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!

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

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!

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