This afternoon Sr Joan Chittester spoke to the 30+ people at the City of God Urban Ministry Conference in Washington DC. I took it all in from the front row and sat amazed for a couple of hours as Sr Joan laid out a prophetic program for the church in the 21st century. Today she was speaking largely to clergy, who make up the largest portion of the group here. I didn't know that Sr Joan was trained as a social psychologist in addition to her vocation as a Benedictine Sister. The range of her learning is broad and her knowledge of modern culture is deep. For those who have not had the pleasure to hear in person, she is down to earth, very energetic, blunt, funny, and slightly irreverent. She is also incredibly smart and exudes a practical spirituality that is at once compassionate, authentic, and cuts like a spear. She spoke fast and with intensity and gave her all for the two hours she was with us. It was very intense, demanding, and prophetic.
Her fundamental message to us, the clergy present, was not to minister in a vacuum. We live in a time of social collapse, but also of social renewal, she told us. This is obvious, of course, but she is firm that what is dying is simply making room for what will be born. She referenced Anthony F.C. Wallace on four stages of cultural renewal: 1) first there is individual stress; here individuals start questioning basic assumptions, in this case church teachings and rules, but do not share these thoughts in public; there is no community of questioning, just a kind of dis-ease; 2) the stress then becomes more widespread and the questioning becomes public in nature; groups form of like-minded people; in one study she worked on with church historian Martin Marty there was a point where liberal Lutherans were finding more in common with liberal Roman Catholics than with conservative Lutherans; this was an indicator many years ago that the uniformity of the church was breaking down; people were starting to listen in to televangelists and preferring them to their own local pastor or priest; 3) now people agree broadly that there is indeed a problem, but there is no consensus on what to do about it; some propose a hyper-traditionalism or a kind of nativism that looks back to a golden age, assuming that if we can do that we can hold on to the past that seems to be receding before us; the fault lies somewhere, probably in authority, perhaps the pastor or the council or other governing body (the national church, for example, or the national Bishop); 4) finally we begin the reconstruction of the new worldview, which is essentially a restructuring of the old institution in a new and vital form; we shed light on the old recognizing that it is the same Spirit at work taking on a new shape.
And who will finally arrive at the answer(s) to this dilemma (and drama) of social collapse? Those of us who are older but who also desire to help the church make this transition are the ones who ask the right questions and allow others to ask them as well. The problem with someone like myself and others like me is that I and others were initially formed in the old institution(s); therefore we carry lots of the old baggage. That puts us in the position of understanding the institution's problems but not in the best place to give the answers. The answers will come from the younger generations, who have left the old institution behind and are free of those forms and thought patterns. Someone like myself becomes a transitional figure, preparing the way for new and vital work ahead. The church is changing and it is sometimes painful. There is no doubt that our church socialization makes it difficult to see the future. Many of us still see the church as the place where spiritual things happen. We haven't always seen the larger world as the real parish. A "church" which, for example, doesn't have a building and all the adornments that a building gives us, including all the paraments, organ, etc. is next to impossible to imagine. We don't understand "church" without all of that. But at least part of the future may look somewhat like that. As far back as World War II Bonhoeffer wondered about such things after he considered the total failure of the institutional church under the Reich to fulfill its calling. Such are the ideas that Sr Joan asks us to think about.
I love the idea of "seeding the questions." I do see that as important, that and trying to breathe new life into old forms and rethink old images and stories of the faith. One thing I can say about Sr Joan. When it comes to thinking about older images and stories she is more than ready to relate them to the modern world with its injustice, greed, and violence. Our priorities are skewed with more money going to pet food than to the poor. I flinched a little, knowing how important pets are to people, and rightly so in many cases. But it does tell a tale of priorities in an age when the military is the most trusted institution and most of our foreign aid is military, when feminism is considered over in America while women worldwide are struggling for the most basic rights, when our national obsession with instant gratification leads to exploitation of land, children, third world nations and precious gifts like the Gulf of Mexico, and when poverty falls most severely on women and children in the so-called "feminization of poverty."
I feel privileged to have experienced a modern day prophet, which she certainly is. But her call to all of us, not only to clergy, is to become the prophets we are called to be. Holiness, she said today, is about virtue, not visions; being there for others; focusing on something greater than oneself; and being present to the Presence, where it is and where it is not. Holiness as a private vision and experience is an old, very old, model that no longer applies. Times have changed and so has our understanding of holiness and spirituality. Our inner spiritual life has to inform our outer expression of it, but it is not complete if it is merely an ascetic discipline. Privatized religion must make its way out of that ghetto to the arena of public responsibility. A new age is forming right under our noses and we are a part of its creation. It is a difficult process, but "everything we do changes the future." There are many emotions that emerge out of this process but I like what Sr Joan says about anger: "If we had been holier we would have been angrier" as we face the injustices in the world and the clear need to realize the vision of the gospel, the reign of God, in the world today.
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