Service is such an organisation. Although it involves directly only about 100 Jesuits, it nonetheless is active in some 60 countries and recruits thousands of co-workers, some of whom are religious.
5. Individual initiatives: Many expressions of a Congregation's inspiration do not represent the congregation's corporate identity, but do reflect its spirit. They often begin in the initiative of a member of the Congregation. Mercy Sister Patricia Pak Poy, for example, initiated a Landmines campaign and gained the support of the Australian, Lao, Vietnamese and other governments. Having set that project moving she is now working to establish "Hope Adelaide", a movement that reaches out to Burmese, especially refugees, who suffer HIV/AIDS. Both of these projects perfectly reflect the Mercy spirit, yet they do not need to carry the corporate identity of the Mercy order.
These examples show that religious believe the Spirit to be present in both world and Church. They also believe that if religious life is to serve people it must be responsive to the changes in the world.
To engage in this process we need to be very clear about our mission. It requires induction, orientation and formation of those who respond to the invitation. We need to identify the essential characteristics of our institutions so that we can measure and evaluate them in the light of the mission. It is not appropriate for a religious congregation to remain identified with any institution that no longer reflects its mission, especially the characteristics of faith and service of the poor that are at the heart of mission.
polarisation within the Church
The prophetic role is often taken to imply a vocal role, speaking out, and thus also identified with differing positions within the Church. For this reason I would like to reflect with you on the perceptions of polarisation in the Church. In this I will rely on some points made by Timothy Radcliffe
(pictured), in his 2005 book
What is the Point of Being a Christian, which was dedicated to healing divisions in the Church.
His core thesis is
We usually think of this polarization in term of the dichotomy of left and right, the progressive and conservative. But these categories are alien to Catholic thinking. They derive from the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment philosophers believed that the light had dawned because they had cast off the darkness of tradition, and especially of Catholic dogma. They liberated themselves from the past.
You may know that many Jesuit alumni were among the authors of the Enlightenment, such as Corneille, Descartes, Pascal, and Diderot. One of these, Voltaire had a love-hate relationship with the Church. It is said that on his deathbed, Voltaire was attended by a Jesuit who asked him to abjure "the Devil, that Prince of Lies, and all his works and all his empty promises". Voltaire apparently replied, "With respect, Father, this is no time to be making enemies."
Radcliffe explains that opposition between tradition and innovation is in fact alien to Catholicism. "It is the tradition we have received, the Gospels, St Paul, the great theologians of the past, who always renew us and provoke fresh insights". He says, "The Second Vat Council was a moment of incredible newness, and simultaneously a return to the Gospels and the theology of the early church."
St Paul, the most creative Christian thinker ever, saw himself as transmitting the traditions he had received: "I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you" (1 Cor 11; 2).
Radcliffe invents his own categories to describe this division, and opts for the terms 'Kingdom' Catholics and 'Communion' Catholics, making the case that we need both.
"By Kingdom Catholics, I mean those of us who have a deep sense of the church as the pilgrim people of God, on the way to the kingdom." The theologians who have been central for this tradition have been people like the Karl Rahner, and Edward Schillebeeckx and Gustavo Gutiérrez.
This tradition stresses openness to the world, finding the presence of the Holy Spirit working outside the church, freedom and the pursuit of justice. They became very much identified with a publication called Concilium, which was launched in 1963. (Schillebeeckx used the revealing concept: "Deus Humanissimus".)
Dom Helder Camara (pictured) echoed this Vatican II world view. Listen to his voice on the floor of the Council in the early 60s:
"Shall we really spend our whole time on discussing internal problems of the Church while two thirds of the world population are starving to death? What is our message in view of the question of underdevelopment? Will the Council express its concern for the great problems of mankind? ... Is the shortage of priest Latin America's biggest problem? No! The biggest problem is underdevelopment."
Of the second group, Radcliffe says: "By Communion Catholics I mean those who came, after the council, to feel the urgent need to rebuild the inner life of the church." They went with theologians like Hans Urs von Balthasar, the then Joseph Ratzinger, and Henri de Lubac. Their theology often stressed Catholic identity, was wary of too hearty an embrace of modernity, and they stressed the cross. They had their publication called Communio commenced in 1974.
Ratzinger was shocked by the student riots of 1968 that started in Paris and swept across Europe, indeed the world. These events shook his confidence in the modernity that had been embraced with such enthusiasm. Christian Europe, he felt risked losing its identity.
Communion Catholics return to elements and practices that stress identity. They see adoration and doxology at the heart of the Church's life. Many young people grow up without receiving any clear Christian or Catholic identity. Lacking this they seek certainty and so identify with an understanding of the Church which stresses the specifics of our inheritance, received ways of praying, talking, and of devotion. Truth and beauty attract them. They seek to avoid any assimilation to the world and to the secular, fearing that otherwise the Church will disappear.
conclusion
The characteristics of faith and service of the poor are at the heart of the prophetic mission of religious today. Service of the poor is stressed because it is central to the Gospel. In our day, too, it has also been emphasised by the Church as central to Christian life. It is central to the witness of religious congregations. Service of the poor is not based in ideology but in attention to the faces of those who are most in need, and in accompaniment of them. This attention will guide the ways in which we serve the poor and advocate for them.
Each religious is a servant and guardian of a particular charism, the inspiration of their founders. A charism is a story about how God is leading us. Charism is passed on through the stories of how particular people follow Jesus and put the Gospel into practice. In religious life, there is risk and weakness, but there are also great stories of fidelity and hope that need to be told. Like love and death, solidarity and joy, knowledge of Jesus Christ does not come to us in a flash. The faithful lives of our founders, and of our brothers and sisters who follow them are inspiring. Charisms are kept alive by telling these stories. The success of our current stage of transition in the Church comes down to how we pass on these stories.
Stories deal not with certitude as much as with imagination. Stories help us to focus on the person of Jesus and on his mission (as it is found, for example in Luke 4). This helps us to focus our mission. Seized by Jesus in this way, it will be obvious to others that our life something worth joining.
In the history of religious life, I am sure that the last story is yet to be told.
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