A future full of hope?
Nicolas Stebbing CR
considers the future of religious life
Our modern Catholic movement in the Anglican Church is
reckoned to have begun in the early 1830s. As a direct response to that in the
1840s women began to form themselves into religious communities of Sisters. They
took on the habit, the daily offices, the Mass and the prayer of the Catholic
Church. They also won support, even from hostile bishops, for the work they did
in parishes, slums and anywhere there was a need. The Sisterhoods were one of
the glories of the nineteenth-century English church.
It took another 20 years for men’s communities to start, and they were never so
big or so numerous. But it is hard to imagine the Anglo-Catholic world of the
larger part of the twentieth century without Cowley, Kelham, Mirfield, Nashdom
and the Franciscans.
Decline
It is very different now. Many of the orders have passed out of existence. All
are a shadow of what they once were. This is not surprising. The pool of
Catholic parishes on which religious communities drew is much smaller than it
was, and contains a far smaller proportion of the young. At the same time we are
part of a wider story: the Roman Catholic Church has experienced a similar
decline, with whole orders of nuns disappearing. Vatican 2 changed the face of
the Catholic Church and the face of religious life too. Huger attempts were made
at renewal, reframing, reinventing religious life. The results sadly are hard to
see.
It is a different world from the one in which religious life flourished. Forms
of the life will change. Numbers may never again be so great. But will it last?
In the Church of England it could expire within a generation. This would be a
serious loss to the Catholic movement as religious life is one of the marks of
Catholicity. It is in everyone’s interest to make sure the present dying of the
life is turned somehow into a resurrection of something new, appropriate and
attractive to those who want to serve Christ with all their hearts.
‘Profound adventure’
So a book recently published by Roman Catholic religious is of great interest.
Called A Future Full of Hope and edited by Gemma Simmonds cj it tries to look
hopefully at what future there might be. The most hopeful part for me came in
the Preface by the remarkable Dominican Timothy Radcliffe who writes, ‘If
Christianity is to flourish in the West, then we must recapture a sense of the
profound adventure of our faith.
Young people do not want a religion which offers just a vague, warm
spirituality. A lifestyle accessory like aromatherapy or a fitness regime. Their
imagination will be touched if we embody the staggering invitation to share
God’s own life. Religious life will surely revive in our time, precisely because
its craziness points to God’s unimaginable promise to us all.’ Fr Radcliffe’s
own Dominican order has more than a third of its members in Europe in the first
years of formation, so he has good grounds for being right. The essays which
follow though are somewhat more problematic.
Need for a proper theology
First comes the Benedictine, Gregory Collins, on the need to develop a proper
theology of religious life. He points out that the twentieth century was one of
the most theologically creative centuries ever, yet little of this has spilled
over in religious life. He sketches a theology which is paschal, Pentecostal,
Eucharistic, Marian and mystical. Unfortunately it is only a sketch and gives
little idea of the dynamic effect such a theology could have. Collins is
undoubtedly right in seeing a need for theology. The English do not like doing
theology and this is particularly true of Anglicans (despite figures like
Michael Ramsey and Rowan Williams); Anglican religious have been particularly
bad at doing theology and have prided themselves on their practical and pastoral
record. We now have a theologically sterile environment and must not be
surprised that there is nothing to nurture new growth. The few religious left
need urgently to ask themselves, what can we do about this?
Charismatic founders
The next two chapters seem to me to describe two developments from Vatican 2
which have been, if not delusory, then far less fruitful than it was hoped. One
was the direction for religious to ‘return to their sources’ and rediscover the
charism of their founders. Undoubtedly much good came out of this, as we found
in CR, as it helped to see what we have always been about. However, for many
there was no particular source, beyond a charismatic founder, now departed. Many
charisms were a product of their age. Once that age had passed it seemed the
Congregation should pass too. It is probably time this search was firmly laid to
rest. It roots us too much in the past, rather than in the present where we are
and the future where we hope to be.
Monastic and apostolic
The other distinction made after Vatican 2 was that between monastic and
apostolic religious life;
broadly speaking those for whom prayer, liturgy and community life were
the priority, and those for whom it was the work, the apostolate which
determined their choices. This was largely intended to free up those sisters
whose work was being hampered by what seemed excessive demands of the monastic
lifestyle.
Fifty years after Vatican 2 most of these sisters are in lay dress, elderly, in
shrinking congregations. Some very impressive work has been done in social
justice, retreat work, education, but it does not look as if there is a great
future. At the same time monastic communities, which have changed less, are
doing much apostolic work, very well. And many of the apostolic sisters,
brothers and priests are, not surprisingly, very committed to prayer and clearly
holy people. Anglicans have been less affected than Romans by this distinction.
Where they have tried to follow it disaster has usually followed.
Feminism
Chapter 4 takes up the issue of feminism in the religious life. Classically,
nuns are supposed to be meek, obedient and subservient to male authority.
Certainly Rome gets very agitated when they are not. Yet in fact there have
always been armies of nuns who were very independent-minded; foundresses,
mothers superior, teachers and nurses have managed to be obedient to the Church
and yet independent in the pursuit of their religious lives. An elderly male
religious like me is not the best person to assess the impact of feminism in the
religious life, but one cannot help wondering if some false distinctions have
been made and the wrong questions asked.
Fostering vocations
Christopher Jamison, former Abbot of Worth, describes his work fostering
vocations throughout the country. He makes the important observation that people
have assumed that, as in the past, a Catholic youth, coming from Catholic
families and Catholic schools, will produce a regular crop of devout and well
instructed young men and women wanting to be religious. This he calls ‘skimming
the cream off the top of the solidly nourished Catholic milk’. Sadly the
Catholic milk has evaporated.
This means that those who do enquire seriously vocation need to be helped to
understand the realities of religious life before they take the plunge. He has
set up a well-organized, well-resourced facility called Compass which brings
such enquirers together with religious men and women to guide them, answer their
questions and help them think about the issues of religious life. We certainly
in CR have found modern enquirers woefully ignorant about Church and monastic
life. There is no question of taking them in until they have learned more.
Motives
In a moving chapter on what really does bring young people into the Life, Joanna
Gilbert gives evidence of a not surprisingly wide range of motives. Many are
simply drawn by the attractiveness of prayerful dedicated religious whom they
have met. They want a good community life, good
liturgical life and a ministry that is significant and different.
In fact it is the word ‘different’ that might sum up their aspirations. They do
not want to be living just as they always have; they want something sufficiently
rich and challenging to make the sacrifice worthwhile. They want the religious
they are joining to believe strongly in the worthwhile nature of the life they
are living, and to be so rooted in Christ that they have a real message to share
with a hungry and despairing world. That is quite a challenge to us who have
lived with disappointment for many years to keep showing the hope that is
inherent in Christian life.
The next chapter, by an Irish Dominican, Gerard Dunne, tells the exciting story
of how a Province with one man in formation in 2000 to the situation ten years
later of having 28 men in various stages of this early period of Dominican life.
The change that seemed to bring this about was really a revamping of the whole
process of formation with a full-time vocations director and hand-picked,
experienced Dominican men responsible for the teaching and training.
This made sure Dominicans are what they always should be, well-educated,
well-focused preachers and teachers who live a good community life in which
prayer too is taken seriously. When a young man joins the Dominicans he has a
very clear idea of what he will get.
Visibility
Gemma Simmonds then takes up the thorny issue of visibility. After Vatican 2
religious generally and apostolic religious particularly progressively gave up
habits and increasingly dressed in secular clothes and often adopted secular
lifestyles. The aim was good: to insert themselves more effectively into the
world, to simplify their lives so that they could work better and not to claim
to themselves a special degree of holiness that habits seemed to imply.
Unfortunately it made them invisible.
They look like other women or men. Often they live like other
women and men, sometimes alone. How would you know they are sisters, and why
should you join them if you do? A younger generation needs a clear identity,
especially in the formative stages. They also want a lifestyle that includes
high quality corporate prayer, not just the muttering of an office in a living
room.
Sr Gemma does not really present a solution, except to suggest that work itself
should distinguish the religious, and that the work should engage with the major
problems of today, including the general loss of meaning, fragmentation of
family and society, world poverty, and the looming ecological disaster. She is
undoubtedly right, but avoids the question whether young women and men are more
likely to take up this work if they are helped by a traditional style.
Changes in society
The final chapter by James Sweeney tries to look at the future. He seems to
conclude that the monastic and mendicant groups (e.g. Benedictines and
Dominicans) seem to have a future and to have managed change without
disintegration. Numbers of new recruits are not spectacular in Western Europe,
but not negligible and seem to be rising. Their identity is clear and the role
in the Church is valued.
The apostolic orders are much more problematic. This should not surprise us as
they are most vulnerable to and dependent upon the changes in society. They
flourished in the nineteenth and early twentieth century as a response to major
social problems, expanding education, the new world of mission, and a general
appreciation for institutional life and institutional forms.
In our world of modernity and postmodernity all this has changed. Apostolic
orders can be prophetic,
identifying with the poor for instance and getting lost among them or they can
revert to previous models – look more monastic or mendicant and so lose their
unique charism. It is still too early to predict which way will prove the way
not just of survival but of real flourishing.
Lessons for Anglicans
Which brings us back to Anglicans. In one sense we cannot compete. We are tiny,
with only a few religious communities scattered across the world, and with
numbers in those communities small in all but a very few cases (SSF and
Melanesian Brothers, and some Sisters Communities in Tanzania and Zululand).
However, we can learn from this example:
Firstly, there is no point in going down the apostolic road. Our communities
have never been apostolic in the full Roman sense. There is doubt whether they
will survive anyway. It would seem that monastic and mendicant are the two
models with a reasonably secure future. We need to ask how we can do that well.
Secondly, religious life is not at an end. The Catholic experience is that there
are still larger numbers of young people, growing numbers actually who enter it,
provided they can see that it is exciting, fulfilling and richly demanding. It
is a wonderful life; we need to believe that and say that. Tired, cynical or
bored religious communities will cut no ice and deserve to die out. The rest of
us need to ask ourselves how we can be the kind of exciting place that young
people will want come to.
Thirdly, we need to be serious. We cannot just muddle on and hope things work
out. The Dominican experience shows what can result from getting serious about
recruitment and formation. We need to make that an absolute priority if we are
to fulfil the purpose God has for us in the future; or there will be no future
for us! ND