Future of Religious Life: May 2010

Monday, May 10, 2010

Sandra Schneiders essay

In this essay Sandra makes a very comprehensive defense of the women religious of the US against the Vatican visitation, and she explains how religious congregations are prophetic witnesses...a long read but worth the time.
http://ncronline.org/news/women/religious-life-prophetic-life-form

Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEW

A Sacred Voice is Calling: Personal Vocation and Social Conscience
John Neafsey
Orbis Books 2006
For about the last ten years or so, the Lilly Foundation has spent millions of dollars in grants to universities and individuals to promote research and activity to determine how religious oriented youth, who in years past responded in relatively large numbers to the call of a vocation to the priesthood and religious life, are now responding to a personal vocation in both secular and church spheres of life. Lilly is interested in knowing what is replacing the so-called religious vocation of the past.
Author John Neafsey, a clinical psychologist at Loyola University of Chicago, was supported by Lilly in writing A Sacred Voice is Calling, in which he explores what it means to find and follow a personal calling. The subtitle, Personal Vocation and Social Conscience, reveals the uniqueness of Neafsey’s approach. He discusses calling in the context of forming a personal conscience with reference to social issues rather than in the context of a particular institution or life style. Issues such as 9/11, the war on terror and the Iraq war are used as examples of situations one could use to sharpen one’s conscience and provide opportunities to hear a call. The book should be suggested reading for any person struggling to find meaning in life.
Neafsey has done a marvelous job of bring together examples of persons from Native American Black Elk to Mother Teresa and Thoreau, persons who have heard and followed a special calling and has used numerous quotes which will inspire those who are in a process of discernment.
Being a psychologist, Neafsey makes good use of psychological theory related to the underpinnings of the notion of the true self as a foundation for developing a meaningful and dedicated life.
Developing a strong social conscience is a key element, in the author’s presentation, to hearing the cry of the poor and sites contemporary reconciliation attempts in South Africa and Guatemala, and martyrdom in Latin America as situations which can help to develop a critical conscience.
The author is very successful in his attempt to take a broad, interdisciplinary and ecumenical approach to the notion of sacred calling and demonstrates that “vocation” is a “universal or archetypal phenomenon.”
Phil Aaron, S.M.

Poverty, Celibacy, and Obedience: A radical Option for Lifeby Diarmuid O'Murchu, Croosroads Press, 1999

INTRODUCTION, CHAPTERS ONE AND TWO
In this short book O'Murchu combines a discussion on a nonviolent way of life with a reinterpretation of the three vows of religious life. Below are excerpts from the book.

P 2 (in this book) I want to rescue the vowed life from the religious minimalism that is choking it to death. I want to transcend the centuries of legalistic and devotional modeling that portrayed the vows as the means toward perfection that guaranteed salvation in a life hereafter.I want to reclaim what I believe is a much deeper and more authentic tradition in which the vowed life engages with the archetypal values that govern our earthly, personal and interpersonal lives. It is these global and planetary—as well as personal and interpersonal—dimensions of the vowed life that surface afresh under the rubric of non-violence, itself a key aspect for the unfolding spirituality and theology of our time.(Chapter one is a review of the history of non-violence and the main characters in the movement)(Another main theme in the book is the notion of “liminality”,, ..”the option for the cutting-edge which characterizes the vowed life in a unique way.”

P 13 Reinterpreting the Vows. In all the traditions, the vows tend to be explored and explained in ascetical, world-denouncing terms. They are portrayed as laws whose strict observance will protect you from the evils of the world and ensure that you attain eternal bliss in the afterlife.

P 14 Now surprisingly, we have—in all the religions of the world-- a two-tier understanding of holiness. The monastic life is considered to be the better and the holier and, consequently, the lay way of life is deemed to be inferior and imperfect. Despite genuine efforts over the past thirty years to change this dualistic and discriminatory distinction, the old division still looms large and seriously inhibits a more integrated spirituality for monk and lay persons alike.

P 17 The call to the vowed life is universal in nature and predates, historically and culturally, all the major religions …Religious life needs neither formal religion nor the Christian Church to validate its existence….it does not require formal religion either for its existence or development.P18 It is unfortunate that religious life today is so closely identified with formal religion. It confuses many issues but, most fundamentally, the meaning of the vowed life as a cultural, global movement.

P 19 The major crisis facing the vowed life today is that it has largely lost touch with its capacity to serve in a liminal capacity. It has been heavily domesticated and excessively institutionalized, not merely in religious (ecclesiastical) terms but also because it has over identified with the conventional behaviors of secular life. Religious tend to work and minister in institutions and systems sponsored by state and Church, sometimes both. Such involvement seriously hinders the ability to act in a liminal and prophetic way.…Many of the contemporary ecological and feminist movements serve the liminal calling in a truly authentic way. They name, bravely and subversively, the sins of oppression in this age and go beyond that to proffer alternative ways of living, for now and for the future. Liminality is alive and thriving, but for the greater part outside and not within the monastic and religious life we know today.For contemporary religious the call of our times may be to place our resources (personal and congregational) more explicitly at the service of those movements that operate at the liminal cutting-edge in today's world.

P 37 If we are to adopt nonviolence as an under girding value for vowed living, we cannot escape the painful truth that much of our living in the past—our attempts to keep the vows—was itself fundamentally violent.

See the author's web site for essays on various topicshttp://www.diarmuid13.com/

Phil Aaron

Future of Religious Life

Monday, May 10, 2010

Sandra Schneiders essay

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