Thanks to Michael Perry for thinking of me and bringing to the attention of the Mirror of Justice community the recent America essay by Sr. Ilia Delio, O.S.F. As one member of a religious order to another, I would like to respond to Sr. Ilia’s essay and the points she makes or implies about religious life. In particular, I suggest that when all is said and done the “communio” versus “concilium” distinction is untenable in any effort to be authentic to the Second Vatican Council’s aspirations, suggestions, and mandates. The fundamental justification for my position is that the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of the Religious Life, Perfectae Caritatis, must be understood and applied in its entirety, not selectively. After having read Sr. Ilia’s interesting essay, I see that she chooses to follow some but not all of the Decree’s provisions. This is a mistake.
Before I offer a brief examination of the Decree that is essential to our understanding that one must subscribe to both “communio” and “concilium” if one wishes to be faithful to the Council, I have a few observations regarding some of Sr. Ilia’s claims. I do not disagree with the position she presents at the outset of her article: that women’s religious life is undergoing “a massive revolutionary change” which she describes as cataclysmic. But at the same time, Sr. Ilia does not offer a reason or theory why new communities that are more traditional are doing well, even prospering, with new vocations. Those who belong to many of the traditional orders have not had this experience of rejuvenation but are, from what Sr. Ileia states and others have demonstrated, suffering the cataclysm, a decline, and death. Could it be that those orders which are experiencing growth or rebirth are doing precisely what the Decree mandates but those which are in decline are choosing a path in which some of the Decree’s elements are followed but others ignored or dismissed?
Sr. Ilia speaks of the “spirit of Vatican II.” One often hears of the “spirit of Vatican II.” Well, the spirit is not some nebulous, self-manufactured hope; it is, rather, a reality that any of us can access should we choose to read and comprehend objectively the texts of the Council in their entirety. This is resourcement; this is what constitutes authentic aggiornamento. She also wonders if some women religious have misinterpreted the documents of the Council. The Spirit and the spirit of the Council are in the texts, and they are clear. So, I do not think it is so much a matter of misinterpretation as I think it is a matter of ignoring. And this is why it is essential to the task of “the spirit of Vatican II” to comprehend in its entirety what the Council had to say about religious life—both in men’s and women’s institutes—so that the Spirit can be followed, the spirit of the Council can be known, and the intent of the Council can be honored and observed. The Radcliffian thesis of “one or the other” that emerges from the “communio/concilium” distinction neglects what the Council intended as evidenced by the Decree’s text.
At the outset, the Council reminds one and all that to be in religious life—be it a male or a female order—one puts on Christ in an additional way (we all put on Christ at our baptism) through the evangelical counsels, i.e., poverty, chastity, and obedience. These counsels are not optional; they are constitutive of religious life. The Council acknowledged that the members of the religious institutes and the institutes themselves reflect a variety of gifts, and it asserted that each member and each institute lives “more and more for Christ and for His body which is the Church.” The greater the personal gift from the women and men religious, “the richer the life of the Church becomes and the more lively and successful its apostolate.” This is a “magis” that necessitates not only “concilium” but, simultaneously “communio.”
The Council was quick to point out the non-negotiable requirement that both adaptation and renewal of religious life must be faithful to sources of all Christian life and the original spirit or charism of the particular order. Of course, these may require some necessary adaptation of first principles but not abandonment. So, when Sr. Laurie Brink spelled out her “dynamic option” for religious life to be beyond Jesus, to be beyond institutional religion, and to be post-Christian, she offered a recipe that is in irreconcilable conflict with both the “spirit” and the intent of the Council’s Decree on Religious Life. [HERE]
One cannot discount the essential nature of what constitutes appropriate adaptation of which the Council speaks and to which Sr. Ilia alludes. The Council note that the ultimate norm of religious life is following Jesus Christ and the Gospels. To be beyond Jesus and to be post-Christian are problems of the highest magnitude. The Council, moreover, noted that all religious institutes must participate in the life of the Church, not beyond or outside of it. Regardless of the order—male or female; contemplative or apostolic), each shares in the principal mission of aiding its members to follow Christ, be united to God, and to remain faithful to the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
While the Council recommended the possibility of prudent experimentation in adaptation, it clearly asserted that the approval of the Holy See or the local Ordinary must be obtained so that the experimentation is consistent with the Decree’s objectives. To pick and choose which practices and beliefs of the Church constitute acceptable adaptation of religious life would likely conflict with this vital element of the Decree. In this context, it is clear that each member of a religious institute is “dedicated to [the Church’s] service.” This essential communion with the Church requires daily prayer and “the holy sacrifice of the Mass.” In this regard, it would seem that the Benedictine Women of Madison, who reconstituted themselves as a secular corporation and piecemeally alienated ecclesiastical property and no longer have Mass at their Holy Wisdom monastery, are not in accord with the intent and “spirit” of the Decree. The mandated union with the Church has evaporated.
Sr. Ilia may consider that she follows the correct course in her effort to be faithful to the Second Vatican Council. But she has given us little to consider by way of pointing out that renewal, adaptation, or anything else that she offers draws from the Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of Religious Life. I trust that some of the relevant elements of the Decree that I have pointed out in this posting demonstrate convincingly that the Decree mandates both “communio” and “concilium”—you can’t have one without the other.
RJA sj
Friday, October 2, 2009
For a very interesting essay in AMERICA, 10/12/09--by Ilia Delio, O.S.F., a Franciscan sister who is a professor in, and chair of, the Department of Spirituality Studies at the Washington Theological Union (D.C.)--subtitled The Vatican Visitation Prompts Reflections on a Religious Divide, click here.
From AMERICA, 10/12/09:
Proofreading the Pope
John F. Kavanaugh
The Tablet of London reported in early September that George Weigel has
been bringing to Polish Catholics his criticism of the “incoherent
sentimentalism” of Pope Benedict XVI’s new encyclical, Caritas in Veritate.
Apparently Weigel claims that since the encyclical does not represent
the pope’s views, Catholics should remain faithful to the
“pro-capitalist teachings” of their countryman Pope John Paul II.
Weigel, of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is the author of a massive biography of Pope John Paul II titled Witness to Hope.
Though widely researched and respectfully praised, the book does not
very successfully establish the “pro-capitalist teachings” of the pope
who, as a Fortune magazine editor complained in November 1982, was
“wedded to socialist economics and increasingly a sucker for third
world anti-imperialist rhetoric.” Weigel acknowledges the harsh
reaction of pro-capitalists to John Paul II’s encyclical On Social Concern,
six years later, but in this case he proposes that the sections of the
encyclical that clash with his own interpretation of John Paul were the
result of committee work and Roman Curial politics.
George Weigel thinks that some liberal virus has infected the encyclical.
Weigel uses the same tactic in dealing with Pope Benedict’s new
encyclical letter on charity, truth and social justice. But this time
he is less gracious. With a conspiratorial tone worthy of Dan Brown’s
novel The Da Vinci Code,
Weigel suggests in an article in The National Review online edition of
July 7, subtitled “The Revenge of Justice and Peace (Or So They May
Think),” that some liberal virus has infected the encyclical. We are
advised to read it armed with a gold marker and a red marker. The gold
should highlight those passages that are authentically Benedict’s (that
is, they agree with Weigel); the red is for the passages inserted by
the pope’s evil peace-and-justice twin. Otherwise we are stuck with “an
encyclical that resembles a duck-billed platypus.” The good Benedict is
lucid and moving; the bad Benedict is “incomprehensible” and marked by
“confused sentimentality.” Are these the passages that refer to world
governance and the common good, the strategic importance of unions, the
redistribution of wealth and governmental restraints on capitalism?
[Read the rest, here.]
Support for Abortion Slips
Issue Ranks Lower on the Agenda
Oct. 1, 2009
Overview
Polls conducted in 2009 have found fewer Americans expressing support for
abortion than in previous years. In Pew Research Center polls in 2007 and 2008,
supporters of legal abortion clearly outnumbered opponents; now Americans are
evenly divided on the question, and there have been modest increases in the
numbers who favor reducing abortions or making them harder to obtain. Less
support for abortion is evident among most demographic and political groups.
[Read the rest, here.]
<p>Pope pushes Obama envoy on abortion, conscience protections</p>Pope pushes Obama envoy on abortion, conscience
protections
By John L Allen Jr
Created Oct 02, 2009
Rome -- Miguel Diaz presented his credentials to Pope
Benedict XVI this morning as President Barack Obama's ambassador to the Holy
See, and the new envoy drew a pledge of cooperation on international issues from
the pope, as well as clear insistence upon "the inalienable right to life from
the moment of conception to natural death," as well as "the right to
conscientious object on the part of health care workers, and indeed all
citizens."
[Read the rest, here.]
You should start making plans now to attend Seton Hall's conference, Religious Legal Theory: The State of the Field, on November 12 and 13. Here's the description:
During the twentieth century purely secular perspectives dominated legal theory. Most legal scholars thought of religion with regard to the law exclusively in terms of church-state relations and freedom of religion. In recent years, however, scholars of law and other disciplines have expanded their focus to include the contributions that religious convictions and perspectives can make to general legal theory and to our understanding of many areas of the law that seem at first sight unrelated to religion.
For example, in his address at the 2008 annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools, AALS President John Garvey emphasized the importance of religious perspectives on law. Major university presses have published volumes on the intersection of faith, legal theory and theology (”Faith and Law: How Religious Traditions from Calvinism to Islam View American Law” (Cochran, ed. NYU Press 2007); “The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics and Human Nature” (Witte and Alexander, eds. Columbia University Press 2006); “Christian Perspectives on Legal Thought” (McConnell, Cochran & Carmella, eds. Yale University Press 2001). Established legal scholars have published work in law reviews offering explicitly religious perspectives. The Journal of Law and Religion publishes symposia on topics such as “Emerging Applications of Jewish Law in American Legal Scholarship,” and The Journal of Catholic Social Thought offers symposia on a variety of topics, both global and domestic. Numerous blogs and other non-traditional publishing venues are devoted to serious reflection on religious conceptions of law and public good.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Thanks to Rick for passing on the news that Chai Feldblum has been nominated to be a member of the EEOC. I'm hoping that Prof. Feldblum has (or will develop) a more fulsome understanding of liberty of conscience than the one reflected in a comment she made about the Elane Photography case. She remarked, "if you run a wedding photography service, even if you don't like the fact that those two gays are getting married, you'd better have someone on your staff who will take those pictures."
Here's how I respond in my forthcoming book:
[The idea] that the Huguenins [the photo agency owners] can avoid the problem by hiring an employee who is willing to shoot events that their own moral convictions do not permit them to shoot . . . solves nothing unless we conceive of conscience in individualist terms, as though its claims apply to my own conduct and no further. In reality, conscience refers (literally) to shared moral belief, and while not every claim of conscience will actually be shared, such claims are, by their nature, susceptible to sharing. As such, the Huguenins’ resistance to offering, through creative hiring, a “full service” photography agency is not an imperialist expansion of conscience’s interior domain; it is a natural outgrowth of conscience’s relational dimension. Institutions do not possess a conscience in some ontological sense, but they do embody distinct moral identities that are shaped by their constituents’ consciences. When we preclude the cultivation and maintenance of such institutional identities, it is not just moral pluralism that suffers; it is the cause of conscience itself.
