Review for Religious - Issue 19.1 (January 1960)

Issue 19.1 of the Review for Religious, 1960.

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title_full	Review for Religious - Issue 19.1 (January 1960)
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description	Issue 19.1 of the Review for Religious, 1960.
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spelling	sluoai_rfr-444 Review for Religious - Issue 19.1 (January 1960) Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus Jesuits -- Periodicals; Monasticism and religious orders -- Periodicals. Issue 19.1 of the Review for Religious, 1960. 1960-01-15 2012-05 PDF RfR.19.1.1960.pdf rfr-1960 BX2400 .R4 Copyright U.S. Central and Southern Province, Society of Jesus. Permission is hereby granted to copy and distribute individual articles for personal, classroom, or workshop use. Please credit Review for Religious and reference the volume, issue, and page number and cite Saint Louis University Libraries as the host of the digital collection. Saint Louis University Libraries Digitization Center text eng Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus Review For Religious Volume 19 1960 Editorial O[[ice ST. h~ARY’S COLLEGE St. Marys, Kansas Publisher TIlE QUEEN’S WORK St. Louis, Missouri EDITOR R. F. Smith, S.J. ASSOCIATE EDITORS Augustine G. Ellard, S.J. Henry Willmering, S.J. ASSISTANT EDITORS John E. Becker, S.J. Robert F. Weiss, S.J. DEPARTMENTAL EDITORS Questions and Answen Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Woodstock College Woodstock, Maryland Book Reviews Earl A. Weis, S.J. West Baden College West Baden Springs, Indiana Published in January, March, May, July, September, November on Ihe fifleenlh of Ihe monlh. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is Indexed in Ihe CATHOLIC PERIODICAL INDEX. Act of "Dedication of the Human Race to Christ the King Sacred Apostolic Penitentiary IOn July 18, 1959 (Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 51 11959~, 595-96), the Sacred Apostolic Penitentiary issued a new text of the act of dedication of the human race to the Heart of Christ the King. The text has been revised according to the directives of John XXIII who has also accorded a number of indulgences to the revised prayer. The following is a translation of the new text of the prayer together with the indulgences granted for its recital.I SWEET JESUS, Redeemer of the human race, look do~vn upon us humbly kneeling before Your altar.~ We are Yours and Yours we wish to be; but in order to be still more firmly united to You, today each one of us freely dedicates himself to Your most Sacred Heart. There are many indeed who have never known You; many others have rejected Your commandments and have repudiated You. Be merciful to all of them, 0 kind Jesus, and draw them all to Your holy Heart. Be king, 0 Lord, not only of the faithful who have never abandoned You, but also of the prodigal children who have left You; bring them back quickly to their Father’s house lest they die of misery and hunger. Be king of those who have been deceived by erroneous ideas or have been separated by discord; bring them back to the harbor of truth and to the unity of faith so that soon there may be a single fold and a single shepherd. Bestow upon Your Church, 0 Lord, security, liberty, and safety; give to all nations the tranquillity of order; and grant that from one pole of the earth to the other there may ring out the cry: Praise to the divine Heart which brought forth our salvation; to It be glory and honor forever. Amen. July 18, 1959 His Holiness, John XXIII, after abrogating the prayer as given in the Enchiridion Indulgentiarum [Manual of Indulgences], 1952, n. 271, graciously granted the following indulgences: 1) A partial indulgence of five years to the faithful who devoutly recite the above act of dedication with contrite heart. 2) A plenary in- 1When the prayer is recited outside a church or oratory, "in Your presence" should be said instead of "before Your altar." ACT OF DEDICATION dulgence once a month, if they have recited the prayer devoutly every day for a whole month, provided they go to confession, receive Communion, and make a visit to a church or a public oratory. 3) The faithful may gain a partial indulgence of seven years if on the Feast of Christ the King they are present in any church or oratory, even a semi-public one (in the case of those legitimately attending it), when the act of dedication tn the Sacred Heart of Jesus according to the formula given above and the Litanies of the Sacred Heart are recited before the Blessed Sacrament solemnly exposed; moreover, they may gain a plenary indulgence if, besides fulfilling the above conditions, they have gone to confession and Communion. All contrary provisions not withstanding. N. Card. CANALI, Major Penitentiary L. ~I, S. I. Rossi, Secretary Living /aters Frederick Power, $. J. pius XII in his encyclical Haurietis aquas on devotion to the Sacred Heart urges us to"-study diligently the teachings of Scripture, the fathers, and the theologians--the solid founda-tions on which devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus rests." For the Holy Father is "firmly convinced that we can rightly and fully appreciate the incomparable excellence and inexhaustible store of heavenly gifts of this devotion only when we study its nature in the light of divinely revealed truth." The encyclical itself begins with a text from Isaiah: "You shall draw waters with joy out of the Saviour’s fountains" (Is 12:3). A few lines further on the Holy Father returns to the idea of the "Saviour’s fountains" when he refers to the scene in the Temple at Jerusalem on the Feast of Tabernacles as recorded in John’s Gospel, Chapter 7:37-39. The words of our Lord on this occasion are numbered among the principal te~ts which establish the biblical foundation of the devotion. A closer study of this text will be most rewarding and will reveal the appropriateness of the text as the general theme of the encyclical. When the Feast of Tabernacles was at hand, our Lord had declined to go to Jerusalem with His relatives but afterwards went up by Himself "not publicly but as it were privately." The Feast of Tabernacles was held towards the end of Sepo tember after the grain harvest and the vintage and the gathering of the autumn fruit crop. Originally an agricultural festival in-stituted to give thanks to God for the fruitfulness of the soil, it later included the commemoration of the forty years spent by the Hebrews in the desert. In memory of the latter event all Jews of free status except the sick, women, and children lived for the week in huts made from the leafy branches of trees. These huts reminded them of the tents or tabernacles pitched in the wilder-ness of Sinai, a period kept ever fresh in their minds as one in which God gave them the great gifts of the manna and of the water from the rock. The desert ever afterwards remained in Jewish tradition as the place of God’s protective presence. Two elaborate ceremonies added to the gaiety of the feast: the procession to the fountain of Siloe and the torch-light illumi-nation of the Women’s Court. It is the first of these ceremonies that is of interest for the present article. FREDERICK POWER Review for Religious Each morning the multitude organized into a procession. The people lined the route leading to thepool of Siloe and crowded into the Temple and the surrounding courtyards and porches. Then a procession of priests and Levites descended the valley as far as the pool of Si\|oe. Those assisting at the ceremony held a citron fruit in the left hand and in the right a palm branch twined with shoots of myrtle and green willow. The Levites chanted the group of festive psalms called the great Hallel; and the multitude, keep-ing time with the refrain, vigorously waved the fruit and palm branch in token of joyfulness and triumph. The officiating priest carried a golden ewer, and at the pool of Siloe he filled it with water to carry back to the altar of holo-causts. This liturgical act was both a commemorative symbol and a dramatized hope. It recalled the miraculous water that gushed forth from the rock of Horeb beneath the rod of Moses, and it was a figure of the outpouring of graces proper to Messianic times. As the celebrant drew the water of Siloe, the choir repeated the verse of Isaiah: "You shall draw water with joy out of the Saviour’s fountains" [12:3), a verse which refers to the blessings promised for the days of the Messiah. This symbol of a spring bursting forth and of water flowing from a fountain was well known to those present, for it is one of the most frequent in the Bible; and in a land afflicted by drought and water scarcity, it was a readily understood symbol of divine blessings. Accordingly, the miraculous event in the desert, when Moses struck the rock with his rod and water gushed forth, was remembered with gratitude in the people’s liturgical ceremonies. Moses himself had prayed before the Ark of the Covenant: "O Lord God, hear the cry of this people and open to them thy treasures, a fountain of living water, that being satisfied they may cease to murmur" (Num 20:6). In this text and elsewhere in Scripture "living water" is water flowing from a spring as opposed to the stagnant water of cisterns. It was this symbol of living waters that the prophets used to signify divine blessings. Jeremiah even calls God the fountain of living waters: "For my people have done two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and have digged to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water" (Jer 2:13). In the last part of the book of Ezekiel, the prophet describes the vision of the holy waters issuing from all sides of the Temple. The desert through which they flow becomes extremely fertile; the trees on their banks have healing power and bear fresh fruit January, 1960 LIVING WATERS monthly. Such is the virtue and dynamism of Yahweh’s holy presence in the Temple that it radiates0grace and blessings over the land. Zechariah, too., in speakingof the time of the Messiah, remarks: "In that day there shall be a fountain open to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem" (Zech 13:1). The prophets, then, looked on water poured out upon parched land as an image of the new spirit that was to be characteristic of the time of salvation. In .the words of Isaiah: "I will pour out waters upon the thirsty ground, and streams upon the dry land; I will pour out my spirit upon thy seed, and blessing upon thy stock" (Is 44:3). In these texts we see some examples of how the blessings of God and the future blessings of the Messianic era are portrayed under the symbol of living waters, and the passages provide some introduction to the scene in Jerusalem on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles. After the drawing of the water the procession wended its way up the slope from the pool of Siloe, the officiating priest carry-ing the golden pitcher of water, the Levites chanting psalms, and the crowd singing the refrain. As the procession approached the temple, the people became more enthusiastic, shouting out their response of Hallelu-Yah--Praise Yahweh--with ever greater vehe-mence. It wasin this way that they manifested their deep-felt conviction that Yahweh was their own God who had brought them out of the land of Egypt and had led them safely through the desert. The procession went up to the altar of holocausts just at the moment when the parts of the victim immolated that day were being placed upon it. The priest was greeted by the sacred trumpets and was met at the altar by another priest carrying the wine for the libations. While the people continued their enthusiastic shout-ing, the two pitchers were emptied into conduits that led to the foot of the altar. By this libation it was intended to thank God for the two occasions when He made water flow from a rock to satisfy the thirst of His people in the wilderness. By the same rite the attention of the people was directed to the Messianic promise of living waters and also to the expectation of the fulfillment of the promise which was symbolically signified. For the people were expecting a Messiah who would bring salvation and who was to be another Moses. When the liturgical rite was finished and the singing ended, a silence descended over the throng. Our Lord, who had been 7 FREDERICK POWER Rewew for Rehgmus present among the crowd, now took advantage of this opportunity to reveal His true mission. Mounting a step he cried out to the Jewish people: "If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink; he who believes in me, as the Scripture says, ’From his heart there shall flow rivers of living water.’ " By these words He revealed Himself as the one in whom all the abundant graces of the Messianic period are to be found, the object of the Messianic expectation, the Messiah himself. He is the rock from which the water of life flows; indeed, He is the fountain itself. He is the spring from which anyone who thirsts may quench his thirst. The effect of faith in Him would be the reception and communication of living water. This text requires the explanation of two important points. First, the text as a whole has been interpreted in two ways: that the fountain of living water flows from the one who believes in Christ, or that the fountain flows from Christ, the one in whom we believe. The Holy Father understands the text in the second way in his encyclical; this use, without doubt, holds the richest and profoundest sense, one more in agreement with the Old Testament prophecies given above. It is also more in agreement with the theology of St. John. Secondly, an explanation must be given for the use of the word heart in the text. The Latin edition of the encyclical follows the Vulgate version of the text, the literal translation of which would be: "Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." The Latin phrase used is de ventre eius, which literally means "out of his belly." This translation would also be a literal trans-lation of the Greek and Aramaic versions of the text. The trans-lation, however, would not be a correct interpretation of the idea intended. Those who are experts in the Aramaic language agree that for the Hebrews the viscera or the belly was regarded as the seat of the emotions in the same way as we regard the heart. Accordingly a proper translation of the phrase used by our Lord would be "from his heart." Such a translation, though not a literal one, is the proper way to express the idea in terms we understand today. It is what our Lord meant, though He expressed it in the idiom of His own day. It is with this understanding that authorities place this text among the fundamental texts of Scrip-ture regarding devotion to the Sacred Heart. On this occasion of our Lord’s revelation of His Sacred Heart, He appeals to Scripture as being fulfilled in His person. He does not refer to one particular text but rather to that whole class of January, 1960 LIVING WATER~ texts from the Old Testament which we considered earlier. The people who heard these ~o.~s could take only one meaning: The man before them was definitely claiming the fulfillment of these prophecies in Himself; He was claiming it and at the same time promising untold blessings to those who would recognize this claim. Certainly St. John is impressed by the words, for he pauses to comment upon them. He tells us that they were prophetic and that they were fulfilled in the final glory of our Lord whicb, for ~John, is our Lord’s passion, death, and subsequent transfiguration: "He said this, however, of the Spirit whom they who believed in~ Him were to receive; for the Spirit had not yet been given, seeing that Jesus had not yet been glorified" (Jn 7:39). The Spirit here means the Holy Spirit and includes the abundance of Mes-sianic goods and the gifts of redemption which the Holy Spirit brings to those who believe in Christ. But before the living water would flow, Christ had to be glorified; this was a condition that had yet to be fulfilled. That our Lord’s glory was concerned with His passion is seen in His priestly prayer after the Last Supper: "Father, the hour has come! Glorify thy Son, that thy Son may glorify thee, even as thou has given him power over all flesh, in order that to all ,that thou hast given him he may give everlasting life" (Jn 17:2). By sacrificing Himself the Redeemer would cause the Spirit to flow and to open up the "fountain of living water." And this would happen when at the death of the Messiah His Heart would be pierced ~with a lance. The life-giving power of the living waters would find its source in the Blood of Christ as it gushed forth from the wounded Heart of Christ. It is, however, necessary to make here some distinctions between the piercing of Christ’s side and the pouring forth of the Holy Spirit. The piercing is not of the same nature as the visible mission of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Nevertheless there is an ancient tradition, attested to among others by St. Augustine, that the Church was born from the pierced side of Christ. As Eve was taken from the side of the sleeping Adam, so also the Spouse of Christ, the Church, sprang from the pierced side of the dead Christ, the new Adam in His sleep of death being the source of the new Eve, the Church. And this Church is the Mystical Body of Christ whose soul is the Holy Spirit. FREDERICK POWER Review for Religious That the living waters promised to those who believe in Christ spring from the pierced side of the dead Saviour is also attested to by the common interpretation that for John the water and blood are signs of the sacraments of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist. In his encyclical Plus XII puts it this way: "From this wounded Heart the grace of the sacraments, from which the children of the Church draw supernatural life, flowed most pro-fusely .... " And the Holy Spirit is included in the sacrament of Baptism, for the new birth to be effected by Baptism is brought about by "water and the Spirit" as our Lord told Nic~demus. So it is that the prediction of John in Chapter 7 concerning the flowing rivers to come after Christ’s glorification was fulfilled when on the cross a soldier "opened his side with a lance, and immediately there came out blood and water" (Jn 19:34). The streams of blood and water are certain signs that now have been fulfilled the Scriptural prophecies of Messianic grace. Now the living water has begun to flow; now the Spirit is given, but only in blood; grace is given but only from the pierced Heart on the cross. Unless the spiritual rock that is Christ had been struck, the waters would nol~ have ~ome forth. And John in his Gospel insists that this incident of the soldier declining to break our Lord’s legs and instead opening His side was a momentous event. He emphasizes his own role as an eye-witness of the event: "And he who saw it has borne witness, and his witness is true: and he knows that he tells the truth, that you also may believe" (Jn 19:35). And he puts further emphasis on the event by telling us that by it two prophecies were fulfilled: "Not a bone of him shall you break," and "They shall look upon. him whom they have pierced." The first of these prophecies speaks of the paschal lamb. Now in the concluding events of the passion of Christ it is fully revealed that Christ is the true Lamb of God; accordingly none of His bones were broken. This symbol of the Lamb recalls the mag-nificent theology of the Apocalypse concerning the "Lamb who was slain" (Apoc 5:12). In the Lamb we see the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah who suffers ’and is glorified in His sufferings: "The Lamb . . . is the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings" (Apoc 17:14). The redeemed are the "bride, the spouse of the Lamb" (Apoc 21:9). In the blood of this Lamb the faithful are able to be cleansed--to be filled with the living waters of the Spirit. And from the fact that the rivers flow forth from the 10 January, 1960 LIVING WATERS wounded Heart of the Lamb, we are led to those passages in the Apocalypse which depict the fulfillment of the prophecies of Isaiah and Ezekiel: "For the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them, and will guide them to the fountains of the waters of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes" (Apoc 7:17); "... he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming forth from the throne of God and of the Lamb" (Apoc 22:1). Thus the act of redemption is enshrined, as it were, in a celestial garden and the redeemed are forever made joyous at the Saviour’s fountains. The second prophecy, which is concerned with the piercing of our Lord’s side, is from Zechariah: "And I will pour out upon the house of David and upon Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of prayers: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for an only son" (Zech 12:10). In this passage God speaks about Himself. As man, He will be the first-born, one for whom they mourn and weep and at whom they gaze although they have pierced Him. God Himself in His human nature brings about the redemption and is the one who gives the living water of the Spirit. He pours forth the Spirit at the moment when the lance opens His Heart. At that moment the Spirit begins to flow and the Messianic work will be prolonged to the end of time when Jesus will come again in glory. In the words of the Apocalypse: "Behold, he comes with the clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also who pierced him" (Apoc 1:7). Our Lord, then, standing above the throng gathered for the Feast of the Tabernacles, revealed Himself as the long awaited Messiah, the rock of salvation, the fountainhead of all the bless-ings of the Messianic times. For the most part, He was not ac-cepted. A few believed in Him, so John tells us, but only a few. For He is the "stone which the builders rejected." But He is also the rock which will be struck anew for the salvation of the newly chosen people. He will give of His sub-stance to give birth to the new people that He will acquire for Himself. From His pierced side will spring the fountain of eternal life, the rivers of living waters, the Spirit of love, the Church, the new Jerusalem, Baptism and the other sacraments, all the graces of the "last days." The Litany of the Sacred Heart sums it all up in the invocation: "Heart of Jesus, fountain of life and holiness." 11 A Catechism on Obedience of Judgment Paul W. O’Brien, S. J. QWhat are the necessary presuppositions for every act of obedience? A. That the superior has authority and that what he commands is not certainly sinful. Q. Could the superior sin while commanding something not sinful? A. Yes, through sinful motives, for example, envy, injustice, or serious imprudence. Q. What is the formal motive of obedience? A. Authority. Q. Is obedience an act of the will or intellect? A. Obedience of the will is an act of the will; obedience of judgment is formally an act of the intellect, but like faith, is commanded by the will. Q. What is obedience of judgment? A. The conforming of my judgment to the judgment of the superior-because he has authority. Q. To what judgment do I conform? A. Not necessarily to his theoretical (speculative)judgment, that is, something to believe, but to his practical judgment, that is, something to do. The Abbot John did not have to believe that the dry stick would grow into a tree; he had only to believe that God wanted him to water it (for His own mysterious reasons). Q. How would you express this practical judgment? A. Given the order of the superior, I must judge that this is what God wants done (that is, God sanctions with His authority the perhaps mistaken decision of my superior) and that it is best according to the ultimate mysterious plan of God (not necessarily best for the immediate purpose intended by the superior). Q. When I cannot agree with the speculative judgment of the superior and must carry out his practical judgment, how should I obey? A. Not just materially, by merely executing the order (and in such a way as to sabotage the project, emphasizing and dis- 12 O[~EDIENCE OF JUDGMENT playing the weakness of the order, proving the superior wrong); but loyally entering into his, views (without blinding myself to his error), covering up its weaknesses before the public, trying my best to make it succeed. Q. Should I judge the order of the superior to be the will of God because of the reasons of the superior? A. No, but only because he has authority. Q. Then obedience of judgment does not imply that I agree with the reasons of the superior? A. No, it does not imply this. Q. Is it possible to have perfect obedience of judgment and the firm assurance that the superior’s order is the will of God for me, while still hesitating over the reasons of the superior? A. Yes. Obedience is specified by authority, not by reasons. Q. Will my obedience of judgment be more perfect in propor-tion as I bring myself into agreement with the reasons of the superior? A. No, though the desire to agree will indicate a more perfect disposition. Q. Then why try to make my reasons agree with the reasons of the superior? A. It helps remove the psychological obstacles to obedience of judgment and chiefly of execution. It is easier to act if humanly speaking I agree with the policy. It is the proper disposition in the face of God’s representative. Q. Do I suspend my act of perfect obedience of judgment while I am trying to bring myself to agree with the reasons of the superior? A. No, no more than you suspend your act of faith while you study your catechism or theology. Q. When I have brought myself to agree with all the reasons of the superior, do I have more assurance of doing God’s will? A. No. The security that comes from authority (in the line of faith) will always be sufficient and greater than that which comes from the weight of human reasons. (Actually both the superior and I may be agreeing in wrong reasons.) Q. What is "blind obedience"? A. Supposing the two presuppositions of all obedience, I blind myself to the qualities and reasons of my superior, that is, I exclude the consideration of these reasons and motivate my obedi-ence by authority alone. Q. What is the difference between obedience of judgment and 13 PAUL W. O’BRIEN blind obedience? A. There is no difference in the act of obedience. But while obedience of judgment merely states the fact, blind obedience connotes the approach: the exclusion of the consideration of the reasons. Q. Is blind obedience a help to obedience of judgment? A. Yes. It makes obedience of judgment easier and safer for though I could have perfect obedience of judgment while consider-ing, and even while rejecting the reasons, still it is much easier to by-pass these reasons and look simply to authority. Q. Is blind obedience always better? A. No. Even though easier and safer, it is often good and sometimes necessary to consider the reasons of the superior (even while excluding them from the motivation of obedience), for they may: (a) help me to profit by the experience of my elders, (b) enlighten me on the spirit of my community, (c) be necessary to relieve psychological blocks to action, (d) be necessary for the understanding of the mind of the superior in view of carrying out his order more intelligently. Q. What should be my attitude toward the reasons of the superior? A. I should be well-disposed towards them. They are given to help me. I should use them as far as they help. If they trouble me, I should prescind from them and practice blind obedience, But even while using them, I should keep them in second place and unite myself to God through authority. 14 The Theology of Religious Women Yves M.-J. Congar, 0. P. This article was a conference given July 10, 1958, to a convention of French priests charged with the care of religious women. It will ~ppear as a chapter in a book to be entitled Le r61e de la religieuse dans l’Eglise (Paris: Cerf, 1960), a volume in the series Probl~mes de la religieuse d’aujourdhui. The article was first printed in Suppldment de la Vie Spirituelle (1959), 316:42. The present translation is by John E. Becker, S.J. Basic Notions: The Church and the World THE WORLD was set on,its way reality by the creative act. Its story is humanity s quest atos, ,ba e fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it" (Gen 1:28). For all practical pur-poses, the world, the temporal, history, the drive to civilize are equivalent ideas; the reality they have in common is the effort of man to perfect himself by subjecting, for his advantage, the re-sources inherent in himself and in material creation. And this effort has a direction, a direction which is completely dependent on the facts of Adam’s existence: he was at one and the same time both image of God and sinner. As Tennyson said very well, it is only at the end of this great adventure that one can say that man is complete. The Church is something other than this inherent movement of the world or of history even if, as is the case, she envelops it and Ultimately guarantees it. For she does not emerge out of the resources deposited within the first creation. She is placed in the realm of reality by a new initiative of God, properly supernatural, that is to say, an initiative in which God commits and gives Himself (this is the meaning of grace). She is an order of sanctity and sanctification positively instituted from above, a creation of the divine positive law issuing from the priestly, prophetic, and redemptive kingship of Christ. Still she has her existence and, as it were, her proper stability within human societies. Divine insti-tution that she is, she herself creates and shapes according to her needs and her spirit institutional forms proper to herself. On the other hand, the Church is not made to be an end in herself. She is made for God and for the world -- even for the world, to save it by the grace which God has given her to dispense: 15 YvEs M -J CONGAR Rewew for Rehgmus "In it [the faith of the Church] is contained union with Christ.’’1 The Church is a new creation of God, and a supernatural one; but she has a mission in and for the world. This mission consists in two things: first, to convert men by making them disciples, that is to say by bringing them into herself, giving them in this way the regeneration of a second birth; and then to sanctify them by communicating to them the grace of the Lord, by forgiving their sins, and by teaching them to conform their lives to the holy and sanctifying will of God;2 second, to operate within temporal life itself in order that in accordance with God’s plan it may be directed and oriented towards God to the fullest possible extent. The Church here reveals especially the healing power of grace which, by giv-ing back to nature her primitive orientation, conforms her to the will and to the image of God while at the same time restoring her t’o herself. The Church seeks, by all sorts of initiatives and under-takings, to remold the world according to the plan of God, which is neither the pursuit of self nor the pursuit of power nor egoistic hardness of heart, but on the contrary, service, brotherhood, justice, peace, communion, sharing, helping the poorest, combating all the degrading miseries of body and soul. This is why, from one end to the other of her history and growth, the Church has created ministries inspired by charity. Some of them, more involved with the work of the world and its battles, such as the fight for social justice, are more the role of the laymen within her whom she forms and inspires for this work. Others, more strictly pertinent to her spiritual nature and to her primary office of sanctification, can remain more properly eccle-siastical ministries; such is the case in particular with the corporal works of mercy or the spiritual works such as teaching. "As long as you did it for one of these, the least of my brethren, you did it for me" (Mt 25:40). Basic Notions: The Church in Herself One can consider the Church as the great sacrament of salva-tion and distinguish in her two aspects. She is both the reality of grace or sanctity and she is the means of grace or sanctification: reality and sacrament. Images for comparison are not lacking. However, as with every .image, they are very inadequate, and risk losing through excessive schematization what they gain in clarity. 1St. Ir~naeus, Adversus Haereses, III, 24, 1. ~Mt 28:19-20; Mk 16:15 ft.; Jn 3:3 ft.; 20:21 ff.; Col 1:13; etc. 16 January, 1960 THEOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS WOMEN For example, the Church as a holy reality may be considered to be. a tower or a temple; as a means of. sanctification, to have the instrumental power of a pick, a mining car, a windlass, a scaffold, and all of those things which are necessary ~to bring the rough stone from the mines to the finished building where each has its place and its proper finish (see the hymn for the dedication of a church). Does not St. Augustine distinguish the "society of the sacraments" and the "society of the saints," the former being ordered to the latter? Does he not also write: "The architect builds a permanent edifice with temporary machinery"?’~ To see in the Church the holiness already rooted in souls is not only to consider the depths of her life, it is to see in her that which will always be. "Charity never passes away" (1 Cor 13:8). To live through charity the life of holiness is really to live as a citizen of the eternal and heavenly City of God. In heaven, one might say, there will be nothing else but that. That city knows no hierarchy other than that of holiness or of love. The Virgin Mary is at its pinnacle. In the Church of this world she had neither a function nor a hierarchical dignity. It could readily be said of her that she was a member, the first member, of the laity if there were not the danger of belying by this way of speaking her per-fection as a consecrated member of the faithful. Mgr. Journet says well, following St. Thomas, that the Virgin Mary has per-fectly achieved the highest holiness, not the highest hierarchical dignity.~ She is-the type, or better, the perfect personification of the Church, but of the Church as final end, not as means. Mary is the "eschatological eikon of the Church.’’~ That which in the Church is "sacrament" in the wide sense of the word -- instrument or means of grace -- is as such related to her as a wayfarer. This is true in the first place of her sacraments properly speaking, but also of her dogmatic formulas, of her organizations, and of her ecclesiastical hierarchy which has the care of all these matters. If it were necessary to point out a type or a personification of the Church here, it would not be the Virgin Mary but rather the Apostle Peter. But this would be to consider 3Sermo 362, 7 (Patrologia Latina, 39, 1615). 4St. Thomas, In I Sent., d. 16, q. 1, a. 2, ad 4; Summa Theologiae, 3, 27, 5, ad 3; Albert the Great, In IV Sent., d. 19, a. 7; Charles Journet, L’Eglise du Verbe incarnd, 2 (Paris, 1951), 422; 441; 456, note 2. ~This striking expression is from L. Bouyer, Le culte de la M~re de Dieu (Chevetogne, 1950), 33; Le trSne de la sagesse (Paris, 1957), 188. See also O. Semmelroth, Die Kirche als Ursakrament (Frankfort, 1951), 176-85. A beautifu] and rich meditation on the theme of Mary as perfect spiritual type of the Church is to be found in H. Rahner, Marie et ~’Eglise (Paris, 1955). 17 YvEs M.-J. CONGAR Review [or Religious only one part of the reality, to reduce the power of the Church as means of grace or of sanctification to "institutions" alone. But as a matter of fact the whole life of the Church in time is a means of grace tending to produce that interior fruit of holiness which will always remain. Still, if the distinction which we have proposed is valid -- it is a classical one -- it is very necessary to guard against pushing it to the point of separation or disjunction. The Church in the concrete, the existential Church on earth is at the same time both means of sanctification and sanctity. In terms of the image used above, we should say that she is at the same time the building and the construction works by which she is built; or, using another image, she is the ear of wheat, full of the grain of which the host will be made, and at the same time the root and stem necessary to bear and nourish the wheat until the harvest time. This is why in the Church holiness and means of sanctification interpenetrate. The sacraments are holy; but also the reality of the interior holiness of the members is a powerful means of leading other members and the whole body either to conversion or to greater holiness. There is a spiritual mothering of holiness, or, if holiness seems too broad, of the life of faith, of prayer, and of charity; and perhaps this mothering is too little studied, theoretically undervalued in the Church, even though it is extremely real, a factor of everyday life. We shall return to this point later. It would also be inexact to make a complete separation be-tween holiness and visibility. Holiness manifests itself. It is even a "note" of the Church, that is to say a mark which "notifies" and permits the true Church to be recognized. As instigator and end of all the visible works of the Church, terminus and interior direction of all the instrumentality of grace, intimate soul of all the historical life of the Church, holiness gathers all of these func-tions together to constitute that sign of the Kingdom of God which the Church must be for the world. During His earthly life, Jesus made men sensible of the approach of the Kingdom of God and unveiled something of its proper mystery by "signs" just as He opened up the ways of the Good News in parables. After the Ascension of the Lord, it is the Church which by the grace of Pentecost is the sign for the world. But the different manifesta-tions of her historical life are signs of the Kingdom of God, signs of the charity of Christ, only because they incorporate and radiate holiness. Otherwise they might be signs of power, of legal right, even of greatness; they would not be signs of the Kingdom of God 18 January, 1960 THEOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS WOMEN and of the charity of Christ. They would not draw the world to the faith. Basic Notions: Religious Life The Church is a body which is organic, organized, and.there-fore composed of different elements. She embraces the infinity of individual differences which are the foundation of the gifts, altogether interior ~and spiritual or exterior and public, of each one: what a variety among men, what a variety in the world of the saints! All this is the rainbow of grace. But there are also larger differences in the Church, delimited categories, groups charac-terized by a particular social structure, even constituted as such by law. These are those major differences of condition which affect Christian life in that profound and permanent as well as public and manifest way by reason of which one may speak of them as states. Christian antiquity and the Middle Ages used the expression orders for any group, and the encyc.lical Mystici corporis of June 29, 1943, reintroduced this idea into its broad theology of the Church as the Body of Christ. Once more it speaks, for example, of the "order of the laity.’’~ The fathers spoke of the order of preachers or of prelates, the order of clerics, of monks, of virgins, of the continent, of widows, of deaconesses, of married people. If we consider only the most general divisions of states in the Church, we find ourselves faced with a double distinction, that between clerics and the laity, and another between seculars and regulars or religious (see below, note 50). If we recall what was said above about the Church, we will be able to relate the first distinction more to that ~aspect according to which the Church is means of sanctification, since this difference is between the simple members of the people of God and those members who are destined to exercise some sacred function and are endowed with powers appropriate to the prac.tical application of the means of grace. The second distinction pertains more to the aspect of the Church according to which she is a mystery of holiness; for the "state of perfection," even though it is a means of sanctification, is nor-mally an approach towards a more perfect life in Christ. In both cases, the state ~or particular ecclesiastical position of the cleric and of the regular is a deprivation of the greater liberty legiti-mately given those in the world in view of their conditio.n of life and .activity in the world; the purpose of this deprivation is the better service of God, whether this be more on the plane of per- SActa Apostolicae Sedis, 35 [1943), 200-01. 19 YVES M.-J. CONGAR Review for Religious sonal spiritual life (religious life) or more on the plane of admin-istering the Church’s means of sanctification (clerical, priestly state). It would be superfluous to spend time here defining religious life. Let us recall merely the simple and vigorous manner in which St. Thomas Aquinas characterized it in relation to the Christian life of the simple faithful.7 Each member of the faithful is com-mitted by his baptism, to renounce sin as well as Satan and his temptations. By religious profession, a Christian man or woman commits himself to renounce the world as the context of his life in order to belong more entirely, more definitively to God and to His work; for the world is an ambiguous milieu to live in; it is full of occasions of evil; it is engrossing, distracting, and filled with demands which hinder one from belonging to God completely and of temptations which turn one away from Him. This is why it is essential to the religious life, not only to detach oneself from the earthly and to consecrate oneself to God by vows, but through the rule to separate oneself from the conditions of life in the world. A point of view less individual and more ecclesiological might present the same realities in the following way.s The difference between religious and the simple faithful need not be viewed as a difference between the consecrated and the non-consecrated. This opposition exists, of course; but it should be located between the Church and the world, between the people of God and those who are not, between Christians and non-Christians (see 1 Pet 2:10). In the people of God as such, in the Body of Christ, all is sacred. The faithful are consecrated; their whole life as Christians, in so far as it is Christian, is sacred, not profane. All that religious can ambition is to be more consistently, more integrally Christian, and to embrace more perfect means toward this end." Laymen, or the ordinary faithful, live in the world. It is their precise charac-teristic to serve God in the way that is determined by their natural mission into the world.~° But the world is something other than 7Contra impugnantes religionem, c. 1. 8We employ here a suggestion of R. Carpentier, S.J. in his Life in the City o[ God: An Introduction to the Religious Life (New York, 1959). Compare the same author’s "Les instituts s~culiers," Nouvelle Revue Thdologique, 77 (1955), 408-12, in particular, 409, 411. ~Since Dom G. Morin’s L’iddal monastique et la vie chrdtienne des premiers jours (Maredsous, 1912), it is better known that religious life is merely the Christian life more fully expressed. 1°There is more and more agreement on this positive and theological definition of the lay state: Y. M.-J. Congar, "Qu’est-ce qu’un laic?" Suppld-ment de la Vie Spirituelle, 1950, 363-92; this article is the first chapter in the same author’s Lay People in the Church Westminster, 1957). See also K. 2O January, 1960 THEOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS WOMEN the Church. If the Church has its inner consistency and its proper demands, the world has too, Even prescinding from the ambiguity inherent in the enterprises of men and in the tendency toward sin which adheres to the tissue of the world, it is still necessary to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. For this reason even those laymen who seek only to love and serve God, whose personal lives are surrendered to God, and whose hearts are wholly intent upon Him find it difficult to exert themselves and to carve out their way in that world, a world which is not surrendered to God. "And he is divided" (1 Cor 7:33-34). The life of the Christian in the world is, unhappily, a divided one. The religious is the Christian who, in the desire to belong totally and irrevocably to God,~ leaves the world and enters a life built up and organized for the service of God, something which the world is not. The religious life in so far as it is a social frame-work for living is actually a creation of the Church for the pur-poses of the Church -- the service of God, Throughout the len.gth of her history.the Church has striven to achieve through religious life that which she tried to do as soon as she entered the world" by the grace of Pentecost; it was something that had been tried’ be-fore her, for example in the monasticism of the Essenes on the shores of the Dead Sea. Her aim has been to constitute a way of life which responds perfectly, even as a social or juridical structure, to the communal and fraternal demands of the Gospel and which allows one to be at the exclusive service of God. In fact, through-out the whole history of the religious life one finds references back to the tentative attempt at communal living in the primitive Church at Jerusalem.~- Moreover, it is by expressl.y referring to Rahner, "L’apostolat des la~cs" in Nouvelle Revue Thdologique, 78 (1956), 3-32; a digest of this article may be found in Theology Digest, 5 (1957-58), 73-79. ~St. Thomas: "So that he may not turn back" (Summa Theologiae, 2-2, 186, 6, ad 1; see also Contra Gentiles, 3, 131). l~See Acts 2:44 and 4:32. Some references on this point are: F~r St. Pach-omius see L.Th. Lefort, Les vies coptes de saint Pach6me et de ses premiers successeurs [Louvain, 1943), 3, 30, and 65, 25; for St. Basil, see his Regulae brevius tractatae, int. 148, 187 (Patrologia Graeca, 31, 1180 and 1208) as well as his Regulae [usius tractatae, int. 7 (Patrologia Graeca, 31, 933); for St. Augustine see his En~arrationes in Psalmos, 132, 2 (Patrologia Latina, 37, 1729 ff.), his Sermo 355 and 356 De vita et moribus clericorurn suorum ( Patrologia Latina, 39, 1568 ff.), his De opere monachorum (C.S.E.L., 41, 529 ft.), his Regula (see below, note 21), and A. Zumkeller’s Das M6nchtum des hl. Augus-tinus (Wiirzburg, 1950), 129 ft.; for St. Ambrose Autpert, see his In Cant. (Bibl. Max. Patrum, 13, 442); for St. Odo of Cluny, see his Occupatio 6 (Patrologia Latina, 133, 572) and J. Leclercq’s "L’id~al monastique de saint Odon d’apr~s ses oeuvres," in A Cluny. Congrbs scientifique, 1949, 227 ff.; for St. Peter Damian, see his Opusculum 24, Contra clericos regulares proprietarios (Patrologia Latina, 145, 482-90). From the time of the reform 21 YvEs M.-J. CONGAR Review [or Religious this historical archetype that all reforms, all renewals of the religious life have been carried out. The "type" of Jerusalem, the City of Peace, the city "where all together make one body" (Ps 122:3), the place of God’s habitation, has always been, for the various institutes of religious life, a kind of ideal, or "myth" in $orel’s sense of the word. The religious life is a kind of earthly anticipation of the City of God. The chief forms of the religious life derive, even in those things which differentiate them, from the following principle com-mon to all: The religious life is a total consecration which is carridd out on the social level and publicly approved by the Church and which aims at the pursuit of the perfection of charity on the basis of a renouncement of that which hinders this totality, and this renouncement is made in such a way as to close to oneself the possibility of turning back. Within the bounds of this essential principle common to all, religious institutes differ from one another according to that pre-. eminent work of charity to which each one specifically devotes itself. A first overall distinction arises, for this reason, between institutes vowed to the service of the love of God alone, in Him-self, and immediately -- the contemplative life, monasticism, the eremetical life -- and institutes vowed to the service of the love of God in the exterior exercise of love and of service to the neigh-bor -- institutes specifically vowed to the works of mercy, corporal (hospitals), or spiritual (teaching), or the two together (the greater part of the missionary congregations).13 Contemplatives or monks also contribute to the salvation of the world, but only from above and in the context of the mystery of the Communion of Saints, from which comes in its secret forms that spiritual maternity which we have already mentioned and to which we shall return. From the point of view of effective activity they seem to leave the world to its damnation..Nevertheless, this is a historical fact: it is the monks who have made Christianity; of the llth and 12th centuries the references ’to Acts increase; see the studies of Ch. Dereine and others. See also J. Leclercq, La vie parfaite (Turnhout, 1948), 82-108. M.-D. Chenu, La thdologie au xii’~ si~cle (Paris, 1957), 227 ff. 13As is well known there exists a third category, that of the apostolic life, which is sometimes given the strange and little justified name of the "mixed life." In this life the superexcellent work of charity is identical with that of that agape which implies service, self-giving, apostolate, mission. It implies living in the light of faith and love to the extent of communicating them to others by means of the apostolate. But this apostolic life is almost exclusively reserved to men; and in its fullness it demands the priesthood of the Gospels. 22 January, 1960 THEOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS WOMEN monasticism has been --it is still, it will continue to be in the future -- preeminently the educator who teaches men not only what it is to be a Christian, but also what it is.to be human. In this way it has been the creator of much that is beautiful. It is impossible to accept grace without its showing its healing power, impossible to seek first the Kingdom of God without all these other things being added on besides (Mt 6:33; Lk 12:31). Religious devoted to the works of mercy enter into the torrent of the world to perform the work of rescue. They participate more strictly than the monks in that which in the Church is not only repose in God but also anxiety for and with men; they participate in the Church not only as a harbor of grace and the inn of the good Samaritan, but as an effective rescue service with the difficult commitment to heal the wounded on a road infested with robbers. In the duality of the Church and of the world, the monks represent essentially the distinction or opposition of the two. The Church is not of the world; and in her monks she says to it: "Do not touch me!" But the duality of the Church and of the world is not only distinction and opposition, it is also a kind of coupling; it implies a dialectical and dramatic point of contact. Not only do the Church and the world coexist in the time between Eden and the Kingdom, they exist in a certain way one with the other and one for the other. The world is, for the Church, not only~ the quarry from which she gets her stones, but also a necessary partner in a dialogue, or better, a sort of separated partner, who opposes and tests her, but with whom she must remain joined in order to try to save it. The Church is different from the world, she is grace and salvation. But in the interim between Easter and the second coming, which is her time of wayfaring and of labor, she is joined to the world as the good Samaritan was to his wounded stranger while he lifted him up and carried him, or as a lifeguard is joined to the drowning person whom he attempts to bring to the shore.~ Basic Notions: The Role of Woman in the Church One can scarcely speak of the laws of God’s work, for he would thus risk giving the meaning that rules are imposed upon God extrinsically and as necessities. But one may speak of con-stants which the work itself reveals to us. And one of these constants seems to be procedure by pairs or complementary polarities. The study of tradition throughout Scripture, the fathers, and ancient ~On this point read G. Bernanos, La libertd, pourquoi faire? (Paris, 1953), 267-69; and see H. Urs yon Balthasar, Le chr~tien Bernanos (Paris, 1956), 217. 23 YVES M~-J. CONGAR Review for Religious texts and records, has convinced us more and more that this idea has played a very great role in Christian thought and institutions.~5 Among these unified dualities or complementary polarities, the first is without doubt the division of humanity into man and woman. It reappears in the Church, with the reservation that will be noted later. It is the reason that today’s relatively numerous studies of "the second sex" have their counterparts, frequently stimulating ones, in Christian publications which attempt to de-termine the particular role and assets of women and hence of religious women in the Church.~ This role and these assets are connected with these larger values: a) Woman stands for receiving, welcoming, consenting; she is the "spiritual vessel." To speak of passivity would be not quite exact; receptivity is vital and active. Recall the "fiat" of the Virgin Mary, the prototype of acceptance and of the faithfulness of the Church before the God who comes, calls, asks. b) It is also said of the Virgin that "she kept all things in her heart." Man has the initiative in producing life. Woman creates for it a milieu that is intimate and warm, a home. In the home she embodies that humble faithfulness which conserves, waits, wel-comes. Man is devoted to the risks of conflict on the outside; he is the victim of its aggression; he suffers change. But thanks to his wife he has a home where he can recover intact his better self, his inner self: the freshness and poetry of love, the faithfulness to memory and to conscience, the delicacy of attention and of care.’7 Man is specialized by work and by action. Woman is nearer 15The following examples have been chosen at random and hurriedly; nevertheless the meaning and the relationships of this theme of "pairs" were a matter of profound experience in the consciousness and texts of the ancients; they will be understood better if one keeps in mind the duality in unity which is at the basis of all the examples: Man and woman, soul and body, the two sides of the body (two eyes, two hands, etc.), sky and earth, sun and moon (the "two luminaries"), the two powers, pope and emperor, the two witnesses Peter and Paul, Moses and Elias, law and grace, the Church of the Jews and the Church of the Gentiles, head and body, Scripture and tradition, baptism and confirmation [Christ and the Holy ~pirit), com-munion under two species, the two columns of the temple of Jerusalem, the two cherubim of the Ark, etc. ~6For studies by Catholics see Gertrud von Lefort, Die ewige Frau ~Munich, 1935); Maura BSckeler, Das grosse Zeichen. Die Frau als Symbol g6ttlicher Wirklichkeit (Salzburg, 1941); D’Eve tt Marie, ou le destin de la Femme in L’Anneau d’or, 1954; F.J.J. Buytendijk, La femme, ses modes d’etre, de paratt)’e et d’exister (Paris, 1957). A Protestant study is Ch. von Kirschbaum’s Die wirkliche Frau (Zurich, 1949). A Greek Orthodox study is: Paul Evdo-kimov, La femme et le salut du monde. Etude d’anthropologie chrdtient~e sur les charismes de la [emme (Paris, 1958). ~TThis role of woman is well illustrated in novels such as the following: Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter: Elizabeth Goudge, Green Dolphin Street; A. J. Cronin, Th~ Citadel. See also Alice Oll~-Laprune, Liens immortels. 24 January, 1960 THEOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS WOMEN to the sources of life and of elementary realities, more humbly given over to daily occupations. She has also an instinctive sensi-bility which allows her to grasp things in a more concrete, simpler, more comprehensive fashion, to see things as wholes. She gives herself more simply, and perhaps more irrevocably, in committing herself more thoroughly and totally to these things. In this total commitment of woman there is a value attested to by experience which is expressed remarkably well in the con-secration of religious women. This consecration, for the faithful and even for the priesthood, stands as a kind of oasis, a reserve storehouse of the simple life, of total, unsophisticated faith; it stands for homesteads of inviolate faithfulness softened by a gentle delicacy. There are here, along with a beehive’s thrifty efficiency, treasure houses of devotedness and all the strength of an abnegation that is without ambition or defense. We will not delay on this longer because we are not sure that this precisely feminine element is so very important in the religious life. The religious life would represent in the Church rather that condition in which woman becomes most active,, closest to assum-ing initiatives and activities comparable to those of men. So she proclaims in a special way a superiority over the differences of sex and over the other conditions which divide man in his "life in Christ.’’~8 If femininity exists at this level, it is that of the whole Church who is, according to patristic tradition and its develop-ment of the indications of Scripture, the New Eve beside the New Adam, Christ. That which, in the Church, represents Christ as Master, Spouse, and Father, is not the male religious institute; it is the episcopacy and the priesthood. It is easy to relate these facts to that which was said above about the two aspects of the Church: that of goal or of holiness, alongside which religious life has its special place, and that of means, alongside which the dis-tinction between priests and simple faithful has its place. The Role of Religious Woman in the Church The religious life is, in the Church, the highest approximation of the City of God. It is, in the sphere of collective realities, that portion which is nearest to being the fruit of lasting holiness (reality), that which most closely pertains to the Church as "Com-reunion of Saints" and eschatological reality. This is what we shall consider first in itself and then in its inherent value as a sign. ~sSee Gal 3:28; Col 3:11. 25 YVES M.-J. CONGAR Review for Religious Religious life is first of all for God. It exists in the Church first of all as an area reserved for God. It represents the first fruits and their special worth as tokens of homage and as free gifts. Sometimes, in a corner of the countryside withdrawn from the traffic of men one finds a religious house which, humanly speaking, vegetates. But when one has become a regular visitor to such a community, one discovers that it is accomplishing an onerous duty of praise or of intercession, far from the notice or even the knowl-edge of men. "To what purpose is this waste?" ~Mt 26:8; Mk 14:4) It is the song of the bride meant only for her spouse; it is that part of the Church seen and known to God alone, to the Father "who sees in secret" (Mt 6:4; 6:18). Above and beyond all its external usefulness and all i~s ordination to extrinsic things, religious life remains a realization of the mystery of the Church or of the mystical body. It is im-possible to’emphasize this too much: before one can cooperate in the building up of the outside of the Church which is for others, it is necessary that it be built up within. A religious community is a cell of the Church; better, it is a Church in miniature.’9 It gives flesh to the mystery of the Church. The Rule of St. Augustine begins with these words, whose fulness of meaning and even whose technical validity arise out of the great Augustinian synthesis on the sacrifice of the "City redeemed as one":2° "A primary purpose for which you are gathered together in one community is that you live in the monastery with unanimity, having but one mind and one heart in the service of God.’’~’ Members join together in re-ligious life first of all to live the life of charity, to give reality to fraternal union according to the spirit of the Gospel. We cannot meditate too much on this truth, without which our communities will be nothing but a lie and a scandal.’-’~ The great lawgivers of ~On this theme see the valuable study of Dom Emmanuel yon Severus, "Das MSnchtum als Kirche," in Enkainia, ed. by H. Emonds (Dusseldorf, 1956), 230-48; also A. deVogu~, "Le monast~re, Eglise du Christ," in Studia Anselmiana, 42 (Rome, 1957), 25-46. ~’See De Civitate Dei, X, cc. 5 and 6. ~Patrologia Latina, 32, 1738. ~To stimulate reflection on this matter, I permit myself to cite here the two following texts which are hateful and terrible, but important: "Monks are people who bunch together without knowing each other, live together without loving each other, and die without regretting each other." ~Voltaire, L’homme aux quarante ~cus, VIII, Oeuvres completes, xxxiv, Paris, 1829, 60). "The love of God serves them as an excuse to love no one; they do not even love one another. Has anyone ever observed rea] friendship among the devout? But the more they detach themselves from men, the more they demand of men; and one could say that they do not raise themselves to God except to exercise his authority on the earth." (J.-J. Rousseau, Nouve~le Hdloise 6th Part, Letter 8). 26 January, 1960 THEOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS WOMEN the cenobitic life, St. Pachomius and St. Basil, expressly defended the primacy of this life over the anchoritic life on the basis of the fraternal charity and mutual edification (one of the great values in the Gospels) for which it gives the opportunity.~’~ One of the essential articles of the religious life is the achievement of a true fraternal relationship, the condition, complement, and fruit of a true relationship with God. If the Christian is an eschatological man because he is a fellow citizen with the saints, a member of the house of God (Eph 2:19), the monk is all the more truly a Christian. "But our citizenship is in heaven.’’24 This is :said and it is true of all the people of God, for they are a people in exile journeying towards their fatherland. We have already received the pledge of the Spirit, the first fruits of our inheritance,2’’ but only the pledge and the first fruits. We still live here below subject to the slavery of the flesh and the oppression of the devil, whom our Savior ~calls "the .Prince of this world"; all creation, subject to vanity, groans in the labor of its childbirth hoping for the glorious liberty of the children of God (Rm 8:19-23). The citizens of the heavenly city are, in this life, in the situa-tion of a people occupied by an enemy power. There are those who adjust themselves to it, there are even those who compromise and "collaborate." There are many who do not accept the enemy power, and in the midst of external conditions of servitude, they assert as far as they can their loyalty to their homeland. But some go farther and resist. They escape to the outskirts. There at least they advance With great labor the hour of liberation, they live already a life of liberty and they prepare for everyone the coming of the liberator. If the Church is like the outskirts of the world,’-’~ religious life is so in a more decided way. Religious have left their homes, their parents, their fields, the comforts of normal life, to be unburdened, free to serve the King of the Heavens. They are, by a more meaningful title, the first fruits of the new creation.~7 ~:~See H. Leclercq, "C~nobitisme," in Dictionnaire d’archdologie chrdtienne, II, 2, 3047-3248; 3093 is concerned with Saint Pachomius and 3149-50 with Saint Basil. See also Vie de Pach6me, cc. 3 and 4 in R. Draguet’s Les P~res du ddsert (Paris, 1949), 90 ff., and Saint Basil, Regulae fusius tractatae, cc. 7 and 25-31 (Patrologia Graeca, 31,928 and 984 ft’.) and his Letter 295 (Patro-logia Graeca, 32, 1037). See also 0. Rousseau, Monachisme et vie religieuse d’apr~s l’ancienne tradition de l’Eglise (Chevetogne, 1957), 80 ff. 24Phil 3:20; Heb 11:13-16. ~SSee 2 Cor 1:12; Rom 8:1-30; Eph 1:14o ~See Yves M. J. Congar, Lay People in the Church (Westminster, 1957), 101. ~TSee Apoc 14:4, "the first fruits for God and for the Lamb." This idea of 27 YVES M.-J. COUGAR Review for Religious Each religious profession is like a guerilla victory by which the power of the occupying forces is checked; and without doubt Christ contemplates it with the sentiments which he expressed when the seventy-two disciples returned from their mission full of joy that the demons had given way before them: "I was watching Satan fall as lightning from heaven" (Lk 10:18). This idea of the religious life as an eschatological life~8 is fre-quently expressed in monastic tradition by the theme of the angelic life.2~ It is a perfectly valid theme. Whether one actually looks at the religious life under the aspect of virginity or under that of the spiritual marriage, which is fundamentally the same thing, or under the aspect of the perpetual praise of God (see in particular E: Peterson), or under that of the anticipation as far as possible of heavenly life, life in the presence of God, and even if one looks at this life in the details of asceticism such as vigils or fasting -- under all these aspects of religious life the theme of the angelic life is authentic, and we wish in no way to exclude it. We are convinced,, nevertheless, that certain expressions can be very dangerous and ought to be criticized in the name of biblical and Christian truth2° Historically these expressions have been somewhat distorted by influences coming from two areas: first, the assumption, without~ a critical attitude sufficiently inspired by the biblical point of view, of certain Platonic and Pythagorean ideas, in particular the idea that man consists of a soul, that the body is a tomb (a~/~a-~l/~a) from which one should free himself as much as possible with the result that perfection is made to consist in the contemplation (Oe¢op;~) of eternal, transcendent truths; second, the development of a wholly speculative theory concerning Adam and the state of paradise. We know how St. Gregory of Nyssa, for example, transposed, the final liberation from the oppo-the first fruits is especially emphasized by Dom Emmanuel von Severus, "Zu den bibiischen Grundlagen des MSnchtums," in Geist und Leben, 26 (1953), 113-22’; see also the same periodical, 27 (1954), 414 ff. -°SThis idea is developed in D. Thalhammer, S.J., Jenseitige Menschen. Eine Deutung des Ordensstandes, 2nd ed. (Freiburg, 1952); in J. Leclercq, La vie parfaite (Turnhout, 1948); in L. Bouyer, The Meaning of the Monastic Life (New York, 1955); and in O. Rousseau, op. cir. (footnote 23). ~Wexts on this are innumerable. The principal ones can be found in the works listed in the preceding note, to which the following may be added: E. Peterson, Le livre des anges (Paris, 1954); A. Lamy, "Bios angelikos," in Dieu vivant, n. 7 (1946), 59-77; J. C. Didier, " ’Angdlisme’ ou perspectives eschatologiques?" in M~langes de science retigieuse, 11 (1954), 31-48; U. Ranke-Heinemann, "Zum Ideal der vita angelica im fr~ihen MSnchtum," in Geist und Leben, 29 (1956), 347-57; Emmanuel yon Severus, "Bios aggetikos," in Die Engel in der Welt yon heute, 1957, 56-70. 3°I hope to treat this problem later and on a larger scale with the needed precisions and justifications. 28 January, 1960 THEOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS WOMEN sition of the sexes (above, note 18) into the creative intention and held that sex had been a ~stranger to the nature of man as God had, or would have conceived of him, if He had not known ia advance that man would sin.’~ The result of this double influence, with which other factors certainly have concurred, has been not so much perhaps to give an orientation toward the recovery of a lost state of perfection, which is an eschatological expectation present in the New Testament; it has been rather to superimpose on (and perhaps to substitute for) the duality between this world and the other which is to come as the fruit of Christ’s Passover, a duality between this earthly, bodily world and a celestial, in-corporeal world which is to be imitated as closely as. possible. But is the Christian ideal to be found in the condescension of God who for love entered human history as a suffering servant? Or is it instead an angelic perfection, situated in an ideal world of the spirit toward which the soul must elevate itself by certain degrees of ascension and sublimation thereby withdrawing itself progres-sively from the sensible world? We may well fear lest spirituality seek its place between heaven and earth and turn away from the history of the world and the commitment to be a savior to men’s miseries, meanwhile adjusting itself to a theocracy in which the idea of subordination of body to soul ambiguously expresses itself as a basically political program of subjection of the "temporal" to the "spiritual." We find something of this, it seems, in the history of Citeaux at the height of its prosperity. At that very time the "They will be like the angels" (Lk 20:36; Mt 22:30) is transposed from eschatology to the condition of monks on the earth, something which had been completely avoided, for example, by St. Augustine2: But, on the other hand, for St. Bernard, the mysticism of that angelic life which can bear such doubtful fruits as we have just mentioned is balanced by an ardent mysticism of Christ in his humanity and of the imitation of Christ. What is important is to see, as St. Therese of Lisieux very brilliantly saw it and acted on it,’~’~ that the perfection of love con- 3*See De opificio hominis, cc. 16-17 (Patrologia Graeca, 46, 181 and 188-92). On the very subtle thought of Gregory see the Introduction of P. J. Laplace to La crdation de l’homme [Paris, 1943). St. Thomas criticizes this position in Summa Theologiae, 1, 98, 2. 3~See "Eglise et Cit~ de Dieu chez quelques auteurs cisterciens h l’~poque des Croisades," in Mdlanges Etienne Gilson [Paris, 1959) and "Henri de Marcy, abb~ de Clairvaux, cardinal-dv~que d’Albano et l~gat pontifical," in Analecta Monastica, 5 (Rome, 1958). 33See the studies of A. Combes [for example, his Saint Therese and Her Mission INew York, 1955]) and Ft. Heer, "Die Heilige des Atomzeitalters," in Sprechen wir yon der Wirklichkeit (Nuremberg, 1955), 177 ft. From the 29 YVES M.-J. CONGAR Review for Religious sists essentially not in the ascending movements of an increasing spiritualization, but in a descent by the paths and the steps of humble service to the point of emptying oneselfi34 One must come to the cross where the salvation of the world is worked out and where, by losing ourselves, we work out our own salvation also. This is scriptural and it is Christian, more .scriptural and more Christian than the theme of the angelic life, traditional and valid though it may be under the conditions which have just been detailed. This angelic theme is a monastic theme. Many modern con-gregations, as they are called, have little or no contact with the great sources of monastic spirituality. They are not, for all that, safe from missteps analogous to those which the theme of the angelic life risks causing. The spirituality proposed in these con-gregations, in so far as it is legitimate to reduce it to a common denominator, is largely inspired by Jesuit authors (Rodriguez) and by the spirituality of the French school, the great French moralists and preachers of the "Great Century." But these sources, valuable certainly and even powerful as inspirers of the true Christian life, seem to bear the mark of the two following influences: first, a certain stoic influence, of which Guillaume du Vair would be a particularly representative example35 (we do not mention him for any other reason and certainly not as one of the sources). This stoic influence, diffuse as it may be, is not negligible. Many mod-ern spiritual programs depend rather largely on Christian stoicism. Second: even the great spiritual men of the French school betray the orientation of the moralist, an insistence on those themes which aim to make man conscious of his baseness and his malice, an insistence on the theme of original sin and its consequences, on the wickedness of the world and of all its aims2~ It seems that this is far from the theme of the angelic life; but the two rejoin in certain eventual consequences. There are fruitful considerations in literary viewpoint see von Balthasar, Le chr~tien Bernanos, pp. 156, 160-61, 264 ff., 457-77, 484. ’~4Phil 2:7. ~See F. Strowski, Histoire du sentiment religieux en France au xvii" si~cle, I (Paris, 1910), 18-125; and P. Mesnard, "Du Vair et le N6o-stoicisme," in Revue d’histoire de la philosophie, April, 1928, 142-66. Du Vair begins from original sin and the feelings of penance to arrive at a "life in God" by passing through the practice of the cardinal virtues. ~"Some remarks concerning the influence of this spirituality on the con-gregations of teaching religious may be found in J. G. Lawler, The Christian Imagination: Studies in Religious Thought (Westminster, 1955), 38 ft. It is also necessary here to refer to the Imitation of Christ with its moralistic and individualistic perspective of the opposition between the movements of grace and the movements of nature. 3O January, 1960 THEOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS WOMEN all these areas, but scriptural monotheism implies another set of values, more thoroughly oriented toward life, toward history, toward the cosmic theme of salvation. The religious life, and more especially the religious life of women, realizes with a particular intensity and purity the voca-tion of the Church to be the Virgin Spouse of the Lord and thus to become spiritually a mother. The application to the Church of these three inseparable themes: virgin, spouse, mother, whose biblical sources are not only abundant, but situated at the heart of the economy of salvation, is frequent in Christian tradition27 To wish to compare them with themes more or less verbally analogous which have been gathered from the history of religions would be to close one’s mind to this. Pagan religions are nature religions which transfer to so-called transcendent persons the relationships and needs of men. They sexualise the divinity. The God of biblical revelation is in no way sexualised; He is the living God who unites men to Himself by faith. The whole relationship of alliance and of union which He establishes with man consists in the spiritual relation of faith, and faith includes a total gift, and therefore is not fully realized except by love: "I will espouse thee to me for-ever: and I will espouse thee to me in justice and judgment and in mercy and in commiserations. And I will espouse thee to me in faith" (Hos 2:19-20). That which creates between God and our-selves, between the Church and God, a marital relation is nothing other than this completely spiritual communication in faith. But this communication supposes in us the sole response of a total giving, of receptivity to the coming of God: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to thy word." So faith is the point of contact for an exchange of fidelity. "I will be your God and you will be my people." And therefore it is a point at which a relation of alliance is achieved, a marital union which is at the same time altogether virginal. It is altogether virginal be-cause the union is spiritual. It consists in nothing else than fidelity itself and is preserved by maintaining this fidelity, that is to say, by its very chastity. It is altogether virginal also because in this relationship of faith nothing which comes from the outside or from ~TThe bibliography is abundant; we will cite only the following: S. Tromp, "Ecclesia Sponsa, Virgo, Mater," in Gregorianum, 18 (1937), 3-29; O. Casel, "Die Kirche als Braut Christi nach Schrift, V~itern, und Liturgie," in The-ologie der Zeit, 1936, 91-111; CI. Chavasse, The Bride o] Christ: An Enquiry into the Nuptial Element in Early Christianity (London, 1940); J. C. Plumpe, Mater Ecclesia: An Inquiry into the Concept of the Church as Mother in Early Christianity (Washington, 1943); AI. Mfiller, Ecclesia-Maria: Die Einheit Marias und der Kirche (Fribourg, 1951); H. Rahner as cited above, n. 5. 31 YVES M.-J. CONGAR Review for Religious that which is lower enters in, nothing which breaks or mars its integrity. There is nothing of earthly eros here. Motherhood or fruitfulness comes to this virginal and marital union as its fulfillment. The fathers say and repeat that the Church (or the soul) becomes a virgin spouse by faith, and that she also becomes a mother by faith: virgin spouse by believing, mother by communicating the faith, by engendering men in faith. Again, the relationship is altogether spiritual. It consists in faith and this is why it is superior to every kind of carnal kinship2s Precisely because of this, the vocation of the Church to be both virginal spouse and virginal mother is achieved in all the members in proportion to their fervor. For, according to a theme equally familiar to the fathers and to spiritual authors, every soul is the Church. Nevertheless in so far as God is not fully "all in all" (1 Cor 15:28), the difference between man and woman exists not only as a reality of the world, but projects itself and intervenes in a certain manner in the body of Christ which is the Church. So there exist certain differences in the manner in which men and women exercise the spiritual motherhood of the Church. The priesthood, since it is a position of external authority, is reserved to the man. But this relates to the Church under her aspect as means of grace, and therefore does not touch the religious life. as such. In its external activity a religious institute can just as well exercise apostolic functions which also relate to the Church as means of grace and represent an explicit cooperation with the action of the hierarchy where the motherhood of the Church is achieved. But the religious life as such, the religious life purely and simply, belongs rather to the Church as eschatological realiza-tion of holiness. This devotes it to being the locus of a very pure and altogether spiritual realization of the twofold relationship of virginal marriage and of motherhood. All this is particularly true in the life of women religious be-cause woman is more a being of receptivity and of self-giving: because when she gives herself, and above all whe~ she gives her-self in the integrity of her heart and of her body, she gives herself in a more intense way, a more complete and irrevocable way than man; because having fewer exterior activities and acting less out of duty and more from her heart, she makes good with her fervor that which would have been lost to her in action. For all these ~Read in this sense Mt 12:48-50 (=Mk 3:33-35; Lk 8:21); Lk 11:28. In .the same way St. Paul calls those his brothers of whom he says that he has engendered them and is their father. See above, n. 18. 32 January, 1960 THEOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS WOMEN reasons religious women, consecrated virgins, play a choice role in the mystery of the Church as virgin spouse of the Lord. They play also their wonderful part in the Church’s spiritual motherhood. It is extremely remarkable that this doctrine was recalled to us in a very striking way precisely in a religious woman, Therese of the Child Jesus, who having entered Carmel at the age of sixteen, having died at twenty-four, and having remained unknown by the world during her life, has become not only officially but really the patroness of all Catholic missions2’~ She became all this and remains all this solely in the order of the Communion of Saints. According to St. Augustine, it is pre-cisely the Church as a union of love and a communion of saints which exercises spiritual motherhood.4° And so without exterior activity we can in our prayer and in our laborious efforts at con-version (our penances) include intentions for other men and for all the world’s miserable; and we can bear them in the womb of love which is the Church’s heart of prayer and charity. It is a part of tradition also that in the Church the strong support the weak (there is no question at all here of any other strength than that which comes from God in faith). This spiritual motherhood is a very profound characteristic of the Church: we believe in the Com-munion of Saints. But experience comes frequently to the aid of our weakness of faith. Who has not appealed to this strength? Who would not be able to bear witness to its reality? The Role of the Religious Woman in the Church as a Sign St. Paul says, "We have been made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men" (1 Cor 4:9). The Church gives a visible body to spiritual gifts. So, for example, the gift of unity in Christ which has been given her becomes the "note" of unity; and that of sanctification by the Holy Spirit, the "note" of holiness. Of all these notes that of holiness is the most insistent; it is’the most efficacious also as a witness to men that the Kingdom of God draws near and calls them. It is also the most directly meaningful note because from the fact of holiness to the presence of God the inference is direct and within the grasp of all. And in this mani- 3~See above, n. 33. Pius XII said that contemplative institutes are "fully and completely apostolic," Sponsa Christi, November 21, 1950 (Acta Apos-tolicae Sedis, 43 [1951], 14). See also the letter to Cardinal Piazza of June 29, 1955, (Acta Apostoltcae Sedis, 47 [~9551, 543). 4°See for example De sancta virginitate, cc. 3 and 5 (Patrologia Latina, 40, 398-99); Sermo Denis, 25, 7 (edition by G. Morin, 162-63); Sermo 215, 4 (Patrologia Latina, 38, 1074). 33 YVES M.-J. CONGAR Review for Religious festation of holiness which the Church constitutes throughout the course of history, the various expressions of religious life occupy a choice place.4~ Religious communities are living parables for men of the Kingdom of God. If we begin our consideration of this by treating what is more external in religious life, its institutions appear to us first of all as the freest and most genuine expressions of the spirit of the Church on the plane of her social manifestations. We know that the Church is an original institution put into the world by God; she proceeds from spiritual energies which come from above (Mr 16:17-18). But as this divine institution is made up of men and has a historical, terrestrial existence, she projects herself and expresses herself in creations equally historical in which, nevertheless, she injects the inspiration and the mark of her own proper genius. It would not be difficult and it would be extremely interesting to show how this special genius has from the beginning inspired institutions which are essentially communal, and at the same time respectful of the person and of his liberty, and marked with the character of service. There is truly a special Christian genius at the level of social creations.~- The religious life is perhaps the most pure and most represen-tative creation of the spirit of the Church in this area of social realities. It is not in vain that she has always loved to compare herself with the model of the first community of Jerusalem. It is marvelous to see how on the collective and judicial plane religious rules and canon law have known how to translate into institutions and laws thecommands and the inspirations of the Gospel. As a result, the institutions of religious life, just as in a certain degree the canonical life of the Church herself, become a kind of preach-ing of and witnessing to the Gospel. It is no mere coincidence that it is always the same men who fail to recognize the existence of divine positive law in the world, who deny to the Church the quality of being an institution of divine law, and who misjudge, attack, and seek to thwart or sup-press religious life. One thinks of Josephinism, of Jacobinism, of our own French laicism in its virulent form. So the religious life is not only a sign of the heavenly kingdom; it is also, along with the 4XSee Cardinal Dechamps, Entretiens, in Oeuvres, I, 467 ft.; Dora Gr~a, De l’Eglise et de sa divine constitution, II (Paris, 1907), 152. Vernon Johnson was converted by the fact of Therese of Lisieux. 42Chateaubriand and even Montalembert are dated. But there are more recent and more technical studies: E. Chenon, Le rSle social de l’Eglise and the six volumes of the Carlyle brothers, A History of Mediaeval Political Theory in the West. 34 January, 1960 THEOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS WOMEN sacraments and the hierarchy, a sign of the Church as a separated order, a social and public reality placed ,in the world in virtue of the right God has to affirm and to establish his reign.43 In a world which wishes to be completely autonomous, religious life, situated at the heart of the Church’s garden, presents the example of a life totally "theonomous." But it is common, it is normal, that signs should be, according to the dispositions of those to whom they are shown, a call to conversion or a sign of contradiction, a sign of opposition. They can also be, even for well-disposed men, signs which scandalize if they become sign~ that lie, or signs that are simply inadequate for their mission and their aims. There is also, in the religious life, and we think particularly of the religious life of women, a human element -- sometimes too human, sometimes not human enough! Pettiness, legalism, authoritarianism, pharisaism, the spirit of ownership, hardness of heart, lack of fraternal com-munion and failure to share human misery, taste for power, a judaic spirit in the way of considering observances, especially the least important ones, precisely those from which the Gospel has liberated us. Among the causes which brought on the death of Christianity, the betrayal of their true spirit in the last centuries of the Middle Ages by a number of monastic and religious insti-tutions has justly been noted.4~ When it is authentic, the religious life is a sign that the spiritual exists. Heaven exists, and that takes the value out of the the goods and the joys of earth. Not that they are not truly goods, truly joys, but they are so relative! For "this world as we see it is passing away" (1 Cor 7:31). The religious life proposes, without the noise of words, the message of death which the Church addresses to the world, not a sorrowful message -- who is more joyful than the religious man, if not the religious woman? -- but a serious and an important one. Again, the religious life verifies in a singular manner the essence of all Christian life, which is an Easter life, a mystery of life and of death, comprehended within the message of 4’~In this connection I recall the beautiful text of A. Lamy, "Bios angelikos," in Dieu vivant, n. 7, 76: "The function of monachism in the Church seems to be to affirm the citizenship of the Christian in the city of the angels arid to affirm his rights there by the exercise of them." Religious life is one ele-ment of the eschatological right which the Church affirms and translates into the world. On this basis it could be said that religious life is of divine right, not in its various historical forms, but in its essential principle. It flows from the transcendence of the Church with respect to the world and from the right possessed by every Christian to leave the world and to thus affirm his eschatological and spiritual royalty. ~See Fr. Heer, "L’h~ritage Europe," in Dieu vivant, n. 27 (1954), 43. 35 Yvzs M.-J. CO~AR Review for Religious Ash Wednesday, "Remember that you are dust and that you will return to dust" and that of Easter Day, "Remember that you are spirit and that you will return to the Spirit." The religious life, by its mere existence, is a witness to the world that God exists; it calls the world to the obedience of faith. On either side of the chancel which closes in the choir at the abbey of Maria Laach one may read these words of St. Paul:" "I, therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, exhort you to walk in a worthy manner" (Eph 4:1). The religious life, therefore, has its part in the great kerygmatic function of the Church, that is, in its .lifelong exercise of the mis-sion of announcing the Good News of the Kingdom. It is like a lasting sermon against the spirit of the world. Against its freedom-worshipping and anarchical taste for liberty, religious life affirms that one can bind himself to God, that one can, in the Holy Spirit, make a spiritual thing out of that which is corporeal, and make something stable out of that which changes. Against the world’s obsessive defeatism before the evil which it inflicts on itself, the religious life affirms that one can conquer the flesh and push back the empire of the devil. Finally if it is true that the very word ecclesia means con-vocation, a gathering of men in response to a call, the cal! of the Kingdom of God, the religious life situates itself at the very source of the mystery of the Church. For the religious life is, both in its substance as well as in the first act which draws one to enter into it, a total listening to God. It is a reality in the image of Mary, Mary herself being, we know, the type, and even better than the type: the perfect personification of the Church as holiness. It is possible to think that in the wide sense everything is a vocation, because everything is a response to the will of God. But there are vocations in the strict sense, and it is correct to speak of "religious vocation." In the Church, as we have seen, the strong support the weakest; docility in the following of that which is strictly a voca-tion is like a compelling example, a sign and a support for the difficult fidelity to vocations in their larger acceptation. The abso-luteness of the response of religious women to their call supports the response of all others. It is necessary that religious women know that they contribute in this way to the continuation of the whole Church, somewhat as each star in the firmament is necessary for the balance of the whole. Spiritually we all have family respon-sibilities. A last remark of some importance ecclesiologically on the subject of the religious life as a response to a special call. In the 36 January, 1960 THEOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS WOMEN beginnings of Christianity, baptism ratified a personal choice, an eventually dangerous one, of the faith. It was the term of a con-version. It was truly a second birth, not only in the dogmatic sense which is always true, but in the moral sense and on the psycho-logical plane. Psychologists distinguish, since Francis W. New-man, 4~ the "once born" and the "twice born": those who are simply what they were at their entrance into the world plus the results of their being" formed by it; and those who have known a revela-tion, had a decisive ~xperience, heard a call, and are truly, per-sonally, born a second time. A man baptised at the termination of a personal conversion is, psychologically and morally, a "twice born." But, in the general practice, almost universal and one might even say automatic practice of baptism of the newly born, the Church is no longer made up of the twice born except by way of exception. But it is necessary that their moral race always be represented in her midst. She is "twice born" individually by the more or less large number of faithful who are truly born of a second birth. She is "twice born" institutionally especially because of the religious life. Moreover, historically the fact has often been brought out46 that the monastic life developed at the moment when, with the end of persecution and danger and the beginning of the favor of the powerful, large masses of people entered the Church, en-dangering the strength of her leaven. The vocation to asceticism has after a fashion taken the place of the vocation to martyrdom; monks have in a way taken over the status of the martyrs as signs of an absolute response given to an absolute call. The Church’s religious life always has this mission of signifying that the Christian life is a second birth whose principle is a call. We will not treat here -- we have already done it briefly elsewhere47 -- an interesting problem, but more theoretical than practical, which was posed by the researches of M. Weber and E. Troeltsch. According to these Protestant authors, religious orders answer within the Church to the needs and the religious tempera-ment which outside the Church produces sects. These would be, sociologically speaking, of the "sect" type, not of the "church" type in so far as they are groupings, first, of volunteers, men who 4~The Soul. Its Sorrows and Its Aspirations. 3rd ed., 1852, 89 ft. 4GFor example, see M. Viller, "Martyre et perfection," in Revue d’ascd-tique et mystique, 6 (1925), 4-25; L. Bouyer, op. cit. n. 28, 89 ft. and his Vie de saint Antoine (Fontenelle, 1950); J. Winandy, Ambroise Autpert, moine et thdologien (Paris, 1953), 56; Ed. E. Malone, The Monk and the Martyr: The Monk as the Successor of the Martyr (Washington, 1950). 47Vraie et [ausse r~/orme dans l’Eglise (Paris, 1950), 288-92 (includes bibli-ography). 37 YVES M.-J. CONGAR Review for Religious come together in a group on the basis of a personal decision and who thus do not presuppose the existence of the group but con-stitute it; second, men who have achieved a break with the world and prefer the Gospel’s opposition to terrestrial life to its universal-ism which necessarily involves compromise. Troeltsch sees in religious orders an ecclesiastical naturalization of tendencies which outside the Church result in sects. There is much truth in the analysis of Troeltsch, but only on its own psycho-sociological plane. Both above and below this level it errs. Without prejudice to other of his well made points, we be-lieve we have shown from the inside, that is to say from the view-point of the Church herself, that it is the mystery of the Church which is found to be the essential element in the life of religious orders and of each of their members. By way of conclusion, we would like to answer a question which it is impossible not to put in the context of what we have been considering. Is the religious life or is it not of the essence of the Church, and if it is, by what title? Papal teaching furnishes an answer and it will suffice merely to present it and explain it. Faced with "Americanism," Leo XIII already affirmed that religious orders are of great importance to the mission of the Church.48 But it was necessary to connect their existence with the end of the Church. The Church would not fully fulfill her mission if the institutions of religious life were lacking. If the end of the "missions," in the strict canonical sense of the word, is to "plant the Church" in such a way that she has in a given country or among a given people all her essential institutions, all the means of existence and of action, one understands why Pius XI demanded that on the missions as many religious orders and congregations as possible should be instituted, and that they should be made up of indigenous elements created in new and better forms, where the need for such arose29 His Holiness Pius XII made the matter still clearer in the constitution Provida mater of February 2, 1947, the charter of secular instutes. The two states of cleric and layman, he said, exist by divine right and are necessary to the Church in so far as she is a society constituted and structured hierarchically; they pertain to the essential structure (to the building) of the Kingdom of God 4sSee his letter Testern benevolentiae to Cardinal Gibbons, January 22, 1899, in Actes de Ldon XIII (Paris: Bonne Presse), V, 322-25; also the letter of December 23, 1900 to Cardinal Richard, ibid., VI, 188-89. ~gSee the encylical Rerurn Ecclesiae of February, 1926, in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 18 (1926), 74. 38 January, 1960 THEOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS WOMEN on earth.5° The Church recognizes a third state, the religious state, which is common to the two preceding states, since it includes members of the faithful who, canonically, belong to the clerical or to the lay state; this religious state is bound by a strict and peculiar relationship to the end of the Church, sanctification.5~ One can say, then, that the religious state is not essential to the Church considered in her formal elements or in her static constitutives. A bishop and faithful suffice for a Church. From this comes the well-known definition of St. Cyprian, "A people one with its priest and a flock adhering to its shepherd, these are the Church.’’~ Nevertheless, as soon as the Church lives she exercises the activities for which she was put into the world. These are the activities of the sanctification of men, that is to say, of their sub-mission to the Kingdom of God and, by that fact, of their entry into her communion. Here it is that the religious life steps in as the social form of existence most strictly conformed to the needs and the conditions of the Kingdom of God. And the religious life was first seen historically under the form of the institution of con° secrated virgins. Evidently, looked at in one or other of its par-ticular forms, religious life is a creation of the Church and stands out in her history. But, looked upon in principle, that is to say as the call to live only for God and for His kingdom, it holds a place at the very heart of the Church. In her quality as bride of Christ, it is included in the obligations and the laws of holiness which this Church pursues as her proper end. ~°Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 39 (1947), 116. In his al]ocution Annus sacer, the Holy Father, citing canon 107, said that "on earth the structure of the Kingdom of God consists of a double element" (Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 43 [1951], 27). ~See Provida Mater Ecclesiae and also Annus sacer, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 43 (1951), 28: "[The religious state] exists and is important, because it is closely connected to the proper end of the Church which is to lead men to the attainment of sanctity." ~2Epistula 66, 8 (Hartel’s edition, p. 732; Patrologia Latina, 4, 406 where it is listed, however, as Epistle 69). 39 Survey of Roman Documents R. F. Smith, S. J. THIS ARTICLE will provide a summary of the documents which appeared in Acta Apostolicae Sedis (AAS) during August and Sep-tember, 1959. Throughout the article all page references will be to the 1959 AAS (v. 51). Encyclical on the Priesthood On August 1, 1959 (AAS, pp. 545479), Pope John XXIII issued the second encyclical of his pontificate. The encyclical was entitled Sacerdotii Nostri primordia (The First Days of Our Priesthood); oc-casioned by the Pontiff’s desire to honor the hundredth anniversary of the death of St. John Vianney, Cur~ of Ars, the document is devoted to a consideration of the priesthood as exemplified in the life of the saint. The introductory paragraphs recall the temporal links between the official glorification of St. John and the Pontiff’s own priesthood: the future saint was beatified shortly after the Pope’s own ordination to the priesthood; the first bishop the Pope served, Bishop Radini- Tadeschi, was consecrated on the day of the beatification; and the Pope received the fullness of the priesthood in the year (1925) when the Cur~ of Ars was declared a saint. The Holy Father then lists the great papal documents on the priesthood that have appeared during the present century: Pius X’s Haerent animo (Acta Pii X, 4, 237-64); Plus XI’s Ad catholici sacerdotii fastigium (AAS, 28 ~19361, 5-53); Pius XII’s Menti Nostrae (AAS, 42 [1950], 657-702); and the same Pontiff’s three allocutions on the priesthood inspired by the canonization of Plus X (AAS, 46 119541, 313-17; 666-77). To these documents the Pope has now added his own in the hope that it may aid priests to preserve and increase that divine friendship which is at once the joy and strength of the priestly life. In expressing the purpose of the encyclical the Vicar of Christ remarked that he intended to retrace the chief traits of the holiness of the Cur~ of Ars, since these emphasize those aspects of the priestly life which, while always essential, are today so vital that the Pontiff has deemed it his apostolic duty to call attention to them. Priestly Asceticism and Mortification In the first of the three parts of the main body of the encyclical the Pope considered the priestly asceticism and mortification of the Cur~. To speak of the saint, he began, is to evoke the figure of an 4O ROMAN DOCUMENTS exceptionally mortified priest who for the love of God deprived himself of nourishment and sleep, practiced severe, penances, and exercised a heroic self-renouncement. His example, the Holy Father said, should recall to all the important place of the virtue of penance in the perfec-tion proper to the priesthood. While it is true that priests as such are not bound by divine law to the evangelical counsels, still this does not mean that the priest is less bound than religious to strive for evangelical perfection of life. Rather the accomplishment of the priestly functions "requires a greater interior sanctity than even the religious state does" (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 2-2, 184, 8, c). And if the evangelical counsels are not imposed on the priest by virtue of his clerical state, nevertheless they are offered to him, as to all Christians, as the safest road to the longed for goal of Christian perfection. The Cur~ of Ars, continued the Pope, is a model of evangelical poverty; he lived totally detached from the things of this world. Freed in this way from the bonds of material things, he could thereby be entirely open to all those who suffered and who flocked to him for solace. His disinterestedness made him especially attentive to the poor whom he treated with tenderness and respect, convinced that to con-temn the poor is to contemn God Himself. Priests, then, if they possess material things, should not cleave to them with cupidity; rather should they recall the directives of canon law (c. 1473) according to which what is left over from ecclesiastical benefices should be used in favor of the poor and of pious causes. The Pontiff, however, made it clear in the closing part of this section that he does not approve the abject poverty to which many priests in small towns and in the country are reduced, and he urged the faithful to cooperate with the bishops to see that the sacred ministers be not lacking in what is necessary for their daily sustenance. Turning to the second of the evangelical counsels, the Vicar of Christ then pointed out that all through his life the Cur~ was mortified in his body and that this was achieved by his constant and careful observance of chastity. His example, the Pope pointed out, is most necessary today; for in many places priests must live in an atmosphere of excessive license and pleasure. And at times they must live in such an atmosphere unsupported by the sympathetic understanding of the faithful they serve. In spite of these difficulties John XXIII called upon priests to show forth in their entire lives the splendor of the virtue of chastity, that noblest ornament of their sacred order, as Pius X called it. The chastity of the priest, he added, will not enclose him in a sterile egoism; for as the Cur~ of Ars himself once said: "The soul that is adorned with the virtue of chastity can not but love others; for such a person has found the source and origin of all love---God." The next component of the Cur~’s asceticism to be considered by the Holy Father was his obedience. The Pontiff emphasized that the 41 l~ F. SMtT~ Rewew for Rehgmus "I promise" of the Cur$’s ordination ceremony was the occasion of a permanent self-renouncement that lasted throughout forty years. From early youth the ardent desire of the Cur~ had been for solitude, and his pastoral responsibilities were a heavy burden preventing him from the fulfillment of this desire; many times he tried to be freed from his pastoral work but always remained obedient to the will of his bishop, convinced as he was of the Gospel phrase: "Whoever hears you, hears me" (Lk 10:16). The Vicar of Christ then expressed the hope that the priests of today would see in the Curg the grandeur of obedience and would recall the words of Pius XII: "Individual holiness as well as the efficacy of all apostolic work finds its solid foundation in constant obedience to the hierarchy." Accordingly priests should endeavor to develop in themselves the sense of the filial relationship by which they are united to Mother Church. Prayer and Devotion to the Eucharist In the second principal division of the document, John XXIII reflected on St. John as a model of prayer and of devotion to the Eu-charist. Prayer, he said, was as important in the saint’s life as was penance and mortification. His love for prayer was shown in his long nightly vigils of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament; the tabernacle of his parish church became for him the center from which he drew the strength necessary for his own personal life and for the effectiveness of his apostolic endeavors. This example of the Cur6, the Vicar of Christ pointed out, is sorely needed by the priests of today; for they are keenly sensible of the effectiveness of action and hence easily tempted to a dangerous activism. The Cur~ of Ars should convince priests everywhere that they must be men of prayer and that they can be such, no matter how heavy the press of apostolic labors may at times become. The prayer of the Cur~, he continued, was especially a Eucharistic prayer; for nothing in the life of a priest can replace silent and prolonged prayer before the altar. Nor should it be forgotten that Eucharistic prayer in the fullest sense of the word is to be found in the sacrifice of the Mass. The celebration of the Mass is an essential part of the priestly life, for in what does the apostolate of the priest consist if not in the gathering together of the people of God around the altar? It is through the Mass that in one generation after another the mystical body of Christ that is the Church is built up. Moreover the entire sanctifica-tion of the priest must be modeled on the sacrifice he offers; the priest must make his own life a fitting sacrifice, a participation in the expiatory life of the Redeemer. It was for this reason that the Cur~ used to ob-serve that if priests lose the first fervor of their ordination it is because they do not celebrate piously and attentively. 42 January, 1960 ROMAN DOCUMENTS Pastoral Zeal In the third part of the encyclical the Vicar of Christ delineates the pastoral zeal of St. John Vianney. The Curg’s life of asceticism, he observed, together with his life of prayer was the source from which flowed the effectiveness of his ministry; in him is verified once more the statement of Christ: "Without me you can do nothing" (Jn 15:5). As a result, the Curg was a model shepherd of souls who knew his flock, protected it from danger, and led it with authority and wisdom. His example, the Pope continued, included three points of utmost import-ance. The first of these was his keen appreciation of his pastoral re-sponsibilities. From the beginning he conceived of his pastoral work in heroic fashion and expressed his attitude in one of his early prayers: "Grant, O God, that~ the people entrusted to me may be converted. For this I am prepared to suffer all the days of my life whatever You may wish." Following the example of apostles of all ages he saw in the cross the one great effective means of saving souls; so it was that he could advise a fellow priest who was disappointed in the results of his apostolic endeavors that prayer, supplications, sighs, and groans were insufficient unless there was added to them fastings, vigils, and bodily chastisement. Besides his general sense of his pastoral responsibilities the Curg manifested his pastoral zeal by his interest and care for preaching and catechizing. Up to the time of his death St. John never ceased to preach, to instruct, to denounce evil, and to lead souls towards God. This should remind today’s priests, the Pope said, that everywhere and at all times they must be faithful to their duty of preaching; for, as Pius X insisted, no task of the priest is more important than this. And in their reflections upon their duty to teach, priests should remember that they preach more by their lives than by their words. The third element in the pastoral zeal of the Cur~ of Ars was, according to the encyclical, his work as confessor. It was this form of his ministry that became the real martyrdom of his life. His fifteen hours a day in the confessional would have been difficult in any case; but these were spent by a man already exhausted by fasting, penances, and infirmities. It can be said, the Pope continued, that the Cur~ lived for sinners; their conversion and sanctification was the aim of all his thoughts and of all his activities. Like the Cur~ priests must devote themselves to the work of the confessional, for it is there that the mercy of God meets and overcomes the malice of men. And they must set their people a good example in this matter by their own regular and fervent use of the sacrament of penance. In the conclusion to the encyclical the Pontiff expressed the desire that the centenary of the Curg may arouse in all priests a desire to accomplish their ministry and especially their own perfection as gen-erously as possible. No problem facing the Church today, he added, 43 R. F. SMITH Review for Religious can be solved without priests. As Plus X said: "To promote the King-dom of Christ throughout the world, nothing is more necessary than a holy clergy." Similarly St. John himself pointed out to his bishop: "If you wish to convert your diocese, you must make saints of all your priests." The Pontiff went on to urge the bishops of the world to make the care of their priests their first solicitude; he exhorted the faithful to pray for priests and to contribute to their sanctification; and he pleaded with Christian youth to reflect that "the harvest is great, but the harvesters are few" (Mt 9:37) and that entire peoples are today enduring a spiritual starvation far greater than any hunger of the body. Allocutions, Addresses, Messages On July 29, 1959 (AAS, pp. 586-89), the Holy Father addressed a congress of the blind and those interested in assisting the blind of the world. Pointing out to his audience that in Jesus’ ministry of healing the first place was reserved for the blind, the Pontiff went on to deliver a message of hope to the blind of the world. They must remember, he began, that they have a suffering to offer up to God. In spite of all efforts to ease the lot of the blind, they will always be subject to dis-couragement, loneliness, and the weight of sorrow that blindness carries with it. Yet they must recall that according to the Apostle (Col 1:24) men must fill up what is lacking to Christ’s passion and that in the redemptive plan the Lord has need of the daily offering of suffering on the part of the blind. The Vicar of Christ also pointed out that the blind have a definite mission to perform in this world, the mission of silent example that only one thing matters in this world: the love with which the will of God is accomplished. And he added that nothing on tbis earth is loss, as long as conformity with God’s will is present. In the concluding part of his address the Pope recalled to his listeners that their goal is that of eternal life and that their journey thither is supported by the words of Christ: "Whoever follows me walks not in darkness, but has the light of life" (Jn 8:12). Blindness, he ended, can prepare those afflicted with it for the shining luminosity which will come in the next life from the glorified Christ. On August 20, 1959 (AAS, 639-41), the Pontiff radioed a message to the Second World Sodality Congress held at Newark, New Jersey. He told the sodalists that they were in the first ranks of the Church’s army and stressed in their lives the role of their consecration to the Blessed Virgin, a consecration which of its nature includes the proposal to keep it throughout life. From this consecration, he continued, arises the desire to wish for nothing except what is pleasing to God and the resolution to strive by prayer, action, and example to serve the Church and to work for the eternal salvation of souls. On July 21, 1959 (AAS, pp. 584-85), the Holy Father delivered an allocution to the Prime Minister of Japan on the occasion of that 44 January, 1960 ROMAN DOCUMENTS dignitary’s official visit to the Holy See. On August 16, 1959 (AAS, pp. 638o39), he delivered a radio message to the people of.Honduras on the occasion of the official consecration of their nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, telling them to strive to live in the grace of God, to preserve the sanctity of the family, and to maintain union and concord among themselves. On June 30, 1959 (AAS, p. 589), the Holy Father sent a written message to the Tenth World Boy Scout Jamboree held in the Philippine Islands. In the message he pointed out that the boy scout movement can produce admirable fruits in accordance with the ideals of Christian charity and universal brotherhood. Miscellaneous Documents By the apostolic letter, "Caritatis unitas," of May 4, 1959 (AAS, pp. 630-33), the Vicar of Christ approved the confederation of the various congregations of the Order of Canons Regular of St. Augustine. At the same time he also approved the general principles which are to govern the confederation and directed the members of the confedera-tion to draw up specific statutes for the confederation which should then be submitted to the Holy See for approval. A later apostolic letter, Salutiferos cruciatus Christi, dated July 1, 1959 (AAS, pp. 634-36), was directed to the Passionists. In the letter the Pontiff approved the revised form of the Passionists’ constitutions and rules. He noted that the revision was undertaken in an effort to adapt the institute to the needs of the times and observed that in the revision the primary and fundamental characteristics of the institute had been reasserted, strengthened, and made more effective. On July 8, 1959 (AAS, pp. 592-93), the Sacred Congregation of Rites issued a decree approving the Office and Mass of St. Lawrence of Brindisi, confessor and doctor. The text of the Office, of the Oration of the Mass, and of the notices to be inserted into the martyrology is given in AAS, pp. 593-94. Another decree of the same Congregation was dated February 13, 1959 (AAS, pp. 590-92); this decree approved the introduction of the causes of the Servant of God Salvatore Lilli (1853-1895), professed priest of the Order of Friars Minor, and his companions, all of Whom were put to death in hatred of the faith. In the period under survey three documents of the Sacred Apostolic Penitentiary appeared. Under the date of July 18, 1959 (AAS, pp. 595-96), the Penitentiary published the revised text of the act of dedi-cation to Christ the King as well as its attached indulgences. This document is given in full on pages 3 and 4 of the present issue of RE-VIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. On August 13, 1959 (AAS, pp. 655-56), the Penitentiary published the text of a prayer composed by the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Universities to be recited by semi-narians for their parents. Seminarians who devoutly and contritely recite the prayer for their parents may gain an indulgence of fifty 45 VIEWS, NEWS, PREVIEWS Review for Religious days; and once a month they may gain a plenary indulgence under the usual conditions provided they have recited the prayer for a whole month. On the same date (AAS, p. 656), the Penitentiary announced that the faithful who in a church, a public oratory, or (in the case of those legitimately using it) a semi-public oratory privately perform the pious exercise commonly called the holy hour in memory of the passion, death, and ardent love of our Lord Jesus Christ may gain a plenary indulgence, if they have gone to confession, received Com-munion, and prayed for the intentions of the Holy Father. This new concession of an indulgence for this practice is not intended to abrogate the partial indulgence of ten years mentioned in the Enchiridion in-dulgentiarum (Manual of Indulgences), 1952 edition, n. 168. On May 18, 1959 (AAS, p. 647), the Sacred Consistorial Congrega-tion appointed Archbishop Concha of Bogot~ military vicar of Columbia. Views, News, Previews IN A PREVIOUS issue (Review for Religious, 18 [1959], 237), the beginning of a new quarterly, Jesus Caritas, was noted. Response to the new magazine, which is devoted to the spirituality of P~re de Foucauld, has been sufficient to warrant the continuation of its publi-cation. The latest issue has been that of September, 1959. The yearly subscription price has been set at $1.00; in Canada and the United States subscription orders should be sent to: Jesus Caritas 700 Irving Street, N.E. Washington 17, D. C. The first congress of the Confederation of Benedictine Congrega-tions to be held since the promulgation of the confederation’s laws by Pius XII in 1952 took place during the latter part of September, 1959. At the congress Dom Benno Gut, Abbot of Einsiedeln in Switzerland, was elected Abbot Primate of the Confederation. The new primate was born on April 1, 1897, was professed in 1918, and ordained in 1921. After studies and a teaching career at Sant’Anselmo in Rome, he was elected abbot of Einsiedeln in 1947. The Cassinese Benedictine Congregation, largest of the fifteen included in the Benedictine Confederation, in a general chapter at Subiaco during October, 1959, elected Dom Celestino Gusi, Abbot of Manila, as the eleventh Abbot General of the congregation. The Graduate Department of Religious Education, Immaculate Heart College, 2021 North Western Avenue, Los Angeles 27, Cali- 46 January, 1960 VIEWS, NEWS, PREVIEWS fornia, announces a two-week course in canon law for religious superiors, which will grant two units of graduate credit. The course, conducted by the Reverend Joseph F. Gallen, S.J., professor of canon law at Woodstock College, Maryland, will be open to major and local su-periors of all communities of sisters. It is scheduled for the afternoons of June 28 to July 9, 1960. The tuition is $32. The fourth course in the new program in ascetical theology, which is offered in the Graduate Department of Religious Education, Im-maculate Heart College, will be given by the Reverend Eugene Burke, C.S.P., professor of dogmatic theology at Catholic University of America, from July 11-15, 1960. The course is entitled "The Life of Grace and Growth of Virtue" and grants one unit of graduate credit. Sisters who did not apply for admission to the M.A. program when it began in October, 1959, may apply for admission now. Residence ac-commodations are available for the five-day course at Holy Spirit Retreat House in Los Angeles. All reservations must be made before June 1, 1960, and be accompanied by a ten-dollar deposit. Room and board is $20; tuition is $17.50. Inquiries should be directed to Sister Mary Thecla, I.H.M., Dean of the Graduate School, Immaculate Heart College. A new publication that should prove both interesting and important is the Seminary Newsletter, the first issue of which appeared in October, 1959: The Newsletter is issued by the Seminary Department of the National Catholic Educational Association and "is meant to be a clearinghouse of information about seminaries and seminary training, especially from the academic point of vigw; a clearinghouse of ideas, projects, and results of research." Included in the first issue of the Newsletter is an informative statistical report on Catholic seminaries in the United States. According to the report, during the academic year 1958-1959 there were 381 major and minor seminaries in the United States; of these 99 were diocesan institutions, the other 282 belonging to religious orders and congregations. The report notes "that 131 of the 381 seminaries in the United States have been founded since 1945; 108 since 1950. This means that 34% of the total number have been founded since World War II, 28% of them since 1950. It represents a 53 % increase in the number of seminaries since 1945 and a 40% increase since 1950." The report gives 38,503 as the total num-ber of young men studying for the priesthood in the United States. This number includes besides minor and major seminarians 2082 novices as well as 920 scholastics who have interrupted their seminary studies to teach. In REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 18 (1959), 304-05, Father Gallen discussed the quest~ion whether more American congregations are be- 47 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Rewew for Rehgmus coming pontifical and presented some statistics on the matter covering the years 1943 to 1957. A study of L’attivit~ della Santa Sede nel 1958 (The Activity of the Holy See in 1958), published in 1959 by the Vatican Polyglot Press gives data from the year 1958 on the same matter. According to the report of the Sacred Congregation of Religious that is given in the volume, during 1958, fifteen institutes received the decree of praise; two of these were in the United States: the Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity (M.S.B.T.) of Philadelphia founded in 1916 and the Missionary Sisters of the Most Holy Trinity (M.S.SS.T.) of Washington founded in 1921. The Congregation also reported that during 1958 there were seventeen institutes which re-ceived the definitive approval of their constitutions; of these none was in the United States. The Congregation’s report also contained informa-tion about secular institutes: two secular institutes were granted diocesan establishment, one received the decree of praise, and one, the decree of final approbation; none of these four was in the United States. During the same year the Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith granted the decree of praise to one institute in Ireland and gave definitive approval to the Daughters of Mary of Uganda, Africa. It is interesting to note that this last institute is the first pontifical African institute for women. ( uestions and Answers IThe following answers are given by Father Joseph F. Gallen, S. J., professor of canon law at Woodstock College, Woodstock, Maryland.] Our constitutions command the mistress to be with the novices always and, if she should be absent from the house, to learn on her return everything that happened during her absence. I do not think that any mistress has followed either injunction literally, but these two prescriptions have caused a highly exaggerated surveillance. Shouldn’t the observance of both be tempered by intelligent prudence? Yes. The first injunction, that the mistress should be with the novices always, is in many constitutions, the second only in very few. The first injunction is also and unfortunately observed in many insti-tutes. This is an evidently false spiritual pedagogy. It simply does not work in any field of the development of character and it is unworthy of the religious state, which is a spontaneous, voluntary, and personal dedication of oneself to Christ. The fundamental purpose of the novice-ship is to give the novice a profound consciousness of God, not of the master or mistress. The novice is to be led to a convinced personal dedication of herself to God; her life is to be a personal committment, 48 January, 1960 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS not forced external observance; she is to be trained to think for herself, to personal decisions, and to a sense of responsibility and reliability. The noviceship should be a school that will equip the novice for the life she will actually have to live. She should be instructed and guided but allowed sufficient freedom of action; otherwise you will know what she appears to be but not what she is. She should be checked and corrected, and even more frequently than is commonly done; but this does not demand unceasing vigilance. The more a superior tries to see, the less he will learn. No superior has to try to see everything in order to learrL what he should know. I hazard the conjecture that reticence about interior matters increases in direct proportion to external observation. That the novice mistress or her assistant should be with the novices frequently is intelligent and prudent; that she should be with them always is simply destructive of the purpose intended. Only God. can see everything, and God as one’s judge is not the motive of the religious life. The following quotation from a religious woman contains several thought-provoking observations. The principles for the formation of character in congregations are for the most part taken from a psychology of a distant past. This, in the case of women, only aimed at creating habits of will power, furnishing the mind with knowledge learnt by heart, and very little was done to appeal to the interest. They disregarded the education of the senses, any development of initiative and sense of responsibility and the deep needs of feelings. The new psychology seeks to develop the virtues and activities that they may adapt themselves and form personalities .... Deeper problems lie in the change of the feminine way of living. In the depth of her being the woman is rather passive. In past centuries the life of a woman matched this interior disposition, but today matters have changed. Modern life forces woman to greater independent activity. She has had to take over responsible work both in private and public life. Her mode of living gets nearer to the masculine type, though at the expense of her individuality. (Sister Agnes, S.I-I.C., Religious Life Today, 162-63.) 2 Our constitutions do not mention at all the canonical requisites for a higher superior. You have already explained these partially. Will you please explain them fully? Canon 504 demands the three personal qualities listed below for the valid election or "appointment of any higher superior of men or women. Age is the only variable element among the three canonical requirements. All of these three impediments established in canon 504 are dispensable but only by the Holy See. The higher superiors in the sense of this canon are the abbot primate; abbot superior of a mon-astic congregation; the abbot .of an independent monastery, even if the monastery appertains to a monastic congregation; the mothers general and regional of federations and superioresses of monast City of Saint Louis (Mo.), http://www.geonames.org/4407084 http://cdm17321.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/rfr/id/444

Review for Religious - Issue 19.1 (January 1960)

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