SOCIAL MINISTRY – THE CHANGING ROLE OF RELIGIOUS
Speaking Notes of
Most Rev. Diarmuid Martin
Archbishop of Dublin, Primate of Ireland
Most Rev. Diarmuid Martin
Archbishop of Dublin, Primate of Ireland
Association of Bursars of Religious of Ireland Conference2008
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Emmaus Conference Centre, 3rd November 2008
Emmaus Conference Centre, 3rd November 2008
“Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction”. These are words taken from the opening paragraph of Pope Benedict’s Encyclical Deus Caritas Est. They are words which reflect a fundamental theme of his teaching: the Christian faith is not a simple ideology no matter how permeated with worthy ideals, much less a cold ethical rule book, but an encounter with a person, Jesus Christ, who reaches out in history to meet us as he reveals to us who God is.
When I was at school our religious education at primary level consisted above all of the Catechism. We learned formulae which expressed something of the content of the Creed. I can still recall many of these formulae. I am sure that if I can still remember them, then there are many around the country who also can still recall these same formulae, but who have long since lost all contact with the Church. A convinced atheist could learn and memorise the entire Catechism and still remain a convinced atheist.
As I moved on to secondary school level, our religious education programme was enhanced with apologetics. We learned about the miracles of Jesus and how because he worked miracles Jesus showed that he was God. This was different to the Catechism. We learned that God was revealed through the power of Jesus to change the laws of the physical universe in a way in which no other prophet could and that therefore Jesus was God. The convinced atheist, faced with the facts of these miracles we were led to believe, if he or she were truly open and honest, would have to renounce atheism and admit that Jesus was God.
I am not against apologetics and I am not denying the Jesus used his divine power to perform miracles. Our apologetic approach however missed something essential, indeed what is most essential in the miracles of Jesus. Jesus performed miracles but his miracles were never performances. Jesus performed miracles not to show off his power, but to reveal the true image of God, namely that he is a God of love. His miracles were miracles of caring and healing and restoring. His miracles were signs of a God who rejected personal power-seeking and the external trappings of power, but rather humbled himself and emptied himself in self-giving love, and in that way revealed who God truly is.
Love is of the essence of the Christian life, because God loved us first. We can see that love was recognised as of the essence of the Christian life from the self description of the early Church communities: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need” (Acts 2:44-5). This self presentation of the early Christian community by Saint Luke is part of a number of similar formulae which provide a kind of definition of the Church, whose constitutive elements include fidelity to the “teaching of the Apostles”, “communion”, “the breaking of the bread” and “prayer” (cf. Acts 2:42).
The element of “communion” (koinonia) consisted in the fact that believers held all things in common and that among them, there was to be no longer any distinction between rich and poor.
This radical form of material communion of the early Christian community could not however be preserved in the same way as the Church expanded and grew both numerically and in geographical extension. But its essential dimension remained and has to be retained in every era and epoch of the history of the Church and of the world. The Church community is one where no one should be left poor, that is deprived of what is needed for a dignified life. Poverty is not simply a lack of financial or material resources. Poverty is the inability of people to realise their God-given potential. Fighting poverty is about enhancing people to realise their God-given potential. A Church which wishes to remain true to the “communion” which was characteristic of the early Church must be one where its members and its structures work together to ensure that the caring, healing and restoring power which Jesus showed in his miracles, is made visible today, through individual lives and through forms of community witness.
The commandment of love of neighbour, grounded in the love that God first showed us, is clearly a responsibility for individual Christians. But it is also a responsibility to be developed in an appropriate way by the entire ecclesial community at every level and at every time in its history. In Deus Caritas Est Pope Benedict concludes: “The Church’s deepest nature is expressed in her three-fold responsibility: of proclaiming the word of God (kerygma-martyria), celebrating the sacraments (leitourgia), and exercising the ministry of charity (diakonia). These duties presuppose each other and are inseparable. For the Church, charity is not a kind of welfare activity which could equally well be left to others, but is a part of her nature, an indispensable expression of her very being”.
The Church can therefore be said to be formed around three tables: the table of the Word, the table of the Eucharist, and the table of Charity. All three go together. The social ministry of the Church must be nourished by the word of God and by the unique experience of communion which is the breaking of the bread in the celebration of the Lord’s unique self-giving sacrifice. The practice of love must be a distinctive mark of every expression of the life of the Church, and this is especially so in religious life.
How can love be organized and become an ordered service to the community in our world today? How does that organization of love change, with the different concrete situations in which the Church finds itself? How can the heritage of religious communities, dedicated for centuries or decades to charity and to human enrichment in many forms, be given new vigour for tomorrow in the changing situations in which religious congregations find themselves? These are questions that religious congregations in Ireland are asking themselves today, but they are part of a wider questioning of what it means today to be the Church.
They are questions which must be addressed in a broad cultural context. It is not just that the demographics of religious life have changed in Ireland. We live in a cultural context in which for many people in our generation faith in Jesus Christ seems more difficult than at other periods in history. Many young people – and many highly idealistic young people – have drifted away, at times one might think definitively, both from the practice of their faith, as well as from finding any essential link between the message of Jesus and their lives, beyond in an undefined cultural recognition of the basic human values which the message of Jesus contains.
Other young people may be interested in the message of Jesus, but feel that the Church is not the place where they will find the essence and the practice of his message. They thus remain happy with what a secular vision provides for them; they feel that it gives them sufficient sense of purpose, a desire to be caring, honest and good. They live a caring, generous and dutiful life, but in many ways they live as if God did not exist.
Is there something specific which religious life can say to such a generation, even as religious congregations struggle with changing times? Religious congregations find that their members are getting older and vocations are getting fewer. How are they to maintain the charism of their congregation? Schools and hospitals and caring institutions which were once under the direct management of religious are now being run by lay persons. Reflections and programmes are underway to ensure a further stage in this transition, namely to ensure that the original ethos and charism of each religious congregation is carried on by forms of lay trusteeship throughout the generations to come. I am happy to see these efforts and hope that they will bring success.
In speaking to religious about their current challenges, I sometimes find, alongside the proper sense of realism about which I have just spoken, also a sense of fatality to the point that they can sometimes loose courage. I get the sense that many feel that congregations will die and will not be replaced, or at the very most just some elements of their charism will hopefully live on in some manner yet to be defined and full of unknowns.
I am happy to see these efforts to keep ethos alive for future generations as times and demographic change. But religious and consecrated life is more than the ethos of a school or an institution. It is more than the specific works carried out within the ecclesial community or in society. It is something vital in itself. It is something without which the life of the Church will bear less savour, and without which something of the freshness of the Church will be lost. Consecrated life is something essential to the life of the Church. Because religious life is a witness to values which transcend daily experience, it is a light for the Church and for humankind that must shine, enlighten, and have no fear of the dark.
What would the Church be like without consecrated life? The life of the Church would certainly be poorer and less authentic. When we are talking about change, we should be not looking for a sort of life-raft solution which in rough seas can salvage some remnants from the past. What we should be asking rather is: what are the new ways in which the witness of consecrated lives will prosper in the future and will be there to support the many people who are looking for a sense of meaning in their Christian lives?
Ethos is important, but ethos can be subjective and individualist. Consecrated life is about more than ethos. If the challenge for the future was just about keeping ethos alive, then what you would need most would be just a mission statement and a legal framework-document. But religious life was never just about ethos. Religious life is about an encounter with Jesus Christ which, as I quoted in the Popes’ introduction from Deus Caritas Est, “gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction about mission and witness”. Without that encounter with Jesus Christ, ethos could be as ineffective in personal lives as the formulae of the Catechism memorized by those who have drifted for years from any real depth of faith.
In a special way, religious life is about community witness. If the charism of a religious congregation is to be renewed and continued in new forms, then those forms must include a clear sense of mission, of witness and of community religious experience. At a moment in which people today more than ever need new experiences of faith communities which can respond to the characteristic of our times, the call of the Lord must surely be discerned as a call which reignites community witness of the faith.
I strongly believe that however important mission statements and legal framework-documents may be, the heritage of your congregations will only survive is you can engender a new generation of lay men and women whose encounter with Jesus Christ enables them to embrace as a concrete part of their lives, a sense of mission and witness which is shared with others in society and in the Church.
I strongly believe that however important mission statements and legal framework-documents may be, the heritage of your congregations will only survive is you can engender a new generation of lay men and women whose encounter with Jesus Christ enables them to embrace as a concrete part of their lives, a sense of mission and witness which is shared with others in society and in the Church.
In the Archdiocese of Dublin, it is so encouraging to see a wide range of lay people emerging as co-workers in pastoral care willingly, generously and with competence. I know that there are many who are only waiting to have the opportunity to do more and do things differently. In this I discern the Lord speaking to us and challenging all of us.
What would be the characteristics of such new experiences of lay community-based faith experience taking up the heritage of religious congregations, especially in the social sphere? What might be the characteristics of a new and more intimate and integrated bond between lay persons and the charisms of consecrated life? Will there be a visible difference between such a commitment and any other form of service to the community?
The first specific characteristic of such new forms of ecclesial experience would be an understanding of the meaning of God’s love. Pope Benedict in speaking of Catholic social endeavours notes: “Yet, while professional competence is a primary, fundamental requirement, it is not of itself sufficient. We are dealing with human beings, and human beings always need something more than technically proper care. They need humanity. They need heartfelt concern. Those who work for the Church’s charitable organizations must be distinguished by the fact that they do not merely meet the needs of the moment, but they dedicate themselves to others with heartfelt concern, enabling them to experience the richness of their humanity. Consequently, in addition to their necessary professional training, these charity workers need a “formation of the heart”: they need to be led to that encounter with God in Christ which awakens their love and opens their spirits to others”.
This attitude of love can only be attained through one of those other pillars of the Christian community which is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles which we quoted earlier, namely prayer. I am sometimes concerned that in the changed circumstances of religious life some religious might be tempted towards a privatisation of their prayer life, rather than sharing with others their experience of prayer and of the bond between prayer and life.
In his second Encyclical Letter on the theme of hope, Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict notes that: “To pray is not to step outside history and withdraw to our own private corner of happiness. When we pray properly we undergo a process of inner purification which opens us up to God and thus to our fellow human beings as well. In prayer we must learn what we can truly ask of God—what is worthy of God. We must learn that we cannot pray against others. We must learn that we cannot ask for the superficial and comfortable things that we desire at this moment—that meagre, misplaced hope that leads us away from God. We must learn to purify our desires and our hopes. We must free ourselves from the hidden lies with which we deceive ourselves.”
One of the clear distinguishing marks of many of the founders and foundresses of religious congregations was the bond that existed in their lives between social commitment to the poor and prayer. The true friend of the poor realizes that concern for the poor becomes fully authentic through coming closer to Jesus Christ. Most of your founders and foundersesses were true mystics. It was their closeness to the Lord which enhanced their ability to see the suffering of others in a way that others overlooked and gave them the ability to be true pioneers of charity.
Keeping alive the heritage of religious congregations calls for more than just ethos, it requires a different witness to values in life. Lay persons who take up the elements of your charism must also be helped make part of their lives a concrete witness to the evangelical counsels, even if they will do so within the more secular context. Their lives must consciously witness to a vision of wealth and power and human sexuality consonant with that of the evangelical counsels.
They must also be helped establish in a realistic manner some form of community of faith, in a supportive manner but also as a counter-witness to the dominant individualism in our society. Such a community must be visible also as an ecclesial reality, a community linked with the sacraments. I think here of the role in the past for example that “third orders” or “secular communities” embracing the charisms of religious congregation.
Working out the mechanics of new trusts and defining and protecting ethos is a difficult and challenging task. I believe however that it is only part of the real task. Ethos will only survive if it is accompanied by and inspired by witness. It must be accompanied by the concrete life decisions of those involved to radically live the evangelical counsels, in a world so often driven by a sense of power, possession and celebrity. Religious life must always be marked by simplicity and humility. The practices which you chose to keep alive your traditions must be marked by the same sense of simplicity and must be free from any trace of arrogance if they are to be a convincing witness in our world, to that Jesus “who went about doing good”.
Let me conclude with a true story of what such simplicity can attain. When I was a seminarian I worked for a number of summers in a centre for ex-prisoners in London. It was a down-to-earth day-centre to which men could come in the early period after their release from prison and be helped back into what was for them the difficult routine of ordinary life. We helped them to access their social security benefits, to find a room to live in, and where possible to get a job.
There was also a core group of men who had spent most of their lives in prison and who were never going to make it back into society. They too were given some sort of support – very often until they returned again to prison, which had become almost their natural home.
On the warmer summer days this group would sit out on the front steps and would amuse themselves by hurling abuse – good humoured abuse mostly, but not always – at passers by. One morning they were in particularly aggressive form. I was standing with them and what did I see turning the corner into our street but a Daughter of Charity, complete in those days with white bonnet, carrying two large bags. I thought for a moment and prayed: Sister, please turn back or God only knows what they are going to shout at you.
To my surprise, one of the senior men, a triple murderer who had retired from active criminal life, said to the youngest member of the group “go over and help that women with those bags, she goes visiting the old folk”.
I have no idea who that sister was and I never saw her again, but she remains for me an icon of a religious sister, quietly going about her work. No one that day knew her name but her simple goodness had become a bye-word even among my criminal friends.
There is something about sincere evangelical simplicity which speaks for itself, or rather, to put it more correctly, allows the Lord to say powerful things through us.
The challenge of religious today may appear daunting. But you possess the answer: it is not really about defining the “changing role of religious”, as appears in the title of your Conference, but rather in re-finding the unchanging role, the essential and the simple. These are the elements through which you will to enable people to hear the call of the Lord today, because these are the same elements which enabled you to hear and to answer the Lord’s call to you. Do not be afraid. Avoid all fatalism. The Lord is with us. He comes towards us as the only one who can give our lives “a new horizon and a decisive direction”.
