In a recent issue of Commonweal magazine there is an article in which a psychiatrist reflects on his very successful schooling in a Jesuit secondary school and college, and then speculates on the influence of the vow of celibacy on the action or inaction of bishops and priests in the sex abuse scandal.
A set of letters to the editor then followed in which writers initiate a debate about whether negative forces within the nature of religious vows retard personal development. In one letter reference is made to a 1947 talk by Jesuit John Courtney Murray entitled Dangers of the Vows. (see the whole text at
http://woodstock.georgetown.edu/library/murray/1967a.htm)
Below is a summary of the article and excerpts of letters reacting to the article as well as a summary of Murray’s speech.
Gault Commonweal article excerpts
On completion of their training Jesuits take vows: poverty, chastity, and obedience. And what are the challenges of adolescence? With what must we come to terms as we struggle to adapt to a place in the adult world? Wealth, sex, and power. Are these not the three great forces, the perplexing and dominant mysteries with which the untroubled child must at last unhappily contend? These men had vowed to avoid these issues. Poverty, chastity, obedience. However admirable in the purity of their moral rigor, might not these principles forfend some of the most difficult challenges of full adulthood? About the schoolmaster there is an ancient saying, Inter pueros senex; inter senes puer. A man among boys; a boy among men.
… That the church and some of its priests can have been so good and some so bad boggles the mind. But I recall your attention to the issue of incomplete adulthood. Celibacy may facilitate the consecrated life, but not full and ordinary life. Obedience may make one a good soldier, but not necessarily a good decision maker. The unworldliness of a pious man, like that of an intellectual, ill equips him for administrative emergencies. The absent-minded impracticality of professors is legendary. Everyone forgives them their somewhat childlike single-mindedness and understands that ivory towers are necessary for the protection of their endangered species. Perhaps both the spiritual and the academic life conduce to one’s retaining some traits of the innocent child. Poverty, chastity, obedience. Perhaps these abnegations are accomplished at some cost, dulling the shrewd discernment and restraining the decisive reaction that crisis management requires.
St. Paul, in his letter to Timothy, offered this advice: “A bishop, therefore, must be above reproach, husband of one wife.... He must be one who manages his own household well and controls his children.... For if a man does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of a congregation?” There’s a commonsense plausibility to Paul’s argument, and he seems to be making a case against a celibate clergy. A man can stop being a child without becoming a husband and father, but it isn’t easy.
…I’m wondering whether, as in classic tragedy, heroic virtue and fatal flaw may both derive—at least in part—from one source: the Catholic clergy’s incomplete personal entanglement in the perplexing challenges of full adulthood.
It was from women, several of them, that I first heard the observation that priests are like children. My informants didn’t actually explain this idea in a way I could fully grasp. It reminds me of the parallel observation, heard from more than a few women, that men are like children. But priests, perhaps, even more so.
Maybe that’s it. Maybe they were boys themselves, boys who loved school, and teaching school, and being with boys at school. They consecrated their lives to it; and they created Marquette High School, where I was so happy, although I still don’t quite understand why. Not really
Excerpts of Letters in Response
Perilous Vows
I was disappointed in Barry Gault’s article on Jesuits (“Society Men,” April 22), but I enjoyed the letters in response (May 20) and the debate over whether religious vows can keep the young Jesuit from growing up. In a little-known essay published in Woodstock Letters (Vol. 96, Fall 1967), John Courtney Murray, SJ, discussed the dangers of the vows. It was originally a talk he gave to fellow Jesuits in 1947.
He warned young Jesuits about the “risks of religious life,” especially “the one supremely perilous risk—that of losing your manhood.” Look around, he said, and see men damaged by their reaction to poverty, chastity, and obedience; and see men unorganized, and intellectually and emotionally immature. They lack responsibility and purpose because they have failed to grapple with three elemental forces—the earth, woman, and their own spirits. “Man is not a man until by his own hard work he has bent stubborn earth to his own purposes.” Without woman, a man loses the possibility of becoming a father, more fully like God, and the “possibility of headship”: Adam’s fault was allowing Eve to “rule” him into temptation. (Obviously Murray wrote long before Theological Studies had published articles on feminist theology.) Finally, through obedience, one loses power to choose a destiny. “Your typical bachelor is proverbially crotchety, emotionally unstable, petulant, and self-enclosed—small and childish in the emotional life.”
Jesuit life has been radically revised in an effort to avoid producing typical bachelors. Nevertheless, some of what Murray wrote still rings true.
Raymond A. Schroth, SJ
Excerpts from other letters
Barry Gault’s article “Society Men” (April 22) raises thoughtful questions. Does Catholic priesthood, as it is actually lived today, promote certain kinds of extended adolescence or boyishness among its members? “A man can stop being a child without becoming a husband and father, but it isn’t easy.” Gault then raises the intriguing metaquestion of whether that extended boyishness, resulting from “the Catholic clergy’s incomplete personal entanglement in the perplexing challenges of full adulthood,” might have positive as well as negative effects on their character. Among its negative effects, Gault seems to count pedophilia, which I find a dubious linkage—but then, I guess he is the shrink.
I think a celibate, tenured priesthood does tend to make priests like children. Psychic prices are paid. But what generally passes for growing up has its prices too.
Bill Schrempp
Newberg, Ore.
I am disappointed that Commonweal, which usually holds to high journalistic and intellectual standards, saw fit to print the tired old argument that clerical celibacy leads to psychosexual immaturity, which, according to the baseless logic of this line of reasoning, led to the clergy sexual-abuse crisis in the church. This argument, often associated with left-leaning Catholics, is as discredited and without foundation as the argument often put forth by right-leaning Catholics that homosexuality is the source of the problem. Given my study of the data in my seven years as director of vocations for the Upper Midwest Jesuits, there is no evidence that either is the case.
Since when is marriage the cure-all for life’s problems? Are there no immature married men? Are there no mature celibate men and women? What about the great celibate saints of the church, not to mention Buddhist monks such as the Dalai Lama and other celibates from non-Christian traditions? For that matter, what about Jesus Christ? From scriptural evidence, church tradition, and doctrine, Jesus never married. Was he psychosexually immature? Was he an abuser?
Warren Sazama, SJ
Milwaukee, Wis
Another letter
As for the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, Gault asks, “However admirable in the purity of their moral rigor, might not these principles forfend some of the most difficult challenges of full adulthood?” On the contrary, far from removing one from a confrontation with those “three great forces” of the adult world—wealth, sex, and power—living the vows obliges one to come to terms with them, if the vows are to be lived in a holy manner. To consider only the first of these forces: the complacent greed of an unscrupulous CEO is not so far removed from the petty possessiveness of a sister guarding her space or her few belongings. Neither has confronted adequately the mighty pull of material treasure.
Rose Hoover, RC
Gainesville, Fla.
MY RESPONSE
The Gault article has produced an interesting set of responses which tend to be more defensive than analytical. One exception is the reference to the Murray article. Gault’s thesis and charges seem to deserve a more critical analysis based on psychological theory and new knowledge about moral development gained in the last one hundred years.
I suggest that further discussion might be based on three ideas: Jung’s theory on individuation and the development of the self, studies on the development of personal moral responsibility, and the notion of human rights.
Jung wrote in response to the apparent lack of personal responsibility in the collective atmosphere of communist oppression in the 50’s in Eastern Europe where identification with social norms provided little critique of them. A strong sense of self should lead to critical analysis. Psychological studies about the process of moral development are numerous and new emphasis on human rights questions under what circumstances it is morally responsible for an individual to give up those rights.
Having lived the three vows for over sixty years, I am in a position to question how it is that religious orders have not done the critical analysis it seems is necessary to address the very rapid and fatal decline in membership. A new understanding of the vows in light of new psychological knowledge may be the place to start.
Philip Aaron, S.M.
Dayton, OH
summary of Murray article
The Danger of the Vows
An encounter with
earth, woman, and spirit
John Courtney Murray, S.J.
Many conferences are given about the obligations of the religious life, the beauties of it, the graces one receives in it. Perhaps one aspect is a bit neglected—the risks of the religious life, the dangers inherent in it because it is religious. Let me speak of them.
Actually you run one supremely perilous risk—that of losing your manhood—impoverishment, diminution, deformation (if true, a serious threat to our Holy Orders). If you doubt, look about. How many take the risk and lose . . . so many men of diminished manhood, of incomplete virility . . . not necessarily more than in the world. To be a man in any walk of life is not easy; few achieve full virility, full womanhood either . . . but for reasons that do not entirely operate among us. The world puts obstacles in the way of manhood; religion does, too. And there are those who succumb to the obstacles.
Recognize them by certain marks: men who are at least in some greater or lesser degree irresponsible, whose manhood has something lacking, who have been damaged because of the way they have reacted to the vow of poverty . . . men who are dispersed, energyless, because unorganized and immature intellectually and emotionally . . . their manhood has been changed by the vow of chastity . . . men who to a degree are purposeless, their lives not consciously and strongly patterned, not inwardly directed toward a determined goal with all the organized power of the whole self.
Lack of responsibility, lack of integrity, lack of purpose—all somehow relate to the three vows. All are indicative of diminished manhood.
…
Our problem
You see now our problem. On entering religion, we avoid this triple encounter, we step aside from the struggle with these elemental forces. By the vow of poverty, we are redeemed from the struggle with earth; security is given to us without a struggle; we do not know want nor the fear of want. We are no longer responsible for creating the conditions of our life; they are created for us. We free ourselves from the heritage of work. The collectivity assumes a responsibility for each of us; we vow to depend on it, and we do. And that is a terribly risky thing to do—seemingly it amounts to a violation of the law of nature. No man may depend on another for livelihood—a child may, because he is a child; but a man should assume responsibility for himself. And if he does not, he risks remaining an irresponsible child. He risks the destruction of living an inert, parasitic life—living off the collectivity. He has taken out of his life one of the elemental forces, motives that drive a man to the achievement of his manhood. And unless it is replaced by a comparable drive, he will inevitably be less a man—diminished, impoverished.
By the vow of chastity, we decline the encounter with woman. We make the radical refusal to enter the world of Eve—that strange, elemental world of life, wherein is offered to man the possibility of being the principle of man, the head of woman, and therefore himself (caput mulieris . . . vir per mulierem). Again there seems to be a violation of a law of nature. And the risk is manifold (adolescent senility; sex is dead). The Fathers pointed to pride as the danger one runs in choosing virginity—a certain hardness of spirit, a withdrawal of reason into a world of unreality because it is isolated from the facts and forces of life, and therefore unable to be integral. Man risks becoming a disembodied head, that fancies itself a whole thing when it is not; when it denies its dependence on the body and all that the body stands for; and therefore risks denying its dependence on God who made it dependent on the body. The pure spirit can readily be the proud spirit—whose hardness makes it poor material for priestly consecration.
This is the danger of false integrity. There is the opposite danger of a failure to reach any integrity—of a relapse into softness and dispersion of an immature emotionality, that has never grown up, been strongly polarized, and therefore wanders into sentimentality, wasting itself, and draining off the psychic energies. In a word, there is again the danger of childishness. Your typical bachelor is proverbially crotchety, emotionally unstable, petulant, and self-enclosed—small and childish in the emotional life. Your religious risks being the same. The chaste spirit risks being also the childish spirit.
Finally, by the vow of obedience one declines the most bruising encounter of all—that of a man with himself, with his own spirit and its power of choice, with his own powers and the problem of their full exercise, towards the achievement of a determined purpose.
Here again one throws oneself on the collectivity, and on the will of another. One ceases to be self-directed. One's choices are made; and there is the comfortable feeling that one does not have to assume the responsibility for them—that falls on the superior. One need go through no particular agonies of decision; one need only follow the crowd, and obey the principle, "munere suo fungi mediocriter." There need be no greatly earnest searching of heart, to discover if there are powers not yet exploited. And hence there can be an end both to aspiration and conflict. In a word, one can live through one's public life, and spare oneself the lonely agony of the desert struggle. In eliminating alternatives and the stern necessity for choice, obedience eliminates also the necessity for self-assertion and the assertion of one's own purposes. And thus it subtracts from one of the elemental disciplines that make for manhood. Your obedient man can become relatively inert, purposeless, and to that extent less a man.
These are the dangers; this is our problem. We have no time here for a solution, but such a solution as we need is founded on a paradox. By taking vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, we risk irresponsibility, childish immaturity, and purposelessness. We avoid the risks by keeping them integrally. Any chipping off in their observance is a blow, light or heavy, on one's manhood. Truly poor equals responsible; integrally chaste equals mature; absolutely obedient equals enterprising and purposeful.
Showing posts with label vows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vows. Show all posts
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Vows in Developed Society vs in Subsistence
Since the religious vows were first formulated in a subsistence society it seems that they should be reformulated in a developed society. What do you think?
FROM SUBSISTENCE TO DEVELOPMENT: Religious Life and the Vows
Father William Ferree, S.M., a provincial superior of the Society of Mary during the effervescence of the late 60's, used the progress of people from subsistence to development as a general organizing principle to explain all social phenomenon. For him, this movement explained from where we came and to where we are going as a people. It was the basis of his general theory of social justice: our social requirement to organize life for the good flourishing of all. He frequently referred to this progression from subsistence to development in teaching and writing. Since religious life and the vows were formulated in a time of subsistence, it might be appropriate to reflect on the meaning of the life in reference to new understanding that comes with development.
Subsistence is a cyclical way of life in which most are poor and live from hand to mouth. Everyone is poor with the exception of land owners, money changers and royalty. Scarcity characterizes everything. A few are rich and progress is not a common notion for people living a subsistence life. Development brings progress, education, an orientation to the future, and an abundance of everything. Wealth is fixed in subsistence, whereas in a development society wealth is created.
Frequently the word “economy”is used as object of the adjective "subsistence", and most often is the limit of the values with which subsistence is analyzed. Other disciplines and social, psychological and spiritual theories, however, can also be analyzed in reference to subsistence.
Although Ferree alludes to this movement from subsistence to development in his circular letter on the vows, #1 and #2, he does not elaborate in detail and leaves open conjecture about how the understanding of the vows might be different in the two eras.
Before referring directly to the three vows of religious life, it might be useful to further contrast subsistence and development by noting specific examples of characteristics which change in this progression since change in everything is the dynamic element in the movement from subsistence to development.
The most important dynamic might be between scarcity and abundance. In a subsistence society everything is scarce, not only material goods but information, relationships, and dreams. Under subsistence, life requires sharing, and hoarding is a common survival technique. While in a development mode abundance is the hallmark of everything from goods to technology. The common need is to solve the problem of distribution of goods. Knowledge is perhaps the best example of this dynamic of abundance since it can be distributed indefinitely.
In these two societies even virtue can be defined with different emphases on personal and societal needs. The best example of this might be the practice of social justice in reference to the distribution of an abundance of goods and opportunities versus a scarcity of these. In the development case, the virtue of social justice must be practiced in common rather than individually.
Perhaps the one area in which the contrast between the two modes of life is most striking is in the area of relationship to place. In subsistence societies, place is a very narrow concept. One seldom travels far away from home and life is generally spent close to one's family. Care of the earth is very important because the immediate neighborhood is the basis of livelihood and is all that is known. People are close to the earth and reverence it. As development takes place people become alienated form the earth and are more prone to exploit it. They travel further and develop relationships other than family. Diversity is a more common characteristic in a developed society.
Although community is held high in a subsistence society, it is limited to family and tribe, and the notion of globalization is unknown. Local self-sufficiency is a requirement for survival rather than reliance on the market. Money as a means of exchange is less common in subsistence. Common property under subsistence is replaced with private property under development. Community even looks different in the two societies if hospitality, ritual, and individual rights are considered.
Population control is unknown in a situation of subsistence. Families are large and provide additional workers and insurance for taking care of parents in their old age. Sex is for the sole purpose of procreation and marriage is arranged for the economic good of the family. With the ability to control births in developed societies, the purpose of sex takes on additional meaning and thus alters the purpose and time frame of marriage as well. In addition, length of life is longer in developed societies and the purpose of sex extends beyond the natural child-producing age.
Even religion is influenced by the movement from subsistence to development and our image of God undergoes profound changes. Scientific insights into the origins of the universe produce new cosmologies which replace long held stories to explain our origins. Genesis is replaced with the Big Bang. An understanding of new cosmology influences religious doctrine and new images of God are sought to reconcile with new knowledge. God the Provider is replaced with God the Originator. Dependence is placed on planning rather than on Providence. Original blessing replaces original sin, and heaven appears to be on earth. Even the Church acknowledges that happiness should be characteristic of this life as well as in the hereafter. The Kingdom of God is sought on this earth now.
The notion that personal or human rights acquire greater significance in a developed society influences all aspects of life and our sense of community profoundly. Coupled with a tendency toward secularism under development, one finds it hard to distinguish what is religious and what is secular.
Given the profound changes which have influenced human flourishing and life under development, it is worth speculating about how our understanding of religious vows, which were formulated at a time when subsistence was the common way of life, should be understood and practiced in an era influenced by and committed to the notion of development and all that comes with it. The developed world is what we have, we are committed to it, and there is no indication that the trend will be reversed. So, how should we formulate and practice the three vows in this developed world?
Ferree and others taught that the purpose of the vows was to be an eschatological witness, a sign, to the transitory nature of life on earth which when ended will be concerned about neither marriage nor possessions, nor with personal choice. Under an eschatological theory of the vows, those aspects of life are denied by the vows as a witness to the hereafter. Religious are supposed to be a sign that all in this life is to lead to a better life in heaven. Our purpose in life is to escape this world and the toil brought on by original sin.
So, we can ask: what should be the meaning and practice of the “vow of poverty” in a society that knows that the way to meet the growing human demand to feed the hungry and cloth the naked is to increase wealth? Or that the real human problem is not scarcity but the distribution of an abundance of goods and wealth?
What should be the meaning and practice of the “vow of chastity” in developed societies in which humans experience longer life, more complex relationships and in which the whole notion of sex and its purpose is redefined?
What should be the meaning of the “vow of obedience” in a developed world in which the level of education is very high, in which the notion of personal rights is high and in which the acceptance of the personal gift of each person is recognized as sacred and in which the value of collaboration is recognized to be the key to the solution to making progress.
In Poverty, Celibacy, and Obedience, Irish religious Diarmuid O'Murchu uses new wording to describe the nature of religious life and the formulation and practice of the three vows.
O'Murchu reflects on a religious life based on a philosophy of non-violence and suggests a new way of looking at the vows in which the objects of the vows are achieved in a non-violent context respecting persons, the earth and individual gifts. “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”.
He writes: “A reformulation of the vows is long overdue, and it seems to me that we cannot develop a new theology or spirituality of the vowed life without a radical change in the language we use.”
Further he writes:'…how I live the vow of poverty in a wealthy Western European context requires a radically different response from that of being a slum dweller in Sao Paulo or Delhi. Context governs the criteria that make my liminal witness authentic or otherwise.”
O'Murchu writes about all three of the vows but here reflection will be made only on the vow of poverty as an example of the new language and understanding suggested by O'Murchu.
O'Murchu starts by suggesting that in the past the vow of poverty was concerned with stripping away all attachment to material goods to set free the soul for eternal life but was not concerned with care of the goods of God's creation. In addition, he says, the responsibility was on the individual person, and the collective wealth of the community was not subject to the same scrutiny. Of course, examples of excessive wealth of monasteries and religious communities are numerous in history.
For the vow for poverty, O'Murchu calls it the vow of mutual sustainability. “. . .in the old understanding of the vow of poverty ownership of goods belonged to the community rather than to the individual. This often led to widespread abuse and a great deal of irresponsible evasiveness. The notion of sustainability requires each and all of us to reclaim a real ownership of the goods entrusted to our care.”
In reference to all of the vows, O'Murchu uses the term “liminality” to describe the place and perspective from which religious should be living in this world. He is saying that we should be on the margins. “Liminal witness will strive to remain open to several interpretations for every aspect of reality. No question is ever closed, because such closure is an act of idolatry and often an act of blasphemy”.
If these perspectives anger you or thrill you, in either case, reading the entire text will make you think about the past and future of the vowed life. Perhaps you will be moved to write a comment to share your thoughts.
FROM SUBSISTENCE TO DEVELOPMENT: Religious Life and the Vows
Father William Ferree, S.M., a provincial superior of the Society of Mary during the effervescence of the late 60's, used the progress of people from subsistence to development as a general organizing principle to explain all social phenomenon. For him, this movement explained from where we came and to where we are going as a people. It was the basis of his general theory of social justice: our social requirement to organize life for the good flourishing of all. He frequently referred to this progression from subsistence to development in teaching and writing. Since religious life and the vows were formulated in a time of subsistence, it might be appropriate to reflect on the meaning of the life in reference to new understanding that comes with development.
Subsistence is a cyclical way of life in which most are poor and live from hand to mouth. Everyone is poor with the exception of land owners, money changers and royalty. Scarcity characterizes everything. A few are rich and progress is not a common notion for people living a subsistence life. Development brings progress, education, an orientation to the future, and an abundance of everything. Wealth is fixed in subsistence, whereas in a development society wealth is created.
Frequently the word “economy”is used as object of the adjective "subsistence", and most often is the limit of the values with which subsistence is analyzed. Other disciplines and social, psychological and spiritual theories, however, can also be analyzed in reference to subsistence.
Although Ferree alludes to this movement from subsistence to development in his circular letter on the vows, #1 and #2, he does not elaborate in detail and leaves open conjecture about how the understanding of the vows might be different in the two eras.
Before referring directly to the three vows of religious life, it might be useful to further contrast subsistence and development by noting specific examples of characteristics which change in this progression since change in everything is the dynamic element in the movement from subsistence to development.
The most important dynamic might be between scarcity and abundance. In a subsistence society everything is scarce, not only material goods but information, relationships, and dreams. Under subsistence, life requires sharing, and hoarding is a common survival technique. While in a development mode abundance is the hallmark of everything from goods to technology. The common need is to solve the problem of distribution of goods. Knowledge is perhaps the best example of this dynamic of abundance since it can be distributed indefinitely.
In these two societies even virtue can be defined with different emphases on personal and societal needs. The best example of this might be the practice of social justice in reference to the distribution of an abundance of goods and opportunities versus a scarcity of these. In the development case, the virtue of social justice must be practiced in common rather than individually.
Perhaps the one area in which the contrast between the two modes of life is most striking is in the area of relationship to place. In subsistence societies, place is a very narrow concept. One seldom travels far away from home and life is generally spent close to one's family. Care of the earth is very important because the immediate neighborhood is the basis of livelihood and is all that is known. People are close to the earth and reverence it. As development takes place people become alienated form the earth and are more prone to exploit it. They travel further and develop relationships other than family. Diversity is a more common characteristic in a developed society.
Although community is held high in a subsistence society, it is limited to family and tribe, and the notion of globalization is unknown. Local self-sufficiency is a requirement for survival rather than reliance on the market. Money as a means of exchange is less common in subsistence. Common property under subsistence is replaced with private property under development. Community even looks different in the two societies if hospitality, ritual, and individual rights are considered.
Population control is unknown in a situation of subsistence. Families are large and provide additional workers and insurance for taking care of parents in their old age. Sex is for the sole purpose of procreation and marriage is arranged for the economic good of the family. With the ability to control births in developed societies, the purpose of sex takes on additional meaning and thus alters the purpose and time frame of marriage as well. In addition, length of life is longer in developed societies and the purpose of sex extends beyond the natural child-producing age.
Even religion is influenced by the movement from subsistence to development and our image of God undergoes profound changes. Scientific insights into the origins of the universe produce new cosmologies which replace long held stories to explain our origins. Genesis is replaced with the Big Bang. An understanding of new cosmology influences religious doctrine and new images of God are sought to reconcile with new knowledge. God the Provider is replaced with God the Originator. Dependence is placed on planning rather than on Providence. Original blessing replaces original sin, and heaven appears to be on earth. Even the Church acknowledges that happiness should be characteristic of this life as well as in the hereafter. The Kingdom of God is sought on this earth now.
The notion that personal or human rights acquire greater significance in a developed society influences all aspects of life and our sense of community profoundly. Coupled with a tendency toward secularism under development, one finds it hard to distinguish what is religious and what is secular.
Given the profound changes which have influenced human flourishing and life under development, it is worth speculating about how our understanding of religious vows, which were formulated at a time when subsistence was the common way of life, should be understood and practiced in an era influenced by and committed to the notion of development and all that comes with it. The developed world is what we have, we are committed to it, and there is no indication that the trend will be reversed. So, how should we formulate and practice the three vows in this developed world?
Ferree and others taught that the purpose of the vows was to be an eschatological witness, a sign, to the transitory nature of life on earth which when ended will be concerned about neither marriage nor possessions, nor with personal choice. Under an eschatological theory of the vows, those aspects of life are denied by the vows as a witness to the hereafter. Religious are supposed to be a sign that all in this life is to lead to a better life in heaven. Our purpose in life is to escape this world and the toil brought on by original sin.
So, we can ask: what should be the meaning and practice of the “vow of poverty” in a society that knows that the way to meet the growing human demand to feed the hungry and cloth the naked is to increase wealth? Or that the real human problem is not scarcity but the distribution of an abundance of goods and wealth?
What should be the meaning and practice of the “vow of chastity” in developed societies in which humans experience longer life, more complex relationships and in which the whole notion of sex and its purpose is redefined?
What should be the meaning of the “vow of obedience” in a developed world in which the level of education is very high, in which the notion of personal rights is high and in which the acceptance of the personal gift of each person is recognized as sacred and in which the value of collaboration is recognized to be the key to the solution to making progress.
In Poverty, Celibacy, and Obedience, Irish religious Diarmuid O'Murchu uses new wording to describe the nature of religious life and the formulation and practice of the three vows.
O'Murchu reflects on a religious life based on a philosophy of non-violence and suggests a new way of looking at the vows in which the objects of the vows are achieved in a non-violent context respecting persons, the earth and individual gifts. “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”.
He writes: “A reformulation of the vows is long overdue, and it seems to me that we cannot develop a new theology or spirituality of the vowed life without a radical change in the language we use.”
Further he writes:'…how I live the vow of poverty in a wealthy Western European context requires a radically different response from that of being a slum dweller in Sao Paulo or Delhi. Context governs the criteria that make my liminal witness authentic or otherwise.”
O'Murchu writes about all three of the vows but here reflection will be made only on the vow of poverty as an example of the new language and understanding suggested by O'Murchu.
O'Murchu starts by suggesting that in the past the vow of poverty was concerned with stripping away all attachment to material goods to set free the soul for eternal life but was not concerned with care of the goods of God's creation. In addition, he says, the responsibility was on the individual person, and the collective wealth of the community was not subject to the same scrutiny. Of course, examples of excessive wealth of monasteries and religious communities are numerous in history.
For the vow for poverty, O'Murchu calls it the vow of mutual sustainability. “. . .in the old understanding of the vow of poverty ownership of goods belonged to the community rather than to the individual. This often led to widespread abuse and a great deal of irresponsible evasiveness. The notion of sustainability requires each and all of us to reclaim a real ownership of the goods entrusted to our care.”
In reference to all of the vows, O'Murchu uses the term “liminality” to describe the place and perspective from which religious should be living in this world. He is saying that we should be on the margins. “Liminal witness will strive to remain open to several interpretations for every aspect of reality. No question is ever closed, because such closure is an act of idolatry and often an act of blasphemy”.
If these perspectives anger you or thrill you, in either case, reading the entire text will make you think about the past and future of the vowed life. Perhaps you will be moved to write a comment to share your thoughts.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Individuation And Liberation In Religious Life by Phil Aaron
After living fifty seven years as a vowed religious, I am haunted by the fact that we religious are a dying breed especially in developed countries, unable to recruit new members even to replacement levels let alone able to recruit for growth. While at the same time no organized, grassroots and fundamental critique and analysis of the phenomenon of religious life is taking place.
For over forty years we have been in a process of renewal which has been concerned with externals such as dress, daily schedule, living situations and so forth without making a critical analysis of the religious life itself using new theories of human behavior which were unknown to all of us during the hundreds of years of development, growth and living of vowed religious life, personal growth theories which today are accepted as essential to living a fully human life. We have renewed but not revolutionized religious life.
What appealed and made sense for good people hundreds of years ago no longer attracts nor makes sense for good people in the postmodern world. Now men and women in the developed world have education and a new sense of themselves and their relationship to the world. Educated people no longer flee from the world nor look for life beyond this world. They rather embrace the world as good and use its good to develop the reign of God in this world. In order to survive, religious communities must address issues related to a need for a new understanding of the notion of the self while being vowed religious in this world.
If a much traveled bridge suddenly collapsed, engineers would immediately organize to find the fatal flaw in the design that caused the rapid destruction of something that they had designed with the best knowledge and planning available to them at the time, something they expected to last longer than it did. What is the fatal flaw in the design of religious life as we knew it?
The classic story of the widget business which faced extinction when widgets were no longer needed should be a learning model for religious orders. Some businesses have had to make radical and revolutionary changes in their identity to survive. This is no less true for individual religious and for religious orders. Changes made thus far have not been sufficiently radical to lead from death to resurrection. Why is there this resistance to radical change even in the face of organizational death? Is there something about the relationship between self identity and the nature of religious life that we need to address to survive?
Some make the survival of religious orders a divine issue related to God's call to vocation but, - call me a heretic - I believe vocation is a human call from the community, the culture and the church and that religious orders are human organizations subject to the same forces and dynamics as any organized group.
There are human issues involved in the demise of religious life which have to do with our self identity as religious and our lack of freedom to change fundamental aspects of our life, aspects which appear to be inherent in the very understanding of religious life but which may not be, and which are threatened when renewal is attempted, especially with reference to the notion of obedience and the responsibility to take charge of our own lives.
I wonder how we have let ourselves get to this situation in which we are spiraling down to extinction and unable to reverse the trend. Has personal identification with the norms of religious life (for example, obedience, humility, abnegation, uniformity, silence…) served to produce individual members who have no interest or ability, nor power to critique the culture of the religious community within which they live? None of this is said as an indictment or criticism of any individuals or leaders of religious communities. Individual religious and leadership have for decades been working hard at renewal. What seems to have been lacking is a loving critique of some fundamental values related to the system of consecrated life. This present critique faults no individual religious or superior nor does it assign blame to anyone. It is meant as an objective analysis of the notion of what we call vowed religious life in the Catholic Church.
To analyze the notion of religious life, I look to two theorists: a psychologist, Carl Jung, and a philosopher, Paulo Freire. Jung was concerned with the notion of individualtion, the process whereby a person develops a sense of self in relation to the other, to the world. Freire was concerned with the notion of freedom especially among oppressed peoples.
Individuation
Jung's idea of individuation is discussed by psychotherapist, Mary Watkins:
Jung focused on the emergence of individuality out of collectivity. For him, individuation “is the process by which individual beings are formed and differentiated; in particular, it is the development of the psychological individual as a being distinct from the general, collective psychology:”. (Jung, 1871 p757). I read “collective' here as the culture(s) one is residing in psychologically. Jung understood the power of a culture's dominant ideas over the individual and saw that simple identification with these norms provided no critique of them, no interest or power in resisting them, no moral center apart from them. (Watkins p 207)
In his 1957 work, The Undiscovered Self, Carl Jung writes about the loss of self identity under communist governments and the subsequent loss of moral responsibility. He contends that the fatal flaw of communism is that this political system suppressed the individual. To what extend can the following quote from The Undiscovered Self be applied to the notion of religious life as we know it?
"The moral responsibility of the individual is then inevitably replaced by the policy of the State (raison d'etat). Instead of moral and mental differentiation of the individual, you have public welfare and the raising of living standard. The goal and meaning of individual life (which is the only real life) no longer lie in the individual development but in the policy of the State, which is thrust upon the individual from outside and consists in the execution of an abstract idea which ultimately tends to attract all life to itself. The individual is increasingly deprived of the moral decision as to how he should live his own life, and instead is ruled, fed, clothed and educated as a social unit, accommodated in the appropriate housing unit, and amused in accordance with the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the masses. The rulers, in their turn, are just as much social units as the ruled and are distinguished only by the fact that they are specialized mouthpieces of the State doctrine." (p22)
Have we religious “given ourselves” so much to the notion of religious community that at this moment we do not have a strong enough sense of self to sufficiently critique the system which formed us and which does not seem to make sense to modern thinkers and those good persons who might think about joining us in our life?
Jungian analysts Howard W. Tyas, Jr. and Karen O. Hodges in one of their lectures describe the importance of individuation: “Jung understood individuation to be something that began in the second half of life, when individuals reach the zenith of their lives and suddenly find themselves facing an unknown vista or some unforeseen upheaval. Sometimes this turning point takes the form of a crisis: such as . . . a health problem, a broken relationship, or a change of residence or profession - something which upsets the status quo. Sometimes this experience assumes the form of a profound self-doubt, a loss of meaning or religious conviction, a questioning of everything previously held so dear. Sometimes it presents itself as a deep yearning or a call to change direction. And many times, it can manifest itself in powerful dreams and fantasies”.
As our median age continues to increase, it seems we need to analyze and critique the same list: self doubt, loss of meaning, and a questioning of everything in order to see a new future for religious orders.
Bert Chapman, former religious, has recently published A Monk's Tale, his recollection of his religious formation days and the characters and situations involved. Having lived these early days with him, I can appreciate his reflection on how his formation relates to the notion of individuation: Reflecting on the influence of his spiritual director he writes:
"Reflecting on his influence on me at this time (1997), I can feel the sadness experienced throughout my entire religious life as a Marianist. It's a sadness developed and, might I say, cultivated to neurotic perfection within religious orders prior to Vatican II. Religious superiors, as they themselves taught and trained, assumed life for candidates began the day they entered the monastery, that their lives before were to be forgotten, renounced, denied, and expunged. References to one's former life were frowned upon and any sharing of former experiences were considered possible temptations to return to that life, thus renouncing the call made by God to a new life as Brothers of Mary. As a result of losing our histories, all of us--postulants, novices, Scholastics, temporary professed Brothers, and those with perpetual vows--would deny to others something very precious, something revealing their identities, something to reveal for lasting friendships. Religious superiors preferred a house of strangers. They never would understand friendship as something to ground the natural grace of charity. Intimacy in all its senses was unknown."
"The denial of a person's history was a denial the person ever existed, he once moved in time and space, he loved and was loved, he was somebody in another city and hour who meant something precious to others and who possessed value and received unconditional love because he simply was who he was."
"Religious communities were convinced such histories had to be expunged in order to make religious life work efficiently and safely for the common good. Identities were an obstacle to the common life. (I saw a movie's depiction of battle-scarred soldiers in Vietnam not bothering to learn the names of new recruits they statistically thought would not survive long enough to merit their remembrance. To me it was an analogue to the real aloofness and abstract context of human relationships in religious life.) We danced as skeletons a danse macabre because flesh and blood -- these essentials to human beings--we denied having in order to imitate the angels and, along the way, in order to abuse and mangle Christ's meaning to "be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect."
I bought into the system. I swallowed, in the beginning, all the premises of religious life. I kept the Rule and, I truly believed, the Rule would keep me. It became evident in college and especially "out in community" in Trinity (January, '53, Brooklyn) and Cathedral Latin (school year '54-'55, Cleveland) that the Rule and I were at odds in profound ways and "keeping one another" meant two different things."
Some will argue that the ideas about which Chapman writes have been addressed, reform has taken place, and that we are beyond the issues he mentions. The few new members joining religious orders are frequently quoted saying that the conditions which he writes about are no longer in vogue and religious orders are beyond and past those ways of acting and the values implied. My contention is that the issues he addresses are still within us, rooted deep within the notion of religious life and myth, and that failure to adapt some basic values related to the self and modern life does not make us attractive to a large segment of potential recruits. Valuing the self identity and individual difference of present members is the place to begin. A majority of members present in religious orders today were formed under the values expressed above by Chapman and these still operate in their lives.
Liberation
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire was concerned with the process of liberation in a communitarian context. He developed educational methods to raise the consciousness of oppressed groups by leading them from a position of being an object to that of being a subject.
Freire's theory is concerned with the process of liberation where by an individual, lives and takes action as a subject and names the world rather than to be an object, something which is acted on. Freire is concerned with the masses of people in Latin America who suffer oppression, have no voice and participate in a “culture of silence.” He taught that humans, in order to be fully human, must liberate themselves from oppression in whatever form it is experienced.
Friere defined oppression in this way: “Any situation in which “A” objectively exploits “B” or hinders his pursuit of self-affirmation as a responsible person is one of oppression. Such a situation in itself constitutes violence, even when sweetened by false generosity, because it interferes with man's ontological and historical vocation to be more fully human. With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun.” (p40)
Many accept Freire's theory when applied to economically oppressed masses in Latin America but fail to apply it in situations where oppression is less recognized and acknowledged.
A culture of silence is characterized by lack of horizontal communication in a situation in which individuals feel something is not right but do not openly express their concern because of fear that by speaking out their situation will become worse and that others know best. They are made to feel that the situation is due to fate or that, in the case of the poor, their reward will be received in heaven. In a culture of silence, the voice of the silent is not sought by those in charge.
My thesis is that religious orders and their members participate in a situation of oppression and live in a culture of silence, a situation experienced by all people in general no matter what their state of life. Our task as persons is to continually identify situations of oppression in order to achieve human freedom. This is no less true for members of religious orders than it is for persons living in oppressive marriages.
At this time, members of religious orders live in a culture (the religious order) which could be analyzed for its negative influence on the development of the self of individual religious. I think that good, educated individuals today understand intuitively that religious communities are not a good environment for the development of self, and for this reason are not motivated to become vowed members. They may be interested in being lay associates but they find no motivation, no attraction to live as vowed religious.
Within religious orders the self is submerged to the point where good religious do not criticize their life sufficiently to change it. As a result, very old myths and perspectives on the world, love and the self prevent the adoption of new practices and new identities which will be attractive to new recruits.
That religious live in a state of oppression and in a culture of silence may be examined by taking a critical look at the myths, rituals, language and practices that have shaped religious life from the beginning. In so many cases religious life and virtue is described in terms of submission, abnegation, obedience, rule and authority in language frequently related to practices of childhood. This notion of childhood influences many practices associated with the traditional three vows and this does not allow the energy inherent in a strong self to critique the practices of the order.
How to reconcile humility, detachment, and responsibility with a spirituality of the development of self is the key to the resurrection of religious life. Others have written extensively about how to rename and refocus the three vows so that the self and the energy inherent in a strong self may influence our practice. That the self has to be submerged in order to practice virtue and to do good is a myth that has to be challenged through dialogue.
Dialogue among oppressed people is the key to overcoming oppression. Dialogue about the development of new myths about the self and its place in community and the practice of virtue is the process which must be encouraged
to put a new and more attractive face on the vowed life.
For over forty years we have been in a process of renewal which has been concerned with externals such as dress, daily schedule, living situations and so forth without making a critical analysis of the religious life itself using new theories of human behavior which were unknown to all of us during the hundreds of years of development, growth and living of vowed religious life, personal growth theories which today are accepted as essential to living a fully human life. We have renewed but not revolutionized religious life.
What appealed and made sense for good people hundreds of years ago no longer attracts nor makes sense for good people in the postmodern world. Now men and women in the developed world have education and a new sense of themselves and their relationship to the world. Educated people no longer flee from the world nor look for life beyond this world. They rather embrace the world as good and use its good to develop the reign of God in this world. In order to survive, religious communities must address issues related to a need for a new understanding of the notion of the self while being vowed religious in this world.
If a much traveled bridge suddenly collapsed, engineers would immediately organize to find the fatal flaw in the design that caused the rapid destruction of something that they had designed with the best knowledge and planning available to them at the time, something they expected to last longer than it did. What is the fatal flaw in the design of religious life as we knew it?
The classic story of the widget business which faced extinction when widgets were no longer needed should be a learning model for religious orders. Some businesses have had to make radical and revolutionary changes in their identity to survive. This is no less true for individual religious and for religious orders. Changes made thus far have not been sufficiently radical to lead from death to resurrection. Why is there this resistance to radical change even in the face of organizational death? Is there something about the relationship between self identity and the nature of religious life that we need to address to survive?
Some make the survival of religious orders a divine issue related to God's call to vocation but, - call me a heretic - I believe vocation is a human call from the community, the culture and the church and that religious orders are human organizations subject to the same forces and dynamics as any organized group.
There are human issues involved in the demise of religious life which have to do with our self identity as religious and our lack of freedom to change fundamental aspects of our life, aspects which appear to be inherent in the very understanding of religious life but which may not be, and which are threatened when renewal is attempted, especially with reference to the notion of obedience and the responsibility to take charge of our own lives.
I wonder how we have let ourselves get to this situation in which we are spiraling down to extinction and unable to reverse the trend. Has personal identification with the norms of religious life (for example, obedience, humility, abnegation, uniformity, silence…) served to produce individual members who have no interest or ability, nor power to critique the culture of the religious community within which they live? None of this is said as an indictment or criticism of any individuals or leaders of religious communities. Individual religious and leadership have for decades been working hard at renewal. What seems to have been lacking is a loving critique of some fundamental values related to the system of consecrated life. This present critique faults no individual religious or superior nor does it assign blame to anyone. It is meant as an objective analysis of the notion of what we call vowed religious life in the Catholic Church.
To analyze the notion of religious life, I look to two theorists: a psychologist, Carl Jung, and a philosopher, Paulo Freire. Jung was concerned with the notion of individualtion, the process whereby a person develops a sense of self in relation to the other, to the world. Freire was concerned with the notion of freedom especially among oppressed peoples.
Individuation
Jung's idea of individuation is discussed by psychotherapist, Mary Watkins:
Jung focused on the emergence of individuality out of collectivity. For him, individuation “is the process by which individual beings are formed and differentiated; in particular, it is the development of the psychological individual as a being distinct from the general, collective psychology:”. (Jung, 1871 p757). I read “collective' here as the culture(s) one is residing in psychologically. Jung understood the power of a culture's dominant ideas over the individual and saw that simple identification with these norms provided no critique of them, no interest or power in resisting them, no moral center apart from them. (Watkins p 207)
In his 1957 work, The Undiscovered Self, Carl Jung writes about the loss of self identity under communist governments and the subsequent loss of moral responsibility. He contends that the fatal flaw of communism is that this political system suppressed the individual. To what extend can the following quote from The Undiscovered Self be applied to the notion of religious life as we know it?
"The moral responsibility of the individual is then inevitably replaced by the policy of the State (raison d'etat). Instead of moral and mental differentiation of the individual, you have public welfare and the raising of living standard. The goal and meaning of individual life (which is the only real life) no longer lie in the individual development but in the policy of the State, which is thrust upon the individual from outside and consists in the execution of an abstract idea which ultimately tends to attract all life to itself. The individual is increasingly deprived of the moral decision as to how he should live his own life, and instead is ruled, fed, clothed and educated as a social unit, accommodated in the appropriate housing unit, and amused in accordance with the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the masses. The rulers, in their turn, are just as much social units as the ruled and are distinguished only by the fact that they are specialized mouthpieces of the State doctrine." (p22)
Have we religious “given ourselves” so much to the notion of religious community that at this moment we do not have a strong enough sense of self to sufficiently critique the system which formed us and which does not seem to make sense to modern thinkers and those good persons who might think about joining us in our life?
Jungian analysts Howard W. Tyas, Jr. and Karen O. Hodges in one of their lectures describe the importance of individuation: “Jung understood individuation to be something that began in the second half of life, when individuals reach the zenith of their lives and suddenly find themselves facing an unknown vista or some unforeseen upheaval. Sometimes this turning point takes the form of a crisis: such as . . . a health problem, a broken relationship, or a change of residence or profession - something which upsets the status quo. Sometimes this experience assumes the form of a profound self-doubt, a loss of meaning or religious conviction, a questioning of everything previously held so dear. Sometimes it presents itself as a deep yearning or a call to change direction. And many times, it can manifest itself in powerful dreams and fantasies”.
As our median age continues to increase, it seems we need to analyze and critique the same list: self doubt, loss of meaning, and a questioning of everything in order to see a new future for religious orders.
Bert Chapman, former religious, has recently published A Monk's Tale, his recollection of his religious formation days and the characters and situations involved. Having lived these early days with him, I can appreciate his reflection on how his formation relates to the notion of individuation: Reflecting on the influence of his spiritual director he writes:
"Reflecting on his influence on me at this time (1997), I can feel the sadness experienced throughout my entire religious life as a Marianist. It's a sadness developed and, might I say, cultivated to neurotic perfection within religious orders prior to Vatican II. Religious superiors, as they themselves taught and trained, assumed life for candidates began the day they entered the monastery, that their lives before were to be forgotten, renounced, denied, and expunged. References to one's former life were frowned upon and any sharing of former experiences were considered possible temptations to return to that life, thus renouncing the call made by God to a new life as Brothers of Mary. As a result of losing our histories, all of us--postulants, novices, Scholastics, temporary professed Brothers, and those with perpetual vows--would deny to others something very precious, something revealing their identities, something to reveal for lasting friendships. Religious superiors preferred a house of strangers. They never would understand friendship as something to ground the natural grace of charity. Intimacy in all its senses was unknown."
"The denial of a person's history was a denial the person ever existed, he once moved in time and space, he loved and was loved, he was somebody in another city and hour who meant something precious to others and who possessed value and received unconditional love because he simply was who he was."
"Religious communities were convinced such histories had to be expunged in order to make religious life work efficiently and safely for the common good. Identities were an obstacle to the common life. (I saw a movie's depiction of battle-scarred soldiers in Vietnam not bothering to learn the names of new recruits they statistically thought would not survive long enough to merit their remembrance. To me it was an analogue to the real aloofness and abstract context of human relationships in religious life.) We danced as skeletons a danse macabre because flesh and blood -- these essentials to human beings--we denied having in order to imitate the angels and, along the way, in order to abuse and mangle Christ's meaning to "be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect."
I bought into the system. I swallowed, in the beginning, all the premises of religious life. I kept the Rule and, I truly believed, the Rule would keep me. It became evident in college and especially "out in community" in Trinity (January, '53, Brooklyn) and Cathedral Latin (school year '54-'55, Cleveland) that the Rule and I were at odds in profound ways and "keeping one another" meant two different things."
Some will argue that the ideas about which Chapman writes have been addressed, reform has taken place, and that we are beyond the issues he mentions. The few new members joining religious orders are frequently quoted saying that the conditions which he writes about are no longer in vogue and religious orders are beyond and past those ways of acting and the values implied. My contention is that the issues he addresses are still within us, rooted deep within the notion of religious life and myth, and that failure to adapt some basic values related to the self and modern life does not make us attractive to a large segment of potential recruits. Valuing the self identity and individual difference of present members is the place to begin. A majority of members present in religious orders today were formed under the values expressed above by Chapman and these still operate in their lives.
Liberation
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire was concerned with the process of liberation in a communitarian context. He developed educational methods to raise the consciousness of oppressed groups by leading them from a position of being an object to that of being a subject.
Freire's theory is concerned with the process of liberation where by an individual, lives and takes action as a subject and names the world rather than to be an object, something which is acted on. Freire is concerned with the masses of people in Latin America who suffer oppression, have no voice and participate in a “culture of silence.” He taught that humans, in order to be fully human, must liberate themselves from oppression in whatever form it is experienced.
Friere defined oppression in this way: “Any situation in which “A” objectively exploits “B” or hinders his pursuit of self-affirmation as a responsible person is one of oppression. Such a situation in itself constitutes violence, even when sweetened by false generosity, because it interferes with man's ontological and historical vocation to be more fully human. With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun.” (p40)
Many accept Freire's theory when applied to economically oppressed masses in Latin America but fail to apply it in situations where oppression is less recognized and acknowledged.
A culture of silence is characterized by lack of horizontal communication in a situation in which individuals feel something is not right but do not openly express their concern because of fear that by speaking out their situation will become worse and that others know best. They are made to feel that the situation is due to fate or that, in the case of the poor, their reward will be received in heaven. In a culture of silence, the voice of the silent is not sought by those in charge.
My thesis is that religious orders and their members participate in a situation of oppression and live in a culture of silence, a situation experienced by all people in general no matter what their state of life. Our task as persons is to continually identify situations of oppression in order to achieve human freedom. This is no less true for members of religious orders than it is for persons living in oppressive marriages.
At this time, members of religious orders live in a culture (the religious order) which could be analyzed for its negative influence on the development of the self of individual religious. I think that good, educated individuals today understand intuitively that religious communities are not a good environment for the development of self, and for this reason are not motivated to become vowed members. They may be interested in being lay associates but they find no motivation, no attraction to live as vowed religious.
Within religious orders the self is submerged to the point where good religious do not criticize their life sufficiently to change it. As a result, very old myths and perspectives on the world, love and the self prevent the adoption of new practices and new identities which will be attractive to new recruits.
That religious live in a state of oppression and in a culture of silence may be examined by taking a critical look at the myths, rituals, language and practices that have shaped religious life from the beginning. In so many cases religious life and virtue is described in terms of submission, abnegation, obedience, rule and authority in language frequently related to practices of childhood. This notion of childhood influences many practices associated with the traditional three vows and this does not allow the energy inherent in a strong self to critique the practices of the order.
How to reconcile humility, detachment, and responsibility with a spirituality of the development of self is the key to the resurrection of religious life. Others have written extensively about how to rename and refocus the three vows so that the self and the energy inherent in a strong self may influence our practice. That the self has to be submerged in order to practice virtue and to do good is a myth that has to be challenged through dialogue.
Dialogue among oppressed people is the key to overcoming oppression. Dialogue about the development of new myths about the self and its place in community and the practice of virtue is the process which must be encouraged
to put a new and more attractive face on the vowed life.
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