Work to Do

Ah, the pity of it. I refer to Jolted by Affluence, by Thomas G. Casey, S.J., (11/27). The Island of Saints and Scholars is only a single generation removed from penury, the emigrant ship and coercive priests and bishops, not to mention the Magdalene Laundries, the industrial schools and the reformatories, mostly staffed by religious. And what are the Irish doing with their newfound wealth and freedom? They are enjoying it. Is Mass attendance down? For sure! And why is that, you ask, and quick as a whippet you answer materialism.

Not so fast. For most of my own youth in Ireland, 1940 to 1965, Catholics were more driven than led, more threatened than instructed, and this by a clergy who were being rapidly overtaken in education and understanding by their flocks. Throw in the odd sexual abuse scandal and the pathetic attempts at cover-up, and you have a recipe for confusing the messenger with the message. Any hope at all, at all?

Well yes, there is; but it won’t come quickly and it won’t be dependent on Polish immigrants, however pious they be. First there is a terrible need for more good priests, and they don’t need to be Irish-born. Nigerians and Ghanaians will do just fine. A bit of a payback, you might say. Then, as the old bishops schooled in 19th-century clerical dominance die off, their replacements need to believe truly that they are the servants of the servants of God. Given a generation or so, there is a fair chance that the unchurched will be once again churched, but there will be no going back to the good old days of That’s what Father says; so it is. So enough of the weeping. There is work to do.

Sean O’Connor

Call to Serve

The article Religious Life at the Brink, by Donald Senior, C.P., (10/16) was certainly thought-provoking; but what of today’s brothers? I would like to see an article dealing with them and their call to serve Christ, not only with their hands but intellectually and academically as well, according to the spirituality of their order.

Justin De Chance, S.J.

Those Who Serve

Religious You Will Always Have With You, by Richard Rohr, O.F.M., (10/16) was one of the finest and most thoughtprovoking articles I have read on the subject of religious life in today’s world. The author has shown how religious life can be and often is an initiation to a fuller Christian life, which may well be lived outside the convent or monastery.

When I go to Pax Christi meetings and others, in which I find many dedicated persons trying to live a life according to the Gospels, I am not surprised to find that a large number of them are former religious. Each had his or her own reason for leaving, but the reason was rarely that they wanted a more comfortable and less demanding life. On the contrary, they have often chosen to live a difficult life of service.

But I also believe that the loss of members in religious life as well as the opening of opportunities to do the work formerly done by religious is the nudging of the Spirit. The old elitist concept of the called can now be changed to a call to all of us to be a part of the only kind of elite that Jesus spoke about, those who serve others.

Lucy Fuchs

Avoid Racism

Thanks to George M. Anderson, S.J., for the interview with James Cone, Theologians and White Supremacy (11/20).

I am a member of a Dismantling Racism team in the greater Philadelphia area, and one of the few Catholic members. Our focus is primarily on racism as it survives today within the Christian churches.

So I was pleased that America used the interview as a cover story. Usually Catholic publications feature stories about racism only on special occasions, as in February for Black History Month. But as the interview indicates, this is an ongoing, serious moral issue and an area where the Christian churches have been very remiss. Many Christians seem to avoid racism on a personal level, but seem oblivious to its deeper systemic life, which affects so many of our structures and institutions, including Catholic theology and the church itself.

Jim Ratigan

Radical Reform

I read Religious You Will Always Have With You, by Richard Rohr, O.F.M., (10/16) with great interest. As a young religious I am constantly reading the writings of religious who have more experience than I for insight and wisdom on the vowed life. The article left me with unsettled feelings hard to describe. I am left wondering what I am to believe about the choice I have made to be a religious in the 21st century? Am I to see this step as only a stage of initiation or rather as a place for me to stand firm? I was left with more questions than answers.

While I agree that religious life is in need of renewal and clarification in our world, I also believe that young religious are bringing gifts to contribute to this renewal and clarification. If we believe that religious life has a purpose in our world today, which I believe it does, then we must have faith that the Spirit is bringing to religious life the necessary tools for rejuvenation.

I am convinced that religious life in the 21st century is more about who we are and less about what we do. As Father Rohr wrote, religious were seen as the leaven of the church for many years. We were the teachers, catechists, preachers and ministers to the faithful. Today much of this has changed, for we see an empowered laity that has taken its rightful place in ministry. So what we do is not as significant as it was years ago. Who we are is much more important in helping to clarify our future. Professing the evangelical counsels is a radical freedom from our complex power-hungry culture of individualism and materialism.

For those who are joining religious life much later in life than many of the older religious did, I think the reality is a bit different. Religious life for us is not a springboard of values and faith formation toward a future as a lay minister. Rather it is an entrance into a community of discipleship committed to a witness that our world so desperately needs. It is a resting place for our restless heart. Suggesting that religious life is simply initiation seems incomplete.

I entered the community at the age of 27 after seven years of discernment. While living the vowed life has not been the easiest, other life choices would have presented their own challenges. If I were to see this stage of my human development as merely initiation, I might as well throw in the towel. I think Christ lures me to a life deeply rooted in the Gospel, a life in which I am called to witness the radical freedom of the vowed life. Religious life is now my identity; it is my home; and it is the place from which I stand. I must see it as such and not simply as a stop along the way.

There is nothing that keeps me here in the vowed life more than my own commitment to it, but this is precisely the point. Young religious are making a deliberate and carefully discerned choice to join religious life today. We come with big ideas, restless hearts and experiences that would scandalize the older religious. Yet we are blessed to have a place within our faith community where we can find rest to be more than we imagined we could be. It is here in religious life that I hope to be challenged to grow in my life of Christ. It is here that I hope I can be a witness in our world of restless individuality and materialism.

In some ways our call as religious men and women gives us a rather simple and humble place to stand, feet firmly planted, like Mary at the foot of the cross. It is from this place that I think we will discover purpose for this life. It is from the Mount of Calvary that I have come to discover that my life as a religious is much more than initiation. It is an identity as one who is beloved.

Brian Halderman, S.M.

To Be Heard

Have we, and the media in general, completely forgotten that one of the last great peace efforts by the dying Pope John Paul II was to send Cardinal Pio Laghi, the former Vatican ambassador to Washington (Signs of the Times, 11/6), to try to talk President Bush and his advisers out of their ill-advised rush to war? I am sure that today, in his deep heart’s core, our president really wishes he had heeded the pope’s voice.

Cardinal Laghi tried in vain to point out to him the difficulty of the language, the serious conflicts among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and that while America’s formidable war machine would make quick work of Hussein’s inferior defenses, unmanageable human problems would certainly follow.

I have come from Rome not only to hear you, Mr. President, but also to be heard, Laghi complained at one point in their conversation. I had the impression that they had already made their decision, Laghi said in a remarkable speech in Camaldoli (Arezzo, Italy) on Oct. 4, 2003.

President Bush had been offered the best intelligence available on Iraq. The bishops in Iraq are in touch with the apostolic nuncio in Baghdad, and he with the Vatican. They speak the people’s language and have their hand on the pulse of the nation. Their knowledge of Iraq was more reliable than that of our highly paid intelligence agencies who cost us billions but whose information has been repeatedly proven embarrassingly wrong and misleading.

It was President Reagan in 1984 who urged the Senate to confirm William A. Wilson, his personal envoy to the pope, as the first U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. His reason was his oft-repeated conviction that the Vatican is the world’s greatest listening post.

I spoke at length with Cardinal Laghi last September in Rome. He recalled his sense of failure when President Bush tried to end their meeting on a positive note: at least they held common positions on the defense of human life and opposition to human cloning. The cardinal replied that those issues were not the purpose of his mission to Washington.

Larry N. Lorenzoni, S.D.B.