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Ministerial Religious Life
Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM, has made public an important paper on Ministerial Religious Life. In the paper God So Loved the World … Ministerial Religious Life in 2009 Sister Sandra describes what Apostolic Religious Life is and how it is evolving (or has evolved) into what she has called Ministerial Religious Life.
Here’s my very brief outline of the paper — any inaccuracies here are mine and not Sister Sandra’s. It’s meant only to give you a sense of the topics in the paper and to encourage you to read the full paper. You really don’t want to miss it if you are at all interested in Religious Life.
Sister Sandra looks at the origins of Apostolic Religious Life (which “has had official canonical recognition since 1900 and existed for centuries before that”) and situates it both canonically (what does Canon Law say about this form of consecrated life) and ecclesiastically (how does Apostolic Religious Life as a lifeform fit within the structure of the Church).
She shows how the Apostolic Religious Life that is being lived today is still authentically religious life and at the same time “involves some very significant discontinuities with earlier understandings of enough of the constitutive dimensions of that life that it is really a new form in relation to traditional apostolic Congregations.” Two important aspects of this evolution are what Sister Sandra calls “the end of Religious Life as Total Institution” and the simultaneous “ministerial turn”. She looks at how both of these have affected our understanding and living out of the vows, community life, ministry, and public witness.
Once Sister Sandra has set the context she goes on to asks, “What has brought about this development and how do we interpret, evaluate, and appropriate it?” What follows is an excellent piece on the impact of the Second Vatican Council on Religious Life. She notes how “most Religious Congregations of women, especially in the developed world, did not read Perfectae Caritatis in isolation, as a kind of self-sufficient magna carta for renewal. They read it through the lenses of Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes.” Note: Perfectae Caritatis is the document on the renewal of Religious Life; Lumen Gentium is the document on the Church affirming the universal call to holiness of all the baptized; and Guadium et Spes is the document on the Church in the modern world.
Sister Sandra then looks at the development of a new theology of world and the development of a new spirituality of world as a result of the shifts and the ongoing urgings of the Holy Spirit. Finally, she articulates some of the implications of these developments for vowed Religious Life.
Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM, is one of my nuns and a leader in the study of religious life and of biblical spirituality. This talk was originally presented at our IHM Motherhouse for the Sisters and Associates of my community.
Read God So Loved the World … Ministerial Religious Life in 2009 and let’s get a discussion going about this. It’s an excellent paper, a good read, and definitely worth reflecting on.
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{ 23 comments }
The link gives me a 404
Venite – try the first link in the beginning of the aricle – it downloads a PDF of the article.
Julie – i am now in the process of reading this – and it is excellent – your synopsis is very helpful for getting the general context – and where she is going with it – did you by any chance get a golden kernal that popped out as something hopeful and positive ??
Sister Sandra always floors me. I have not finished the article yet. When I get up from off the floor, I will post my thoughts.
Wow! Amen and amen. What a courageous and well drafted position. It is a Declaration of Independence for Religious Women (although, as Sister Sandra Schneiders notes, Religious Life is not part of the formal hierarchy of the Church).
I especially liked her concise and laudatory references to Pope John XXIII. It is refreshing to have Pope John XIII and Vatican II praised instead of vilified.
Of course, there will be significant number of bloggers who will disagree vehemently: “some of the hierarchy who experience renewed Religious life as a multi-pronged threat to a patriarchal and clerical institution … some laity who nostalgically long for the ‘good Sisters’ to act as an anchor in a roiling ecclesiastical and cultural sea… and those “who once had large corps of Religious workers at their command.” [Don’t hold back, Sister, tell us what you really think!]
The resistance to the organic changes of Religious Life is precipitated by two very human phenomena: (1) Perceived threats to one’s comfort and the status quo are not well received (2) Confusion about what it means to be “traditional.”
The confusion about what “traditional” means might be well illustrated by the following story from another faith community:
There once was a beloved rabbi in a small Polish town. He came from a distinguished line of rabbis. This rabbi, however, was particularly loved by his congregation.
The congregation loved the way he conducted the service and the minhagim (customs- but not religious laws) he helped established. As with all humans, the rabbi passed away. His son was appointed to succeed him and started changing some of the minhagim/customs.
The congregation took offense. “Why can’t you do things the way your father did?”
The younger rabbi replied, “But, I am doing as he did.”
The congregation then pointed out all the differences in the conduct of the service- the different songs, the different order of prayers, etc.
The rabbi replied- “I am doing exactly what my father did. He did not do as his father did, and I am doing the same thing. He did what was appropriate for the times, and so am I.”
For Sisters to strive for a life “in, with, and for the world while maintaining their religious identity” requires great wisdom, will, effort and leadership. I am confident that this will mean “interesting times,” and that the quest is imperative.
May you be blessed with wisdom and strength- it appears you are already blessed with leadership.
I am looking forward to reading this.
What wonderful contributions the Sisters have made to our country. CatholicTV has been privileged to receive videos from a variety of communities which we air to highlight vocations. I am always so impressed with the discipleship and commitment to living out the Good News of Jesus Christ of these grace-filled women.
Thanks, Venite — I fixed the link so you won’t get the “Gnarly, Dude” 404 message.
Aneesah — wow, a golden kernel. There are enough to have a giant bowl of popcorn!
What struck me the most was that Sandra articulated and provided concrete research about a shift in Religious Life that hasn’t always been clearly explored. It’s what has happened in that shift that so many people (including many of us religious) have questions about — e.g., why don’t all the nuns live in a convent? why aren’t they all working in a parish or church ministry? why do/don’t they wear a habit? There is a temptation by some (noted by David in his comment above) to equate the answers of these questions with whether or not one is “really” a Catholic sister or nun. I find in Sandra’s paper and thought on this shift the beginnings of a response that affirms the many different ways of Religious Life. Sandra’s work in this area is a major contribution to understanding a new the role and “lifeform” of Religious Life..
You say that Sr. Sandra reads Perfectae Caritatis not through the lens of isolation, but rather through the lens of Lumen Gentium and Gaudiem et Spes. The problem is that she is reading only through a Vatican II lens, as if Vatican II somehow created a rupture with the Tradition of the Church. It is this sort of discontinuity and hermeneutic of rupture that gets her into trouble, and has led to the sort of situation among women religious that have made the Apostolic Visitation so necessary – the Visitation that she so disturbingly condemned with her anti-Church attitude. Until religious, clergy, and laity alike recognize that Vatican II is part of a continuity of Church Tradition and not a rupture from it, our faith will continue to be watered down and cheapened, the faithful will continue to be victimized by dreadful catechesis and uninspired, banal, and faux-creative liturgies, and the Church will become less and less relevant at a time when the world needs her more and more.
David — You raise a good point about confusion about the word “traditional”. I don’t know that it’s ever really been defined in terms of our Catholic faith — but, much like the words “liberal” and “conservative”, they are used to categorize views, persons, organizations, etc. for quick dismissal or approval. And for many young people I’ve known and worked with, the word “traditional” can be used right along with other descriptors that aren’t normally associated with “traditional” like “feminist” or “liberal”. So language is definitely an issue. One thing I like about Sandra’s work in general is that she is very clear with words and ideas.
Michael — Hi, nice to see you again! How’s your IHM Aunt doing?
Please don’t take my words as Sister Sandra’s words — please read the piece itself because I do not want to do any injustice to her. Sandra’s work on religious life is much more comprehensive than the Vatican II documents and the Church’s experience of renewal at that time. This particular paper certainly highlights the importance of Vatican II but also notes that the “Ministerial Turn” was present in religious communities long before Vatican II.
I do agree with you that there are some Catholics who don’t see much of the Church’s tradition prior to Vatican II. That’s quite unfortunate because ours is a beautiful, rich tradition that continues to be alive today. There are also Catholics who refuse to acknowledge the authority of Vatican II and ignore that it — like Nicaea, Chalcedon, Lateran, Trent and others — is an Ecumenical Council. (FYI, for those unfamiliar with an Ecumenical Council, check out The Catholic Encyclopedia entry on General Councils). No one, myself included, wants a faith that is “watered down and cheapened” or includes “dreadful catechesis and … liturgies”. I believe one of our tasks as Catholic Religious, Clergy, and Lay Leaders is to keep the Gospel and the continuity of our Catholic faith and at the same time to make it alive in ways that are engage the world today.
Thanks for helping me with the link, aneesah, and for fixing the second, Sr. Julie – I managed to read it!
Sr. Julie, you said “let’s get a discussion going,” but I fear to tread here… because as Sr. Sandra clearly said, the paper concerns the life of vowed IHMs in 2009. I’m not an IHM, so it’s none of my business really. I’m not even an unvowed religious – not for a couple of months!
But what I can say is that if this paper referred to my future community, I would not join there – that is, it doesn’t reflect what I have been looking for in the religious life.
My future congregation split (friendly) from another in the process of their post-VCII evaluation. The other part went a bit like the “IHM-way”, my congregation decided to keep some traditions including a to a large degree common horarium.
I understand that what Sr. Sandra describes as the “total institutionalisation” wasn’t feasible to uphold and, more importantly, decidedly unhealthy for both the people in it and out of it. However, I don’t agree with her interpretation of the parable of the grain and the weeds. To me, it means that we can’t see whether someone is grain or weed. We are called to treat everybody as grain and leave the judging to the Judge. So far, I think Sr. Sandra would agree – but it ends there.
Of course there are moral dilemmas that have no “good” solution, only degrees of bad. But these are by far the exception, not the rule. And we can treat them as such when they arise. In all other cases, the majority of life (big words, I know, but in this case I won’t let Sr. Sandra’s doubtlessly superior experience daunt me – unfortunately I have seen enough of the edges myself already to give a fairly informed impression) there actually is something beyond our congregational moral compass that we can fall back to, and that is the teaching of the Church.
This teaching did not fall out of the sky in 1965, and neither did human nature change all that much in between. I think that in leaving so much of the common life and brainful obedience to the magisterium, some children might have slipped out with the bathwater.
A short comment that doesn’t do the paper justice – but maybe a start.
Hi Venite, So glad you were able to get the paper. You highlight a very good point when you describe the friendly parting-of-ways of your community and it’s “sister” community. The way of life that Sister Sandra is describing is only one way of living Religious Life in the Church. Like the Mendicants who became a new lifeform within Religious Life along side of other Religious orders that continued then and to this day, the “new form” of Religious Life that Sister Sandra is speaking of is along side other forms such as Monasticism, Cloistered Life, and Semi-Cloistered Life. It will appeal to some while other forms of Religious Life will appeal to others.
I have always been attracted to the horarium, Venite, ever since my Franciscan friar friends in Toronto taught me to pray the Liturgy of the Hours. It’s something I try to honor in my prayer alone and in common when I can and in ways that “fit” my life as an Apostolic/Ministerial Religious. I did a retreat with the monks of the Monastery of the Geneseo and loved 2:30 a.m. prayer the most!
I love to read Sandra Schneiders and am working my way through her talk a second time. The richness of her thought is, for me, described perfectly in this statement from the text: “Religious Life is one of
those phenomena in which everything implies everything else”. There is neither floor nor ceiling, no walls that can define the limits of spiritual meaning, certainly none that any human can determine. That reality is one of the most intellectually compelling aspects of theology, of life spent with the God/human relationship at its conscious center, and Sister Sandra’s thought alwas exemplifies that. “Religious Life is one of those phenomena in which everything implies everything else”.
I like especially
1) her use of the advent of the Mendicant orders to place in context the recent developments in forms of Religious Life;
and
2) her discussion of the vows, and the apparent and undiminished expectation of humility as vowed Catholic Christian vowed Religious Life develops throughout the millenia, and the expectation that an eschewing of privilege and status is an integral characteristic of vowed Catholic Christian Religious Life, whether ministerial (in all the wonderful and exciting forms she enumerates at the bottom of one page – 23 or so), contemplative, old, new, pre-Vatican II or post-Vatican II.
I am interested in the comments from David K and MHallman (especially) about where the text sits in the larger context of current debate and the Church’s 2000 year old body of foundational doucments and thinking and corporate identity/philosophy. I don’t have nearly enough knowledge about that body and the debates to which MHallman, in particular, refer but I am fascinated because both Hallman and Schneiders are concerned with the coin with two sides: continuity and change, which is – I think – an inherently Catholic Christian paradox (Jesus was a Jew and all the implications flowing from that; all that good stuff…).
Thanks for posting the article, Sister Julie.
Jean
Sister,
She is doing well. She is in Miami now, is coming up to visit soon.
To be fair, not only are there those Catholics who do not see anything prior to Vatican II, but there are those who just as sadly deny Vatican II itself. I shouldn’t have been so harsh in my comment, but it just seems to me that these two opposing forces are both working from the same hermeneutic of rupture, which ultimately harms the Church. Catholics today are suffering greatly because of the lack of an authentic Catholic identity, and so long as the rupture-ists (I like making up words) from both poles continue to distort authentic Catholic teaching, the sheep of the Church will either not be fed, or will be fed very poorly.
It is a wonderful thing for religious to evaluate their place in the Church and in the world so as to better and more effectively serve both in fidelity to Christ. But Sister Sandra has demonstrated a true disdain for essential elements of the Church, particularly the hiearchal structure that is necessary to our unity and to our continuous preaching of Gospel truth in love. This is a tendency among clergy and religious alike (hence why the Apostolic Visitation of the seminaries was also necessary), and through them it has trickled down to the unknowing non-religious laity. There is a spirit of disobedience prevalent in the Church today and it is destroying our effectiveness as stewards of the mysteries of the Catholic faith.
Glad to hear about your Aunt, Michael. It’s odd for me to hear Sister Sandra characterized as being disdainful toward the Church. I say this because I’ve read a lot of her stuff on religious life and i know her personally. If ever a Sister were to be called “a daughter of the Church” I would have to say that I’d include Sandra in that group because of her love for the Church and our faith tradition and because of her dedication to the liberating mission of Jesus. I guess the word I’d use is “critique” not “disdain” because my read of her observations is that it comes from a place of great love for the Church — hierarchy included. Your point was well made though about the necessity of a structure to unite us and perpetuate our Catholic life and mission. I think though that what Sandra is saying in this paper is simply that Religious don’t have to actually be part of the structure because canonically they never were and in reality they really aren’t. Just because religious aren’t part of the hierarchy (this of course has more to do with Women Religious than Men Religious because men can be both Religious and a member of the Clergy which is in fact part of the hierarchy) doesn’t mean that the hierarchy is unnecessary.
The issue of critique, disobedience, dissent (not all equavalent) is an interesting one in our history going all the way back to Jesus himself. Sometimes we find that “the voice that differs” is a prophetic call that enriches the Church even if at the time it was rejected, and sometimes “the voice that differs” is destructive as you noted. I wonder (in a rare moment of extroversion) if this has something to do with the weeds and wheat thing that Venite mentioned … “We are called to treat everybody as grain and leave the judging to the Judge.” Will have to think more on this. Good thoughts, Michael, and lots to ponder!
Sr. Julie,
I know you think that way, but I’m still very glad you said it again… I was a bit anxious to post about it because, as you are aware, there is some bad blood between some of the “old-new” and some of the “new-new” communities (to say nothing of the “old-old” and the rest!).
When I started discerning and still thought a nun is a nun is a nun I befriended some sisters in communities here, and when I had finally made my choice they were… not very supportive. And they were supposed to be sisters of my own Order! That was a disillusion to say the least.
Well, I’m a child of divorced parents… I’m used to two people (groups) loving the same thing yet wanting something else with it. You’d think I could deal with it
Experiences like this are what make me wonder, like Michael, about these voices calling in the wilderness. They don’t seem to be calling in unison (at least, I surely hope not, considering some of them).
I hope the Visitation will be fruitful for all.
Thank you Julie for leading me to this article. I have just finished reading it and after an exhausting day yesterday, a regional one, as we are in Chapter which will formally be concluded in September. I cannot attend those days for health reasons, but this does not at all mean that I am uninterested in what will be discerned and decided at that Chapter. As a member of a mendicant Order much of what Sandra wrote was familiar to me and the distinction of having non-conventional groups who were not enclosed and who numbered Catherine of Siena among their numbers has given many of us a model of a strong woman in the Church to whom the hierarchy sometimes listened. (That sounds facetious, but there is a kernal of truth in there!!)
What I found particularly helpful was the reference to the parable of the co-existence of the wheat and the weeds. Why have I not thought of that in this context before????
Having Sandra as one of “your own” is a privilege of which you can be justly proud.
Thank you again.
Joan OP (in Australia)
Thanks, Joan! It’s good to hear from your perspective. I’m going to have to reread the parable and Sister Sandra’s remarks since you and others have been reflecting on that piece of it.
Most of this is way above my head. Speaking as a middle aged cradle catholic not overly educated in theology I think one of the our church’s greatest strenghs is it’s diversity. I love the fact that there are different ideas and schools of thoughts among the churches many followers-Franciscans, Jesuits and many orders of nuns. The idea of the church allowing voices to speak forth is so appealing to me. The fundamentalist views a friend tries to impress me with are far too narrow for me. The churches diversity is a great thing-there are many people with different needs. All religions have their issues. The catholic church has stood the test of time. I also believe some nuns need to be able to change with the times. Their progress should not be impeeded or seen as a negative thing.
I have been thinking that I need to reread the prarble of the wheat and the chaff, too.
Venite, I really love your understanding of it and, though at this moment I cannot recall how Sr Sandra interpreted the parable, I can imagine – from my reading of her article – that she might very well embrace your interpretation, in that it could be understood to support just what you speak of and what Sister Julie does so beautifully communicate: family is family, even when we set off down various forks in the roads. It is interesting for me to think about the conversation if Terese of Lisiseux and Catherine of Siena sat down for a cup of tea to discuss Religious Life.
My spiritual brother frequently reminds me that, in mystical experiences with Mary around the world, she appears as a local woman: our Lady of LaSallette, our Lady of Guadalupe, Bernadette’s Lady at Lourdes, the many Black Madonnas, her appearance on the side of a refrigerator (ooooops, that was an Enquirer story. Never mind).
And the very essence of Catholicism is that, despite differences in local culture and expression, we are “one holy catholic and apostolic church”.
By extension, it makes sense to me that God’s servants will go right on appearing in new and different guises, as strangers to be welcomed at the table of Religious Life. It is lovely thing, Venite, that you – like Sister Julie – see that it is not yours to determine which is the “right” kind of religious life . It is only your job to determine to which life God calls YOU. Very cool. Jean
Good point about Mary, Jean — that is one of the things that I so love about Mary. Have you read Our Lady of the Lost and Found by Diane Schoemperlen?
Venite –
I have been reading back and forth between your post and Sr Schneiders’ discussion of the parable of the weeds and the wheat in the context of the passages from John. I think you are right that she would agree with your interpretation and simple has additional interpretations, in the way that every priest on town can come up with a different and accurate interpretation of the day’s readings, based on the current needs and challenges of the congregation, etc.
“Of course there are moral dilemmas that hve no ‘good’ solution, only degrees of bad. But these are by far the exception, not the rule. And we can treat them as such when they arise. In all other cases, the majority of life there actually is something beyond our congregational moral compass that we can fall back to, and that is the teaching of the Church”.
My experience of and understanding of life is consistent with your interpretation and Sr Schneiders’ additional interpretation: “Jesus says good and evil are so closely intertwined, so indistinguishable at times, so mutually supportive and even parasitic, that often we cannot make a clear-cut distinction between them. Good is rarely so pure and evil is often so apparently good that even those with sharp moral eyes and nimble ministerial fingers often cannot distinguish and separate them. We do not get to work in a world where good is good and bad is bad, where moral clarity shines like the noonday sun, where we need never tolerate or even at times be implicated in evil. Participation in the cultivation of the Reign of God is often morally agonizing, intellectually confusing, personally compromising”.
I completely agree with you that, when challenged, we can “fall back” on the teaching of the Church and, having chosen to do so, I think most of us – even our Church’s greatest thinkers, clercis and saints – find ourselves in “free fall”, discovering that there are not so infrequent episodes during which it is not at all clear that our human minds can perfectly discern what path is ultimately evil and what path is ultimately good, and our free will further complicates the result of our imperfect discernment. That seems, to me, the very essence of Catholic belief and even the Church’s wisdom cannot save us from that most essential truth: while we are alive in our human bodies, we will encounter “evil”. I believe we will all do so on a daily basis, no matter who and what and where we are, and a holy reponse in that battle of power and principilities (Ephesians) will be all too often be extraordinarily difficult to discern, even when the teachings of the Church are scoured for an answer.
Archbishop Romero, now Blessed Oscar Romero, and Rome were in genuine and deep conflict about what response the Church demanded of him during the war in El Salvador. He believed he was acting to evangelize Rome and El Salvador’s oppressive government, military, ruling elite and allies (US included). Rome believed he was defying the Church. Today, he is on his way to becoming one of our martyr-saints for his ministry of accompaniment of the poor and evangelization of the powerful. The Church’s contemporary teachings would have silenced Blessed Oscar Romero and, in that way, would have silenced God in El Salvador.
That may seem one of those extraordinary examples but I believe it is only in proportion that Romero’s dilemma was extraordinary. God will sort out what happens on Judgment Day to all involved in that war, but the Church has sorted out its teachings and has embraced Romero as one of its great and holy dissidents.
So, in the end, I like your interpretation and Sr Schneiders’.
I love all this back and forth, this dialogue. Jean
Jean,
It’s difficult for me to say anything, because as I said, I’m not in any way capable of or even willing to tell other people how to live their lives (unless I know them very well and they specifically ask me
). So I won’t say anything about how the IHMs should shape their ministry – how would I know?
But I do know that I strongly disagree with the idea that there was a break in Church tradition during/after VCII. So if you’re building on that idea, even though the results may be great, I would think there’s something really off.
I know the Magisterium has most certainly been wrong in individual cases, like that of Bl. Oscar Romaro, but I don’t think the comparison applies here – and in any case, I’m talking before my turn because the congregations and the Vatican are looking at how things are going right now, and nobody knows what the results will be yet!
Venite – Can you tell me more about what you mean by “break with Church tradition before/after Vatican II”? I am not building on that because I do not know enough about the “before”. I may be completely off-base here, Venite.You sound far more educated and well-informed on this stuff than I and I am interested to know more about this issue. So, please be patient as you read this because I write the following with an awareness of my naivete re: the Church (the institutional life of which my education is just beginning), and only based on my own life experience of communities and organizations and constitutions:
developments over time in meanings founding/definitional documents are a healthy given and even healthier is the awareness that developments in meaning will result in new applications. Those new meanings and new applications may result in a “discontinuity” (to use Sister Schneiders’ word) with previous circumscribed meanings and applications but that does not, in my understanding, mean that the founding/definitional documents, etc., have been “broken with”.
And I did not understand that Sr Schneiders suggested a breaking with founding/definitional documents: I understood her to say that as meaning develops, applications will also develop and that it is these applications which will be discontinuous.
I think of the US Supreme Court and its role of interpreting the Constitution as a “living document”. Its frequent new, groundbreaking and precedent-setting rulings provide a good parallel of my very limited, very naive understanding of Vatican II as one “groundbreaking and precedent-setting ruling” with fidelity to the tradition of the Church and the changes in religious life represent the “ground broken” with all the messiness of that project now before us.
Re: Bl Oscar Romero – what is so powerful for me about him is that his dilemma (whether to act only to evangelize “the least of these” or to also evangelize the powerful, the leaders, the dominant classes with various forms of control of “the least of these”, an enterprise that by its nature inserts us into the public lives of our communities) is very much a dilemma for each of us in this day.
Again, Venite, you sound so much more knowledgeable than I and I am interested to understand more, in the context of our discussion about Sr Schneiders article, about that issue of whether VII is break or not with tradition.
Off to watch Jane Austen. Jean
A few of the nuns from our monastery drove to Fort Erie, Canada last weekend to join our community there in marking the closing of the first North American English-speaking Redemptoristine House – bitter sweet occasion. On the way home I searched for something on the car radio. I happened on an interview of a gentleman who has written a book on the sacrament of Confirmation. A career military man, he couched his theology of the sacrament in military terms. It harkened back to my own Confirmation training – we were to become soldiers for Christ. But every other word, it seemed, was about the essentially evil world, the evils in the world, the need to fight all that evil. Finally I moved along on the dial because I just couldn’t accept the language and the judgement. I did not discuss it at the time with the other sisters in the car. A couple of days later I brought this up during meal conversation and those two other sistered came out with the same reaction – too much talk of the evils of the world – no sense of the basic goodness present in all of God’s creation. Needless to say, I felt affirmed. As information: one sister was born in Puerto Rico, in vows over 40 years; another born in the Philippines, in vows over 25 years; and myself, very early babyboomer and grandmother in vows just 6 years. And we all reacted the same way.
Sr. Sandra’s talk, “God so Loved the World…” is the direct antidote to what we heard on the radio. Our world is not merely wheat and tares, good and evil, black and white. It contains a zillion shades of grey in between. Before reaching her phrase “spirituality of engagement” I wrote in the margin of the paper: “How do we engage with the world? via confrontation or compassion.” As Jesus taught in the Gospel story, if we confront by pulling up all the weeds mixed in with the wheat we run the risk of killing off some of the good wheat with which it intermingles. The compassionate approach, motivated by Sr. Sandra’s spirituality of engagement would be dismissed by author on the radio as the cowardly approach. I suggest that it is rather a much more difficult, much more personally challenging way of being to cultivate and to live by.
I found a striking parallel in the current issue of the Bulletin of the International Union of Superiors General. In her article entitled “A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of India”, Sr. Joyce Murray, CSJ of Peterborough, Canada proposes a “spirituality of mission as dialogue”. She presents Jesus as the model for this spirituality which calls for dialogue with God, with the poor, with cultures, with other religions, with the earth and with the universe. Sr. Sandra does not stand alone as she prophetically points from the margins, from which as a vowed religious she has a great view, and offers a teaching to us all about being other Christs in today’s world.
Before closing this too lengthy post, I do want to add that her introductory historical information is invaluable. Uppity religious are nothing new in this world. The mendicants had the nerve to want to move out of the monasteries and what service they ultimately gave to the Church. Later women wanted to move out of cloisters to “engage” the needy, the poorest of the poor and had to beg and suffer to do so. Nineteenth and twentieth century women religious founded the health care system in this country and are in no small way responsible for a religious educational system. And they had to be uppity to do so. I won’t even get into the likes of Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine of Siena or St. Teresa of Avila!