1 Notes for Chapter 4 Introduction: The turmoil in religious life—especially women’s—after Vatican II Plainly, all has not gone well with religious life since the Council. I do not think there is any single factor that accounts for it. Rather, what has been happening flows from many factors that happen to concur, somewhat like a motoring accident in which the driver of a rented car hits a parked vehicle because of: (1) a patch of ice on the road, (2) the driver’s distraction, which prevents noticing the ice in time, (3) the tires’ lack of tread, which prevents stopping in time, (4) the other vehicle being parked where it should not have been. A traffic officer tickets both the parked vehicle and the driver for driving too fast under hazardous conditions; the driver sues the rental car company for supplying a vehicle with badly worn tires; the owner of the parked vehicle expects the driver or the rental car company to repair it; and everyone would blame the patch of ice if it could be forced to pay. But none of the partial views does justice to the complexity of the situation, in which there is more than enough blame to go around. Prior to Vatican II, there were many real problems with religious life, especially in many institutes or local communities of women. It was by no means a golden age. For many centuries, Rome resisted the development of women’s religious institutes of active life, wrongly supposing that religious life, especially for women, had to be contemplative: religious women had to be nuns, living in cloisters. When institutes of active apostolate were recognized, in many ways their members were hindered by restrictive practices that amounted to a sort of residue of the old conception of the nun. Many entered directly after high school and some even before high school. In many cases, they had insufficient information to discern whether their gifts and limitations pointed to a different vocation. In very few cases were they compelled to confront the challenges to faith and temptations of lay people who went to college. So, not having had to renew their commitment of faith against serious alternative options, their faith was not as strong as it would have been had it been tempered by fire. Exploitation by bishops and pastors to provide cheap staff for schools and other institutions— and even to provide cheap servants for seminaries, rectories, and so on—had distorted religious life and violated various human goods of many sisters. Very often, sisters were terribly overworked, while clerics enjoyed plenty of free time to visit their families, play golf, and enjoy popular entertainment or more sophisticated cultural opportunities. In many cases, bishops and priests exercised authority over sisters with respect to matters they should have decided for themselves. Such abuses generated justified anger, which was suppressed rather than consciously dealt with, so that it generated a deep and powerful pool of resentment, like hot lava building up pressure under an apparently quiet volcano. While progress had been made in many institutes in educating their members and preparing them for apostolates, many were ill-educated and inadequately prepared—compelled by bishops and/or superiors to get to work quickly like raw recruits forced immediately into battle with little regard for the consequences to themselves and others. 2 Notes for Chapter 4 In many cases, the grace of office was exaggerated, and superiors made uninformed decisions without adequate consultation and listening to considerations pro and con. In some cases, obedience was distorted to promote humiliation and a childish lack of appropriate autonomy and self-confidence. Various practices, instilled during formation, played on the immaturity and fearfulness of those entering women’s religious communities. For example, requiring not only unthinking and unquestioning obedience but prior approval by a superior to do anything not specifically prescribed fostered childish dependence; in moral formation, obeying rules to avoid hell prevailed over understanding the good reasons for willingly doing appropriate actions. Spirituality depended too much on conformity in external observances and pious practices. Many were fixated on superficial marks of distinction and resistant to updating sought by Pius XII and the Congregation for Religious. In some cases, group pride made for uncharitable rivalry and competition rather than effective cooperation. John M. Lozano, C.M.F., Foundresses, Founders, and Their Religious Families, trans. Joseph Daries, C.M.F. (Chicago: Claret Center for Resources in Spirituality, 1983), 66–68, lists many founders of institutes who were deposed by the Holy See or by bishops, most of them women. Bishops often installed a priest as superior of an institute for women; while some of these no doubt exercised restrained and benign oversight, others oppressively interfered with the inner life of the community. What Vatican II called for was very difficult, and the work of renewal was not well moderated by the Vatican. The renewal called for required creativity of the sort characteristic of founders, as well as their charisma to keep the group together. PC was calling on sisters to put themselves in the place of their foundress and refound the institute as she would have done had she been doing it today—thus getting rid of anything intervening that would not be useful for the purpose and taking full account of the present situation. That was a challenge requiring unusual capacities and creativity. The problem of renewal could be solved in diverse ways; it admitted of no simple and single right answer. But some possible answers suited some members better; others, other members. Institutes were more or less ill-organized to undertake the task of reinventing themselves. In general, authority structures were not designed for such radical reworking, which called for a broadly representative and collaborative approach. Probably special structures should have been devised and required to be used for this purpose. Probably, too, minority reports should have been allowed and mediators provided. A worldwide gathering of representatives of all those in any approved form of consecrated life perhaps could have worked out detailed procedures and norms by dialogue with the synod of bishops. Perhaps in the short run certain changes widely considered desirable could have been legislated for all institutes that ratified them by a certain proportion of votes. In some respects, experimentation was not well understood and was improperly used: one needs to know what one is looking for and to have clear criteria in advance for determining 3 Notes for Chapter 4 whether one is attaining it. Also, there can be no experiment with the most central things, whose value is intrinsic—one must do the best one can in every instance, and do something else only when one thinks that is the best one can do. Changing one’s life in significant ways makes a permanent change in oneself; one can no more experiment with significant changes in one’s spiritual and apostolic life than a young couple can experiment by living together so as to decide whether to get married. Analogy with bringing up kids. Members who had never been superiors and who were most effectively formed by the existing system were disinclined to take initiative in the renewal process. Those who both had been superiors and who were dissatisfied with the existing system were most inclined to take the initiative and most able to dominate the renewal process. The Holy See failed to set ground rules that might have ensured a broadly representative and collaborative approach. Did not entertain minority reports. Did not facilitate regrouping of individuals by division and merging of institutes. Assumed all religious should retain all characteristics of religious life as it had been—a rigidity about the essence of religious life—rather than allowing a spectrum of forms of evangelical life with various combinations and permutations of features to emerge. Nadine Foley, “The Ambiguity of Religious Life; Does It Evolve?” Review for Religious, 56/1 (Jan./Feb. 1997): 8–9, a former president of the LCRW, tells how, while participating in the process of seeking approval for new constitutions through conversations with people at CICLSAL, she encountered the view that religious life does not evolve. After “entire congregations participated in developing new constitutions,” she says, “it became quite clear that we were expected to fit into a Procrustean bed of fixed categories. The suggestion, once heard, that we could save ourselves a lot of trouble if we just settled upon calling ourselves ‘secular institutes’ epitomized the problem. We did not fit many canonical expectations of ‘consecrated life,’ but at the same time we found no comfort in being labeled secular institutes.” She is no doubt right about the rigidity of the categories. But the proposed solution would not have been bad to seize upon. For secular institutes can add nonessentials, such as community life and even public vows, without violating their paradigm. What really is essential for an institute to be recognized? It must promote genuinely evangelical life, in which all the essentials received from Christ are cherished and members strive to do nothing but respond to God’s plan for their lives. It must involve specifications with respect to gifts and opportunities for service that are common enough to warrant institutionalization. In other words, it must not be so specified that too few intent on living an evangelical life would be called to enter it. (In practice, this condition is shown to be met by the growth of the would-be institute in numbers stably adhering to it over a period of time before it wins approval.) Nothing about it may be likely to bring about side effects that would make the Church’s recognition inappropriate.