Beyond Our Lights and Shadows: Charism and Institution in the Church 9780567658180, 9780567669704, 9780567658241

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Beyond Our Lights and Shadows

Beyond Our Lights and Shadows Charism and Institution in the Church Judith A. Merkle

Bloomsbury T&T Clark An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Bloomsbury T&T Clark An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Imprint previously known as T&T Clark 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2016 © Judith A. Merkle, 2016 Judith A. Merkle has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-0-56765-818-0 ePDF: 978-0-56765-824-1 ePub: 978-0-56765-823-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Cover image © jvphoto/Alamy Stock Photo Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

In Loving Memory of my Mother and Father Kathleen Morgan Merkle 1918–2014 Charles Robert Merkle 1919–2007

Contents Documents Cited and Abbreviations Used Introduction

ix xi

Part 1  Foundations 1 Charism and the Christian Life: One Movement or Two? 2 Charism and Institution: Max Weber, Alienation, and the Spirit in Christian Life 3 Beyond Our Lights and Shadows: Community and Transformation in the Church

3 29 57

Part 2  Charism in the Church 4 Primary Charisms: Calling and Postmodern Society—A Church in Transition 5 The Restructuring of Ministry and Spirituality: Groups and Communities 6 Christian Identity and Charism: Beyond Ideology

87 115 143

Part 3  Charism, Institution, and Society 7 Globalization: The Stirring of Charism in a New Church 8 A New Lens on Charism: Sacramentality, Mediation, and Community

171

Bibliography Index

221

199

233

Documents Cited and Abbreviations Used1 RN

Rerum Novarum: The Condition of Labor (Leo XIII, 1891)

QA

Quadragesimo Anno: After Forty Years (Pius XI, 1931)

MC

Mystici Corporis Christi: On the Mystical Body of Christ (Pius XII, 1943)2

DV

Dei Verbum: Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Vatican II, 1963)3

LG

Lumen Gentium: Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Vatican II, 1964)

UR

Unitatis Redintegratio: Decree on Ecumenism (Vatican II, 1964)

AG

Ad Gentes: Decree on Missionary Activity (Vatican II, 1965)

GS

Gaudium et Spes: Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Vatican II, 1965)

AA

Apostolicam Actuositatem: Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity (Vatican II, 1965)

PC

Perfectae Caritatis: The Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life (Vatican II, 1965)

JW

Justice in the World: (Synod of Bishops, 1971)



Documents of Ecclesial Conferences of Medellin (1968), Puebla (1979) (Bishops of Latin America)4

All social encyclicals are cited from Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage, David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon (eds) (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002). 2 Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi (Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 1943). 3 The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter M. Abbott, S.J. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966). 4 As referenced in the text. 1

x

Documents Cited and Abbreviations Used

RH

Redemptor Hominis: Christ the Redeemer (John Paul II, 1979)5

DM

Dives in Misericordia: On the Mercy of God (John Paul II, 1980)

LE

Laborem Exercens: On Human Work (John Paul II, 1981)

SRS

Sollicitudo Rei Socialis: On Social Concern (John Paul II, 1987)

RM

Redemptoris Missio: On the Permanent Validity of the Church’s Missionary Mandate (John Paul II, 1990)

CA

Centesimus Annus: On the Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum (John Paul, 1991)

PV

Pastores Dabo Vobis: On the Formation of Priests in the Present Day (John Paul II, 1992 Apostolic Exhortation)6

CV

Caritas in Veritate: Charity in Truth (Benedict XVI, 2006)7

EG

Evangelii Gaudium: The Joy of the Gospel (Francis, 2013)8

LS

Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home (Francis, 2015)9

The Encyclicals of John Paul II, J. Michael Miller, C.S.B. (ed. and intro.) (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1996). 6 John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis (Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 1992). 7 Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate (Vatican City, Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 2009). 8 Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 2013). 9 Francis, Laudato Si (Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 2015). 5

Introduction “Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you through prophecy with the laying on of hands by the council of elders.” (1 Tim. 4:14) Walking today, as a member of the Church, enables one to comprehend Paul’s sentiment to Timothy. While not all ordained, all as baptized Christians have had hands laid on us. We have been touched by the gift of charism, the gift of the Holy Spirit, given for the good of the Church and society. This gift ties the path of our human becoming to its meaning for the whole, and to its ultimate significance for our life with God. We live this through the institution of the Church, with all its concreteness, ambiguity, goodness and sinfulness. We interpret charism in a secular context, where religious belief is simply one option among many for a meaningful life. We live in the institution of the Church which suffers much criticism and uncertainty in our day, yet we have been infused with the gift or “charism” of the Spirit, which is a fire within, and a source of meaning. Beyond the gifts of faith, hope and love, each has received an individual touch of God’s grace which is ours to give back throughout our lives. We are sentenced and blessed by Baptism into a matrix of this-worldly and other-worldly mystery and concreteness which are in constant tension and struggle, not only in our own hearts, but within the church and society as a whole. Yet this path of the intangibility of the Spirit and the concreteness of the institution is the only path we know as we journey to God. Theologian John Haughey once remarked that trying to define charism is like attempting to catch wind in a bottle. For this reason, this book will call on theology and sociology to explore the spiritual identity of charism as well as its manifestation in the human journey. This book is for people looking for “more”: more vision, inspiration and hope. It is not a map of the future of church and society, as new paths must be created. However, it offers building materials for those roads and suggests the directions they may take. Its aim is not predictions or answers, but it will indicate some places we have been as a church and society, the graces of that journey, and the promises within

xii Introduction

them to move forward. It does so with an eye on the terrain which marks the practice of religion today, both its valleys and pathways. Charism is a gift of the Holy Spirit within each member of the People of God; it is also a gift to the Church and essential to its identity. The relationship of charism and institution, while on the surface appearing opposed, is one which is inseparable in theology and sociology. Each discipline, using different tools and language, interprets the relationship. Neither is capable of expressing the perspective of the other, yet together they provide a fuller picture of charism and institution, than theology or sociology alone. The relationship of charism and institution will be discussed in light of the changes which modernization brings to contemporary society. Charism will be explored in the context of secular society and the place of religion as a whole in the mindset of contemporary life. We will outline some major features of this world, and their impact on our consciousness of the presence and potential of charism in our lives. This book is not about what the other should do—individuals, groups and congregations, or official Church itself—for the renewal of the Church; rather what we must do together to move forward. Its reference to conversion, communion and new outreach to follow the Spirit assumes no segment of the Church is the solution to this challenge, but only a Church willing to be whole, is up to the task. Chapter 1 will explore the “state of the question” of charism from various lenses. It will examine how charism relates to the human search for meaning, and human development along with the impact of charism on the sources of these important human quests. It will identify the roots of what we know as charism today in scripture as well as offer a historical sketch of how charism has been interpreted in church history and its diverse manifestations. The broad contours of charism introduced will be explored in further detail throughout the text. Chapter 2 will introduce the thought of sociologist Max Weber and key elements of his perspective on the changes modernity brought to human living. It will examine nineteenth-century approaches to the charismatic in the Church, and their linkage to contemporary meanings of secularity. The interplay and often interpreted antagonism between charism, office and institution in the Church will be explored, and their necessary and essential relationship for understanding the Church will be offered.

Introduction

xiii

Chapter 3 will ask whether community is really possible in the conditions of modernity, and how secular society offers a new context for its development. It will look at the image of Church as communion, an important model of the Church today, and its practical implications for the meaning and reinterpretation of charism. The chapter will look at the role of charism in a new communion in the Church in light of drawbacks and potentials for transcending the individualism of our culture and experiencing a rediscovery of a new sense of community in secular life. Chapter 4 will examine the primary charisms of the Christian life, as life callings of marriage, priesthood, consecrated life and intentional singularity. It explores how the immanent frame of modern society, as the absence of another world of meaning which gives significance to the present, reduces our life to our current definitions of social and individual success. It will inquire how experiences of self-transcendence, revelation, values, initiative; autonomy and responsibility provide other markers to find meaning and to interpret one’s life at a deeper level. Chapter 5 asks the place of charism in groups and communities as a source to restructure ministry and spirituality. It discusses the current situation of both seekers and dwellers in the church and the many starting points of spirituality today. It explores how sociology interprets the creativity which flows from charisma as a social phenomenon; and what directions can be gleaned for the reinterpretation of ministry and charism today. It outlines some major features of ministry and community in the recent past, and explores new criteria for their expression in the secular society. Chapter 6 considers the identity of charism before the ideological tensions in church and society, especially regarding interpretations of Vatican II. Does charism have a deeper identity than those collapsed in the outlooks of the polarities in the church or by conservatives or liberals in society? The chapter explores current understandings of the buffered self in society and the exclusive humanism of the modern era and contrasts these cultural images of modern living with an expression of charism. It asks, can one follow a meaning structure which transcends human flourishing, yet also find in it the impetus to address the concerns of a more human life for all? It will explore the Law of the Cross and the path of conversion, and their role in marking the identity of charism in the Church and in each Christian life.

xiv Introduction

Chapter 7 will discuss globalization, multiculturalism and technology as factors of charisma or change in society, and explore their impact on an understanding of charism and the life of the Church. The call of Vatican II was not to create a charismatic church in the midst of the existing one, or a parallel structure, rather to incorporate the charisms of the faithful into the whole church. What might this mean in light of a new global reality? Chapter 8 will examine how movements and associate membership in existing religious communities help laity find structural and communal support to move from a generalized and anonymous identity in the church to a more focused one. Are these initiatives related to the need for further structural reform in the church? It will summarize major issues raised in the previous chapters and respond that inclusion of new expressions of charism in the church requires a blending of personal, ecclesial and global responses. Key aspects of this integration are markers of Catholic identity, as mediation, sacramentality, and a call to communion. Lastly it will ask how governance in the Church may profit today from a renewed understanding and openness to the charism of its members. This book expresses the faith that the Holy Spirit, always present in the Church, can through the charisms of its members bring it to a new future, as a sacrament of the Kingdom and a servant of humanity. It has confidence that we as Church will find hope and inspiration for a journey which will take us “beyond our lights and shadows”; for our own growth in the Christian life and for the good of the Church and society. I would like to thank my community, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, for their support in writing this book and their witness to the vitality of a charism over a lifetime. I would also like to acknowledge the support of my department of Religious Studies at Niagara University, its librarians, and students who bring to light many of the questions of this text. I am thankful to the Lay Centre in Rome, its director Donna Orsuto and its students, as well as the library of the Gregorian University for their hospitality during my research period there. I am blessed by the support of friends and family whose interest and emotional encouragement helped me to reach beyond my own lights and shadows to explore this important issue in the church.

Part One

Foundations

1

Charism and the Christian Life: One Movement or Two?

What inspires the human spirit to hope for more? What nurtures men and women to risk to make the world a better place, even in small incremental ways? When we hear another speak or observe them act, what signals to us that they are in touch with something deeper in life, some special spirit which reaches into our innermost, and at times, inexpressible needs, hopes and dreams? We might say, “She has a gift for this.” or “He has a calling.” However we express it, we imply the source of what we observe comes from more than effort and practice, something easily proven through cause and effect; rather, it stems from a deeper intangible origin. In the Christian life we refer to this as a charism. Traditionally in the church, charism is a gift of the Holy Spirit given for the good of the church. Pope Francis in an interview with La Civilta Cattolica remarks, “… the charism of religious people is like yeast: prophecy announces the spirit of the Gospel.”1 Pope Francis connects charism to that element of announcing the gospel that every Christian is able to offer through their person and behavior. Charism is more than a personality characteristic or style of acting; it is a capacity to put people in touch with the power of the Gospel. In contrast to “God talk” charism communicates more than words, it denotes the spark that attracts and the posture that evokes second thoughts about the meaning of our everyday encounters. Charism is also recognized in the church as something which can be institutionalized, as the charism of a religious congregation. Today religious congregations are concerned that their charism is passed on to the next Antonio Spadaro, S.J., “A Big Heart Open to God,” America (September 30, 2013).

1

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Beyond Our Lights and Shadows

generation. Charism in this sense is the spirit and aims of each founding person, as well as how that charism has been interpreted through time by the members. As religious communities expand their associations to bond with people in various walks of life who share their values and mission; charism gains in importance as a link of identity with those who are married, single or belonging to other religious groups. The Church at Vatican II called each religious congregation to renewal through the examination of their charism. Charism is the marker which is faithfully accepted and retained as congregations adapt and renew for changed times.2 It is their compass in new times. Here charism is more than the personality style, an attitude or even the work of the founding person. Fundamental to an institutional charism is the following of Jesus Christ from whom the founding charism is inseparable. A congregational charism is a spiritual gestalt which is both unique and integral to the Spirit of the gospel. This deeper foundation makes it possible that a charism can be expressed in new ways for new times. This book will explore the interplay between charism and individuals, as well as charism and institution as an ongoing experience in the church.

Human Faith and Charism Charism would not be a matter of interest to us unless it is related to our deeper search for meaning in life, and the quality of life in the institutions upon which we rely on our journey. At some point in their lives, most human beings ask, why was I born? What is the meaning of my life, of human life? In times of struggle, the more thoughtful search for the ultimate sense of life, a fulfillment which human sickness and death, injustice and war cannot destroy. St. Augustine refers to the restlessness of the human spirit as it wrestles with these questions, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You, O God.”3 Whether in the fourth century or in our lives today, a restlessness of the human spirit continues. In the secular world in which we live, we find Perfectae Caritatis, 2. The Documents of Vatican II, Walter M. Abbott, S.J. (ed.) (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966), 468–9. 3 Augustine of Hippo, Confessions of St. Augustine, F. J. Sheed (trans.) (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1943) 1 (Book One, I). 2



Charism and the Christian Life

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that an encounter with charism involves a brush with mystery and the transcendent, two dimensions of life which secular society overlooks. In its public dimension, behavior which flows from charism points to something in its living that is not simply a religious legitimation of the values of the society in which it lives.4 It can direct attention to what is beyond the ordinary. Theologian Edward Schillebeeckx suggests that the search for an ultimate meaning to our life is something which is often unconscious and indirect. We stumble upon this questioning in our everyday experience. For instance, good people see things amiss in the world and in the church and say, this should not be. Yet implicit in this “no” to how things are, is a “yes” to something better. People are disappointed and angry with the situation in the church of sexual abuse, lack of participation in the church community, attitudes which name religion as a nice extra to life but not really necessary. They listen to the news of unspeakable violence, continued unemployment, human trafficking, record-setting income inequality, dangers to the climate through human-created global warming, and vulnerable people struggling to survive. Yet despite the bad news, they work toward a solution. They get up in the morning and go to work, raise their families, do their ministry. They hold onto the belief that love is worth their effort. They act from this vision which fuels their energies.5 Implicit in their “no” is a “yes” to something more. As a gift of the Holy Spirit, charism is an expression of the wholeness of life which is envisioned in this “more,” a wholeness we both seek and possess in seed in our hopes and dreams. It is part of the “gift” of life, the “givenness” beyond our lights and shadows. Both believers and nonbelievers have the experience of contrast, according to Schillebeeckx. To say no, instead of walking away from a situation, calls for faith. Faith implicitly places our confidence in a center beyond ourselves, and in a future we do not yet possess. Yet paradoxically an act of faith also confirms our deepest self in a new potential. Through faith we act on our hope for something better. We organize and plan for it. We work with others, we try new things. Yet ultimately all our efforts are based on a faith which at the level of modern life is unverifiable. We must take a risk, as while we sense we are James Cone, Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation and Black Theology (Grand Rapids. MI: Eerdmans, 1986), 118. Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God (New York: Crossroads, 1990), 22.

4

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on this earth for something more than the everyday measures of a good life, we find it hard to believe that Life takes us that seriously. We observe and live this kind of human faith every day. Human faith is the act of risk by which we use our freedom to move out toward others in love. We know this faith and its opposite. We know when we live from it and when we fail to take on the challenges of life and relationships, and turn into ourselves in egotism. Psychologist Erik Erikson claims this core human faith is necessary to navigate successfully the various challenges of the life cycle.6 Through basic human faith we form relationships, create values and reach out to the problems of our life and communities. Religious faith builds on human faith. For Christians, religious faith is the identification of the ultimate possibilities and limits of human life and the world with the revelation of Jesus Christ. While the challenges of human life are experienced and faced through human faith, religious faith interprets the process in relationship to God. Both believers and nonbelievers often desire the world to be a better place and share the experience of making it so. Believers, however, see the face of God in this experience and name the unfolding of a better history as God’s gift.7 Charism in the Christian community is an experience of religious faith, but charism is also a phenomenon animating human faith in society. Both human faith and religious faith call us to believe less in our littleness and more in our capacity for “more” and to resist the temptation to downsize our beliefs. Religious faith calls us to the audacious hope and certainty that God loves us. Theologian Karl Rahner highlights the two-dimensional life of charism in his understanding of religious faith. Rahner describes religious faith in terms of this human search for meaning, not only of one’s life but of all of life. In his terms, the experience of faith in the Spirit of God is the positive and unconditional acceptance of one’s own existence as meaningful and open to a final fulfillment, “which we call God.”8 However, no one comes to religious faith simply through the drives of human life. Religious faith is a gift, not a personal achievement. Rahner describes that God communicates in grace within the structure of human knowing and loving, which is limited, yet open to what is Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society, 2nd rev. edn (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1963 [1950]). Juan Luis Segundo, Faith and Ideologies, John Drury (trans.) (New York: Orbis, 1984), 81. Karl Rahner, “The Certainty of Faith,” in The Practice of Faith (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 32.

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ultimate. Human beings meet God in the experiences of everyday existence, and they learn to listen for the possible Self-manifestation of God, as communicating with them in human terms.9 Revelation, especially Scripture, brings awareness that the horizon encompassing human life is God who saves. Human life is where God abides and where God offers to humans God’s own self and the possibility of the free response of faith. Charism in its most fundamental meaning in the Christian life is this grace of breakthrough of the Spirit, the gift which makes the life of faith possible, but which shows itself in an enablement of the person and community in time, in the midst of church and society. For St. Paul, charis, which initially meant grace, later becomes the term for the grace of salvation. The charisma are the effects of charis, God’s gift of God’s Spirit. These are not exceptional gifts of the Spirit, but that Spirit poured out on all, as on Pentecost. (Joel 3:1-5; Acts 2:17-21).10 St. Paul reminds us that everyone has his or her charism, as the Spirit has given. He puts it most simply: “To each is given the manifestations of the Spirit for the common good.” (1 Cor. 12:7). What motivates us to take the risk of faith instead of egotism? Theologian Juan Luis Segundo suggests that such faith is built only in relationship with others. The community of those who share faith in Jesus Christ is the Church. Many today claim an individual faith in God but reject any notion of a need for a community of faith, the Church. Yet Segundo claims that it is only through others that we learn, even at a developmental level, the important “data” about life and its meaning. The life experience of learning how to learn is a point of reference for understanding the role of the Church in the life of faith. Central to life learning is the difficult task of deciding what is worth our effort. To enter into this process requires trust. We have to place faith in others in order to learn from them. We observe, consciously or unconsciously, how their values have brought them satisfaction in life. We learn from observing their actions.11 We take on the practices which form those values in our own lives. We try out what we have observed. Stephen Duffy, The Graced Horizon (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1992), 209. Walter Kasper, The Catholic Church: Nature, Reality and Mission (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 138–9. 11 Ibid., 23, 72–4, 84–5. 9

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Beyond Our Lights and Shadows

This kind of data about life is different than other types of learning. We learn many things in life, like how to ride a bike, through experience. We can store this experience and call on it later in life. However, in deciding important roads in life or life attitudes, it is impossible from the beginning to be able to see down the different roads which we are considering and to know the satisfactions involved from personal experience. Robert Frost’s poetic statement, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both, and be one traveler,” captures this kind of life dilemma.12 We experience ambivalence as we try to decide to invest in a relationship, take a job, or respond to a vocation. Yet life dictates that eventually we have to stop looking at the road and choose one on which to travel. Paradoxically, our freedom is limited once we use it. We cannot marry Joan and Mary, Tim and Fred. We cannot have a future which takes time to develop if we change our direction and never invest in any path. Segundo claims that the type of data we use to make such a decision is called transcendent data, not because it is beyond our capacity to understand it, rather because we cannot confirm it is true based solely on our own experience. Rather we take in this type of data through observation. We often notice the satisfactions which others seem to experience living the path we are considering. Are they happy? Are they fulfilled in the manner which we desire? Transcendent data can be compared to a store of utopias within each person. They are hopes and meaning structures which even though experience shows them not always to be the case, we give them first place in our decisions.13 When we hope for “true love”, work for “a better world,” enter the military to establish “world peace”, join a network for “sustainable community” we are engaging with transcendent data. While we often have some experience of these values, however partial, they generally exceed direct verification because their fulfillment occurs less often in life than their opposite. Yet our desire and investment in their pursuit impact our decision-making. Segundo claims in this sense that reason itself is influenced by values. Different than scientific data, transcendent data are self-validating. They cannot be proven true in a total empirical manner. For instance, “honesty

Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken,” in Mountain Interval (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1921), 1. Segundo, Faith and Ideologies, 73.

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is the best policy” is something we act on, yet we cannot prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is true. Transcendent data are unique in that instead of empirical reality being the measure of deciding their truth or falsity, they are the measure for judging reality. They are values which function in our meaning systems as reasons for behavior. They are decisive for our values because they have to do with the possibilities for satisfaction that those values can or cannot provide. We learn these from others. They are powerful as they filter how we perceive life and affect our hierarchy of values.14 Anytime we consciously or unconsciously wonder, is this worth it, and the worth cannot be calculated in facts and figures, we engage our faith. Faith, therefore, is a mystery which draws us into the “more” of life, or our capacity for human transcendence. Since this is not the “more” of money, power, status quo, class interests or ethnic superiority, all values the culture alone would affirm, faith is necessary. The Christian community holds that no finite object in the world can ultimately fill this desire. Only love and its concerns draw us into the Mystery which leads to its fulfillment. Charism speaks to us because it touches into this universal human path of finding meaning in life and entering into our own path of self-transcendence. Charism is involved as we are drawn to those persons or groups who in some way confirm the meaningfulness of this search. We might become dissatisfied with our institutions because they do not spark the energy of this level of meaning. They may appear routine if not corrupted when our inner lives hope they will validate and engage this more symbolic and meaning-driven level of our lives. We are attracted to people who appear to be in touch with this transcendent level of life, who appeal to our deeper purpose in life and our truer identities as human beings. We seek those persons and institutions who confirm that our lives mean more than our function and usefulness. Charism for Christians therefore is inseparable from this human faith and the subsequent religious faith of Christianity which confirms our life’s meaning is grounded in the saving love of God. Pope Francis can say that the charism of religious people is like yeast: prophecy announces the spirit of the Gospel, because religious faith involves more than using God’s name as the reason for one’s action, or explaining to Ibid., 108.

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another a belief of Christianity in an intellectual manner alone. Religious faith involves the risk to commit to the transcendent data contained in the gospel, which then become decisive for our values. Religious faith mediates the transcendence of God who grounds these values, and always invites us to the “more” of our lives. Religious faith also involves an investment in a tradition of witnesses regarding the experiencing of an acquisition of that data.15 We witness to our belief in the transcendence of God by opening ourselves to a way to learn and experience more than we know. We open our lives to the process of conversion. This is in essence what Christianity is, a way of living and believing based on Jesus Christ, his example, and his promise to be with us until the end of time.

Human Development: A Two-Way Street How though does charism impact our lives over the long term? Is encounter with charism an event of enthusiasm, but may not last? Does it bring any qualitative difference to the human process of becoming? To gain insight into this question we turn to the theology of Bernard Lonergan, S.J. (1904–84), a Canadian philosopher and theologian. Lonergan is widely regarded as one of the most significant thinkers of the twentieth century. His original and coherent philosophical investigations focus on human knowing as a dynamic event. The same philosophical investigations and intellectual force of his writing also brought him to address fundamental questions that pertain to human development. In his May 15, 1975 article entitled “Healing and Creating in History,” Lonergan claims that authentic human development follows two fundamental and complementary ways, an ascending one, the way up from below upwards, the way of achievement, and a descending one, the way down, from above downwards, the way of heritage. In his words: For human development is of two different kinds. There is development from below upwards, from experience to understanding, from growing understanding to balanced judgment, from balanced judgment to fruitful courses Segundo, Faith and Ideologies, 81.

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or action, and from fruitful courses of action to new situations that call for further understanding, profounder judgment, richer courses of action. But there also is development from above downwards. There is the transformation of falling in love: the domestic love of the family; the human love of one’s tribe, one’s country, mankind; the divine love that orientates man in his cosmos and expresses itself in worship.16

Lonergan’s understanding of two ways of human development is based on his theory of knowing. He sees all human knowing as composed of four levels of conscious and intentional operations. Development from below upwards begins with an attentive experience of data, then moves from an understanding of the data to critical reflection on this understanding, and from this critical reflection, to responsible decision. Development from above downwards, on the other hand, begins with moments when one better apprehends the meaning of responsible decision, critical reflection, intelligent understanding, and attentive experience. This second way has its source in gift, but the first is the way of achievement.17 Lonergan speaks of this second way, practically and spiritually. At first look it may seem that the second way is simply a consciousness of spiritual experience, for example, having an experience of gratitude. However, Lonergan also considers the gift of this second way more concretely. For example, the human process of socialization, acculturation and education in human development are “from above.” In his words, “By that process there is formed our initial mindset, worldview, … horizon. On that basis and with its limitation we slowly begin to become our own masters, think for ourselves, make our own decisions, exercise our own freedom and responsibility.”18 Lonergan’s focus, not just on the path of achievement, which modern society affirms, but also on what we receive from processes of education and socialization draws attention to what is often an ignored aspect of modern living, the impact of institutions on our lives. What insights might this provide for our understanding of charism and its potential expression in an institution? Bernard Lonergan, “Healing and Creating in History,” in The Lonergan Reader, Mark D. Morelli and Elizabeth A. Morelli [Murray] (eds) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 106. 17 F. E. Crowe, The Lonergan Enterprise (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1980), 72–3. 18 Bernard Lonergan, “The Ongoing Genesis of Methods,” in A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S.J., Frederick E. Crowe (ed.) (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 156. 16

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Institutions can be impacted by charism and be its carrier and expression. Since individuals live in groups, to act with other people demands cooperation. Human cooperation follows some settled pattern, and often this pattern is fixed by a rule to be fulfilled or a task to be performed within an institutional framework. Our socialization process gradually conveys these patterns to us. Such frameworks, according to Lonergan, are the family and manners, society and education, the state in the law, the economy and technology, and the church. Each constitutes the commonly understood and the already accepted basis and ways of cooperation. They tend to change only slowly. For change, as distinct from breakdown, involves a new common understanding and a new common consent.19 This often takes time. Charism can enter into the framework of institutional arrangements and imbue them with direction and purpose. We experience various institutional frameworks such as family, church and school throughout our lives as a given which we simply receive, yet our response to these givens engages us fundamentally in our own becoming. Institutions are also instrumental in the handing on of charism, or a style of living, to a new generation. Each generation reframes what it has received either positively or negatively. In Lonergan’s framework, neither development from above or from below is seamless. Positive development is a result of the desire to be authentic. Authenticity is the consistent struggle to be attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and responsible. However, the desire to be authentic can be overshadowed by conflicting desires not set on these aims. Authenticity is thwarted by inattentiveness, obtuseness, unreasonableness, and irresponsibility.20 The ongoing effort and capacity to reinvest one’s life in line with the desire to be authentic has tangible results in human development.21 Attentiveness alerts the person to two kinds of information: that of the senses and that of consciousness. The first plunges the person into the real world of immediacy, the world of sense. The second directs the person to notice the world of Bernard Lonergan S.J., Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 48. Lonergan, “Healing and Creating in History.” 21 The Dynamism of Desire: Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S.J. on the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. James J. Connor, S.J. and Fellows of the Woodstock Theological Center (Saint Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2006). The aim of the Spiritual Exercises, according to Ignatius, is to order one’s life toward achieving its end. See Chapter 2 “Authenticity of Self-Transcendence.” 19 20



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interiority, to notice what is happening as he or she processes sense data or that data of consciousness. Intelligence opens the person to inquiry and if not thwarted by bias, allows their questioning to go on unrestricted. Reasonableness calls the person to move beyond drifting and to come to a conclusion. It is the courage to ask whether something is really so. Is it as I understand it, or is it not? Responsibility raises the question of worth, of value. It urges the person to prioritize, in face of a choice it calls for decision and action. If this is worth my effort, how do I begin? A final piece in this sketch of Lonergan’s approach to human development is how we can cripple our capacity to grow. One way is through bias. Bias, our own and that of others, has a major impact on human flourishing. Bias is the distortion or the blockage of intellectual development. Lonergan understands bias as a dimension of individual development and that of groups. Bias can be dramatic such as the unconscious motivation brought to light by depth psychology which can block the person from an insight that he or she needs. There is the bias of individual egoism which will limit an individual’s questioning to only those things which contribute to one’s own point of view. Every new situation is limited to an exploitation of his or her need. Group egoism is the corporate blindness used by a group to ignore a situation, fail to deal with the problem, or ignore a remedy simply because it could limit its power. Finally there is general bias or the insistence on immediate results which leads us to forsake working toward values and goals which are long in coming. Charism is not every grace or gift of God, but it is more than a general sense of God’s presence in our lives. If the brief example of Lonergan’s framework of human development gives us any insight into the struggles of becoming, then it seems fair to assume that the gift of charism enters into this very process and its challenges. It touches our drive to be authentic as well as shapes the institutions which affect our lives. Charism can be interpreted in light of those gifts which are needed in our secular society to foster a sense of transcendence in individuals and to establish those conditions in which human growth can occur in an authentic manner through healthy institutions. In order to set to do this over the course of our investigation, let us turn to take a look at what charism means upon a closer inquiry.

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The Identity of Charism At Vatican II the term charism was used fourteen times in the council documents, yet we find that the term is very difficult to pin down. Three issues, among others, complicate the process of giving a clear definition to charism and to point to its distinctive character. First, as a biblical term, the word charism which we use in English is not exactly the same as the Greek term used in scripture. Second, New Testament texts are used to ground the theological term charism, however not all uses of the word in the New Testament present the same perspective. Rather we have a multi-dimensional picture of a spiritual and ecclesial reality. Third, the notion of charism has been open to evolution in the life of the church; therefore its reality is not totally captured in Scripture.22 Besides what we know from scripture, the unfolding of the meaning of charism has evolved over time in the various historical contexts in which it has been identified. We learn what charism means through a cluster of scriptural references, not one alone. Charism derives from the Greek term charis, meaning the favor of God. This term appears mainly in the New Testament; however, a look in the Hebrew scripture provides a sense of the term Spirit. The meaning of charism is inseparable from the “bookends” of its identity, in scripture and the tradition.

Hebrew Scriptures The roots of a modern-day experience of charism are present in the scriptures since early times in the faith community, in its references to the Spirit. The Hebrew word ruah, in Greek pneuma, means breath, air, wind or soul. While breath can mean the sign and principle of life, it has a less admirable sense, as “windy words,” something unsubstantial (Job 16:3; Job 6:26). In its positive form it refers to the Spirit of God, that which comes from another dimension of reality. In the Hebrew Scriptures, ruah denotes the wind or a breath of air which is the force that enlivens human beings. Breath in this Albert Vanhoye, S.J. “The Biblical Question of ‘Charisms’ after Vatican II,” in Rene Latourelle, Vatican II: Assessment and Perspectives: Twenty-Five Years After (1962–1987), Vol. 1 (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1988), 439–68, esp. 440.

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sense is a principle of human life; it is the ground of knowledge and feeling. It also indicates the life of God, the force by which God acts and causes action.23 Breath is not opposed to the physical body; rather it is what animates all life, human, animal and plants.24 Breath though is not the same as flesh, the term used in the scriptures to refer to the earthly reality of human life. Flesh is weak and corruptible; whereas spirit breath is the life principle. We read in Isaiah, “The Egyptians are men not gods; their horses are flesh not spirit” (Isa. 31:3). Knowing the difference between the breath or pneuma of the Spirit and flesh is a question of knowing the source of real strength in life. This breath, or Spirit, connects our life to God, our meaning to God’s meaning. The spirit breath is first and foremost what causes human beings to act, so that God’s plan in history may be fulfilled.25 Walter Kasper suggests that this biblical notion needs interpretation. In an age where suffering and evil have spurred many to conclude that God is dead, the religious question is more than, does God exist? It is how does God exist? He argues that the core of God’s action towards human beings is mercy. This signature of God’s action toward human beings as mercy involves the notion of relationship, not just a single action, rather an ongoing attitude or posture of kindness and mercy. In Kasper’s words, “Applied to God, the concept expresses an unexpected and unmerited gift of God’s grace—transcending every relationship of reciprocal fidelity—that exceeds all human expectations and bursts every human category.”26 God’s mystery, experienced as God’s transcendence, involves unmerited loving kindness, friendliness, favor, divine grace, and mercy. All exceeds normal human experience and expectation; all goes beyond human imagination and thought. While charism is experienced in the church in very concrete forms, Kasper’s insights suggest to us that at its root, it also belongs to this dimension of religious experience. Charism seen in a spirituality of God’s mercy in the Church also receives an important perspective to the face of the gospel it expresses to the world today. John L. McKenzie, S.J., The Dictionary of the Bible (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1965), 840. 24 Pope Francis, On Care for Our Common Home, Laudato Si (Citta del Vaticana: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2015). 25 Yves Congar O.P., I Believe in the Holy Spirit. The Complete Three Volume Work in One Volume, David Smith (trans.) (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 3–15. 26 Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to the Christian Life, William Madges (trans.) (New York: Paulist, 2014), 43. 23

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The spirit, or breath, in the Hebrew scripture has an effect on human beings, as it brings about an experience of seeing and wisdom. Samuel is told he will meet a band of prophets and will enter into the grip of a prophetic trance. “Then the spirit of the Lord will possess you, and you will be in a prophetic frenzy along with them and be turned into a different person. Now when these signs meet you, do whatever you see fit to do, for God is with you.” (1 Sam. 10:6-8). The scripture affirms that the effects on people and their psyche in cases of guidance and inspiration are attributed to the breath of God himself. God’s relationship with human beings involves them completely, including their psychosomatic being. While the spirit comes from God, it is not other-worldly. It gives discernment and wisdom that deals with what is normal. It is in these ordinary occurrences of life that human encounters with God guarantee that God’s plan for his people will be carried out. In other words, the purpose of these encounters transcends the individual. They are meant as vehicles of God’s continual movement close to his people in all their needs and concerns, to the point of even animating their dead bones. (Ezek. 36–38). God will do this by communicating himself within people’s hearts. “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances” (Ezek. 36:26-28). The Hebrew scripture understood the role of the judges and the prophets in the lives of God’s people as vehicles of this loving movement of God towards them. “I will leave none of them behind; and I will never again hide my face from them, when I pour out my spirit upon the house of Israel, says the Lord God” (Ezek. 39:29). The giving of God’s breath spirit is continual and ever new in the life of God’s people. When early Christians made their confession of faith, their belief in the Holy Spirit was linked to the one “who has spoken through the prophets.” The Spirit by whom Jesus was conceived and who animated the gospel was the same Spirit referred to in the Hebrew scripture.27 In the midst of his people’s difficulties Isaiah foretells that “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots. And the Spirit of the Lord Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, 3–15.

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shall come upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord (Isa. 11:1). This revelation to the people of Israel of who God is in their lives, and who they are as God’s people, is essential to their identity. Likewise these images of God and how God acts with his people continue to inform us of the meaning of charism in our lives and in that of the church.

The New Testament In the New Testament the most important elements in the experience and revelation of this Spirit are: the conception, baptism and activity of Jesus. It was by the Spirit that Mary conceived Jesus. At his baptism by John the Baptist Jesus is marked out as the one by whose words, sacrifice, and activity the Spirit enters the history of humankind. It was also as the one who was led by the Spirit that has come upon him at his baptism that Jesus undertook his ministry. All three synoptic gospels show that ministry as beginning with his victorious struggle against the demon. The descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus at his baptism is described as an anointing, as a prophetic anointing for a mission to proclaim, and as a realization of, the good news of liberation from evil and the evil one.28 Luke shows in the Acts of the Apostles that the Spirit which anointed Jesus at Nazareth, and especially at his baptism in the Jordan, was also sent to the church. Pentecost was for the church what his baptism was for Jesus, the gift and the power of the Spirit, dedication to the ministry, mission and bearing witness. We hear in Acts 10:38-39, “You know … how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. And we are witnesses to all that he did.” The New Testament refers both to the Spirit, and to God’s favor or charis. In fact the whole message of the Gospel, as Good News, is captured in the term, God’s favor to us. In particular and most frequently, charis means the saving will of God executed in Jesus Christ and communicated to men and women through him. Jesus is both the object Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, 19, see also 15–24.

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and expression of the good will of God, i.e. God was pleased with him (Lk. 2:40). Hence in the New Testament charis means both favor, an act immanent to God, and the effects of the saving will as they appear in the life of Jesus and in the Church.29 While these terms indicate the spiritual reality which we refer to as charism, the term was introduced into theological terminology by Paul. The synoptics, John and Acts are familiar with the phenomenon but have not the term, which is found in Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and 1 Peter.30

St. Paul and Beyond Paul creates a definite terminology to speak of charisms, though he also uses various terms to refer to the spiritual gifts of the favor of God, included in the meaning of charism. Charism in the New Testament is related to the religious experience of the Spirit, but it is referred to using several Greek terms, the word charis, which means grace and eucharisten, to give thanks. The New Testament refers to a great variety of God’s gifts as charis signifying them as “gracious grace” or “gift.” Because of this more general use of the term charis and its different layers of meanings, some authors find it difficult to find any technical teaching that clarifies the modern use of the word charism today.31 In Paul we find this more general use as well as a more specific focus. Charism refers to the gift of grace; importantly the gift of redemption and eternal life (Rom. 5:15-16; 6:23). Yet he also uses it to refer to particular gifts: like those given to the people of Israel; (Rom. 11:29), graces given to ministers of evangelization (1 Cor. 12:8-10, 29-30; Rom. 12:6-8) as well as the gift of bodily healings (1 Cor. 12:30). Charis, as well, refers to the graces that establish a person in a way of life in the Church—virginity, marriage, pastoral ministry— conferred by the laying on of hands (1 Cor. 7:7; cf. 1 Tim. 4:14, 2 Tim 1:6). Paul’s approach is characterized however by the effort shown in 1 Corinthians 12–14 to distinguish charism from what was experienced in the early church McKenzie, The Dictionary of the Bible, 324. Estevao Bettencourt, “Charisms,” in Sacramentum Mundi, Karl Rahner et al. (eds), Vol. 1 (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968), 283–4. 31 See: Vanhoye, “The Biblical Questions of ‘Charisms’ after Vatican II,” 464. Also: Brendan Leahy, Ecclesial Movements and Communities: Origins, Significance and Issues (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2011), 81–93. 29 30



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as mere “enthusiasm” and strange ecstatic phenomena. He focuses rather on the place of charism in the ordered life of the community, and instead of seeing charisms as belonging only to the specialized few, sees them as characteristic of the baptized in general (Rom. 12:6; 1 Cor. 7:7).32 Paul uses the metaphor of the body and its members to show that the variety of the gifts of the Spirit is not contrary to the unity of the church, rather necessary to it. Charisms, as grace, are given to build up the body of Christ. Paul lists the charisms, he names apostles first, then prophets and others after them. (1 Cor. 12:27-30). We learn from Paul that the Church at Corinth was favored with charisms (1 Cor. 1:4-7; 12:4-11); and he expected to find charisms in the Church of Rome (Rom. 12:6-8). He remarks, “We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us; prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry in ministering; the teaching, in teaching; the exhorter in exhortation, the giver in generosity; the leader in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.” To the Church at Ephesus he clarifies the gifts of the Spirit given as Christ’s gift. Ephesians 4:11-13: “The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.” Paul never wavers: charisms are given for the common good in Christ’s body: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Cor. 12:7). Key to understanding Paul’s assessment of the charismatic gifts is that they are all subordinate to the main gift of the Christian life, the gift of love (1 Cor. 13). And unlike the charisms which are transient, love will not pass away.33 No one has, or needs all the charisms; in fact charisms are the principle of differentiation in the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:4-11). Paul notes the centrality of the charisms in the church. “In the certainly authentic letters of Paul we find no other principle of differentiation in the Christian community than the charisms: no other basis for the decision as to who is to be a leader, who a teacher, who an administrator, than the charism that each one has received.”34 Bettencourt, “Charisms,” 283. Wilfrid Harrington, O.P., “Charism” in The New Dictionary of Theology, Joseph A. Komonchak et al. (eds) (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1989), 180–3. 34 Francis A. Sullivan, S.J. Charisms and Charismatic Renewal: A Biblical and Theological Study (Servant Books, 1982. Republished by Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2004), 19. 32 33

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Some have argued that the charismata were only phenomena at the beginning of the church, and the further institutional developments of the church were deviations from its primitive beginnings.35 However, Walter Kasper argues that we need to read the New Testament accounts of the charismata in the context of the accounts of Jesus’ miracles and the miracles of the apostles (Mk 6:7; 16:17–18, 20; Acts 2:22, 43; 4:30; 5:12ff.; Heb. 2:4). In this deeper context, the charismata are signs of the beginning kingdom of God and therefore they belong permanently to the Church.36

Charism outside the Church Since ecstatic utterances, as some charisms are, can exist outside the Church the question arises by what criterion to judge them. The same problem can also exist inside the Church, since what appears to be charismatic can be displayed without any legitimation from the faith. Paul affirms that the Spirit is the decisive criterion. For only in the Spirit can one say Jesus is Lord. This kyrios is the Lord of the gifts of the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3ff.) and from him comes the love which sustains and surpasses all the charisms. It is only through love that charisms can be integrated into the whole (1 Cor. 13).37 Since Vatican II however the activity of the Spirit outside the visible Catholic Church is more readily recognized. This openness allows for the possibility of charisms there (LG 15; UR 3). The ecumenical movement itself is understood as an expression of the charismatic element in the Church (UR 1, 4 ) Again, only in the Spirit can the Church find its unity amid its diversity.38

Charism in Church Life There is good reason to doubt whether it is possible to draw up an exhaustive list of charisms in the New Testament. To do so would mean that the Holy Kasper, The Catholic Church: Nature, Reality and Mission, 189. Ibid., 138. 37 Bettencourt, “Charisms,” 283. 38 Ibid., 284. 35 36



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Spirit would be limited to giving only those gifts which he had already given to the church in apostolic times. Certainly the Holy Spirit, who guides the church through time, will continue to give new gifts to meet new needs in every age. The Church at Pentecost was created by the Spirit, yet it was not a church which could continue on its own without the Spirit. The early Church father Irenaeus showed the apostles as developing the church by communicating to believers the Spirit they had received from the Lord. The Church believes the Spirit guides the church in every age. Yves Congar provides perspective on this more general statement. “This must mean that the Spirit did not come simply in order to animate an institution that was already fully determined in all its structures, but that he is really the ‘co-instituting’ principle.”39 In other words, while the New Testament indicates how the gifts of the Spirit were experienced in the early church, it is the tradition of the church to hold that the Spirit can give new gifts to the Church as she needs them. When they are given they will be experienced as God’s gift of redemption and eternal life to us and gifts given for a particular purpose. We find in modern thinking a tendency to oppose charism and institution. However, Irenaeus stressed the connection between the two. For him, charism was linked to the Incarnation, making concrete the presence of God. In debates with the Montanists, a sect that rejected the Incarnation, denigrated the flesh and in turn downplayed the need for church structures, Irenaeus said the Spirit is given to the church to keep it ever young.40 Throughout church history there has been a certain cautiousness regarding charisms and their place in the church, because of their connection to spiritualist movements. Positive movements animated the church, like the Franciscan and Dominican movements in the Middle Ages. But some spirit­ ualist movements were known to denigrate the structures of church life and provide substantial headaches to its officers. The familiar yet false challenge which stems from this history is to either follow the Spirit or the Church. However, it is not that simple. Among the positive movements across the centuries that embodied charisms in a healthy way is the rise of monasticism. This new form of the

Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, Vol. II, “He is the Lord and Giver of Life,” 9. (See also note 19). Leahy, Ecclesial Movements and Communities, 82. See 83–9.

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Christian life gave the Church a language to speak of charism not simply as a dimension of the Church but as a structure in the church. Monastic communities were seen as charismatic communitarian expressions within the church. In the early years of the monastic movements, during the fourth and fifth centuries, charism was not addressed because there were further manifestations of heretical spiritualists’ movements stirring in the church. Augustine for instance hardly touches this topic because of the power of these movements in his day. However by the time of the Middle Ages we see signs that the meaning of charism again arose in the Church. Charism, as we use it in the Latin Church, comes from its translation into Latin in the Vulgate. Here it is often referred to as “grace” or “gift.” In the Middle Ages the term charism was not used; rather “gratia” or grace was a focus of reflection. Theology in the Middle Ages stressed the work of the Holy Spirit to inhabit us, to dwell within, to innovate us, to make us new. In his study on grace Thomas Aquinas distinguishes what we know today as charism from other graces or gifts from God mentioned throughout the New Testament. In the Summa Theologica he wrote: According, grace is of two kinds. Firstly, there is the grace by which man himself is united to God, and this is called sanctifying grace (gratia gratum faciens). Secondly, there is the grace by which one man cooperates with another so that he might be brought back to God. Now this kind of grace is called freely bestowed grace (gratia gratis data).41

Theologians today are in agreement over the identification of gratia gratis data with charism.42 Interestingly, this distinction between grace given to sanctify the individual and grace given to foster the common good, arose as the Church in the Middle Ages found it necessary to discern the authenticity of mendicant orders, as a new form of religious life. The question before the Church of the Middle Ages was, whether this new form of life was valid? Could the Spirit be in these groups who were moving around, instead of embracing the stability which was part and parcel of monastic life until that point in the church? Religious before this time stayed in their monasteries, whereas mendicants did not See Summa Theologica, I, II, 3,4; and II/II qq. 171–8. Vanhoye, “The Biblical Question of ‘Charisms’”, 441.

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own property, lived from alms, and saw their lives as not only for their own salvation but to minister to others. They lived not apart from people but closer to the new town centers developing in Europe. They also could be missioned away from their community provinces, in fact, anywhere in the world. The concept of grace conferred on a person or group, not only for their salvation, but for the salvation of others, clarified the role mendicants were assuming in the church. Their presence, not without controversy, was important, and the church had need of their witness. The Church recognized mendicant orders as movements of the Spirit. To the benefit of the Church and of the society, they took root and supported the vocations of generations of members. The meaning of charism today comes from scripture, as well as from the tradition and ongoing experience of the church.43 The New Testament provides the grounding of our concept of charism as well as contributes to its ambiguity. In the New Testament the word signifies “gracious grace” or “gift” but its specific meaning is greatly influenced by the context in which it appears. In other words, Vanhoye remarks, “these texts do not offer any clear teaching on what are today referred to as ‘charisms’, … It is not possible to demonstrate that the word charisma has technical sense in the New Testament.”44 The ongoing experience of the church adds to the scriptural understanding more light on how the initial experience of charisms in the Pauline communities, are reflected in offices and the life of the church in our own times.45

Middle Ages until Today During the Middle Ages a split occurred between theology and spirituality in the Church. Charism was treated as a dimension of the lives of the saints or in its relationship to spirituality, rather than as part of the whole Church. On the one hand, the struggles of the Reformation and Post Reformation period contributed to fear of “spiritualist” leanings in the Church, because of their capacity to lead to disruption. On the other, changes in the world: the rise of democracy, increased religious freedom, migration, the Industrial Revolution, Karl Rahner once called for a thorough historical study of charism. This is beyond the project of this work, but hopefully a study will be done in the near future. 44 Vanhoye, “The Biblical Question of ‘Charisms’,” 464. 45 Leahy, Ecclesial Movements and Communities, 83. 43

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changes in education and health care, and advances in science required new movements, congregations, political parties, associations and spirituality to meet these times. It was a climate ripe for the emergence of new charisms. The call for universal education of the French Revolution gave rise to the teaching orders in the Church and health care and charitable outreach were fostered by groups animated by a charismatic leader and engaged in a focused spirituality. To recount the interplay between charism and institution during these times would require a history of the church itself. A particular feature of the development of charism, not attested to in the New Testament, was how charism could affect numerous people over long periods of time. Instead of charism appearing as a gift given to an individual for the good of the church, charism in new ways could be envisioned as a tradition which impacted people, perhaps over generations. The development of various types of institutes of consecrated life fashioned in the Church new patterns whereby the spiritual and apostolic orientations received from the founder or foundress of a congregation could be passed on to members of the institute. This not only shaped the members of the institute themselves, but impacted the Church at large. Through their ministry, the spiritual wisdom and practices of the institute could be reframed for those in the Church who lived in different states of life. One thinks of the example of the “little way” of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the creation of St. Vincent de Paul societies, or Third Order movements of the Franciscans and other congregations. By the nineteenth century sociologists began to study charisma as a phenomenon, rather than as an aspect of the God-human relationship, through theology.46 Sociologists like Max Weber, interested in the changes brought to Western society through economic and social development, asked how change occurred in society. Since change had to do with power, the question of authority and its impact was central. Weber recognized that a type of authority, not based on tradition or law, emerged from time to time and brought change. He called this charismatic authority, which transcended the more common need for administration, and responded to new problems

S. N. Eisenstadt, Max Weber: On Charism and Institution Building (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1968), xviii.

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facing the community. Charisma then became a factor in the study of society, rather than solely an experience in the faith life of the Church. The Church also began to explain its public identity, in the terms of the social classifications defined by the new sciences and philosophy. The Church as a “perfect society,” explained in Vatican I, was one with a complete human purpose that is not, in its own order, subordinate to a higher good. This selfidentity was important as the Church continually worked out its autonomy before changing political realities of an increasingly secular culture. Vatican Council I referred to charism mainly in its relationship to the institution of the Church and not in terms of the gifts of the Spirit given to all the members of the Church. Since the Council of Trent, the self-identity of the Church laid stress on the role of hierarchy. Charism, if it was referred to at all, was associated with the role of the hierarchy, the question of the infallibility of the Pope, and the institution of the Church grounded on the promise of Jesus Christ to assist Peter with the grace to guide it. This apologetic stand taken up at the Counter-Reformation lasted until Vatican II. With it came a certain suspicion of the charismatic and prophetic as being too often linked with heretical tendencies or aberrant individualisms.47 Before Vatican II, charism was related usually to extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, not the ordinary life of the Christian. Charism was associated with the lives of the saints, mystics, and founders and foundresses of religious orders. There were debates whether the institutional elements of the church were a departure from the more “pure” charismatic foundation of the early Church. Pius XII affirmed that charismatic origin and the Church’s hierarchical structure, were both informed by the Holy Spirit. Charism was not just an extraordinary gift of the early church, but was in the total life of the church. Pius XII gave no priority either to the charismatic element of the church or to the hierarchic. In his encyclical Mystici Corporis, he viewed charisms as “marvelous gifts” in the church, yet still tended to see them as rare and marginal phenomena.48 The “turn” at Vatican II was to find them in more general ways in the church. Even though office was emphasized in the church Roland Potter, O.P., “The Prophetic Element in the Church,” in St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Vol. 45 (2a 2ae, 171–8) Prophecy and Other Charisms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 160–2. 48 Bettencourt, “Charisms,” 284. 47

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before Vatican II, it was never exaggerated to the extent that charismatic gifts and phenomena were completely extinguished. Perhaps this too was the Spirit at work. At Vatican II the term charism, under its aliases, gift, graces, operations, virtues, ministry, vocation, munera or offices, slipped into over 100 texts. Vatican II adopted it specifically fourteen times in its official texts.49 The term prophecy entered into mainstream Catholic spirituality. Vatican II affirmed that the prophets and the prophetic charism cannot be relegated only to the period of the primitive church; they are always a constitutive part of the Church and always possess a permanent and irreplaceable significance for the Church. The charisms endow people with a readiness and willingness to undertake activities helpful to the Church. They are given to the “faithful of every order,” not just to the ordained or just to the laity. The call of the Church to the royal priesthood and to be the holy people of God (1 Pet. 2:9) is expressed clearly in the pastoral constitution of the Church (LG 11). Hierarchical gifts are also gifts of the Spirit. Pastoral office is unthinkable without charism. Vatican II described the unity of the church as recapitulation, that is, the church is called to gather and appreciate the many forms of grace given by God. Charisms in Vatican II are seen as both, common, simple and diffused as well as quite spectacular. Charism is related to each baptized person. The council refused to restrict the concept of charism to extraordinary and miraculous gifts but also applied it to more modest and less rare gifts, such as those listed in Romans 12:6-8. The council presents charisms as functional gifts that render the faithful of every rank, “fitted and made ready to assume various works and offices for the good of the church” (LG 12). Charism in this sense is integrally linked to the Church and the life of each member of the Church. The justification of baptism and the life of the Spirit within are ordained to one another. A charism is a manifestation of the triumph of grace; it can be extraordinary and miraculous but it can also be the fortitude given by grace to bear oneself well in ordinary life. In new times in the Church we can trust that the charisms will be given to meet the challenge of the changes in religiosity which characterize our age.

Albert Vanhoye, “Charism,” in Dictionary of Fundamental Theology, Rene Latourelle (ed.) (New York: Crossroad, 1994), 103–8, esp. 105.

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These charisms, mentioned by Vatican II, will demand of the members, as well as the Church, to work toward what is necessary to integrate a renewed interest in charism with the institution of the Church as a whole. For without structural support, charism will slip into simply an extraordinary movement of enthusiastic piety, and fail to have lasting effects on the person, and the church and society. Karl Rahner supports the vision of the two ways of development, which we began with in this chapter. He claims that God assures the victory of grace in our lives, in the history of society, and in the Church as a whole, ordinarily through the institution, not simply through the efforts of individuals alone. An interest in charism is more than an inquiry into the gifts of the individual members of the Church. It is also a call for a type of renewal in the Church that involves a growth both in spirituality and in structural reform. Why does Rahner see that God offers his best charism or gift, his work, to redeem us, through an institution? Human freedom is weak and defective. However, through God’s action in a charism a person is enabled to be faithful in freedom to living within a framework of life. Our modern lens on living can be clouded by the individualism of our age, the two ways of development helps us to see that while our initiative and autonomy are so important in modern life, God often leads us “beyond our lights and shadows” to what is more than we can imagine through others. Through theology and sociology we will examine charism as a deep phenomenon of the Christian life, and ask what perspective both can offer to renew an understanding of charism in the modern Church.

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Charism and Institution: Max Weber, Alienation, and the Spirit in the Christian Life

The world of St. Paul and the charisms of the early church are far from our experience today. We must cross the two millennia of human experience to grasp how charism might function in the changed circumstances of our times. John Haughey, S.J. once remarked that to define charism is something like trying to capture the wind in a bottle.1 Charism is a free gift of the Spirit given for the good of the church and the use of all. But gifts of the Spirit have both a concrete and a spiritual identity; they are more than insights into human behavior, yet their nature has to be discerned and identified, often by the fruits which they produce. For this reason, along with theology, we will borrow from the language of sociology and philosophy to define charism; and to identify areas which can assist us to discover or re-discover charism in our lives today. Sociology and philosophy can help us articulate the changed conditions of belief which exist in our world today; as well as areas of human experience where the gifts of charism have impact. While charism, as a spiritual reality, cannot be defined by non-theological sources, its presence can be identified as a human experience through them. Since charism is a gift given not only for the Church but for the world, we can call on non-theological sources, to assist in bringing charism out of the shadows into the light of contemporary experience. Today there is an unconscious yet powerful narrative which “explains” the situation of religion today and challenges why we would ever want to explore the meaning of charism at all. This narrative, the secularization theory, is used to define why and how our world is quite different than that of the time of Sean D. Sammon, F.M.S., “Religious Life Reimagined,” America (September 14, 2015): 26–9.

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the scriptures and St. Paul. The conclusion often drawn is that the pursuit of biblical values is irrelevant for our times. We will explore this dominant view which attempts to define our current situation in the church, and explore its roots.2 These perspectives can help us recognize the cultural framework for understanding charism we have received, why charism and institution often appear to be at odds with one another, and what aspects of human experience charism is meant to address.

The Secularization Debate Today our situation in the church is marked by the force of the “secular.” Secularization is often associated with the narrative of how modern society emerged. Numerous factors contributed to the new situation of “modernity.” Among these are the rise of new scientific methods, the political and legal changes brought about through the seventeenth century wars of religion, the invention of new forms of political and economy theory, the religious and cultural changes associated with the Reformation, the Renaissance, and the French Revolution. As a result of these forces, society transitioned from the feudal society of medieval Christendom to a modern capitalist secular society. Modernization was further impacted by the functional differentiation of sectors of society which had previously been fused together in an undifferentiated whole. For example, the separation of politics into the apparatus of the state and its legitimation through various styles of democratic rule, and of the economy into a network of interacting markets based on the freedom of the individual to buy and sell, produced the capitalist societies of the modern period. This development is further understood as the separation of a public sphere of the political activity of citizens in the formation of public opinion from a private sphere of personal interest. In this sphere religion is considered to be a private interest, and adherence to it is seen as one option among many, similar to choosing one item to purchase rather than another. The decline and eventual elimination of religion is imagined as a type of subtraction equation

Anthony J. Carroll, S.J. Weber, Secularization, and Protestantism (Scranton and London: The University of Scranton Press, 2007), 1–81.

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in societal life, as modernization increases, religion decreases. Some see the decline of religion as a result of lack of interest; others attribute it to the discovery of something better to perform its functions. Consequently, religion does not perform, or is actually forbidden to play, a role in the formation of public opinion in the public sphere. Charles Taylor, a Canadian philosopher, adds to this analysis a deeper reflection on “the secular” as it applies to our religious situation. The secular stands in contrast to the religious setting of earlier societies where religion was everywhere, interwoven with everything else and in no sense construed as a separate sphere of its own. Three characteristics express the secularity of modern society. First, our public spaces are emptied of God, or of any reference to ultimate reality. For instance when we function economically or within the sphere of politics or education, we act on standards, not from religion, but from the “rationality” or principles which are embodied in each of these disciplines. Second, secularity refers to the falling off of religious belief and practice. People no longer go to church, or it seems that way. The third concerns changed conditions of belief. The shift to secularity involves a move from a society in which belief in God is unchallenged and in most cases unproblematic to one in which it is considered as one option among others, and not the easiest option to follow. In other words, we have moved in our conditions of belief from a situation in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for a strong believer, is one human possibility among others. “Secularity in this sense is a matter of the whole context of understanding in which our moral, spiritual or religious experience and search takes place.”3 Both believers and unbelievers live in the context of secularity. Secularity is not necessarily a negative, it is simply the conditions which affect the experience of and search for the spiritual. Taylor does not agree with the popular “narrative” of the secularization theory, the rise of modernity and the inevitable decline of religion. He turns instead to the reality of religious belief in a secular context; shifting his focus from the “certainty” of the necessity of the decline of religion, to the more constructive task of offering a closer examination of the conditions of belief today. The secularization debate

Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 2–3, esp. 3.

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however is not a modern phenomenon. Rather it arose over a period of time as thinkers, over the last few centuries, wrestled with the meaning changes in society had for religion.

Max Weber and the Secularization Debate Max Weber, a nineteenth-century German sociologist, is known for his historical and sociological analysis of the development of modern society. He had a special interest in the problems and predicaments of human freedom, creativity and personal responsibility in modern life. Unlike Karl Marx, Max Weber saw alienation as part of all institutional living in modern society. By its very nature, social life imposes on those who participate in it limitations. Yet, freedom, creativity, and personal responsibility only can happen through interpersonal relations, organizations and institutional structures. Max Weber was not the only sociologist to deal with the questions of secularization, but he is of interest to this study because he specifically addresses the question of charisma.4 His study of charism and institution explores the conditions of the emergence, change and stagnation of different types of social organization and cultural creativity. Weber places his discussion of charism within a broader interest in what brings about change in a society.

Charisma and the Social Structure Charisma exists within a network of social relations; therefore Weber’s vision of society is important to understand how charism functions. Society has a center. Membership in the society involves acting with other persons located in a common environment, which affects the people within it and their participation. Membership is constituted always in relationship to the central zone. This center is not defined by geography but rather by a realm of values and beliefs, as it is the center of governance, that which protects the symbols which provide the meaning for the membership. The central zone can even appear to It is beyond the capacity of this writing to enter into the “world” of debates regarding the meaning and significance of Weber’s corpus. Rather we will simply use some of Weber’s key insights as heuristic devices to gain a better understanding of charism today in a modern setting.

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be sacred.5 As center, it affects how people act in a society. It names the structure of activities, the rules and the roles of persons within a network of institutions. It is within these rules that the values and beliefs of the people are embodied.6 Evolution in modern society stems from four interrelated factors: the increasing institutional specialization of society; the increasing rational culture of society, its increasing level of organizational scale, and finally its increasing spatial extension and consolidation.7 The function of charisma is linked to the function of the center of society: both are concerned with the order of society and the provision of some meaningful symbolic and institutional order in the midst of these changes. The charismatic intervenes in an established order to create a new one. In this sense, charisma is a stimulus of change. Charisma is defined in two different ways in Weber’s work: one focuses on power and authority in a society and the other addresses it in more general terms. The first concerns how power is allotted or legitimated in a society. Weber notes some are given authority through tradition or legal means, but others through the power of their personality. The later have charisma, rather than tradition or law, as the legitimation of their authority. In his words: The term “charisma” will be applied to a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader.8

Charisma, however, does not remain in its pure form for a long period of time: it does not remain stable, but becomes either traditionalized or rationalized, or a combination of both.9 In the second use of the term, charisma is less tied to a person, and more a force which goes against what is currently the structure. Instead of a This would be the basis of what is called “civil religion” in society today. Max Weber, On Charisma and Institution Building: Selected Papers, S. N. Eisenstadt (ed. and intro.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), xvi–xvii. 7 Walter L. Wallace, A Weberian Theory of Human Society: Structure and Evolution (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 76. 8 Max Weber, “The Nature of Charismatic Authority and its Routinization,” as cited in Max Weber, On Charisma and Institution Building, 48. 9 Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (2 vols), Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (eds) (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978), 246. 5 6

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legitimation of political authority or a quality of exceptional and extraordinary people, charisma exists in the form of an idea or belief which challenges the status quo. There can be the charism of office—the belief in the specific state of grace of a social institution; or a charismatic glorification of (an idea, for example,) like, “Reason.”10 Literally anything perceivable or conceivable by the human mind can become a charismatic object and can, in this sense, change human society.11 A group, movement, institution, entire society as well as an individual, technology, art, music or aspects of nature can take on the quality of charisma. Religion and science, economics and politics all are involved in the power of legitimation, power, or domination. However, for Weber, religion and science are distinct and rival societal ordering principles. Their significance lies mainly in their legitimation capacity, that is, how they function to hold society together. Weber, an agnostic himself, is not interested in religion per se; he is interested in what makes people act within the changed framework of modern life. Weber’s focus is the capacity of religion or science to legitimate human activities necessary for a stable social order. Weber displays his interest in religion in one of his more famous works, a study on the relationship of Protestantism and the rise of capitalism. The work analyzes how the main principles of the Protestant way of life, those which govern the actions of individual followers, furnish an impetus to the rise of capitalism.12 Weber claims that the “this-worldly” focus of Protestantism, in contrast to the “other-worldly” interests of Catholicism, provides the religious legitimation of the values of thrift, entrepreneurship and hard work, which were essential to the rise of capitalism.

Weber: Keys to the Modern Narrative Many of his interpreters find that Weber makes a major contribution to the “narrative” of modernity. He offers the cultural perception that the growth of Weber, Economy and Society, 1140, 1209. Wallace, A Weberian Theory of Human Society, 119–40, esp. 126. 11 This is in contrast to those who see charism as only possible in a pre-modern world. See Raymond Trevor Bradley, Charisma and Social Structure (New York: Paragon, 1987), 40. 12 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribner, 1958). 10



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science, among others, replaced religion as the ultimate value which grounds secular strivings and gives meaning to everything else. His references to rationalization; secularization, disenchantment, and the growing pluralism of values and beliefs express his insights into this change in society. Our brief treatment of each will offer a lens into how Weber offers keys to understand what we call modern and postmodern society today; and what light these insights offer to understanding the role of charism in the modern Church.

Rationalization Rationalization is a type of thinking used to gain a theoretical mastery of the world. A rational orientation is a formal method of matching means to ends without making a value judgment. The benefit of rationalization is it is a means to get a more precise and comprehensive sense of the world through abstract concepts. Weber asserts this process frees a person from a magical image of the world, offered by religion. Rationalization also involves the mastery of the world through the control of nature, society and individual action by orienting them to this goal through planning, technical procedures and rational action. Western societies, more than others, reflect the tendency of rationalization in their system of law, politics, science and commercial life. Because these spheres underwent the process of rationalization, the West became modernized. Rationalization uses the tool of rationality, the process by which human action is subject to the calculation of means and ends.13 Rationality is in evidence as the natural and social worlds are put under human control through calculation and technical knowledge. Human behavior is also freed by rationality from its dependence upon magical thinking as a means of understanding the world, relying instead on what is immediately given in empirical reality. Rational thinking therefore gives rise to new strategies of social action, as it adjusts means and ends of action in the attainment of goals.14 This critical

See: Stephen Kalberg, “Max Weber: Types of Rationality, Cornerstones for the Analysis of Rationalization Process in History,” American Journal of Sociology 85 (5) (March 1980): 1145–79. 14 Ken Morrison, Marx, Weber, Durkheim: Formations of Modern Social Thought (London: Sage Publications, 1995), 218–23. 13

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rational trend, expressed in varying degrees in the institutions of modern life, leads to a growing rationalization of culture and to a disenchantment of life.15

Magic, Priests and Prophets The process of rationalization occurs even in religion. Weber found in ancient Judaism two forms of religious rationalization expressed in two different approaches to religion: one of the prophet and the other, of the priest. He distinguished between magic, priestly religion and prophecy, in Judaism and Christianity to explain the meaning of these different approaches to religion. The distinction between magic, priests, and prophets became a tool to classify religions as ideal-types.16 Weber concurred with anthropologists of his day that religion developed out of magic; however, he gave the transition from magic to religion an important social meaning. Magical rites seek power over the gods to make them solve the problems of the people who invoke them. Magic turns to the gods for the sake of solving private problems. The magician strives to make the gods do what he wants through manipulation and other means. Religion is magical if, instead of aiding people to cope with changes in life and the environment, it becomes as Marx says, “an opium of the people” distracting them from the responsibilities of this-worldly tasks. Instead of dealing with problems, people rely on the gods to address them. By contrast, true religion expresses itself in order, worship and in surrender to the gods. It does not seek power over the gods to make them solve the problems of the people who invoke them; rather it creates a believing community, which in turn is enabled to deal with problems of their environment.17 Magical religious practice is irreligious; as it is superstitious. The priest, on the other hand, is the guardian of religion, and functions differently than a magician. The priest speaks in the name of the community; the magician speaks only in his or her own name, and is a person of great personal power. People trust the priest because they believe in the divine power residing in the community. In contrast, they are drawn to the special, Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds and trans.) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 155. 16 An ideal-type is a mental construct to represent a pattern of human behavior. 17 Gregory Baum, Religion and Alienation (New York: Paulist Press, 1975), 88. 15



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inexplicable power of the magician. The priest, who acts for the concerns of religion, facilitates a breakthrough. It results from the application of reason to magic, but in this case, it is the type of reason that is substantial, or focuses on the “big picture.” It is concerned less with calculating means, instead it asks “to what end?” Reason here focuses people beyond their personal lives, to the concerns of the wider community, and their place in it. This concern is necessary for survival and meeting the challenges of changes in the environment. A similar breakthrough takes place in the passage from priestly religion to the prophetic. A process of rationalization is involved, for through the prophetic message people acquire a greater sense of responsibility for their future. Weber sees the prophetic tradition as radically altering a people’s relationship to the world. “Genuine prophecy creates from within a way of life systematically oriented towards a single scale of values and in the light of such an orientation the world is regarded as a raw material to be shaped in ethical terms according to a given norm.”18 The life of men and women and the world, as well as social and cosmic events have a certain systematic and coherent meaning to the prophet. To this meaning the conduct of humankind must be oriented if life is to bring salvation, for only in relation to this meaning does life obtain a unified and significant pattern. Charism is related to this prophetic task in the Church. However, for Weber charism is a value-free term. It does not have the religious grounding we give it theologically. It refers to the superior power some persons have over groups of people. It applies to good and wicked leaders alike. Charism can be present in the magician as well as the prophet; in Hitler as well as Pope Francis. As a value-free phenomenon, Weber made charism central in his theory of social change.19 Because of the same reason, Weber’s use of charism can only be a door to its religious meaning, not identical to it. What is important to note is that for Weber the passage from magic to religion is due to the application of “reason” to social life, not necessarily due to anything qualitative in religion itself. Since people are by nature meaning-making, significant changes take place in culture and society when Max Weber, “The Prophet,” in On Charisma and Institution Building, 267. See also Carroll, Weber, Secularization, and Protestantism, 103–4. Baum, Religion and Alienation, 168.

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men and women achieve greater unification of the various aspects of their lives, combine their personal needs with the needs of the community and acquire a more integrated world view. All is involved in what he means by “rationalization.” Weber acknowledged the diverse and irreconcilable values present in society, many deserving of loyalty and admiration. He never claimed all could be brought into a single synthesis; as such pluralism and diversity is characteristic of modern society. Every development in one direction, trying to embody one ideal, would necessarily neglect another, irreconcilable with it. Ultimately each advance produces a reaction, a new movement, possibly one mediated by a religious breakthrough, that would seek to recover some of these neglected values. Weber’s depiction of the dynamism of change through rationalization, while it expresses a modern phenomenon with which we can identify, can provide insight into two aspects of the reality of charism today. First, charism is linked to the prophetic task. Theologically, charism is grounded in the prophetic function of the Church. In the documents of Vatican II, this link between prophecy and charism is made. “Because Christ is supremely Prophet (LG 35) the Church which is truly Christ continued in time and place must have a prophetic function too. Christ’s prophetic work was accomplished by his life’s witness and the power of his word. This task is shared by the hierarchy (AD 5). However it is not only through the hierarchy that Christ performs through all the ages his prophetic task. In the Decree on the Missionary Activity of the Church, it states: He uses the laity, too, and therefore he appoints them as witnesses and equips them with the discernment of faith and the grace of speech. He wants the power of the Gospel to shine through their daily life in family and society. They show themselves as sons of promise if they make the most of the present moment with strong faith and hope. … the consecrated People of God have a share, too, in Christ’s prophetic office, chiefly by spreading a live witness to him by means of a life of faith and charity, and by offering to God a Sacrifice of Praise, the tribute of lips that acknowledge his name. (AG 35)

The Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity links these gifts to the specific issue of charism. “From the reception of these charisms or gifts, including those



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which are less dramatic, there arise for each believer the right and duty to use them in the Church and in the world for the good of mankind and the up-building of the Church. In doing so believers need to enjoy the freedom of the Holy Spirit who breathes where he wills” (AA 3). As in the difference between magic and prophecy, charism clearly has the larger tasks of the community at its heart. A second point is that the reality of diversity and pluralism in modern life calls for a diversity of charisms. The presence of values, counter-values, and different priorities of emphasis, indicate that no one charism can meet the diverse needs in the church today. Sometimes the charismatic identity of groups is weakened because people try to do too much. Recognition of the diverse needs of the modern church also clarifies that people must collaborate perhaps in new ways. Modern society is pluralistic; inevitably values will be in tension. Any serious discussion of charism has to allow for this reality, and be open to options for working with it for the sake of the good of the Church.

Secularization Secularization is a process by which various sectors and society and culture are removed from the influence of religion and religious symbols, while non-religious sectors of life become central to naming the meaning of life. It is not difficult to recognize that this cultural climate is deep in the modern mindset and sets a context in which charism is expressed today.20 There is no one place where Weber defines what we call secularization; yet he analyzes aspects of its development. He argues that science replaced religion as the key force which legitimates human behavior in modern society, yet this explanation of how this occurred also points to the significance of religion in this shift. Religions were created mainly to explain why God allows evil and suffering in the world, the problem of theodicy. As the church tried to answer the question, how is human suffering compatible with a loving and just God, they employed “magical answers,” and suggested enchanted forms of action. As the church tried to meet this need for meaning, however, something important for modern life emerged. Morrison, Marx, Durkheim and Weber, 188–211.

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The inner rationalization of religious ideas about the world significantly determined the course of Western history and the Western way of life. The core of a genuine religious rationalism fulfills a need to find a metaphysical meaning for the world, in its explanation of how the various aspects of human existence interconnect into a meaning system. Without this internal evolution in the religious ideas, it would be impossible for rationality to have developed the content and technical modality that we find in science. This story, in which modern secular rationalism is traced back to its religious roots, is considered to be a main contribution of his work.21 However, Weber also found that increasing emphasis on rationality contributes to a shift in how people understand reality, which in turn leads to secularization. The process ends with the absence of all metaphysics and almost all residues of religious anchorage, marked by the absence and rejection of all non-utilitarian yardsticks.22 In modern parlance, we would say, the presence of only “bottom line” concerns. An example of this shift is reflected in Weber’s treatment of Calvinism. By applying its spirit of industriousness to the field of capitalist production Calvinism facilitated its development. One contribution to the “capitalist spirit” was the value of work for the sake of work.23 Calvinism had influence on individuals. Individuals held this religious belief in as a subjective meaning, as a way to attain salvation. Through this process, “hard work” evolved as a general norm of society, which from then on could become detached from its original religious context. Weber concluded: “Modern capitalism, once it had achieved the dominant economic form, no longer needed the vehicle of religious convictions to legitimize itself, and it could even turn against them.”24

Bureaucracy Weber’s prognosis for the future of society was not positive. He saw the future, based on increasing rationalization of all aspects of life, as one of an ever-growing bureaucracy.25 The modern search for more coordinated, Hans Joas, Do We Need Religion?, Alex Skinner (trans.) (London: Paradigm, 2008), 74. From Max Weber, Gerth and Mills (eds), 293. 23 Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. 24 Dirk Kasler, Max Weber: An Introduction to his Life and Work, Philippa Hurd (trans.) (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), 93. Weberian scholars debate this thesis. 25 For Weber on bureaucracy, see From Max Weber, Gerth and Mills (eds), 196–244. 21 22



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efficient and controlled social processes expands bureaucracies. While rationalization destroyed the authority of magical powers, it also generated the machine-like regulation of bureaucracy, which ultimately challenges all systems of belief.26 Bureaucracy is of interest to the Church because it defines the tendencies of any modern organization to become locked into its own systems. Bureaucracy is characterized by the creation of new hierarchies, multiplication of rules and legal requirements, and increasing division of competencies and corresponding separation of powers. The drifts toward rational authority observed in industrial society spread bureaucracy to all areas of social and political life. In institutions, few independent decisions could be made except by those at the very top, who would set the norms for others. His study of bureaucracy over a wide variety of cultures convinced him that the type of means-end thinking that dominated the industrialized world would transform the whole of life into “an iron cage”: human life would become dreary, flat and unimaginative, with no room for passion, prophecy or religion.27 Weber feared no inspiration would survive in modern society. Weber stands in the tradition of idealism, which is the belief that we only know things because of the meanings we apply to them.28 His interest in power and domination in society fueled his observations regarding the relationship between bureaucracy and rationalization. While rationalization freed men and woman from “magical powers,” the price of this change was disenchantment. It is to this last characteristic of modern life we now turn.

Disenchantment The “enchanted” world of the past is one in which spirits roamed and magical beliefs are a part of explanations of the world. Disenchantment is the result of the fall from grace of magic as an intellectually respectful mode of explanation of human experience and life’s events. Weber saw that the world grew more disenchanted with the development of modern capitalism and the Ibid., xxiv. Baum, Religion and Alienation, 55. The term “iron cage” is from Weber’s, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 181. 28 Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (New York: Doubleday, 1962), 387. 26 27

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rise of formal rationality, with its means and ends analysis. While the latter fosters the rise of modern institutions, it was also caught in the mechanisms of bureaucracy. Pre-modern societies were more “enchanted” than modern societies. Traditional societies or communities were smaller and more homogeneous, and embraced magic and mystery. Instead of formal rationality, calculation of means and ends, they were guided by substantive rationality, or a complex of “big picture” ideas which explained the world. Individuals and societies defined and pursued goals based on abstract teachings, not the empirical calculation of cause and effect. The ideals and ideas of religion fostered such a worldview. The change in the “enchanted” world, still alive in the Reformation, to the disenchanted one, happened with the rise of capitalism, and Calvinism’s impact on it. Even the notion of “calling” was transformed, and moved from a religious meaning to a secular one. Anthony Carroll comments that Weber’s treatment of disenchantment and the elimination of magic is vague and rather ambitious. He makes little distinction in his writing between ancient Egyptian, Babylonian magic and modern Catholic sacramental practice. All are enchanted forms of action.29 He rejects the sacramental system of the church as a mediation of salvation. According to Weber, the disenchantment of the world began in the prophetic tradition of ancient Judaism, and reached its fulfillment in Calvinism through its rejection of the sacramental mediation of salvation.30 The human mediation of salvation, in the sacraments, is magic, since it suggests that humans can influence the will of God, just as ancient magicians claimed to coerce the gods through sacrificial practice. Carroll further points out that in Calvinism the “works” of human action function only to indicate the result of being elected by God for salvation, but play no role in that election. There is a connection between disenchantment and secularization as the disenchantment of the world is also a form of secularization of human action: the separation of the sacred realm of the grace of salvation from the profane realm of human action.31 The disenchantment of the world also suggests a separation of grace from nature, which is contrary to the tradition of the Max Weber, “The Different Roads to Salvation,” in On Charisma and Institution Building, 268–78. Carroll, Protestant Modernity, 87. For disenchantment, see 87–94. Carroll, Protestant Modernity, 88.

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Church. The Greek term charis, in Latin is gratia, meaning grace. In St. Thomas Aquinas grace means God’s action in humanity leading us to union with God. Human action and divine action are not contradictory but ordered to cooperate together in living a virtuous life. Nature is “all that which is not God” yet human nature remains radically open to God.32 Charism and its tradition, as held in the church, would fall into Weber’s categorization of “enchantment,” thus unsuitable for the modern world. Other thinkers find that Weber’s thought in this area has missing pieces. Hans Joas remarks that Weber’s incorporation of charisma into his interpretation of society is not supported by a theory of action which accounts for it.33 His focus on rationality and the increasing impact of rationalization in society does not explain how charisma is possible, except through the social conditions which give rise to it. Charles Taylor charges that Weber conflates religion and enchantment which closes the door to the possibility of religion in modern form, relegating it to the realm of the magical. In his words: Once we set aside the illusion which identifies religion and enchantment, what we have to retain from this whole movement is a certain direction of transformation in religious life itself. We have moved from an era in which religious life was more “embodied,” where the presence of the sacred could be enacted in ritual or seen, felt, touched, walked toward (in pilgrimage); into one which is more “in the mind,” where the link with God passes more through our endorsing contested interpretations—for instance, of our political identity as religiously defined, or of God as the authority and moral source underpinning our ethical life.34

So Weber does not provide all we need to interpret charism in modern society, yet we can still learn from him. Non-theological sources provide us with language to speak of major cultural currents of our times, even though we differ from them. They help us to understand charism and its unique life in terms more precisely than, “like the wind,” as their capacity to pinpoint social phenomena in modern culture can be keen. For instance, Weber is clear about For a fuller discussion of the “world” in its role in the Christian life see: Judith A. Merkle, Being Faithful: Christian Commitment in Modern Society (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 22–36. 33 Hans Joas, The Creativity of Action, Jeremy Gaines and Paul Keast (trans.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Joas argues here for a model of action that emphasizes creativity, and goes beyond, yet incorporates, the two predominate models of action, rational action and normatively oriented action. 34 Taylor, A Secular Age, 554. 32

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the fact that the person with charisma is more than a magnetic personality. He or she is able to speak to the alienations experienced by others at a certain moment of time. Charisma in turn impacts institution, animating it to meet new needs, and forms an interdependent relationship with what is in place. These observations focus charism in a broad frame of social reality. Within the Church, we straddle the mystical and the concrete. We can over-estimate the significance of the institution, or identify charisma with the authenticity of the gospel, apart from the institution. Both lose sight of a relationship between charism and institution we find in the scriptures, as well as its spirit lived in the lives of countless people in the history of the Church.

The Church as Institution: In Relationship to Charism The ideas of key sociologists impacted the church of their times; as theologians wrote within the intellectual climate which they shared with these thinkers. Principles which guided sociologists, and other scientists, were incorporated into theology. Sometimes this caused tension in the Church, as the modernist crisis attests. In other cases, interaction with these ideas gave credibility to theological work and helped to create bridges with intellectual currents beyond the circles of the church. Intellectuals held in the nineteenth century that religion could be understood through the processes of positive science. One early principle of sociology is of particular interest to a study of charism and institution; that is, the premise that by study of primitive religion one could understand religion in its basic structures and the religious nature of society as well. It was common to think that only by going back to the earliest religious institutions could the nature of religious life be understood. While the Church did not hold that positive science was sufficient to understand religious reality, there were positive effects which resulted from the interaction of new sciences with theology. This intellectual climate led to a wide transformation of theological inquiry in the churches. The historical critical method was introduced in the study of scripture; better methods in historical research and anthropology and archeology were utilized in a new search for the historical Jesus. These same sciences were employed in church history, and literary criticism; while comparative



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religion methods were used to examine early Christian origins. This changed context in theology is the setting in which to understand the work of Rudolph Sohm and his impact on our inquiry into charism and institution.

Rudolph Sohm Rudolph Sohm (1841–1917), was an eminent German legal theorist. It was he, not Max Weber, who was the first to use charisma as the sociological concept. The idea that Max Weber called “charismatic authority” came from the study of Rudolph Sohm on “charismatic organizations.”35 However, Sohm’s idea was theological and Weber’s a greatly altered version of it in secularized terms. Sohm viewed the church itself as a charismatic community. He stood against the Protestant consensus in the 1880s which held that the early Church was a voluntary association in which preaching and teaching were performed by the charismatic action of apostles, prophets and teachers. Matters of administration and worship were conducted by the humanly instituted presbyters/ bishops. It held that the early local churches were autonomous and democratic, since they were voluntary associations resulting from the believers’ decision.36 There was an antagonistic Catholic-Protestant climate at this time; and this tension was illustrated in Sohm’s study of the origins of Christianity. From the Protestant view there was an attempt to show that the Roman Catholic version of Christianity was actually an illegitimate form of Christianity. The historicism of the period was used to “prove” that the forms of religious worship and fellowship must have been simpler at the time of the early church. Protestant scholars argued that these more simple approaches to Christian worship were mirrors of the reforms taken in the Reformation. The assumption was they were closer to the spirit of the gospel, than what followed in church life and practice. The superiority of what is original or primitive in defining religion certainly held sway over this debate. See Peter Haley, “Rudolph Sohm on Charisma,” in The Journal of Religion 60 (2) (April 1980): 185– 97. Also Carroll, Protestant Modernity, 185–9. 36 Enrique Nardoni, “Charism in the Early Church Since Rudolph Sohm: An Ecumenical Challenge,” Theological Studies 53 (1992): 646–62, esp. 647. 35

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Specifically Sohm believed he could demonstrate that, at the turn of the second century, the original truly charismatic church was replaced, especially through Clemens of Rome by the sacramental law of the church and its tie to the authority of the bishop.37 He saw the decline of the church linked to its institutionalization through canon law and structures of authority. This “demise” of the church happened in three phases. The original church was produced through the direct action of God in and through the charismatic gifts given to the early apostles, prophets and teachers. At this time there was no juridically constituted church. Carroll explains, “The ecclesia, the people of God, formed a type of visible church, but its visibility was directly made by God in the power of the Holy Spirit, and not by any church law.”38 The second period went from the end of the first century, when sacramental law regarding the celebration of the Eucharist was established and placed under the jurisdiction of the bishop, until the twelfth century when Gratian wrote his Decretals.39 The third period happened in the twelfth century when ecclesial law was transformed into civil law. Sohm’s core argument was that the charismatic origins of the church, evident in the early church were undermined by the development of canon law in the church. Sohm was a civil and canon lawyer, but he felt that the distinction between “law” and “spirit” evident in St. Paul had been lost in the confusion of the invisible church of Christ with the visible legally constituted body of the Catholic Church. The key point for Sohm is that the invisible nature of the church, its mystery, cannot be ruled by canon law. No visible structure or man-made institution can contain the church. Rather the true church exists in the hearts of Christians directly by the Spirit. Sohm’s work is best understood as an effort of the nineteenth-century Protestant church to recover through historicism something prior, and more pure than the Catholic Church’s claim to the originality of apostolic succession. The Catholic Church from the present back to Jesus Christ was a less pure form of Christianity in their view. What characterized the authenticity of the early church was not its laws or governance but its attention to the teaching of Jesus. This theology upheld that the threats or Kasper, The Catholic Church, Nature, Reality and Mission,189. Carroll, Protestant Modernity, 187. 39 Gratian, by writing Decretum Gratiani, is considered the father of canon law. In it, among other things, he distinguished two kinds of Christians, the clergy and the laity. 37 38



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rewards offered by law are not effective in forming Christians, better is an association in a charismatic organization, where correct action follows from having been led to see something.40 The notion of charisma is focused on the individual in Sohm’s work, as Protestant theological themes frame his thought. Individuals receive charismatic gifts, and unite to form an organization. The church is comprised of individuals through their liberty of spirit (sola scriptura), in contrast to the legality of the authoritarian Catholic tradition. Charismatic organization is contrasted to legal organization. It is not a stretch to see where Weber found the vocabulary to discuss charisma and extract it from its religious roots. To some degree we still find a suspicion of canon law, and concern it is an unne­cessary element in church life in the current culture of the Church.

Weber and Sohm As the Holy Spirit mysteriously distributes gifts of the Spirit to individuals in the community in Sohm’s work, Weber cites the secular charisma of charismatic authority appears to come “from nowhere.” Yet, different than Sohm, Weber sees the link between charism and institution as integral both to religion and social change.41 Charism is a mysterious power which attracts people to a person and makes them obedient to their will and commands. The charismatic person is experienced as someone with superior powers and in some instances, as someone having divine powers. The charismatic leader creates a community and begins a movement of people who accept his or her word and submit to their authority. To make this charism available to people living at a distance from the leader or to hand it on to future generations, the original charism is institutionalized in rites, symbols or sacred writings and ritually communicated in a group of disciples and their successors. This institutionalization of charism always implies a certain weakening or cooling of the original charism. The fervor of the beginning is lost in the next generation. Yet, the charismatic power of the founder is eventually transformed into traditional authority

Haley, “Sohm on Charisma,” 195. See also 188–9. Baum, Religion and Alienation, 167–8.

40 41

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invested in the religious institutions. Weber finds the origin of religion itself in this charismatic dynamism. History shows that what happens again and again is the emergence of new charisms: new leaders who attract others and exercise power over them. Sometimes these new charismatic movements aim at restoring or reforming the religious tradition, and at other times they break away or are forcibly excluded by the original grouping. However, what Weber offers here is a pattern in which charism is gradually institutionalized in order to have a lasting effect on others.

Patterns of Charismatic Change Charismatic authority arises because new problems and changed circumstances causes people to question traditional authority and its unquestioned existence in their sense of the order of things. The tradition is eventually challenged and people ask for change. Often this occurs through a change in laws, and new laws are accepted as people assume they have been made by others on rational grounds. This passage is often released by those with charismatic authority. Through the influence of their personal power, they succeed in leading the modification of traditional structures. However, it takes more than laws to hold a society together, something more than legal reform is necessary. A more radical questioning of society can take place through countervailing movements, some are crushed because they are unsound or based on irrational impulses, or they may be blocked by those who hold power. In other cases the impulses of a countervailing movement may be integrated into the prevailing system. At times such movements are joined by other movements which represent values which are not integrated sufficiently into a social system and yet they are needed by the society. Then a more radical cultural transformation occurs and the social order is reconstituted according to new principles. This new order may actually give rise to a new tradition, and the new society, after the revolution, may exercise power and demand obedience in the name of the traditional authority. And so history continues to change through such social action.42 Weber notes that

Weber, “The Nature of Charismatic Authority and its Routinization,” in Max Weber: On Charisma and Institution Building, 48–65.

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certain conditions contribute to the functioning of charismatic authority. There is often a crisis, and a charismatic person rises to the occasion to meet an urgent need. While the dynamic element of change in the history of institutions is understood as charismatic authority, Weber never names the source of this inexplicable power, beyond its attribution by people. The charismatic person reaches people because she or he touches people where they suffer. The charismatic person is in touch with what disturbs, wounds, or frustrates people on their life journey in a particular society. The person gifted with charism can put into words the hidden oppression from which people suffers, and when they speak people can verify the words through their own experiences. Charism cannot be acquired by intelligence and effort; it is a gift found in a person whereby he or she is able to intuit “what goes on in people behind their social façade.”43 The charismatic person, or community, gives voice to the common suffering. They articulate the alienation of the community. The authority which they hold stems from their capacity to understand and meet the misery or unfulfilled life of the many. To this they offer a new imagination by which this harm can be overcome. Rather than leading people on a road to destruction, or manipulating them for their own purposes, the charismatic person or group, like a prophet, summons people to greater self-knowledge, fosters new energy in them, and inspires them to make the changes necessary to create their world with higher ideals of justice, mercy, and equality. This is not just the world of their inner spiritual life, but that of saeculum, that is, the world that both the believer and unbeliever share.44 Weber has been called to task for separating office and charism. He incorrectly cites that the prophets of Israel were not attached to cultic offices, which were institutional legitimations of their authority.45 In the cultural imagination office and charism can appear to be opposed, so we can understand Weber’s misconception.

Baum, Religion and Alienation, 170. Weber understood the world in a material, this-worldly manner. For an understanding of the world in a theological frame see the interpretation of St. Augustine’s two cities in R. A. Markus, Christianity and the Secular (Notre Dame, IN: The University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 48. 45 Carroll, Protestant Modernity, 190. 43 44

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Charism, Office, and Institution After Sohm, both Catholic and Protestant scholars debated exactly how charism and institution marked the authenticity of the church. While the Protestant scholars stressed the charismatic nature of the Church, Catholic scholars, as well as those from the Reformed and Anglican tradition, were concerned with the institutional structure of the Church and its derivation from the apostolate instituted by Christ. In addition, they regarded charisms as secondary for the life of the Church. The ecclesiology of the first half of the twentieth century focused on the hierarchical church founded by Christ and emphasized the fundamental difference between clergy and laity. Charisms, in the Catholic Church, were regarded as secondary or transitory. This flowed from the fact that from Vatican I (1869–70) onwards, the language of charism was linked to the hierarchy and papal infallibility. The reference to charism was Christological: in instituting the church, Jesus Christ promised to assist Peter and give him the grace to do so. Pius XII in his encyclical Mystici Corporis (1943) referred to charism both as a miraculous gift given to saints and mystics, and yet it also is evidenced in gifts given to the church as a whole and thus can be found on the more general level of ecclesial life. Pius XII viewed the church as an organic body, thus the hierarchical element of the church cannot define the church as a whole. The Catholic imagination tended to see the church as either charismatic or hierarchical, focusing either on people with special charismatic gifts or on the structure of the church. In response to theological debates, Pius XII clarified that the Holy Spirit is always at work in the church—not just in the early church—distributing gifts outside the hierarchy.

Johann Adam Mohler When Pius XII presented the church as the mystical body of Christ, he was developing the theology of nineteenth-century theologian Johann Adam Mohler (1796–1838). Mohler took a different approach to the identity of the church than the post-Reformation and Enlightenment theologians before him. In the face of threats to the church from the climate of these



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periods, theologians stressed the institutional nature of the church, giving less emphasis to its spiritual nature. Mohler, in contrast, focused on the pneumatological aspect of the church. “The Church exists through a life directly and continually moved by the divine Spirit, and is maintained and continued by the loving and mutual exchange of believers.”46 Theologian Michael Himes comments on the significance of this shift. To be sure Bellarmine had written of the grace of the Holy Spirit as the “soul” of the Church. But his definition of the Church had emphasized its “body,” that is, its external nature. “Visibility,” in opposition to the Reformers “invisible” Church had been the hallmark of the Counter-Reformation ecclesiology. For Mohler, the interior life of the members of the Church generated in them by the Spirit through their participation in community with one another was the key to understanding the Church. Thus the Church was defined first of all by its “soul,” not by its “body,” ab internis rather than ab externis.47

Mohler relied on the model of a biological organism already used in the social theory of his time to show how the external forms of the church developed out of and gave expression to the growth of the community’s internal life. He traced the development of the offices of bishop, the episcopal college and papal primacy as expressions of internal needs of the community. In other words, the development of these external structures and hierarchical order were the work of the Spirit. In contrast to the view that the evolution of Church offices was a betrayal of its original charismatic identity and a sign of the cooling of its Spirit-filled identity, Mohler stressed that these offices and structures were concrete expressions of the community’s love and desire for union. These structures of the church came from the action of the Spirit through the Church’s history in contrast to the more common perception that they were the will of Christ expressed at the community’s founding. As his theology developed Mohler made the necessary step in his thought to unite his pneumatological insights regarding the church to the reality of Jesus Christ. He wrestled with the Johann Adam Mohler, Unity in the Church or The Principle of Catholicism Presented in the Spirit of the Church Fathers of the First Three Centuries, Peter C. Erb (ed. and trans.) (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 93. 47 Michael J. Himes, “The Development of Ecclesiology: Modernity to the Twentieth Century,” in The Gift of the Church: A Textbook on Ecclesiology in Honor of Patrick Granfield O.S.B., Peter Phan (ed.) (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2000), 45–68, esp. 56. 46

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question how the Spirit of God and the communal spirit in the church related and decided that he could better explain the divine and human elements in the church by offering a Christological model rather than only a pneumatological one. Just as Jesus Christ is both divine and human, he explains, “ Thus, the visible Church, … is the Son of God himself, everlastingly manifesting himself among men in a human form, perpetually renovated, and eternally young—the permanent incarnation of the same, … even the faithful are called ‘the body of Christ.’”48 Mohler stressed the visibility of the church; however, he did so, not so much defending the legitimacy of its institutional forms and offices as to draw attention to the church as the continuous presence of the incarnate Christ in history. When Pius XII drew on Mohler’s ecclesiology in Mystici Corporis he gives no clear priority to the hierarchic or to the charismatic dimensions of the church. In this he follows a shift in ecclesiology developed by Mohler. Instead of concern primarily with questions of the institutional polity or structure of the church, focus turned to treating how the charismatic and institutional nature of the Church interrelated. The Church was no longer the bearer of the mystery of faith but was itself an aspect of that mystery, as its inner nature and external mission were a dimension of the economy of salvation. Pius XII drew together the institutional nature of the church and attempts to understand the church in relation to other doctrines. He expressed the relationship of Christ to the Church beyond the neo-scholastic emphasis on Christ as the founder of an institution. His image of the Mystical Body explained the image exclusively in terms of corporate societal unity. Contemporary biblical scholarship however contributed to placing this image within a context of sacramentality. The post World War II return to Patristic sources began a revival of images of the Church which complemented both hierarchical institution and body of Christ. This led after Vatican II to attention to Church as communion. Any renewed understanding of charism today therefore cannot just focus on functions in the Church taken up by perhaps new groups, but also a renewal of spirituality, as the soul of the Church must be part of this gift of the Spirit. Johann Adam Mohler, Symbolism: Exposition of the Doctrinal Differences Between Catholics and Protestants as Evidenced by Their Symbolical Writings, trans. James Burton Robertson (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 259. As quoted in Himes, ibid.

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Pius XII’s Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943) enriched the understanding of the Church by placing it within the frame of salvation history. The recognition of the distinction between the Church and the Kingdom of God, often identified previously, caused a shift in the understanding of the Church’s mission. This entailed a refocusing of the way in which the Church’s structure was understood and gave theological basis to the emerging lay movements before and after World War II. Enriched scripture and Patristic studies drew attention to the role of the Holy Spirit and the integration of the pneumatological and Christological elements in understanding the Church. Prior to the years of Vatican II, the theme of salvation history and the image of the Church as a sacrament intertwined, preparing for the shifts in understanding the nature, mission and structure of the Church at the council. No one image of the Church can capture its nature, however, its charismatic and institutional elements are not separate and opposed.49 The Vatican II constitution on the Church taught, “the inner nature of the church is revealed to us through a variety of images” (LG 1, 6). In the post-Vatican II period, we fine that the deeper pneumatological reality of the church was echoed by John Paul II. In a 1998 address to spiritual movements and communities during the Pentecost vigil he said: “The institutional and charismatic aspects are co-essential as it were to the Church’s constitution,”50 For the church, charism is a special gift given by the Spirit to build up the Church; the notion of charism in the church, apart from the church, is a misnomer. Section 12 of the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church clarifies the embeddedness of charism in the Church. It is because people have the sensus fidei, “the supernatural appreciation of the faith,” which belongs “to the whole people,” that they share in the prophetic office of Christ (LG 12). This is not a gift given to some Christians and not to others. Charisms are presented as “special graces” that are distributed in a variety of ways to a broad spectrum of people. Albert Vanhoye, S.J. notes that in the Latin text, the word charismata is expressly applied to these “special graces.”51 These charisms range from the very remarkable to the simple and widely diffused. Karl Rahner, The Dynamic Element in the Church: (Quaestiones Disputatae No. 12) (New York: Herder and Herder, 1964). 50 Kasper, The Catholic Church: Nature, Reality and Mission, 142. 51 Vanhoye, “The Biblical Question of ‘Charisms’,” 443. 49

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The charisms are not the same as the graces that the Holy Spirit grants to the people of God “through the sacraments and the ministries of the Church”—graces of sanctification, leadership, or government, and growth in virtue. Those who have charge over the Church have a responsibility to foster charisms in the faithful: their task is to “judge the genuineness and proper use of these gifts.” They are not to “extinguish the Spirit” but to test charisms and hold fast to what is good (1 Thess. 5:12). Vanhoye argues there is a clear distinction between institution and charism in this text. We find mention of the “sacraments and ministries” on one hand, and the “special graces” or charism on the other. Charisms do not depend on the institution, they depend on the free initiative of the Spirit, in other words, the institution of the church does not create charisms; they recognize them, welcome them and integrate them into the communion of the church. The Spirit provides the Church “with varied hierarchic and charismatic gifts” (LG 4). Later in the document it states that among the various gifts of the Spirit, “the primacy belongs to the grace of the apostles to whose authority the Spirit himself subjects even those who are endowed with charisms (charismaticos)” (LG 7). The distinction which upholds the authority of those who hold office in the church, does not oppose ministries and charisms. Both have a common origin, the Holy Spirit. Vanhoye summarizes: It is the same Holy Spirit who, on the one hand, “through the sacraments and the ministries of the Church … makes holy the People,” and who, on the other, distributes “special graces” to certain members of the faithful without any necessary link to the sacraments (LG 12). Both “hierarchic” gifts and “charismatic” gifts are granted by the same Spirit (LG 4).52

It is important to recognize as we reflect on the relationship of charism and institution that charisms have a special relationship to ministries. The Council remarks, “By these gifts he makes them fit and ready to undertake various tasks and offices (opera et officia) for the renewal and building up of the Church” (LG 12). Works and offices, opera et officia, applies to a broad spectrum of activity in the church which concerns the laity and clergy alike. Those who hold official offices of the church also have charisms, and these are distinct from the sacramental grace given to those with the right disposition, Ibid., 444.

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associated with some calls in the Church. Charisms therefore are intrinsically associated with usefulness to the church and confer a readiness and willingness to undertake whatever is necessary to build up the Church in every age. The life of the whole church and its mission, from which the institution is inseparable, is the broadest context of their reception.

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Beyond Our Lights and Shadows: Community and Transformation in the Church

St. Paul referred to the division of labor in the early church as manifestations of the Spirit, or charisms. These vital functions, like teachers, prophets, and administrators, served the common good in the newly formed community. One wonders if the members of the early church had not been willing to work together to form community, if there would be a church today. Contemporary thinking on community often does not begin with St. Paul, but with the “social contract” theory, to explain life in a group. Community, or any life beyond the individual, is formed through the willingness of autonomous individuals to join together to accomplish common interests. Certainly this theory explains modern forms of democracy. Yet, some forms of community, essential to our identity, are not selected. Family, race, ethnicity, gender, and culture, are received, not chosen. We express ourselves through these identities, their symbols convey how we belong to this world, and without them our lives would be fragmented. They are part of the invisible community we take for granted, yet falls outside of a theory of choice. The study of community, especially in its transition to modernity, separates the social thought of the nineteenth century from that of the preceding age, the Age of Reason. Some reflection on community will aid our inquiry into the meaning and significance of charism.

The Nineteenth Century Ties of community-real or imagined-interpersonal, or cyber; traditional or superficial, are synonymous with a good society or neighborhood, parish,

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diocese, association or congregation. Sociologically, community is a form of relationship which is characterized by a high degree of personal intimacy, emotional depth, moral commitment, social cohesion and continuity in time.1 Contemporary authors describe community as a place of manifold engagement.2 Community focuses on the whole person, in contrast to one or another of his or her roles in society. It is an inclusive whole where people live interdependently with one another, sharing both a private and a public life. In community, one generation initiates the next into a way of life. As center of manifold engagement, community gives each member a significant place in day-to-day participation. Manifold engagement creates important bonds which tie members together. Community is also a center of moral formation and a carrier of values. Through intact communities, people learn the staying power and trust to temper themselves, to serve, to sacrifice, to lead, to observe meaning-giving traditions, to develop character, to practice decision-making, to recover from mistakes, and to forgive. We learn in community how the world works.3 Institution building, social transformation and creativity in modern society rely on community life. For these reasons, understanding charism in today’s society is inseparable from the reality of community. Nineteenth-century sociologists were interested in community because of their fascination with movement to a modern industrialized and politicized society, or the shift from traditionalism to modernism. Hegel wrote on the contrast between a “family society” and “civic society.” Marx spoke of the obsoleteness of the local and kinship institutions—others wrote longingly of the ethos of community or the “enchantment” of a previous way of life.4 Many writers articulated what they saw as the contrast between the world of the Middle Ages and the atomization and secularism of the modern period. What had reached its communal height in the Middle Ages seemed missing Robert A. Nisbet, The Sociological Tradition (New York: Basic Books, 1966), 47. Larry L. Rasmussen, Moral Fragments and Moral Community (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 139. 3 Judith A. Merkle, A Different Touch: A Study of the Vows in Religious Life (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1998), 144–9; 281–3. From the Heart of the Church: The Catholic Social Tradition (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2004), 241–65. 4 See Sara Lyons, “The Disenchantment/Re-Enchantment of the World: Aesthetics, Secularization, and the Gods of Greece: From Friedrich Schiller to Walter Pater,” The Modern Language Review 109 (4) (October 2014): 873–93. 1 2



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in modern society. The thrust of various writings on community in the mid-nineteenth century focuses on these themes: 1) the transition of Western polity from the corporate and communal to the individualistic and rational; 2) the change of Western social organization from one of ascribed status to contract; and 3) the shift of Western ideas from the sacred-communal to the secular-associational.5 Ferdinand Tonnies, (1855–1936) tried to find concepts that typified life in the two diverse environments, and create models which could serve to contrast the old order and the new society. The goal was to understand more precisely the basic effects which these social orders had on human life. Tonnies, a sociologist, named the difference between these two climates of cultural organization through a typology of community: Gemeinschaft and Gessellschaft. Weber’s concept of community built on them. Gemeinschaft is described in terms derived from family life: it is inherited, natural, and received. The existence of the relationship of family does not depend on our will, it is just there. This relationship has three pillars: blood, place (land), and mind, or kinship, neighborhood, and friendship—are all encompassed in the family, but the first is constitutive of it. Groups beyond the family share these characteristics: friendship, a community of mind and spirit based on common work or calling and thus on common beliefs. People not only hold common beliefs but hand them on by their mutual interaction and protect them by their common vigilance. Gemeinschaft is also manifested beyond the family in guilds, fellowships of the arts and crafts, churches, and holy orders. “People know themselves to be a community where each has a place of honor, where authority and inequality are accepted, and where each is deeply identified with the entire social order.”6 The “we” precedes the “I” in identity formation in Gemeinschaft. Gessellschaft reflects the modernization of society. The individual precedes the group. Deliberation and free choice determine the formation of a society, “will” creates laws and determines what function the society is to fulfill. Gessellschaft is an artificial construction, not a natural one; a rational creation which inevitably leads to competition. A marker of this social reality is the

Nisbet, The Sociological Tradition, 72. Baum, Religion and Alienation, 45.

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tension involved when individuals are focused on their own advancement and success. Some find the distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gessellschaft, is that between community and society. The social bond existing among citizens of a society is mainly legal. Activities are restricted to a definite end-means calculation, and find their legitimacy in that common actions conform to the will of its members. Sociologists often refer to the type of bond created as an associative bond, or a contractual one. “It remains external to the personality, it is experienced as a necessary burden, it is in no way an integral, taken-for-granted part of personal life.”7 The essence of Gessellschaft is based on rationality and calculation. Tonnies claims that in Gemeinschaft, people remain essentially united in spite of all separating factors, whereas in Gessellschaft they are essentially separated in spite of all the uniting factors.8 It is a mistake to assume the distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gessellschaft as absolute characteristics of actual social groupings. They represent broad strokes, ideal types; namely, social models that bring out the essential nature of two contrasting types of society. Characteristics of Gessellschaft can be found in the traditional family and Gemeinschaft elements in the modern corporation. Nor is it correct to associate values and morality with Gemeinschaft and moral decay and callousness with Gessellschaft. Without Gessellschaft with its intellectual and social elements much of modern culture could not have arisen. The city is the center of Gessellschaft, as it is also the center of science, arts, culture, books, and commercial law. Modern society is a paradoxical situation where progress, refinement, improvement, fairness, reason and enlightenment stand side by side with the decay of life and mores; political success, capable administration and efficient and liberal jurisprudence co-exist with inequality and disparity in access to the means of justice, health, and education.9 Furthermore, while Gemeinschaft created the conditions where conscience can be developed, a strong identification with a tradition and its values, as well as a common life to promote the practices to integrate these values, Gessellschaft fostered a new thinking self. The inwardness of people living in Ibid. 46. Ferdinand Tonnies, Community and Society, Charles Loomis (ed. and trans.) (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1963), 64. 9 Nisbet, The Sociological Tradition, 77–8; Tonnies, Community and Society, 202. 7 8



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Gessellschaft is “consciousness”: or the thinking self, separated from others and from its own vital functions. The self finds itself standing over against the world, other people, and even its own bodily presence, and is capable of submitting all of these to a critique.10 Distinct from conscience, a product of natural will, Tonnies saw consciousness as the freedom of the rational will in its highest expression. It implied self-criticism, a self-reflection that turns against one’s personal blunders, as much as conscience critiques one’s moral faults. Modern consciousness involves a self-definition as a thinking self over against the rest of reality. Tonnies was aware that the glamour of Gemeinschaft could be hijacked; a longing for home could create some false representations of it. He lived long enough to hear the doctrines of the sanctity of community based on race and nation broadcast across Europe in Nazi doctrines. By 1935 he may have observed in some modern societies the effort to recover Gemeinschaft-type processes like human relations, social security, job insurance in their corporations, governments, and public and private enterprises to provide some communal securities in a Gessellschaft environment coping with the Depression. Certainly the rise of human rights in the years following his death, and their impact of international law, was an expansion of the intuition of a Gemeinschaft environment, to encompass the value of human dignity in the modern Gessellschaft world. The importance of Tonnies’ work among sociologists is that he considered community, not as a dependent variable in the development of modern society, but gave it an independent, even causal status.11

Max Weber and Community Max Weber essentially followed Tonnies in his analysis of society, and advanced his thinking. For Weber, all the institutions of modern life were impacted by an increasing “rationalization” of culture and to a consequent “disenchantment of life.” Loss of a sense of community is a factor in disenchantment.

Baum, Religion and Alienation, 53. Nisbet, The Sociological Tradition, 78.

10 11

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Community, for Weber, is a key factor in social change. Community both sustains institutions, and plays a part both in their “destruction” and renewal. The contrast between the routine of institutions and the dynamic quality of charism and charismatic activities is not as extreme or total as one may assume; there is no total dichotomy between them. In a crisis, the difference between orderly institutional life and the innovative but destructive–constructive potentials of charismatic activity can appear stark. However, even in these situations, there is never a total charismatic situation or traditional one; there is always an element of what existed before integrated into the new. The transformation of a charismatic upsurge and vision into some continuous social organization and institutional framework is an important first step in the routinization of charism. A charismatic personality is ineffective if he or she does not in some way have a “carrier” to assure some continuity of an innovation into the future. The real integration of the values of the charismatic personality happens in community, as it is a framework where patterns of practice can “carry” a meaning system and express it in a practical manner. This does not have to mean the charism is weakened, flattened or so watered down that it becomes unrecognizable in the process. Charism can also be carried through office. Through charism of office the charismatic characteristics are transferred from the unique personality or the unstructured group to orderly institutional reality.12 The test of a charismatic leader lies not only in his or her capacity to create an effective movement or transforming event, but also in his or her ability to leave a continuous impact on an institutional structure. The mediating social groupings between the individual and organization are communities or movements. Charisma of office, of kinship, of hereditary charisma or of contact charisma are ways the charismatic personality transforms any institutional setting by bringing to it some of his or her charismatic vision. This vision, to have a transforming charismatic effect, must touch the regular, orderly offices, and other aspects of the social organization with charismatic qualities. Community is not synonymous with this effort, but is integral to it, since the communal exists over time. Weber, specifically addressing community, points to two basic types of relationships which can exist in the same social structure, as well as in society. S. N. Eisenstadt, “Introduction,” in Max Weber: On Charisma and Institution Building, xxi.

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The communal goes beyond the pursuit of immediate common ends, lasts for long periods, involves relatively permanent social relationships between the same persons, and is characterized by activities which are more than technically necessary ones.13 The communal relationship is also characterized by the subjective feeling of the parties, whether affectual or traditional, that they belong together.14 A communal relationship is not one in which people act from expediency, or exploit the relationship for personal ends. Weber does admit however that most relationships are mixed. Even in a family, there can be a genuine community of interests, as well as a type of “using” the family for one’s own ends.15 An associative relationship, on the other hand, is closer to one of expediency. In the latter, people act and adjust their interest based on a rationally motivated agreement, either based on shared values, or reasons of expediency. The associative type of relationship often rests on mutual consent. People enter into these agreements because it is reasonable, both to hold it and to enter into it, and it is also rational to expect the other party will live up to it.16 Communal or associative groups can also be “open” or “closed” in regard to outsiders. Here community is related to identity and status. Groups have emotional, economic, tradition-based or other calculative reasons to be open or closed to others. A relationship is “closed” against outsiders if participation of certain persons is excluded, limited or subjected to conditions. There can be various motivations for groups to be open or closed to others. Expediency seems to be a major one. If the expectations of a group of improving their position are better served by monopolistic tactics, their interest will be in a closed relationship. A communal relationship, based on tradition or kinship, tends to be more closed. Once a relationship becomes associative—the product of interest or volition rather than tradition or kinship—it is more difficult to enforce the criteria of closure. While sociologists of this period used different terms, they conceptually distinguish these two forms of human community and Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organizations, A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons (trans.), Talcott Parsons (ed.) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), 137. 14 As quoted in Max Weber: On Charisma and Institution Building, “Charisma and Social Relations,” 9. 15 Nisbet, The Sociological Tradition, 80–2. 16 Max Weber: On Charisma and Institution Building, “Charisma and Social Relations,” 10. 13

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their needed balance in human life. They also agreed that the institutional stability of the second form, more loosely connected, had to be deeply rooted in the continuation—in one form or another—of the first, the communal. The replacement of one by the other—what some saw as a solution—would create a sociological monstrosity.17

Community, Charism, and Church The terms open and closed, communal and associative stir our imaginations to consider community today. The community of the Church, and its importance to a life of faith, is a large question today. The necessity of the Church, its credibility, and its basis always requires an explanation which makes sense to people in new contexts. Vatican I, inferring the transcendence and divinity of the Church, claimed it was a basis for its own credibility, a sign raised among nations, a “moral miracle” in itself.18 A church shrouded in mystery, filled with saints, and centralized in an absolute papal monarchy vested itself with a mystery which became more difficult to convey in the twentieth century world. The Second Vatican Council “opened the windows” of a closed church, and released the Church from this posture in the modern world. Expressions of charism however are impacted by the spirit in which the Church explains itself. The first generated a style of being removed from the world, yet active in the world. This was done mainly through the cultures of religious orders. By the mid-twentieth century the second posture was already stirring. Lay associations and institutes became more visible, renewal movements in the Church stirred new life, their insights caught hold in communities, and the church itself was ready for a new adaptation to a postwar society. At Vatican II, the dimension of the church as “sign” in the spirit of Vatican I shifted to a focus on the sacramentality of the church, in which the whole church, as an ecclesial body is approached as a single complex reality (LG 8). This reality is both visible and spiritual. More important for our understanding Nisbet, The Sociological Tradition, 85. See also Benedict XVI, Caritas et Veritate (Vatican City, Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 2009.) Pope Benedict argues that the current international economy cannot survive based on cost-benefit calculation alone. Other non-economic values must intervene which respect the need for solidarity in the human community in overcoming scarcity. Pope Francis calls on the same principle regarding economic activity which ignores its cost on the environment, especially the human effect on climate change (L.S.). 18 Salvador Pie-Ninot, “Church IV: Via Empirica,” in Sacramentum Mundi, Vol. 1, 170–2. 17



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of charism, the verification of the church as “sign,” is concentrated more in the category of witness. Personal and communal witness by its members is an ecclesial sign of credibility. Instead of a focus on the miraculous attributes of the Church, signs of the power of God, sign in Vatican II is personalized, at a fundamental level, in the witness of its members. Interpretation of charism follows this shift in the understanding of the church at Vatican II in four ways.19 1) Focus shifts from attention to God’s power through miraculous deeds, to attention to God’s presence and call which invites human beings to conversion. God’s power is demonstrated in the transformation which occurs in the lives of the People of God. 2) Witness to God is not done in isolation; it is done in the community of the Church. The institution saves freedom from its own inherent weaknesses, and the ecclesial institution identifies and integrates the witness of its members, into a liberating sign of the Spirit and of its prophetic visibility. 3) The starting point for the identity of the church is no longer the church’s glorious attributes, but its paradoxes. Charism becomes an aspect of the human search for meaning amid the complexities of a life journey and complex society. One can look at the church, its communities and oneself, all with lights and shadows, and not find “evidence” of perfection, but enough reasons to arrive at an adequate moral certitude for a prudent decision for commitment. 4) The traditional “notes” of the church, as one, holy, catholic and apostolic is joined by the “notes” of a contemporary Christian life of its members. This life becomes a sacrament and sign of the Church, and of the gospel. Some “notes” of Christianity are: doctrinal consistency; Catholicity (universality), visualization of love; perception of community; Eucharistic dimension; commitment to liberation; openness and ecumenical dialogue; and seeing the Church as a sign of the reign of God. These shifts offer to the interpretation of charism in the life of a community a different yardstick of authenticity.

Church as Communion Communio ecclesiology, a hallmark of Vatican II, grounds the identity of the Ibid., 171. I interpret insights given regarding the Church in their significance for charism.

19

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Church in the image of the Trinity, in the inner relationship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Relationship is key to the identity of the church. John Paul II once said that “the Church as mystery” is “a mystery of Trinitarian communion in missionary tension.”20 By missionary tension he means, that the communion of the church, is one that includes its “open” dimension, going out to the world for its salvation. The Church itself is a sacrament of salvation, a sign and instrument, of communion. It is a sign of God’s love for humanity. The Church also goes out to gather in, in community, marked by the Eucharist. “Eucharistic ecclesiology flows from this, meaning, the church is wherever and whenever the Eucharist is celebrated.”21 The church is therefore an evangelizing communion, a community with an identity in mission as well as formed in Eucharistic communion. Attention to the role of the Holy Spirit and the diversity of charisms in the Church is a good lens to examine the Church as an institution. Thomas Aquinas remarked that instead of saying, we believe in the church, it is better to say, we believe in the Holy Spirit who sanctifies the Church.22 To believe in the Spirit and not in the Church is out of harmony with what is said in the creed. There, the confession of the “one, holy Church” stands within the context of, “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” Since the Spirit is at work in the whole world, and the church has no monopoly of the Spirit, the Church has to be open not closed to the world, to see signs of the Spirit’s activity. The Council states that the Church “tries to discern in the events, needs, and the longings which it shares with other people of our time, what may be genuine signs of the presence or of the purpose of God” (GS 11). This is not just a task for those with official ministries in the church; it is a call to all the faithful. “With the help of the Holy Spirit, it is the task of the whole people of God, particularly its pastors and theologians, to listen to and distinguish the many voices of our times and to interpret them in the light of the divine Word, in order that the revealed truth may be more deeply penetrated, better understood, and more suitably presented” (GS 44). For those who desire to follow a charism in the Church, these general admonitions to the Church are directional. A second lens to see the Church is to take to heart the perspective that Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation, Pastores Dabo Vobis (1992), n.12. Kasper, The Catholic Church: Nature, Reality and Mission, 21, see also 22–3. ST. II–II q. 1, a. 9.

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relation itself is a key to understanding reality. The Church’s identity is seen, not as clearly in itself, as it is in dialogue with others. The desire to identify the Church through its relationships may be behind the interest in communio to characterize the church. When People of God was used to describe the Church at Vatican II, it pointed to the fact that God calls people to salvation, as individuals yet not apart from a relationship in community. God calls and sanctifies people as a community (LG 9). The term People of God also signaled that the council shifted in their understanding of the church, from identifying the church with its hierarchical constitution, to a broader concept, the People of God, which embraces all members of the Church, including the hierarchy as well as the laity. Why is the shift to an emphasis on communion significant today? First, it gives a new focus on the local church, or the particular church. This allows acknowledgement of the reality of diversity, of inculturation and need for decentralization in the church today. Theologian Susan Wood speaks of the Copernican Revolution this marked in the church; as before the Council, a strong theology of the universal Church dominated. The pre-council understanding held the local church as an entity which gravitated around the universal church. The new insights of the council indicate how the Church of God is found present in each celebration of the local church.23 The council retrieved an understanding of the universal Church as the sum and communion of the local churches, as well as rediscovered the universal Church in the local church. The universal Church needs expression in particular churches and particular churches cannot forget their relationship to the church as a whole universally. Communion ecclesiology develops from the two biblical meanings of koinonia: “the common participation in the gifts of salvation won by Jesus Christ and bestowed by the Holy Spirit” and “the bond of fellowship or the community of Christians that results from our union with God.”24 There is a vertical dimension, a graced union with the life of the Trinity in their quality of loving relations, and a horizontal aspect, the companionship and relationship members have within the concrete Christian community. The sacraments

Susan Wood, “The Church as Communion,” in The Gift of the Church, 159–76. Patrick Granfield, “The Church Local and Universal: Realization of Communion,” The Jurist 49 (1989): 451.

23 24

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and Eucharistic communion are the source of the first.25 Organizational structure and the companionship characteristic of church members are seen as secondary within communion ecclesiology. The horizontal dimension provides a vision of governance as churches in union with other churches, with the Church as a communion of particular churches. The tension between the local, or particular and universal Church is reflected in different visions of the church today.26 Some advocate for an imagined unity, which translates into a stifling unity, suggested to them in the image of the universal church; others so focused on local realities, that union with the universal church seems ancillary and perhaps optional. This is also seen in the eclipse in the sacramental and Eucharistic church in the imagination of contemporary members, thinking membership in the church is simply a task of self-identification or inner consciousness, and not necessarily marked by ecclesial liturgical practice or acceptance of any content of belief.27 A theology of charism navigates all these cultural waters and anchors itself in a sense of the whole church as expressed by the council.

Structures of Communion When we think of community in modern society, we often begin in our imaginations with the isolated individual who selects when and how to bond with others. The cultural presence of such an individualistic understanding of the human person contributes to why church can appear to be an option, not a necessity in spirituality. Sociologist Robert Bellah claims that American individualism is so key in our social imagination that it is difficult for Americans, to even conceive of “the communal.”28 Theologian Shawn Copeland goes another step and draws a connection between an individualistic culture and the incapacity to be a more open church and

Wood, “The Church as Communion,” 160. Edmund Hill, O.P., “Church,” in The New Dictionary of Theology, 185–201. See: Jerome P. Baggett, Sense of the Faithful: How American Catholics Live Their Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 28 Robert Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). By extension and in different degrees, this can be said of other first world countries. 25 26 27



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society. She charges that accepted standards of racism, sexism, and classism undermine people’s ability to think and feel and thus dim the public vision of a wider public good or steps needed to form a more inclusive and open community.29 If however, the person is “not the primordial fact. What is primordial is the community” then by extension, charism cannot be understood simply as personal.30 Charism is more than something the individual decides to use or not. Rather it is a reality beyond the individual which involves a calling. Such a calling needs a community to recognize and integrate the gift which has been offered. The call to communion in the Church places the need to recognize new charisms as more than a juridical decision for or against inclusion; rather it is an expression of the transformative nature of the church, a sign of its own creative fidelity. The church is more than one of many modern institutions which needs to adapt to a post-industrial age and a global society and diversify. There is a greater transformation than good organization, which Christian faith holds out, the raising of human life to the divine.31 This perspective of sharing in the agape of God enlarges the horizon beyond whatever is normally understood as human flourishing, even of an organization. It calls the church and its communities to more, and response to this call is a witness to God among us. The framework of particular and universal church allows the discernment of charism and the responsibility for its recognition, to the bishop, the heart of the particular church, on behalf of the whole church. At the parish level, it is the role of the priest and the pastoral team, to incorporate the gifts of the parishioners into the local community. However, at the present time, the charisms of the laity, called forth by Vatican II, can easily be lost or forgotten because the identity of the laity is vague and anonymous structurally in the church. Religious congregations and movements, furthermore, have other difficulties regarding the identification of charisms. Some identified their charisms in periods of the church, Anne E. Patrick, Liberating Conscience (New York: Continuum, 1997), 222. Michael Paul Gallagher, S.J., Faith Maps: Ten Religious Explorers from Newman to Joseph Ratzinger (New York: Paulist Press, 2010), 69. 31 Taylor, A Secular Age, 737. 29 30

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according to models of its mission, which are no longer dominant in the church–world relationships; or, works which were once adopted are carried out by other agencies and more critical works need to be examined. Each segment of the Church contributes to its communion as it addresses the issues which are its own.

Charism and Community: The Challenge The dynamic of the Church’s capacity to be open or closed to the movement of the Spirit in its midst can be highlighted by both sociology and theology. Max Weber, Bernard Lonergan and Karl Rahner offer insights which point to three different but subtle dynamisms of creativity and stagnation which are at work in human community. Models of thinking coming from ecology also provide images of energy, as a form of the Spirit, and its delicate balance in human community. Creation-centered thought fosters awareness of how the Spirit illumines the church “at the right time” and the role of charism in the transformative power of the church. A look at these insights can further our understanding of charism and its dynamic in the Church and society.

Weber Weber held that the end result of the process of the rationalization of society was bureaucracy. The markers of bureaucracy are not attractive if they are applied to communities in the Church. Bureaucracy arose as an aspect of modern life because such organization made it possible for an official to regulate matters abstractly on a large scale. The underlying administrative rules of this type of organization are quite general. People outside the bureaucracy are treated not as individuals whose unique situations must be dealt with case by case, but rather as members of categories. The typical bureaucrat is supposed to be impartial and disinterested. One is trained for an office, and such an official attains an elevated social esteem by virtue of his holding office. A steady wage and tenure, or job security is ensured, as an office is linked to a certain status in the organization. Modern bureaucracy presupposes a money



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economy. The increasing expansion of bureaucracy in modern society may be accounted for by both the quantitative and qualitative development of administrative tasks.32 Weber noted that the advance of bureaucratic organization happened because of its purely technical superiority over any other form of organization. Precision, speed, unambiguity, knowledge of the files, continuity, discretion, unity, strict subordination, reduction of friction and of material and personal costs, these are raised to the optimum point in the strictly bureaucratic administration.33 Once such bureaucratic structures are established, they are practically indestructible. Bureaucracy is a power instrument for those who occupy its command posts. It facilitates the domination and control of large numbers of people. The vested power interests in it, the social control and discipline it facilitates, the specialization of work and the accompanying requirements of expertise—all of these factors make the dismantling of bureaucracy extraordinarily difficult.34 The church, as modern organization, has the potential to become a bureaucracy; the same is true of its communities. The Church in a global society can never return to the simplicity of the household churches of New Testament times. However, the benefits and order of a large modern organization, which the church adopts to be effective in the modern world, can be tempered and balanced through the development of its identity as communion. Data on the bureaucratic “drift” inherent to modern organization warns us it is an illusion to think that church renewal magically will be accomplished through the integration of the non-ordained into governance. The reality of bureaucracy is a dynamic which is transpersonal. The mere structure and routine of bureaucratic organization creates pressures which can militate against the capacity of communities in the church to be effective: whether an ordained, lay or religious takes over.35 Bureaucratic atmospheres also create a work culture which is not attractive to healthy and creative individuals in any vocation in the Church. Charism today has the challenge to not only engage in service for Irving M. Zeitlin, Ideology and the Development of Sociological Theory (Englewood, NJ: PrenticeHall, 1981), 164–7. 33 Weber, Economy and Society, 973. 34 Zeitlin, Ideology and the Development of Sociological Theory, 167. 35 This insight however does not contradict the awareness that positions of authority within the church which do not require ordination should be opened to other members of the faithful. 32

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the church, but to carry out one’s office well in the complex ecclesial cultures of today. Rather than an “iron cage” of bureaucracy, the charismatic dimension of the church can foster the hope that these tendencies can be identified and overcome, and the communal identity of the church fostered, in the midst of what requires at times large-scale management. Charismatic life in the Church today is challenged to contribute to this transformative practice.

Lonergan Bernard Lonergan brings another piece to the puzzle of the communion of the Church, attention to bias as an obstacle to progress, and energies to overcome it. Throughout his work, he utilizes the paradigm of human progress, decline and redemption as a framework for understanding human life. These principles are at work in the life stories of individuals, groups and the flow of human history itself. He presents his notion of bias, in light of these broad strokes of human experience. Bias is a source of community breakdown. For Lonergan, progress happens through intellectual development. As the human intellect moves from what it knows partially, to greater knowledge and more informed action, progress occurs. A negative movement to such progress is introduced through sin; human beings are “originators” of what disrupts God’s intentions for good order in the universe. Sin accounts for decline. In face of the reality of sin, the third movement is redemption: God’s victory over sin and the process which restores the order destroyed by sin.36 Decline is caused by alienation and the ideology which supports it. Human beings refuse self-transcendence and adopt reconstructed “reasons” or ideology which upholds their refusals. Key to genuine human progress for Lonergan is attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and responsible cooperation, not only of an individual, but in ever-expanding and complementary networks of community. Key to decline is the repression of such cooperation and community. The repression of the desire to know, to raise relevant questions, to try to understand something as completely as possible, is the foundation of bias. Bernard Lonergan, “The Human Good as Object: Differentials and Integration,” in Topics in Education: The Cincinnati Lectures of 1959 on the Philosophy of Education. Robert M. Doran and Frederick E. Crowe (eds), Vol. 10 of CWL (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 49–78, esp. 49ff.

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Bias is rooted in the failure to allow free rein to the human drive to understand. Within every person and group, the drive to understand can create progress. However, bias undercuts this drive by censoring the questions which could facilitate correct judgments. While there is always a tension of community in the interaction among members and their different approaches to problem-solving, when there is a “repression of one or the other,” then the tension is no longer creative but destructive.37 Bias can be pre-dispositional and prejudicial; as the blocking of intelligent inquiry is not always conscious. Lonergan thinks such tendencies can be corrected; which separates him from Marx, Freud and others who found the pathologies of the modern human condition less penetrable. While he acknowledged the flight from human solidarity and understanding in society, he rejected that repression, alienation, inhibition or domination were such total states that they could not be transformed. The analysis of these negative states provides some empowerment to transform them. Community is key to the transformation of society, but healthy community involves the choice of freedom to use the four recurrent operations of human consciousness. These operations do not force us to be attentive, intelligent, reasonable, or responsible; each requires freedom. Personal freedom operates within a matrix of social relations and in terms of a scale of preference of values.38 Community involves relationships alive with feelings: common or opposed feelings about values and preferences, mutual feelings regarding the quality of relationships in the group.39 All human cooperation is alive with the desires and feelings which are intentional responses to values. Institutions are not machines that run independently from human agency. Institutions are made up of living human beings. Institutions change as the ways in which the human cooperation constituting them changes. A community is not just a number of people within a geographical frontier. It is an achievement of common meaning at different levels of meaning. Common meaning is realized by decisions and choices, especially by permanent dedication, in the love that makes families, in the loyalty that makes states, in the faith that makes religions. Community coheres or divides, begins or ends, The Desires of the Human Heart, Vernon Gregson (ed.) (New York: Paulist, 1988), 270. He distinguishes between vital, social, cultural, personal, and religious values. Ibid., 264. Lonergan, Method in Theology, 50.

37 38 39

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just where the common field of experience, common understanding, common judgment, common commitments begin and end. People are conceived, born and reared within communities. It is through communities and the available common meanings that the individual grows in experience, understanding, judgment, and so comes to find out for herself or himself and decide who they are to become.40 The handling of bias either builds up or tears apart a community. The substance of community is beyond feelings. People are joined by common experience, shared insights, similar judgments of fact and value, by parallel orientations in life. They are separated and estranged, even hostile, when they are out of touch, misunderstand one another, make contrary judgments or opt for contrary social goals. Personal relations in a community vary from intimacy to ignorance, from love to exploitation, from respect to contempt, from friendliness to enmity. They bind a community together, or divide it into factions, or tear it apart.41 Bias is the rejection of unwanted insights, the refusal to ask further questions, which can advance understanding, judge truthfully and respond to values. The standards which bond a community can be subverted by bias. This basis can be the egotistic disregard of others, or a loyalty to one’s own group fed by hostility to other groups.42 The group might focus only on short-term benefits, overlooking long-term costs. Lonergan comments that what often passes as “common sense” in community is often blind to “the mixture of common nonsense in its more cherished convictions and slogans.”43 Intelligence is key to turning away from the breakdown of community, as intelligence seeks correctly how and why human cooperation and community fails. Intelligence is operative in the common sense of the community; it is only a bias when its legitimate concern for the concrete and the practical moves toward a disregard of larger issues and indifference to long-term results. This incapacity is not just a lack of ability, it is a refusal. It is a rejection of the objectivity which comes with intelligence, and of a criterion, or point of reference to judge progress or decline. Lonergan, Method in Theology, 79. Ibid., 51. 42 See Merkle, Being Faithful, 147–72, for an analysis of a type of group which can ground its identity in negativity toward others. 43 Lonergan, Method in Theology, 53. See also Insight, 218–42 for a more detailed description of bias. 40 41



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Group bias is especially important to detect in a community because it can pass as good order. When confronted with change, a group can either adapt or withdraw into a “closed” posture of self-preservation. Blind spots surface as a group struggles to maintain its usefulness and its advantage before significant evidence to the contrary. A dynamic of maintaining the group for its own sake takes over, often fed by those for whom the status quo provides power and status. Lonergan sees a possible self-corrective to this situation in the very conditions which created it. Ultimately the distortions created indicate clearly that the group is destined for defeat. Group bias itself creates its own ultimate reversal. Neglected ideas surface and those capable of realizing those ideas are given power. Regardless of the previous situation, a new movement occurs in the group. In contrast, the general bias of common sense tends to be more pervasive, deeper and insidious, than group bias; and generates a longer cycle of decline. Lonergan does not see modern society with its markers of industrialization, urbanization and bureaucratization as the graveyard of community. A mentality like the above can render community as increasingly impossible in the modern age, and obstruct a way forward to a transformative outcome. The modern breakdown of community expressed in class oppression, racism, sexism and militarism, is rooted in the “dialectic of community.” Community is the correlative to conscious intentionality; there is no way that alienation, repression and social oppression can completely extinguish community. Just as there is a constructive positive function within the human psyche which fosters insight and understanding, there is also a positive constructive function within the tension of community whereby creativity and community progress.44 The tension of community is the social expression of conscious intentionality, which can generate reversals of individuals and group bias. This happens when other individuals or groups take up the questions, insights, and See Hans Joas, Creativity of Action, Jeremy Gaines and Paul Keast (trans.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Joas argues that the two prevailing models of action; i.e. rational and normatively oriented action need a third model, one which emphasizes the creative character of human action. This third model overarches both the others rather than drawing attention to an additional type of action. He argues there is a creative dimension to all human action—a dimension which is inadequately expressed in the models of rational or normatively oriented action. Lonergan’s description of the dialectic of community seems akin to Joas’ project. In terms of the focus of this study, it also describes the charismatic quality of community.

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issues repressed by the dominant individual or group. Just as consciousness is a complex movement of desire through feelings and images, insights and judgments, to decisions and actions, so community is the cooperative search arising from common experiences, seeking common meanings, truth and values.45 Communities of families, kin and clan evoke over time more intentional civil community. The personal and communal are therefore intrinsically related. Community is generative, not only of feeling and desire, but also of intelligence and goodness. All concretely existing social institutions, insofar as they express attentively intelligent and responsible cooperation, are generated by communities. Human society cannot function without it. Community, like human consciousness, does not guarantee intelligence, goodness or holiness; nor are they neutral playing fields. Community is not indifferent to choices between good and evil, truth and falsity. Conscious living can be marked by inattentiveness as well as attentiveness, stupidity or intelligent inquiry, unreasonable outbursts along with reasonable exchanges, irresponsibility or the responsible decision-making of a moral community. There exists no comprehensive theory which can analyze the source of all these breakdowns of community and the resulting alienation. However, communities themselves, and the desire for community, can bring analysis to their situation, and seek the type of conversation which leads to progress rather than to decline. All development involves tension between the limitations of present achievements and going beyond them to new achievements. When we acknowledge this tension, we take the first step toward the harmonious cooperation which we seek. Lonergan differs from social theorists who predict there will be inherent antagonisms between the human person and their desires and wants and the rational demands of advanced industrial society.46 These other theories give rise to predictions of conflict, which legitimize control, domination and a type of authoritarian rule as the only alternative to chaos or anarchy. Instead, for Lonergan, the radical tension of community is a positive dynamism natural to human life, where practical intelligence comes up with new possibilities, new skills, new insights, new tools, and new ways of cooperating to adapt to changing times and achieve the human good. While these new ways of living

Gregson (ed.), The Desires of the Human Heart, 264. Gregson (ed.), The Desires of the Human Heart, 267.

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and acting stand in tension with old routines and patterns, even in complex and specialized human institutions they are products of human communal cooperation, whether for good or ill.47 Social cohesion based on violence, force, constraint or militarism reflects blindness and fear, not a way forward. Genuine social power based on authority and community is different than dominative power and authoritarianism which reflect the alienations of modern society not the forces of its transformation. We can see these dynamics of community at a practical level in the remarks of Walter Kasper. He indicates that in his diocese of Rottenburg– Stuttgart there are approximately a thousand parishes. There he encounters priests, laity, individuals in religious orders, ecclesial associations and new movements, people who are leaders in their communities and people on the margins—immigrants, disabled, homeless, drug addicts, and prisoners. Here the Church is concretely present as the People of God. A communio-ecclesiology has to pass the concrete test of experience.48 What a communio-ecclesiology means in practice has to be interpreted in its meaning in pastoral care. What is a legitimate, and a misled interpretation? Kasper notes the debates which surround the indispensable role of priestly ministry in the parish and for the parish, the place of post-conciliar councils, identity of those who serve in church institutions, cooperative pastoral care, who can preach at the Eucharist, the position of pastoral assistants; as well as the relationship between the local and universal church; between the magisterium and theologians; and the question of gender and ordination. Beyond these questions of community is the larger issue for the interpretation of charism today, what type of witness should be given? Is the church simply to be a more human bureaucracy? Is it only to be a prophetic challenger in political affairs? As a community, is its role to be a center of social service, or a place where one can get a quality education? In other words, there are conflicting images of what the Church is; which have to be faced by those who interpret charism today. While the above roles are important, they are exchangeable and replaceable with other communities in society. As roles in society they do not exhaust the identity of the church or speak entirely to what

Lonergan, Insight, 477–8; 627–9. Kasper, The Church: The Catholic Church: Nature, Reality and Mission, 23–4.

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the church can do. If the Church is to be a sign of the Kingdom of God in a culture where God can seem to be unnecessary, the renewal of the church, and the retrieval of the significance of charism, cannot simply be one of organization, it also must involve a spiritual renewal.49 Theologian James Cone remarks that religion must be able to point to something in its living that is not simply a religious legitimization of the values of a society in which it lives.50 For Lonergan, it is the law of the cross which is the conduit of a transcendent witness. Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection do not make the massive histories of suffering intelligible or meaningful in themselves. But the paschal mysteries transform the dialectic of community by heightening human awareness of the sufferings and needs of humankind. These wounds can only be healed by a living faith, hope and love attentive to the mystery of God calling each human being into union with the Triune God. The church as communion, therefore, is more than its horizontal witness, while at the same time this witness is indispensable to express, not only the credibility of the Church, but the Kingdom of God through its call to be a transformative community, in worship, prayer and transformative action. At times this transformative action shares in the cross of Christ, as it embraces the dialectic of community and the conversion from various expressions of bias.51 The church, while not the Kingdom of God, witnesses to it; as the essence of the church is an eschatological sign of the Kingdom of God (LG 48). As this sign, the identity of the church is more than yet inseparable from its presence as an institution, a community and an event. In being Church in this way, the Church safeguards the transcendence of the human person (GS 76). Redemptive praxis is therefore the mission and task of the Church, and the focus for an interpretation of charism today.

Rahner The Church functions as a community among the communities of the world, For how “charismatic” communities of the church contribute to its renewal see Sullivan, Charism and Charismatic Renewal, 81ff. James E. Cone, Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation and Black Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1986), 118. 51 J. M. R. Tillard claims that the new way of the Christian life, “exists in the space opened by Christ on the cross,” and this space is the ecclesial body. See Flesh of the Church, Flesh of Christ: At the Source of the Ecclesiology of Communion (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2001), 11. 49

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knowing it is a pilgrim church (LG 48). The Church is always in need of reform and renewal. Rahner contributes a third insight to our reflection on community, a commentary on the reality of sin in the Church. Because the church has its identity rooted in its God-given holiness, it can easily confuse this essential identity and the fact, that it too, is sinful. The recent sexual abuse crisis, frequent media coverage of the “sins” of the Church from the Vatican and across the world, teaches how destructive it can be to protect an unreal image of the church. The church does not sin, as church; rather the sinfulness of its members participates in the ecclesiality of the community and to some extent compromises the church’s mission.52 Communities in the church, are not just horizontal communities, rather they share in the communio which is the church. Our imaginations drift to the universal church when we think of sin. However, church as we live it at the local level, as well as our communities share in this situation. Sin, as the church understands it, is the work of individuals, even though structures, and its communities, can sin in an analogous way and establish patterns which diminish the possibilities of human development or violate the human person.53 The open and closed postures of a community take flesh in the choices made by parishes and communities, dioceses and church institutions. Part of the eschatological humility of the church, is the recognition that it is not identical with the Kingdom of God. The Council remarks in the Document on Ecumenism: “Christ summons the church, as she goes her pilgrim way, to that continued reformation of which she always has need, insofar as she is a human institution here on earth” (UR 6). The church as a community is inseparable from its members, although, as mystery, its holiness is a gift of the Holy Spirit. However, if living the paschal mystery today requires the recognition of structural sin, then that sin must also be recognized in the church. Karl Rahner comments: There exists no dogma according to which the assistance of the Holy Spirit which always remains with the Church would limit the effect of the sinfulness of the men who administer the Church to their purely private lives and not permit it to have any influence of those events which must be characterized Richard Gaillardez, Ecclesiology for a Global Church (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008), 204. Judith A. Merkle, “Sin” in The New Dictionary of Catholic Social Thought, Judith A. Dwyer (ed.) (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1994), 883–8.

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Beyond Our Lights and Shadows as unmistakenly acts of the Church, if the concept of the Church is not to evaporate into the abstract ideal of an invisible Church.54

In first world culture, the “sins” of the Church are enhanced by a sense of entitlement and readiness to disparage the church on the part of its members. While all know theoretically the church is not perfect, it often seems to its members that it should be. A serious challenge to living of charism today is to take up a stance towards the church which avoids the extremes of vilifying the church or being an uncritical proponent of its every move. Both seem to share in the falseness of a, “common sense of the church” which serves no one, because neither offers a true basis for the credibility of the church. Through participation in the church, in participation in the Eucharist, in receiving and acting on the Word of God in scripture, a conversion process can be supported towards a loyalty to the Church which is truthful. The sacramental life of the church can assist all in overcoming the self-serving posture of both stances, which obstructs a credible witness of charismatic life today.55 A sense of mercy in the Church also is called forth, especially towards those whose lives have been damaged, or whose ministries have been made more difficult, because of the choices of some of its members. John Paul II cautioned against both an overvaluation of the sacraments as the sole mark of a “practicing Christian” and an overvaluation of ethics— political or emotional or charismatic—as our “wedding garment” of salvation. In Dives in Misericordia he calls people to open their lives to the order of mercy. Only it is more powerful than evil, sin or death. This mercy is made manifest in the Eucharist, which reminds us that even our notions of what justice is in our world today need to be continually revised. “Mercy constantly reframes what we understand, calling us to forgive, calling us to invest, conferring “a new content” on justice through the introduction of that creative power of love “which is more powerful than sin” (DM 14). It can seem today that the most difficult act of Mercy is one directed toward the Church.

Karl Rahner, “The Church of Sinners,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. VI (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 261. 55 See Louis-Marie Chauvet, The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2001). 54



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Learning from Creation While our life with God and the processes of creation are not identical, we can get insight into the dynamisms charism shares, through reflection on the energy of creation. This energy organizes all of nature and supports what we know as life. Theology points to the anti-entropic process of evolution that borrows from the steady flow of energy from the sun and, through complex and intricate life forms, forms what we know of as life. This underlying energy, analogously called Geist, or spirit, acknowledges a reality more complex than the definitions and metaphors we use to speak of our collective life: family, community, church, corporation, city, school.56 Geist, or spirit, this deeper dimension of life, refers to the presence of a hidden force to the organization, storage and direction of energy to a purpose, in the form of collective life necessary for well-being. May we call these manifestations of the Spirit, the same Spirit we meet in Genesis who creates and organizes energy into purposeful forms for the good, the Spirit manifested in tongues of fire on Pentecost? Teilhard de Chardin is one theologian who sees a connection between these forces of energy. He combines the perspectives of faith and science to link the spirit of our lives in creation with the Spirit of God. De Chardin finds in the cosmos a process which mirrors the inner life of God. Despite its pain, failure, and apparent absurdities, all life is developmental and moving in a process of cosmogenesis. He sees the universe as a cosmos or whole developing in a precise direction. It goes from the Alpha point to the Omega point, under the ever-present care of God the creator and preserver.57 An evolutionary perspective is based on the assumption that energy on the human level is analogous to energies and breakdown of energy in more primitive forms of matter. Evolution is not a mechanical process; it is the result of the tension of two opposing yet complementary principles in the world. The first is entropy, the tendency of all energy toward dissipation into increasingly

Jon P. Gunneman, “Capital, Spirit, and Common Wealth,” in The Wealth of the Nations: Catholic Social Thought and Economic Life, Daniel Finn (ed.) (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 2010), 289–318; see 298. 57 Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, Bernard Wall (trans.) (London: Wm. Collins and Co., 1959). See also Denis Carroll, “Creation,” in the New Dictionary of Theology, 246–58. From a theological viewpoint, Chardin offers a Christian expression of hope. 56

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simple forms. The second is negentropy: the countervailing movement against the force of entropy. Entropy is the principle of the conservation of energy. It holds that every natural transformation involves the same sum total of energy. No energy is lost but no new energy is created in nature. Instead, evolution occurs through the displacement of energy. Energy is concentrated, drawn away from one function and put into another. The negative component to entropy is that all energy is conserved, but it is also degraded. The energy used to run a car, for instance, is transformed into a simpler energy, difficult to concentrate and put into use again. It is converted into heat, the most simple of all energy. If entropy has the power to create greater pools of unusable energy, how does evolution occur? Evolution moves toward ever more complex and potent concentrations of energy. To do this it has to work counter to entropy. True evolution moves counter to entropy. The work of concentrating energy and running counter to the thrust of entropy belongs to the second force, negentropy. Negentropy acts against entropy. Evolution occurs whenever more concentrated and powerful syntheses of energy are formed by running counter to the statistically greater tendency of ever simpler synthesis of degraded energy. While the forces of entropy and negentropy are opposing and complementary, they are not equal. Quantitatively, entropy is greater. More matter is found in simple arrangements than in the richer synthesis of higher forms of life. Qualitatively, negentropy prevails. As matter is arranged in increasingly complex forms, consciousness, or the “within” of things is a dominant and visible force. This evolutionary insight, when applied to charism, points to its healing and creative functions. Many find purposefulness and a sense of chance mixed in their reading of the evolutionary process. Nature masters opposing forces through a combination of chance and adaptation or purposefulness without ever nullifying either.58 Before human beings, nature itself overcame entropy. Believers, however, identify the Spirit of God as the dynamic principle of this universe. St. Paul intuits the unity between levels of the universe as he observes “creation itself groaning in labor pains” (Rom. 8:22). Faith recognizes that Juan Luis Segundo, An Evolutionary Approach to Jesus of Nazareth (New York: Orbis Books, 1988), 51.

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human energy shares in an Energy source far more primitive and foundational to the universe than itself; yet we do so with freedom. As we image the role of charism in the future of the church we can see that just as natural evolution involves a blending of expansive and constricting forces, so does an evolution of the integration of charism in the church. Change occurs over the long term with many twists and turns. Today we find new combinations of “entropy” and “negentropy” that vie in the direction of the spiritual and organizational renewal in the church. Charisms can serve the “negentropy” necessary to assist the Church to carry out its mission today, as well as the “entropy” which gives it stability and routine. To some extent, expression of charism shares in both the entropic and negentropic dynamisms of the church, however, it is a negentropic force when its expression is discerned and renewed and given purposeful expression for change. When this is done, costs need to be evaluated and wise energy calculations made. Evolutionary thinking incorporates setbacks as well as forward movement into a view of the future. It gives stability, as well as change, a role in community life in the church. It challenges all the faithful to plan as well as take risks when the signs of the time open opportunities for new expressions of charism in the church. Finally, it challenges all the faithful to focus on the presence of grace, “beyond our lights and shadows” which ultimately calls us forth as a People of God, in a culture which often does not know God and might rely solely on a scientific explanation of the world.

Part Two

Charism in the Church

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Primary Charisms: Calling and Postmodern Society—A Church in Transition

Charisms of a life calling, marriage or celibacy, were included in St. Paul’s discussion of charisms in the early church. Among the charisms of service to the church, prophets, teachers, administrators and the like, were also the charisms which expressed life choices, or what we call vocations, today. Paul the apostle attested to the fact that “each (member of the Christian community here) has a charism, one this, another that” (1 Cor. 7:7). This observation was made in the course of his advising the Corinthians about their choice of marriage or celibacy. The Vatican II document on the apostolate of the laity addressed calling, not only in the specifics of a vocation to the priesthood or consecrated life, married or single life as a lay person in the church. Calling itself is given its meaning beyond the couple or the individual, in light of its importance for the whole. “… the Holy Spirit who sanctifies the People of God through the ministry and the sacraments gives to the faithful special gifts as well (cf. 1 Cor. 12:7) “allotting to everyone according as he will” (1 Cor. 12:11). Thus may the individual, “according to the gift that each has received, administer it to one another” and become “good stewards of the manifold grace of God” (1 Pet. 4:10) and build up thereby the whole body in charity (cf. Eph. 4:16). From the reception of these charisms or gifts, including those which are less dramatic, there arise for each believer the right and duty to use them in the Church and in the world for the good of mankind and for the up-building of the Church” (AA 3). In modern culture the meaning of calling is eclipsed, especially in its religious nature, as it fused with the situation of religion in society as a

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whole. It is no longer customary to see any life pattern beyond the emotional satisfaction it brings to the participants. This current situation gives rise to the question, what values and perspectives are needed to retrieve a sense of vocation; while respecting the need for a new framework for understanding this vital dimension of life. A first step is to understand that men and women today stand in a different cultural atmosphere than in the past.

The Modern Frame In contrast to past centuries, modern people live in what is called an immanent frame, life without a sense of transcendent reality. Charles Taylor speaks of three phenomena which offer a picture of this new context: disenchantment, a self-sufficient immanent order, and a buffered identity. Understanding the “enchanted world” disenchantment took away, offers insight into disenchantment. The enchanted world was filled with spirits and moral forces, ones which impinge on human beings.1 The boundary between the self and these forces was porous, hence the person was vulnerable to forces beyond the self which had power to wreck good or will. Weber called these forces “magic.” Religious forces worked also to delegitimize superstitious practices, as they neglected or minimized the power of God. Culturally, however, many rituals were put under the term “magic,” even when they did not cross the boundary into superstition. Taylor claims that people still practice rituals which in their minds restore them to health or bring them success. However, these have gone underground. What has replaced the porous self of days ago is a new “buffered” self. The process of disenchantment is the disappearance of this enchanted world, and its substitution with another mentality. In the modern world the only locus of thoughts, feelings, and spiritual energy or enthusiasm is in the mind. The only minds in the cosmos are human, and these thoughts and feelings mentioned above are “within” them. The meaning or significance we find in things rests in the individual mind. The difference, Taylor

Charles Taylor, “Disenchantment—Re-enchantment,” in Dilemmas and Connection: Selected Essays (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2011), 287–302.

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claims, between the mind-centered view and the enchanted world is now meanings are “in the mind” and things only have meaning if they awaken a certain response in us. This response may depend on “how we were raised” or, our personalities, how we are “wired” yet they still only reside from within. In the enchanted world, there are spirits, good and bad. There are other beings, like saints and spirits, who also have minds. This violates a principle of the disenchanted world, as someone other than oneself has a mind. I can pray to a saint for a favor, and they can decide to grant it. There are objects in the enchanted world like the Host, or blessed candles, which deserve my respect, not just because I think so, but because they do. In the enchanted world, the line between personal agency and impersonal force is not that clearly drawn. In contrast to a world of buffered selves and “minds,” there is a certain absence of boundaries. In a buffered world, meaning comes into the world as it impinges on us and we react and give it meaning. An event is registered as euphoric or depressive. In an enchanted world, the meaning already exists outside of us, prior to contact; it can take us over, we can fall into its field of force. It comes to us from the outside.

Chain of Being An enchanted world also places meaning in the cosmos. A more formal theory of an enchanted period is that the world is comprised of a great Chain of Being. This vision explains reality in the following way. Being itself exists on several levels, and the cosmos manifests this hierarchy, and order. The same superiority of dignity and rule that the soul manifests over the body reappears in the state in the preeminence of the king, in the animal realm in that of the lion. These features “correspond” to each other in the different domains. The whole is bound together by relations of hierarchical complementarity, which should be reproduced in a well-ordered state.2 In the enchanted world, charged things have a causal power which matches their incorporated meaning. They hold power which can affect a porous self. Ibid. 291.

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What is so wrong with disenchantment? People today do not see the world in the same way as described in the Chain of Being. Yet, people are not satisfied with a modern condition in which all human meanings are simply projected, or arbitrarily conferred by humans. Moderns see themselves as agents-in-the world, ones who also attribute meaning, so meanings do not reside solely in the object. Yet their experience dictates that shared meanings must be recognized as universally valid, or else all would be arbitrary. Assurance of the enchanted world is not the full answer, yet a re-enchantment which meets the needs of the modern sensibilities is. Disenchantment, and its ultimate rejection of religion, cannot by itself undercut the drive for meaning which people still have. This drive is often kept alive in hidden acknowledgment that the world beyond the self has meaning. Some find that a solely human focused view of existence cannot really do justice and account for our sense of wonder and other transpersonal judgments. The wonder at the universe, love of the world and others in altruism, the experience of “being in love,” which comes from the “other” and is a mystery into which we “fall.” We feel these meanings strongly, and our attribution of meaning to them makes them stronger. These strong evaluations stand in contrast to “weak” one, which are simply those of preference. “Strong” evaluations make a claim on us, and carry with them a sense of the truth of things, the impingement of reality, or objective rightness. We experience them. However, in an immanent frame, they have no explanation. The modern person lives with a strongly buffered identity, not a porous one, in an immanent frame. An immanent frame is the absence of “another world of meaning” which gives significance to the present. An immanent frame reduces life to our current definitions of social and individual success. Paradoxically this cultural climate can either reinforce a sense of individualism or it can stimulate an ethic of authenticity, where a person seeks to find himself, or find her path. Some may have a totally privatized spirituality, or trivialize religion as a whole; however, living in an immanent frame can also foster an unconscious search for a transcendent more. In doing this, people can discover and affirm other forms of re-enchantment. The charism of a life calling is listened for in this context today, where it is also possible to feel, there is no one calling.



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Calling and Institution The reality that life callings in the Church have an institutional dimension adds another layer of complexity to their discernment in today’s culture. A life calling in the faith community is usually not so idiosyncratic that it cannot find a home in the institution. Institutional structures, as contrasted with the charismatic, are those which are regularly established, publically recognized, stable, repeatable, and uniform. Both the Church and the callings in the Church have both an institutional and charismatic identity. Some callings in the Church are more developed institutionally, however all have a place. Avery Dulles distinguishes the institutional and the charismatic in the Church. In the Church, institutional structures may conveniently be divided into four categories: 1. Doctrines and doctrinal formulations which are normative for all members (Creeds, dogmas, canonical writings (Scriptures, conciliar pronouncements, etc.)); 2. Forms of public worship, such as sacraments and other approved rituals; 3. Structures of government, i.e. offices with the powers and duties attached to them; 4. Laws and customs regulating the behavior of members.3 Marriage and celibacy, whether expressed in priesthood, vowed religious life or the single life in the Church also have an institutional component. However, psychologist James Fowler notes that the establishment of an adult life pattern today is not easy, inside or outside the church. Previously, young persons, on the cusp of adulthood would choose a life direction which could be imaged like a “tent” in which to dwell. This tent would have pegs holding it up, representing key choices. For instance, a decision to marry, enter a profession or type of work, embrace a religious affiliation, choose a desired area of the country in which to live each became a peg in one’s life tent. Each would contribute to an all-inclusive climate in which to establish a life course, and enter into a recognized “fit” into the adult world. Avery Dulles, S.J., A Church to Believe In: Discipleship and the Dynamics of Freedom (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 22.

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Today some find it difficult to find such a life structure. Preparation for work takes longer years of schooling; responsibilities which elicit a type of “settled maturity” are postponed. The mobility of the job market means a move to life apart from the extended family or a former circle of friends. These factors, not mentioning the great cultural shifts going on through migration and economic shifts, contribute to the struggle for some individuals to find a life structure in which to fit. In a climate of individualism the model of “role” in life is also ambiguous and less desired. People frequently take employment, not to begin a long tenure, but as a stepping stone to something else. Fowler claims that the goal to have a particular social identity plays less a part in self-understanding.4 Sociologist Robert Bellah analyzes this dilemma further by stating that most forms of institutional life are questioned in American and other first world societies. In general people do not like institutions.5 Institutions are seen as something from the past, filled with unexamined customs and codes which no longer fit modern society. This insight carries double weight when applied to the issue of charism as a life calling. Not only is the church as an institution questioned in this cultural attitude but also the meaning of marriage or celibacy as an understood stance in society. Adding to this is the fact that the church is often viewed as a less credible source of information regarding a life direction today. We observe the ramifications of this loss of credibility as reflected in the phenomenon of younger people especially self-identifying as having no religious affiliation, or “nones.” According to a Pew study of 35,000 Americans “nones” now constitute the second-largest slice of the overall U.S. religious marketplace, at 22.8 percent. This trend was seen in every part of the country, among every ethnic and racial group. The non-affiliated are younger people, and there appears a cultural climate more conducive, and less apologetic regarding not belonging. Some were raised in a climate where parents and grandparents did not

James W. Fowler, Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian: Adult Development and Christian Faith (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000), 1–13. 5 While Bellah’s research is primarily with American society, it seems fair to assume that other First World societies share this cultural attitude. See Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen, and William M. Sullivan, The Good Society (New York: Vintage, 1992), 3–18. 4



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practice, hence they are following how they were raised; others had some kind of religious background, but now are unaffiliated.6 Why do people reject institutions? They find them oppressive. The limitations institutions place on them are judged to be not worth the benefits they provide. Life is viewed more commonly as one of autonomous choices where I construct my life course in a self-designed manner. The benefits of institutions are taken for granted, or remain as invisible factors to the self-awareness of “pulling myself up by my own bootstraps.” Awareness of the investment required to continue to provide these important stabilizers of life is not given account. The loss of a common awareness of the transcendent dimension of life also contributes to the incomprehensibility of life choices in the framework often understood by the church. Why would one choose celibacy, or a life in community?7 Why would one work at a marriage which at the time is emotionally unfulfilling? While the family is seen as a place where one is unconditionally accepted, this climate is almost unknown in the business world and politics. Images from consumer society, with its shifting and utilitarian relationships, can unconsciously dominate the imagination.8 Bellah remarks that in the viewpoint of the married Christians he interviewed, there is no basis for permanent commitment in marriage in the culture apart from Christian faith itself.9 Yet this “older” or traditional view of marriage is often tied to an institutional framework which is judged out of date. The ideals of obligation and freedom seem to float in modern society without sufficient anchors to ground them. While people experience the influence of these factors in varying degrees, they impact most at some level. The lyrics of an old song, “Love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage,” refer to marriage as an institution, or a life course, rather than to marriage as relationship only, the specific intimacy of this couple. We experience in the church community those who witness to the See: Vinnie Rotondara, “Nones Rise to Second Place,” National Catholic Reporter 51 (18) (June 19–July 2, 2015), 7–8. 7 These issues raised by a culture in which autonomy is a key value is discussed in Judith A. Merkle, Committed by Choice: Religious Life Today (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1992). 8 Michael Paul Gallagher, S.J. Clashing Symbols: An Introduction to Faith and Culture (New York: Paulist Press, 2003), 157ff. 9 Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985), 96. 6

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steadfast love and gifts of a good marriage which enliven every community as well as hold most families, schools and parishes together. We observe not just “ideal” marriages but the capacity and commitment to keep working at a relationship in good times and uneasy ones; and we recognize the charism of married life as a gift not only to the couple but to the church and the world. Marriage, is not only a relationship between the couple, is also an institution, a public stance in church and society. Marriage, along with priesthood, consecrated life, and a single life all exist today in dialogue with factors in the culture that have been generations in the making, and perhaps only now are becoming conscious in the Church.

Weber and Calling Weber’s interest in the idea of a “calling” arose from his desire to make connections between the Puritan idea of calling, and the practices for everyday economic life. He claimed that religious movements gave a type of ascetic education which was later reinterpreted in a purely secular way. The religious factor formed a larger type of mindset which the capitalist spirit became a part. Instead of asceticism being “otherworldly,” as interpreted in a religious climate, it became “this-worldly” with the advent of capitalism. Weber was not interested in explaining capitalism as a whole in its reference to Christian religious movements, especially Calvinism. Rather he asked why a capitalist outlook existed in which work, wealth and profit were not merely tolerated, as in previous times, but enjoyed and made into something which was ethically compelling, and had moral meaning. How could an activity, directed mainly to profit alone, appear in an individual’s mind as a calling to which the person even had an ethical obligation? Weber concluded there was a transformation of the idea of calling from the religious realm to the secular one.10 According to Weber, before the Reformation, people did not see their “worldly” activity, occupations and business, as being in service to God. Rather worldly activities were perceived more like necessary evils. The drive to accumulate money, beyond what you needed, was seen as the love of Baum, Religion and Alienation, 256–61.

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“mammon.” The ideal of holiness was monastic, where one withdrew from the world to pursue spiritual matters. The Reformation transformed this attitude into an “inner-worldly” asceticism, since focused control of one’s activity is no longer lived outside the world in monastic communities, but in the world in one’s daily activities. It became wrong to remove yourself from the world, because this was part of God’s purposes for each individual. Labor and business were part of one’s duty to God in an inner-worldly spiritual climate. Weber attributed this shift to the ethic of Protestantism.11 This sense of duty or obligation to God could be transformed into the duty to prosper, given the right theological interpretation; which the Reformation gave to calling. Earlier traditions, like that of Thomas Aquinas, taught that material needs could be satiated. People could earn enough to live on, meet the status quo, without needing to aspire to an ever-increasing production and wages.12 However, the concept of asceticism was transformed gradually from its religious meaning, to a purely secular one. We can see this change in the work of Benjamin Franklin who wrote two books on how to get rich: Necessary Hints to Those That Would be Rich (1736) and Advice to a Young Tradesman (1748). The latter contained sayings that are part of everyday culture, like “Time is money.” Plaques still hang in homes, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” which affirms the segmented work environment of women in the new capitalist system. Weber found in Franklin’s writing an example of how this type of spirituality drifted into everyday culture. What was particular to this brand of the spirit of capitalism was its advocacy of the pursuit of wealth combined with the strict avoidance of taking any pleasure in the wealth. Making money is a religious duty, as a “calling” it is a moral obligation that must be followed. By the time of Franklin, the discipline was still there, but the religious basis was gone. The secularization of asceticism, its transfer from the religious understanding of following a vocation into a monastery, to the Protestant understanding of following a calling in the secular or worldly realm of modern labor is the basic argument of his study in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.13 Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 15. See Mary I. Hirschfield, “From a Theological Frame to a Secular Frame: How Historical Context Shapes Our Understanding of the Principles of Catholic Social Thought,” in The True Wealth of Nations, 165–98. 13 Here we are not entering into the debates regarding Weber’s insights, rather simply using them as a 11 12

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Weber saw capitalism’s need to use transcendental rewards as an incentive to engage in the new form of work as gradually diminishing, and marked this as a sign of the loss of the significance of religion in modern society. Carroll argues that religion did not disappear, it became privatized. Social processes were gradually less influenced by a religious logic and progressively operated according to the secular scientific principles of a disenchanted world. As capitalism became entrenched in modern society, human action became linked to the logic of the machine, but the purpose of the machine, beyond providing a wage as a means of survival, was lost. The meaning of work itself became unclear, as human labor, once linked to the self-sacrifice and toil and effort necessary for ultimate union with God, had lost its transcendental focus.14 Weber acknowledged the problem that the change brought new interpretations of principles of action without transcendental resources.15 While not a believer himself, he could observe that the secularization of the religious calling into a worldly activity meant that there was a new vocation needed. Humanity had to give modern life its meaning out of its own resources. He predicted people with a new charisma would gain legitimacy from their own inner convictions. Theirs would be a secular charisma of creating their own meaning and choosing their own values.16

Toward a Theology of Vocation Weber’s concept of this new vocation came from Nietzsche’s, “last men who invented happiness” in the prologue of his Zarathustra.17 The last man is a term used by Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra to refer to the opposite of an imagined superior being, the Ubermensch, the prototype of Weber’s new man of culture. The last man, in contrast, is tired of life, seeks only comfort and security and takes no risks. Since his sole focus is his own comfort, the heuristic device to understand cultural changes surrounding the meaning of calling. In the Catholic tradition we see Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum and John Paul II in Laborem Exercens not just addressing labor issues but the meaning of work itself. John Paul II linked work to human expression. 15 Hans Joas argues that Weber himself never offered a theory of action to account for the operation of charisma in society. See: The Creativity of Action (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996). 16 Carroll, A Protestant Modernity, 91–4. 17 Ibid., 146 n.60. 14



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last man is not capable of creating anything beyond himself; including his own values; as he is unaware that values are not pre-given. He simply lives each day in the present, seeking whatever escapes he can find which help him overcome the meaninglessness of his life. Weber’s pessimistic view of the future of moderns is influenced by Nietzsche’s depiction of the “masses,” symbolized in the last man. Weber’s call for new men of culture to give modern life its meaning out of their own resources is certainly a counter-narrative to a sense of vocation, as understood by the Church. However, it touches on values which are important to the modern spirit.

Zarathustra The story of Zarathustra is a narrative of his journey to speak to humanity, to share the wisdom he learned from his ascent to the mountains at age thirty.18 He appears as a modern-day prophet, who leaves his home on the mountain, after his heart has been transformed during his period of withdrawal there. He returns to humanity so that he can share with all the people, the wisdom he learned in his seclusion. When he descends the mountain he finds people who symbolize the fate of modern man according to Nietzsche. He meets the last man who invented happiness, as he does not realize that God is dead. He tells the man that the answer to the problems of this life is to learn to live life without God. Also, to be human is not enough; one must be an overman (Ubermensch). What the overman, or the superhuman, knows is the true meaning of living on this earth. Because God is dead, there is no use praying to God or worrying about sin. There is no hell, so worry about some eternal destiny is pointless. Instead, the secret is to be only faithful to the earth. The problem of life is not that God has died. The tragedy is people try to find meaning in their lives from a God who is dead. The real path is to be a “superhuman,” one who has a new relationship to the earth and to nature; this is the highest form of being to which a human can aspire. As the ape evolved into the human being, Zarathustra counsels, the goal of human beings should be to evolve into the

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Walter Kaufman (ed. and trans.) (New York: Penguin Books, 1977).

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Ubermensch. This goal holds out a vision of something better than belief in God. An overman is one who is willing to risk all for the sake of enhancement of humanity. The story of Zarathustra and the Ubermensch carries in narrative form conflicts which float in modern culture, and impact understanding of calling and charism today. Many today do not find a notion of the pre-given world as culturally attractive, yet need to address the universal truths necessary for a well-lived life. People respect human autonomy and responsibility, yet also hunger to be open to the transcendent in experience. The value of human initiative and creativity is recognized, and yet people seek to acknowledge their dependence on God in its processes. There is a felt call to a healthy humanism and belief in human flourishing and yet also a question if this alone is sufficient for a Christian sense of vocation. Concomitantly, there is a questioning of the adequacy of a Christian sense of vocation without a commitment to the concerns of a healthy humanism and human flourishing.

Calling, Revelation and Values Calling can easily be reduced to a choice, in a culture of choice. What is it I want to do with my life? What do I like? How can I make the money I want to lead the life I imagine? What are my interests and talents? While these questions are good ones which many ask, the notion of calling goes beyond them. In modern culture, calling is fused with the question of religiosity itself and the possibility and experience of human transcendence. For this reason, the idea of calling, revelation and values are inseparable. Sociologists and thinkers of the nineteenth century sought to overcome religious tradition with a religion of humanity. However, not all people find this solution adequate in their search for meaning.19 Many do not find modern society the “iron cage” predicted by Weber, nor filled with the banality of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. They observe that a deep sense of the institutionalization of the value of universal human dignity dwells in the midst of the conflict, turmoil and poverty still present in modern society, While those who believe cannot convince those who do not, that they must believe; neither can the nonbeliever demand that the believer accept that his or her interpretation of life is the only feasible one.

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and that people are willing to uphold it. This did not arise from the ashes of mere “rationalization” or from the enthusiasm of momentary revolutionary or religious fervor. This modern, “See how they love one another” retains its symbolic function also for the church and its mission. The promotion of human dignity is essential to the identity and the direction of the Church in the modern world. In the encyclical Redemptor Hominis, John Paul II remarks, this “way” is “traced out by Christ himself,” the mystery of the incarnation and the redemption is grounded in God’s love for human beings (RH 14). Christ’s own model of living through the paschal mystery is the model that the Church herself is to follow. So, the need for religion is not so easily dismissed by believers. Hans Joas in his publication Do We Need Religion? argues that people do not believe because religious belief is useful. In fact, it is common in first world culture to associate religious belief with weakness; only those who are too weak to live without it, practice a religion. However, Joas probes with a new question: Can we live without the experience articulated in faith, in religion? 20 Are there human experiences which are not identical to religious experience, or experiences of the divine; yet without them we cannot understand what faith, what religion is? Are there human experiences which are bridges to the divine, which in themselves, convey a world beyond the self, a world not entirely under its control? We call these experiences of self-transcendence, which are fundamental to a sense of calling.

Experiences of Transcendence We have these experiences in diverse ways. There can be a sense of a fusion with nature, a conversation with another which goes beyond small-talk, giving one the feeling of being “really understood” at a deep level. We experience a transcending of the boundaries of self, where some part of oneself is left in truth with the other. A deeper experience is, “falling in love,” a strong feeling of closeness, of being drawn to another, a recognition of oneself in the other, of acceptance by the other. One is drawn not just to another’s qualities, but a deep sense of the whole person. Joas adds, “Sexual experience, one might Hans Joas, Do We Need Religion?, Alex Skinner (trans.) (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2008), 7–11.

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say, combines the experience of fusion with another person with fusion with nature: We can experience mutual understanding but also the enjoyment of the beauty of another’s body in the joy of knowing one’s body is experienced as beautiful and loved, and a sensual pleasure that goes beyond the quotidian and is one of the strongest foundations of deeply felt human relationships.”21 Experiences which place us in touch with a sense of transcendence are a feeling of obligation before another’s need, and compassion. We can know the self-transcendence of giving and receiving, vulnerability and dependence, anxiety and the awareness of one’s own finitude. Also, moral sensibility is formed by awareness of the other and the experience of being deeply moved. Simultaneously, a sense of the shattering of the self can occur when either a situation or being affected by group experiences of enthusiasm or conscience move us beyond ourselves. We find ourselves in a new place. Paul Tillich wrote of the experience of anxiety as one of self-transcendence. Anxiety can be the experience of one’s own finitude. This sense of finitude does not always come from looking into the world, but can also be experienced through an honest appraisal of self. Walter Conn writes of Tillich’s reference to “ontological shock” as a moment of personal recognition of our own self-absorption which blocks the way to self-realization; a “jarring conviction”—rather than an intellectual awareness—that I am cheating myself of the chance to reach the inmost possibilities of my being.22 Anxiety arises as we face the limits of existence itself; our own finitude and eventual death. Anxiety can arise as we sense our vulnerability before life and the sureness of death; as we observe the ebb and flow of a sense of meaning in our days, or find ourselves engulfed in guilt. These experiences which also link us to values are not always positive or good. Lynchings might never happen without the energy of hatred, and the impotence of fear. We can experience love in sexual union as well as the violence of rape. For every ennobling experience is the possibility of a terrible one. Trust can become betrayal, ecstasy of nature can turn into the horror at an approaching tsunami, commitment can descend into abandonment; one can fall in love and lose the loved one in death or separation. The experience Ibid., 9. Walter Conn, Christian Conversion: A Developmental Interpretation of Autonomy and Surrender (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), 74.

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of vulnerability and dependence therefore, is at the heart of all life experience. The Ubermensch is an illusion to someone who knows life, and senses that everything to which we are attached is linked to us with a precarious thread, which life can snap at any time. We cannot have our choice of the good or the difficult and tragic, in life they come as a package. Karl Rahner testifies that we cannot give meaning to ourselves. We cannot come to the meaning of life simply by accessing the progress of our lives. Life accounts never quite “add up.” Looking over their lives, many will find happy experiences to record and difficult ones. If we were to do a “balance sheet” there would be good will, mistakes, sin and disasters, repentance, and forgiveness. God can never be inserted just as an individual entry in order to strike a balance between debit and credit. Ultimately, we find ourselves unable to balance our life’s accounts, and prove once and for all that life has meaning, rather before this question, we must simply surrender. Rahner claims that people surrender: “… to the hope of an incalculable final reconciliation of their existence, marked by the presence of the One whom we call God.”23

Interpretation of Experience How we interpret experiences of transcendence gives them meaning beyond the experience itself. Believers and non-believers have these human experiences, and both interpret them. Experiences of self-transcendence contain a power that pulls us from a current sense of self, beyond those limits, into something “more.” This is not more money or success, but “more” of what we experience as both the depth of ourselves and the meaning of life. The believer interprets experiences of being deeply touched and moved by life events as an experience of that depth, mystery or what is ultimate, God. Christians believe that the ultimate mystery that beckons all of us is made decisively manifest for them in Jesus Christ; as Jesus is the definite symbolic revelation of the ultimate mystery of the universe. Believers will see God’s presence in nature as the wonder of creation; God’s providence in the chance meeting of a life partner;

Karl Rahner, “Experience of the Holy Spirit,” Theological Investigations, Vol. XVIII (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 200.

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or be assured of God’s justice in the act of conscience of their neighbor. While we grow in our capacity to make this interpretation, it is in everyday existence where men and women listen for the possible Self-manifestation of God in a human manner.24 Nonbelievers may interpret the above experiences of self-transcendence as psychological phenomena, as unhappy or happy, positive or tragic; they may have many of the same life experiences as believers yet hold this life is all there is. The “more” in life contained in the variety of experiences which life brings is understood in terms of the potential which human beings can accomplish in the here and now. Unlike the believer, they do not experience help from above, rather the potential to reach “more” is within.25 The powers they have to make laws, order the world is their main tool to contain what challenges human flourishing. It is not that the believer, as a responsible member of modern society, does not have these secular ideals. In fact, believer and non-believer share this core sense of calling or vocation, the human vocation, to human fulfillment, or human flourishing. A common interpretation of the meaning of life involves seeking human fulfillment itself and fostering the conditions where others can achieve the same. However, for believers, their faith tells them to look for more. Christians in this world are to allow their Christian faith to animate and direct the situation in which they find themselves, and this is their Christian calling or vocation. The Latin American bishops express it in the following way. “We are also to find our fulfillment as Christians, living out our baptism and its summons to be holy (communion and cooperation with God), to be active members of the community, and to bear witness to the Kingdom (communion and cooperation with others.)” Lastly Christians are charged to find their concrete Christian vocation, as married, single, vowed religious or ordained, that enables them to make their specific contribution to the construction of the Kingdom and carry out their evangelizing mission in unity with others.26 This involves a discernment of aptitudes, interests and Stephen Duffy, The Graced Horizon (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1992), 209. Taylor, A Secular Age, 9. 26 This is the essence of the statement made by the Latin American Bishops at the conference Evangelization in the Latin American Church: Communion and Participation. See Puebla and Beyond, John Eagelson and Philip Scharper (eds) (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979), 854. 24 25



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opportunities in choosing a vocation, profession, work of service or position in society or in making decisions regarding family life.27 The mystery Christians find in the world also reveals to them the ongoing mystery of God in their lives. They find in the gospels, not a blueprint for specific life problems, but an animation to live constructively with and for others, in the style of the paschal mystery, knowing God is present in their lives.28 They are to do all they can to transform their culture and to direct it to serve the common good. Yet this-worldly transformation is an essential part of the gospel, which proclaims a salvation which is irreducible to our actions alone. In the words of John Paul II, “The Kingdom of God being in the world without being of the world, throws light on the order to human society, while the power of grace penetrates that order and gives it life” (CA 25). This view of the world is the context for a sense of calling in the Christian life. The interpreted meaning of experiences of self-transcendence can appear to us to be the only possible or plausible ones, whether we are believers or unbelievers. Faith is not just an intellectual pursuit, but a movement of the entire personality that affects how one thinks, acts and feels. Since all people operate by transcendent data, a person of faith operates by a different set of them. When we work for a “better world,” “global peace,” or “sustainable community,” we are engaging with transcendent data. Because we operate by transcendent data we will interpret the same experience in different ways, giving different meaning to the same experience. The languages, cultures, and religions are rich sources for the images to articulate and interpret experiences. For instance, we read in scripture many accounts of the experience of “calling.” We interpret our own experiences through the interpretations which have preceded us. Calling, in the Christian sense of the term, is identified through the language of the tradition, not just of doctrine, but of the community of faith which has preceded us. Hans Joas comments that specific interpretations provide the precondition for certain experiences. In the realm of religious experience, it is possible to Michael Ivens offers this insight on the Ignatian spiritual exercises: “… On the side of the exercitant drawing profit consists in appropriation of God’s action in oneself, letting oneself, through contemplation, be touched, enlightened and changed.” Michael Ivans, S.J. Understanding the Spiritual Exercises—Text and Commentary: A Handbook for Retreat Directors. (Leominster: Gracewing, 1998), 93. 28 John F. Haught, “Revelation,” in The New Dictionary of Theology, 898. 27

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cut ourselves off from certain experiences because of skepticism.29 In other words, the will to believe can affect the possibility of belief; as openness to belief has a role. Joas uses the example of being open to relationship. To wait cold and aloof for love to come into one’s life, might entail a long wait. We must be willing to meet the other half-way, be willing to trust rather than expect to be trusted; I must consider myself worthy of love and the other capable of love, in other words, to have certain experiences which lead to belief; one must be willing to believe. While no one comes to faith, “through their own bootstraps”—faith is a gift from God—we can be open to the gift. To enter into the horizon of viewing my life as a calling, rather than just a series of events, I must be open both to thinking of it in this way, and allowing the meaning of calling to direct how I live it out. Love and faith; calling and commitment, require a leap of faith. Many nonbelievers do find a sense of calling in life from other sources than religious identity. Their calling to human fulfillment, to a well-lived life, is fostered by family, tradition, and other sources. Some firefighters who went up the stairs in the Twin Towers in New York on 9/11 came from a tradition of public servants that went back generations. Family mediations of tradition in the military, industry, commerce, agriculture, medicine, education and others provide similar interpretations of the direction of a meaningful life, through example. Believers and nonbelievers have a mixed source of foundations which lead them to life choices. These human experiences are bridges to the divine; and in themselves convey a world beyond the self. They, in Lonergan’s terms, foster our development “from above,” and give us a basis from which to begin. For the believer, they are part of a more complex picture of encounter with the mystery of Life and their calling.

Autonomy, Responsibility, and the Transcendent Autonomy is the possibility and task to determine oneself, to decide what type of person one is going to be, and to be in harmony with the values and norms which one has given oneself. Human autonomy in American society is radically tied to the pursuit of individual fulfillment as self-interest. Robert Joas, Do We Need Religion?, 13.

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Bellah describes how greater autonomy is associated with upward mobility gained through personal achievement. One advantage of upward mobility, in the American mind, is that it brings with it a personal life space, where the man or woman needs to depend less and less on others. The ultimate goals of a good life are viewed as matters of personal choice alone; therefore, values or priorities cannot be justified by any wider framework of purpose or belief.30 When the individual becomes the center of reality in such a radical manner, relationship with the truths of nature, of interpersonal reality, of common tradition and religious meaning have no integral connection to living. A sense of responsibility can be reduced to an assessment of “success,” or measuring whether the priorities we have chosen have been achieved. The worth of group and political life, nature and its resources, and even interpersonal relationships and religion is more contingent on their relationship to the fulfillment of the needs and wants of the individual. A “calling” arising from a baptismal commitment is difficult to discern in this cultural climate. A simply inherited religion, as an alternative to this mentality, is no longer the cultural “background” for faith for many.31 The “given” reality of our baptismal identity is learned in the wider community; through it we are offered an alternative to the prevailing cultural meaning system. Religious traditions and practices themselves can still foster alternative interpretations of living, which can be the precondition for certain experiences. Even though the climate in which the tradition is shared will be marked by conflict of worldviews, gospel values can be “hidden in the field” of new cultural expressions and plural communities. Even though there is the presence of anti-values which are actually more popular; there can also be signs of hope and of real hunger, and fruits of the Spirit.32 Even if a minority experience, the context in which religiosity as a whole shares is also the context for the discernment of calling, and the re-articulation of traditions of lived charism. At times religious communities today can “skip” this grounding in baptismal identity in their appeal for new vocations. Religious identity can easily become Bellah, Habits of the Heart, 8, 22. Taylor, A Secular Age, 13–20. 32 Gallagher, Faith and Culture, 142–4. Gallagher charges that it is easy today to simply reject entire ways of life as utterly beyond the reach of the gospel. To counter this “desolation” requires a type of “deep diving” into a culture trusting that God is already present and somehow creative in all human cultures. It is important to avoid an attitude of seeing only decadence or disaster as the whole story. 30 31

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“privatized,” and the work of the community as teachers, nurses, social workers, justice advocates, or pastoral workers, can be presented as so central that the grounding call of baptismal identity is hidden. A popular adage circulated today is that people do not enter religious communities because there are so many careers open today for young people. One wonders whether this thinking, while well-meaning, overlooks a big problem of the hesitancy to be public with the congregational spirituality as centered in identity of the faith community. The tradition and practice of the Christian community not only communicates a set of beliefs, but a framework of interpretation which expresses the faith experience of those who have lived this calling before. An absence of this context affects seeing marriage as a calling, or recognition of how faith in God grounds a married relationship; or the meaning of spirituality focused on the couple. The single life, often lived in a postmodern context without support, is even more challenging without a wider circle of interpretation of its significance in a wider framework of meaning.

Single Life in a Postmodern Context The cultural anthropologist Mary Douglas offers a way to look at a “living situation” through the lens of how one commonly experiences the influence of others. She claims that variations between different social contexts can be understood in terms of group and grid experience. “Group” refers to a situation in which forms of authority and the pressure on the individual exercised by a stable society are central. Church and family are institutions which have a strong group atmosphere. Allegiance to group leadership is important, and a type of conformity and obedience is expected. Insiders and outsiders can be identified clearly. “Grid” refers to a form of organization that is less controlling and less explicit. It is made up of a network of roles, rules, and relationships that build people up with one another. It is less focused on the collective, and more on the individual in his or her particular needs, which are fostered by interaction with others. It is not always more free than a group. “Grid” is less a situation of control from above than of assumptions that guide how people behave with one another in different situations. To work under the codes of one’s



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profession is to experience what Douglas means by “grid expectations.” To live in a suburb and not cut one’s grass regularly is to confront the “grid” pressure of neighbors.33 The lay vocation of the single person can be lived in what Douglas would call a low-group and low-grid situation, and sometimes not by personal choice. There one finds an unusual lack of structures and supports. Role definition is at a minimum in society and in the church. Often the social definition centers on leisure, consumption and upward mobility. A sense of “calling” as a single person in the church is the most ambiguous among all the adult stances. Douglas claims that modern industrial society affords people more opportunities than ever to live as an isolate. The single life is a new possibility in modern culture and the church, for social and economic reasons; however it is in need of creative definitions and expressions, by single people themselves. A difficult aspect of this postmodern situation is that it offers few supports or symbols to reinforce the religious dimension of life.34 Gallagher comments on the grid-group structure used by Douglas in its relationship to unbelief. If the main form of unbelief in “A” (strong group, “church”) is an opting out of the structures of belonging or church practice, and if in “B” (high grid or groups of interest or profession) the tendency is to reject God as irrelevant to my life, in “C,” the postmodern situation, the very question of some ultimate meaning and spiritual horizon fades into unreality.35 In a climate where people are detached from one another, and from master narratives which give life meaning, two responses can occur. Some build “intentional communities.” The situation is so lacking in structures that members can become free to create some, “from below.” The very absence of control from group or grid becomes a cultural blessing for new forms of social and religious response. Some will respond to the same situation through a type of cultural desolation where drifting dominates. Lack of support leaves people without any scaffolding for an encounter with religious revelation or community See: Merkle, Being Faithful, 72–3. This book investigates different contexts in the Christian life as to the way they present moral challenges and moral possibilities, using the grid and group typology of Mary Douglas. 34 Ibid., “Postmodern Discipleship: Autonomy, Initiative, and Mysticism,” 124–46. 35 Gallagher, Clashing Symbols, 32. 33

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involvement. Experiences which could be bridges to the transcendent are left without a framework of interpretation. Lack of the protection of a church community can lead to manipulation of the soul isolated from the grounding of the tradition. The absence of pressures may evoke creative freedom and rediscovery of the gospel for some, but for others it can lead to a type of self-created religion without any contact with the traditional wisdom of the churches. Without some belonging to a “group” or some connection with the “grid” of other people, people can easily become totally secularized, un-churched, narcissistic, and lonely. While it appears people are “free,” actually the impact of the socialization of market forces and the state absorb the moral imagination and appear as “common sense.”36 Many try to forge a meaningful response to these choices of focus or drifting. There are those for whom the church community has become alienating, for various reasons. For others there is a real spiritual hunger, based on experiences throughout their lives: past formation, other-centered involvement, social, ecological, and political activism. It is hard to imagine that the Spirit of God who heals the church as well as calls it forward is not stirring among its people to reach out to those still seeking a spiritual home anew. Those who reinterpret their charism today may find able partners who can focus this outreach; or new charisms can emerge where single people can minister to each other in their spiritual needs. In the words of Pope Francis, “The Holy Spirit would appear to create disorder in the Church, since he brings the diversity of charisms and gifts; yet all this, by his working, is a great source of wealth, for the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of unity, which does not mean uniformity, but which leads everything back to harmony.”37

Initiative, Creativity, Charism Instead of intuiting a great order to things, as in the Chain of Being, the modern person experiences the need to create order in this world. Some days it may seem that the only order in the world is what they put into it. Daily we need to decide what is right in a situation, in accordance with what is good; Merkle, Being Faithful, 139. Pope Francis, Homily, “Mass With Ecclesial Movements on Pentecost,” May 19, 2013, in Through the Year with Pope Francis, Kevin Cotter (ed.) (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Press, 2013), 61.

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and often in a climate of ambiguity and confusion. It is hard to imagine the virtues and values, once seen as free-standing identities in the Chain of Being, without the witness of people to put them in action. How would we know justice and mercy without seeing it in practice? Today a calling is not just the practice of virtue for personal sanctification, but a summons to be carriers of values and work with others to create standards for modern society. This is a calling to witness to that point between the maximum application of a standard and its minimum which is possible in the conditions of a concrete society. Without this concrete manifestation of gospel living in face of counter values in society, the gospel remains only a type of moralism. Since the gospel is needed in all dimensions of society the expression of charism will take many forms. How though are expressions of our initiative and creativity in the Christian life not simply those of the Ubermensch of Nietzsche? When Aquinas wrote his great synthesis of the Christian life in the Summa Theologica he focused on the one, universal goal of all human persons, and not on the unique “I” that was on the journey to that goal.38 Aquinas saw that our initiative or human actions had a purpose, the fulfillment of the human person themselves. However, he saw this purpose as linear, as a development of human capacities that all people shared. This was progress in virtue in his synthesis. Today theologians also see human life as a story or narrative. Theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar for instance sees life purpose more as a narrative, in that our actions seek to add up to a meaning which is personal, our life story. Men and women do not see their life simply as isolated choices, or even defined by the facts of their lives. They put life’s isolated situations in a wider context of meaning in order to explain themselves to themselves. They judge past and future actions in light of how they “fit” into a life course, or story, which we have begun. We can either enrich this story or deplete it through neglect or rebellion. From the perspective of this inquiry, calling has more importance in our life than simply the choice of a career or a style of adult living; it is related to our identity. Is “one’s story” therefore just another self-construction? For von Balthasar, the narrative identity is not self-constructed alone, it is given by God. There is Christopher Steck, The Ethical Thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar (New York: Crossroads, 2001), 73.

38

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always a gap between one’s true identity and how one understands one’s story. Between who I think I am and who God sees me to be is a gap in identity which can only be bridged by God.39 God reveals over time through true encounters just who I really am; this is done in relationship and is at the heart of the Christian life. For Thomas the fulfillment of the person, the highest act, was the knowing, willing and loving the Absolute, for von Balthasar, it is becoming a “self ” in relation to the Absolute. This involves the process by which I relate the unique “I” that is my identity to the Absolute.40 While a role gives one identity in life: I am a married person, I am a priest, I am a single woman and nurse, I am a vowed religious, yet this is not one’s full identity, it is an expression of a deeper personal identity. Von Balthasar presents a picture of making decisions stemming from our identity. In prayer, we bring our initiatives before God, we receive Christ’s love and then we act. We surrender to God, and then make choices. The person asks, how does this decision look in God’s eyes, not simply the God of the commandments, but God who loves me and calls me to my true identity? This is a two-fold movement of interpersonal love, Christ moves towards me, a creature, in self-emptying, and the human being reaches towards God. Here the person allows himself or herself to be changed by this encounter, and to allow emotions, ideas, plans and strategies to be altered by what one learns in this personal exchange. This is not an encounter for spiritual specialists alone. It is the model for the daily life of Christians in postmodern society. Christian response to Christ in love is not simply one-directional—i.e. we love Christ. Autonomy and initiative understood through the Christian mysteries lead to an increasing dependence on God. Dependence on God fosters a deeper and more radical autonomy and initiative. This experience of transcendence is not the same as knowing what to do in a concrete situation, however, without it, decisions which need to express the dynamics of charism get engulfed by the limits of normativity and utility alone. Joas argues that our values in life are formed by a process which mirrors these dynamics, but their interpretation rests on the more concrete experience For understanding the ramifications of narrative or “deep story” for movements and congregations see Bernard Lee, S.M., The Beating of Great Wings: A Worldly Spirituality for Active, Apostolic Communities (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 2004). 40 Steck, The Ethical Thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar, 76. 39



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of self-transcendence. Our value commitments do not arise from the justification of rational-argument, but from experiences of self-formation and self-transcendence; from experiences that push us beyond ourselves and make us feel that what we have experienced is “good” based on a sense of subjective self-evidence and affective intensity.41 Identity is related to these moral feelings. Charles Taylor distinguishes between “weak” and “strong” desires, or evaluations of what is worth my effort. In the consideration of calling, the sorting of desires is essential. To respond to a calling often demands we have to choose between desires which are equally legitimate, but practically, cannot be fulfilled simultaneously. We have to choose. However, we experience differences between “weak” and “strong” desires. In the former, we have more pragmatic concerns, I am hungry, how do I find something to eat? Weak desires involve decisions around execution and availability of the means of fulfillment. With strong evaluations, other desires, while perfectly realizable, may be rejected because we hold their satisfaction to be unacceptable. The difference is a “strong” desire is experienced not just arising from the self, but as a given with an independent existence which places a demand on us, and which we are called to defend. We feel moved by some higher good; and we sense we are moved by what is good in it rather than that it is valuable because of our reaction. What moves us is we sense its point as something infinitely valuable.42 These value-standards forge meaningful links with one another over time. They become frameworks of qualitative distinctions incorporating our perception of self and others, and the situations in which our action and acts take place. Our behavior and practices which incorporate these standards remain intact as the foundation of all our conscious action. Identity formation, therefore, is necessarily related to such a framework of qualitative distinctions. They are necessary because human agency, personally and corporately, exists in a “space of questions about strongly valued goods,” on which we must take a stand.43 Charism as a calling is centered in Hans Joas, Faith as an Option: Possible Futures for Christianity, Alex Skinner (trans.) (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 85. 42 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1989), 74. 43 Ibid., 31. See also Hans Joas, The Genesis of Values, Gregory Moore (trans.) (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 124–44. 41

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these strong evaluations, both for individuals, communities and movements, because charism is central to identity. Every answer to the question, “who am I, or who are we?” involves declaring one’s social commitments and identifications. I do not identify with these commitments entirely, but they open a space wherein I or we determine what is affirmed or opposed. Identity is tied up with voluntary commitments or identifications or those that are not a matter of choice, yet form a context which frames my value response. For example, I or we, find ourselves at a time of war, or in the middle of extreme racial strife in the region. It is a situation which I do not choose, but which frames my choices. I am diagnosed with cancer; the question is not my choice of it, but how to deal with it. Taylor claims how we respond to situations, not of our choosing, also reflects our strong evaluations. Identity itself is a strongly valued good—it makes demands on us—we are expected to justify our actions according to its truth. In this sense, charism and calling, is not something static and given once and for all, it is an ongoing dynamic. A marriage is not over on the day of the wedding, it is built every day. What priesthood means in the church has changed radically in the last years, requiring a taking on, letting go and bearing with changes often not originated by the individual. Charism originated with a founder or foundress, but members of a religious congregation cannot nostalgically retreat to its historical artifacts as markers of their identity, without demanding what its “strong evaluations” say to the expression of their identity in the present and the future. Taylor charges that identity not rooted in a strongly preferred preference is incoherent.44

The Question of Vocation and Charism Personal calling and charism rests in the framework of understanding we have pursued here. The stance of Christian faith takes up the human challenge of adult identity, incorporating the powers of autonomy and initiative as high values in modern life, yet seeing more than choice and self-determination. The question, what do I want to do with my life demands an openness to Taylor, Sources of Self, 30.

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listening for a response. Life itself, or the Love which is at its heart, asks, independent of my goals and purpose, “What does my life want of me?” In the words of John S. Dunne: It may be that it is not for him simply to choose this or that life work but to do the work his life calls for, to accomplish the task his life poses for him. It may be too that it is not for him to decide to be part of some movement or community or to strike out on his own but to take the path his life demands, to find the way that is meant for him. And it may be that it is not for him simply to give or withhold his heart but to give his heart when his life demands that he give it and to withhold it when his life forbids him to give it.45

This waiting enables the person to move beyond the risks and calculations, which are a stage in recognizing one’s calling, to deeper considerations. The former can move into the background and allow for questions of the heart to appear. Moving beyond measuring the opposing fears which inevitably enter into any life choice, she can look deeper to uncover her heart’s desire. Whereas before it seemed possible to go in many life directions, his heart now casts a light upon them, and makes it possible to make a choice that is not just arbitrary or expedient. The light of “listening” in prayer takes what once appeared to be equal choices, and makes one a heartless path and the other a way of the heart. Finding one’s calling is finally coming to an adult life stance, in which you can place your heart, and live there for a lifetime.

John S. Dunne, “Insight and Waiting on God,” in Creativity and Method: Essays in Honor of Bernard Lonergan, S.J., Matthew Lamb (ed.) (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1981), 5.

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Spirituality is the “way of living” we adopt to respond to God and to integrate our lives. Specifically it involves the practices which give us access to God, the mystery that grounds life; and express our relationship in concrete ways. Christians believe that God’s self-communication reached its fullest expression in the history of the person of Jesus Christ. Therefore Christian spirituality is centered in the reality of the mystery of Jesus Christ and the Trinity. The Spirit we acknowledge in the experience of charism is the Spirit of Jesus. Christian faith is grounded in the acceptance of what revelation affirms about Jesus. Without the reality of Christ, faith is all process, ungrounded process at that for Christians, and has no content. Christian spirituality involves a process of growth grounded in Jesus Christ. If Jesus’ death and resurrection are not real, it would be impossible to live Christ’s death and resurrection, the paschal mystery, as a reality in Christian spirituality (Gal. 2:20). While there is great interest today in spiritual matters, there are questions about the role of the church in spiritual growth. The image of a church “above the fray,” as having answers to the dilemma of the modern age and spotless before the world, is no longer tenable. Modern society has called forth legal powers to enforce the secular laws the church ignored in the supervision of its personnel, in its sexual abuse scandals. The church also struggles with its internal matters, and with the effects of Vatican II. For some, the changes brought about by the council were not understood or received; for others the church has retreated from the ideals of reforms it once began. Some members of the church look for the stability the church once symbolized to them; others

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desire from the church a dialogue partner, rather than a director, to walk alongside them as they seek a good life in a secular world.

Faces of Spirituality Spirituality is also not a generic term in the Christian life. There is black spirituality, Hispanic spirituality, feminist spirituality, male spirituality, creation spirituality, etc. Modern people are not drawn to the idea that there is only one proper form of human living, rather they recognize the variety of lifestyles surrounding them, each with its own witness to “good.” The call of their individual histories and life possibilities often translates into a spiritual search to be “authentic.” The scope of spirituality today can seem more like a patchwork quilt than a seamless garment. In some cases, Christian belief is mixed in with trivialities; but in other cases, Christian spirituality is a hybrid of positive elements drawn from many sources: traditional ones as well as cultural values, practices from other world religions, holistic health practices, and therapeutic insights. To integrate what is helpful for the Christian life, and sort the unnecessary can make Christian spirituality appear like the dragnet in the gospel, filled with helpful and unhelpful alike, that has to be sorted. Movements of emancipation in society stir another expression of Christian spirituality, as these drives find an anchor in the gospel. The deepest spiritual desires for freedom from alienations of the human spirit: a longing for freedom from racism, from addiction, from violence, from economic dependency, from cultural margination and gender inequality can center and focus identification of God in life. The positive face of alienations also generates a spiritual search: a hope for ethnic diversity, peace, sobriety, peaceful family life free of domestic violence, and more collaborative relationships between different sectors of the church: clergy, lay, religious, parish, movements, theologians and magisterium. These various “starting points” for the spiritual quest, make the term “spiritualities” in the Christian life a more accurate term than spirituality. Yet some report that people leave the church in search of the Spirit today. Many ponder exactly what this means, what should be the response, how do we move forward as a community?



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The Church means different things to people in their quest for spirituality: for some it is a burden, an artifact from the past, a place of gendered oppression, a center of intolerance; or for others it is a spiritual home, a sanctuary, a family, a place of good works, a “haven” in a secularized society. Recently Pope Francis said the church should be like a field hospital. The thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful: it needs nearness, proximity to assist those who experience their lives as a battle. In the words of the Pope: “It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds.”1 Pope Francis offers a different image of the church, than the church has all the answers. His approach is an alternative posture to that which grew out of the “subtraction theory” of the modernization debate. This mentality viewed the question of the role of the church in the modern world, as modernity’s problem, caused by its progressive abandonment of religion as modern society developed. The response of the church therefore needs to be “restorationism”; to bring back the glory of the past when the church was the source of moral authority. The guilty party is the “world” who refused to listen to the church. Instead of the church going to the world, the world needs to come to the church. The church in this view faces the danger of becoming an enclave of the righteous in a society gone wrong. Spirituality involves a flight from the world, to ensure one’s own salvation. This is not the view of Pope Francis. Spirituality in the modern church is to be practiced in a manner in which it is attuned to the whole ministry of the church to preach the gospel, a ministry into which all the People of God are incorporated at baptism.2 Spirituality practiced in a climate where evangelization is central, sets a different tone in its expression than an inward and defensive note. Walter Kasper offers representation, Christian existence as pro-existence, being for others, as the heart of what it means to be a Christian. This standing up for others and taking their place can turn the more inward-looking orientation of some communities toward a secularized world, as love of neighbor.3 The Pope Francis as quoted in Antonio Spadaro, S.J. “A Big Heart Open to God,” America, September 30, 2013. 2 Pope Francis, Joy of the Gospel: Evangelii Gaudium (Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2013). 3 Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to the Christian Life, 155. 1

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link between charism and evangelization therefore reflects the essence of charism as a gift of the Spirit for the building up of the Church. Charism is not just for the internal working of the church, but for the mission of the Church, as a sacrament of the love and mercy of God before today’s diverse spiritual needs.

Seekers and Dwellers A few decades ago researchers gave a name to those who were in search of spirituality but without adherence to a church.4 The term “seekers” meant non-church members who explored organized religion from the outside. A seeker was someone open to what was offered in the religious, spiritual or life-orienting realm by the churches, but someone not convinced of the need to actually belong to the institution. In fact, some spoke of a “vicarious religion”—religion performed by an active minority but on behalf of a much larger number who (implicitly at least) not only understood but, quite clearly approve what the minority is doing.5 These early attempts to clarify the ambiguity surrounding religious practice led to more research. Today the term seeker is used to distinguish among believers different postures on the spiritual journey: some are “seekers” and others, “dwellers.”6 Giving the term further meaning, seekers are those who “search” in a complicated world for its transcendent meaning, either in or outside the church. “Dwellers” are those who “dwell” in the church, they belong and are satisfied. Despite its struggles, dwellers find that the church meets their needs for the spiritual journey. After these broad definitions, the definitions can be muddled. Dwellers also seek spiritual enrichment, and seekers do find some aspects of church life a comfort and support to their journey. The distinction between the two is more a matter whether the experience of search with unanswered questions or dwelling in what one has found falls into a main clause of a self-description of their spiritual journey.7 Wade Clark Roof, A Generation of Seekers. The Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation (San Francisco: Harper, 1993). Grace Davie, “Vicarious Religion: A Methodological Challenge,” Everyday Religion: Observing Religious Lives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 22. 6 Robert Wuthnow, After Heaven; Spirituality in America since 1950’s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). 7 Charles Taylor, “The Church Speaks—To Whom?” in Church and People: Disjunctions in a Secular 4

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Seeking and dwelling have also their “lighter” forms. Affiliated seeking is a more intense living of one’s churched identity, which can appear to some people as too much effort; and can result in a name-only church membership. Others profess agnosticism, not one of conscience, but of lack of effort. Dwelling can camouflage going through the motions, avoiding a deeper involvement. Most go through periods in which some form of these postures characterizes their religious practice, however they move through them. What researchers are noting is they have become replacements for religious practice. A type of religious “tinkering” which is called seeking, but lacks its seriousness can be a cover for drifting and non-commitment. Wuthnow points to a borrowing of solutions for practical problems from a range of religions without any real commitment to the disciplines of any.8 Seekers and dwellers can talk past one another; and appear to live in different worlds. Today the church needs to make efforts to dialogue with seekers, people who have questions about the meaning and significance of Christian belief, and not just wait until they become dwellers or live within the magnetic field of the church. This requires a shift in pastoral practice. There has been the tendency in the past to focus on dwellers, mainly fostering the rights of passage and generational transfer of faith that has “worked” for previous generations. This ministry is still important, as it reaches both seekers and dwellers, but a new situation exists. Taylor predicts that the road ahead is mixed. While a prevailing rhetoric in culture is dismissive of religious faith, some will break through this, and acknowledge realities in their lives which cannot be explained through the immanent frame of the systems of science, the state, reason and human achievements. They will “believe again,” and will make up a convinced and adult segment of the church population. Another group will not be moved by the cultural narrative, and will “believe still,” or find they never had a reason to doubt, finding themselves simply in the faith and grateful for it. And a third group, will be a mixture of the two, in which a type of alternating between seeking and dwelling, depending on the context or period of their lives, will

Age, Charles Taylor, Jose Casanova, and George F. McLean (eds) (Washington, DC: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2012), 17–24. 8 Robert Wuthnow, After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty and Thirty Somethings are Shaping the Future of American Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 15.

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be more characteristic of their journey. There also will be changes in the status of the church in countries where the church has traditionally held a majority position, it becomes a minority. Because of the complexity of the world situation, it is likely the church will remain a majority in some countries, and become a minority in others.9 To meet this wider range of spirituality in its midst, the church needs to listen. The official church can have a tendency to rebuff the spiritual seeking current in culture. Seekers ask questions, which do not concur with the already worked-out answers of the church; and it is hard to listen.10 The tension between seekers and dwellers however exists not just with the institutional church; it is present among the people themselves. It is a source of division in parishes, religious congregations, movements, diocese, national churches, and on an international scale. Charism today is experienced within this context, and challenged to create ways to meet it. This is not the first time there has been a shift in spirituality.

Weber and Spirituality Weber uses three terms to speak of spirituality: asceticism, mysticism and virtuosi. He notes a difference between unusual and routine religious experiences, but this gap is overcome through an effort in the Church to systematize and rationalize methods of growing religiously.11 Weber sees the goal of all spiritual methods as the assurance of grace in one’s life. All religious practice has this focus.12 Religion uses rational forms to “pass on” so to say proven methods or paths to this assurance of grace, or what we call spirituality today. Mysticism and asceticism give different answers to the question: How is it possible for a religious believer to gain a sure sense of salvation?13 Both For the discussion of the situation in Europe see: A Catholic Minority Church in a World of Seekers, Staf Hellemans and Peter Jonkers (eds) (Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2015). 10 George F. McLean, “Introduction: Disjunction in the 21st Century,” in Church and People: Disjunctions in a Secular Age, 5. 11 Max Weber, Economy and Society, Vol. 1, Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (eds) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 538. 12 Max Weber, “Different Roads to Salvation,” in Max Weber: On Charisma and Institution Building, 275. 13 Carroll, Protestant Modernity, 169–82. 9



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individuals and institutions which “dispense this sense of salvation to others” try to answer how to “know” one is saved. Institutions differ from individuals in that they tend to awaken in the individual a “method” of living which keeps them in touch with their religious lives. Three paths seem to offer this sense of salvation: ecstasy, asceticism and contemplation. Contemplative practice is needed because ecstasy is fleeting. For this reason, it must be incorporated into a practice of contemplation. One makes repeated attempts at contemplation to assure a sense of certainty of salvation. It becomes a practice of one’s spirituality.

Virtuosi Virtuosi are a “status group” in religious practice; as people differ widely in their religious capacities. Not everyone possesses the “charisma” to maintain continually the religious awareness of the assurance of grace. Religious virtuosi work methodically at their salvation; so their status in the community of the faithful is given honor.14 Virtuosi exist, not just in Christianity, but in other religions; and have different styles of practice. In early Christianity these people were separate from the congregation and later began monastic orders. In Protestantism they became ascetic sects or pious conventicles. In Judaism, the Pharisees held this position, in Islam, the Sufis. The maintenance of a type of “certainty” of salvation was the constant in all these groups of virtuosi. It required the upholding of religious and ethical standards and the avoidance of major sins like cowardice, brutality, selfishness, sensuality and others which would “divert the individual from his charismatic character.”15 Vatican II departed from the sense of virtuosi pointed to by Weber. They called the whole church to attention to their spiritual life, in their universal call to holiness. “In the various types and duties of life, one and the same holiness is cultivated by all who are moved by the Spirit of God, and who obey the voice of the Father, worshipping God the Father in spirit and truth” (LG 41). It seems fair to assume that the awareness that all possess a charism, not just exceptional people, is tied to this stance.

Weber, Economy and Society, 539, see also 541–56. Ibid., 540.

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Asceticism Weber associates salvation with the capacity to act ethically. The ascetic is one who experiences salvation through the sense of being an instrument of God. Religious virtuosi submit their natural drives to a systematic patterning of life. They live a type of radical ethical stance which results in a critique of society, and its conventional virtues, which Weber found unheroic and utilitarian. Weber’s view of the world was rather negative. It was a place of temptation and filled with sensual pleasures which divert one from the divine. The world had enough “satisfactions” that it fosters in the religiously average person a type of complacency, distracting them from the necessity of “those things necessary” for salvation. Therefore, a withdrawal from the world was necessary. In Weber’s terms this is “world-rejecting asceticism.” It is possible that a salvific outlook and lifestyle may require participation within the world. In this case, one lives and works within institutions in the world, but in opposition to them. This requires a type of piety and qualifications which mark one as “elect of God.” This person’s responsibility is to engage the world and transform it according to his or her ascetic ideals. This requires an “inner-worldly asceticism.” A person in this stance could be a revolutionary; or a rational reformer coming out of a sense of natural rights. Both “other-worldly asceticism” and “inner-worldly asceticism” separates ascetics from the general mass of people. Weber felt ascetics should give up the illusion they can raise the level of everyone to the lifestyle they have embraced. There are simply different religious endowments. This leaves him to conclude that the world as a whole constitutes a “massa perditionis.” It is wise to give up the demand that the world conforms to religious claims. The world remains “a natural vessel of sin.” The ascetic must live in the world, but not of the world. Yet, it is the world, with its limitations, which is the medium through which one’s unique religious charisma, proves itself by means of rational ethical conduct. This is the path by which one may become and remain certain of one’s own state of grace.16 The order of the world in which the ascetic is situated is the vocation which he must fulfill rationally. Economic conduct, participation in organizations, marriage and the begetting

Ibid., 543.

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of children, use of force to keep order in society, secular enjoyment, all can be entered into, but within the limits of the salvific order.

Mysticism Mysticism is the condition in which one may enjoy mystical union with the divine. In mysticism, the content of salvation is assured, not through an active quality of conduct, but as a subjective condition of mystic illumination. Illumination may be an end result of a practice of contemplation; and a distancing from everyday concerns. Contemplation is primarily the quest to achieve rest in God and in God alone. It entails inactivity, cessation of thought; especially regarding anything that reminds one of the world; in other words, the minimization of all outer and inner activity. These activities of “flight from the world” are paths through which the mystic achieves union with the divine.17 Mysticism involves a distinctive organization of the emotions, which leads to a certain type of knowledge, not of facts, but of the meaning of the world. This knowledge is not always communicable. As a gnosis, or knowledge, it is a possession of something from which there may be derived a new practical orientation to the world. It can even lead to new and communicable items of knowledge. Weber contrasts “world-rejecting asceticism” and mysticism. The former is oriented to activity within the world; from that activity, in its process, the ascetic gains new assurance of salvation experienced in the power to act, and the conviction that through action he or she serves God. This is not a flight from the world, rather an engagement in it, overcoming its temptations and experiencing “in the battle” a victory, and connection to God. In mysticism, there is a flight from the world, not in passive abandonment to self-absorption, rather as a concentration on certain truths which integrate one’s total view of the world. A felt emotional unity of knowledge and volitional mood is acquired which provides the mystic with decisive assurance of his or her religious state of grace.18 While the ascetic feels an experience of

Ibid., 545. Ibid., 546.

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God in the process of his or her action, the mystic, who neither desires nor can be God’s instrument, seeks to be instead, a vessel of God. The mystic does not seek a rational understanding of the world to change it, for she or he has already conceived of the essential meaning of the world as a unity beyond all empirical reality. Mystical contemplation does not always result in a total flight from the world, which requires avoiding all contact. The mystic may also require of themselves the task to maintain a state of grace against every pressure of the mundane order, as an index of the enduring character of that very state of grace.19 If this is the case, the mystic’s presence in the institutional framework of the world is a different vocation than the one produced by innerworldly asceticism. There is a type of humility and brokenness, not efficiency, witnessed to in the mystic’s presence to the world which is a different posture than the activity of the ascetic.20 Carroll finds in Weber’s analysis of asceticism and mysticism a missing link. It fails to account for the role of mysticism in its relationship to action. The arbitrary division between prayer and works does not allow him to address the Counter-Reformation development in the Catholic Church of contemplation in action. Therefore he is unable to attribute any sociological significance to mysticism for action.21 Joas concurs with this criticism of Weber in a different but related manner. He claims Weber does not have a theory of action to account for charisma—he merely observes charisma as a phenomenon of change. However, we can also note in the post-Vatican II church, a tendency to see spirituality and justice as two “camps” of faithfulness; perhaps the tendency to divide the two is not so unusual in the human imagination.

Charism and Ministry The line between the world and the Church is not as tightly drawn as Weber suggests: nor is the transition from religious to secular calling as seamless as Ibid., 548. One might project this difference described in the contrasting essays of the Niebuhrs: H. Richard Niebuhr, “The Grace of Doing Nothing,” The Christian Century (March 30, 1932): 378–80. Reinhold Niebuhr, “Must We Do Nothing,” The Christian Century (March 30, 1932): 417. 21 Carroll, Protestant Modernity, 173. 19 20



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presented. It would take hundreds of books to outline the impact of asceticism and mysticism on the church and society. The charismatic activity of the People of God, led by the Spirit, especially in communities, is intertwined with the development of the history of modern society. While Weber was not too hopeful that the more communal ethic of brotherly love could be integrated into the distant and anonymous relationships of the modern world, the church’s social tradition, and the charismatic communities and associations which have carried it into modern society have thought otherwise. Even historically, the “world-denying” charisms of Christian groups have produced world-enhancing results. It has been a deep tradition of the church that political and economic power is not ultimate. This limitation of power provided an early theoretical foundation for democracy and human rights. These insights among others contribute to a hybrid account of Western modernity where no single factor led to its development, yet its reality is unrecognizable without the contribution of Christianity. The charisms of its institutions are inseparable from this impact.22 Vera Zamagni refers to the contribution of the Franciscan school to the development of the economic thinking which provided a basis for the modern market economy and modern development.23 Stefano Zamagni relates doubleentry book-keeping and business accounting, bills of exchange, pledge banks, and stock exchanges, as institutions without which self-sustaining, widely diffused economic development would have been impossible. All are the result of the mixed investment of late-medieval merchants, manufacturers, seafarers, and business innovators, and monks all living in a pre-Reformation context.24 This creativity, which cannot be interpreted apart from the religious culture of the time, shares in the mystery of all creativity in history, and is a dimension of charism. While John Haughey remarks, “… that charisms are notoriously elusive”—we can reflect on some patterns they share with other creativity Hans Joas, The Sacredness of the Person: A New Genealogy of Human Rights (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013), 170. 23 Vera Negri Zamagni, “The Political and Economic Impact of CST since 1891: Christian Democracy and Christian Labour Unions in Europe,” in The True Wealth of Nations, 96. 24 Stefano Zamagni, “Catholic Social Thought, Civil Economy, and the Spirit of Capitalism,” in The True Wealth of Nations, 67–8. 22

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in history.25 First, we know charisms are God’s way of building up families, communities, parishes, schools, hospitals, agencies, the Church, but also business, neighborhoods, cities, and even international relations. Charisms function where there are human needs, so making a list of them in today’s society will go beyond Paul’s mention of them in an ecclesial framework only (1 Cor. 12:7). We can feel confident in this assumption, as Vatican II documents spoke of charisms to be used in the wider society, as well as in the church (AA 3). It seems fair to say, where there are needs for ministry, there are charisms given to meet those needs. Since each member has a charism, is this charism simply the person’s gifts or developed or educated skills? Not exactly, grace does build on nature, but a charism is a power God’s Spirit gives a person that enables them to do better what nature or training has first equipped them to do. It adds another dimension to what is there, without suggesting there is a division between nature and grace.26 The relationship could be what John Paul II saw as the relationship between the church and culture, something marked by transcendence and compenetration.27 A charism is marked by transcendence since it is a gift from God—it is “beyond our lights and shadows.” Yet when we consider its function in ministry, it is also characterized by compenetration, that is, while essentially religious, it is expressed in the everyday life of the church and society. Charism functions in the various ministries of the church in its offices, in the services provided by the church as church to its members and beyond; it is expressed in the broader mission of the church to the world, thus operating in what is often a totally secular realm. Charism is one bridge the church has to be involved in the daily life of every socio-political reality. So its identification and fostering is important not only to the members of the church, but for its mission.

Models of Creative Action It is difficult to distinguish charism from daily involvement in the world. Researchers suggest that the creative element in human action in general John Haughey, “Charisms: An Ecclesiological Exploration,” in Retrieving Charisms for the 21st Century, Doris Donnelly (ed.) (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1999), 1. 26 Ibid., 2. 27 See Merkle, From the Heart of the Church, 236ff. 25



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is problematic to define. Usually models of action are classified by two predominant ways of thinking. People act for rational reasons or people act for normative reasons. Hans Joas asserts that creativity of action is not a third model; rather it is a dimension of all human action. Charism, as creative action, in a secular society witnesses to the potential in all action in the Christian life, that is, its significance for the common good, and its transcendent source. It can provide a meaning to life in secular society; at a level that society itself cannot provide. How do we recognize creative action in history? Joas offers some classifications which can provide perspective on the creative expression of charism today. We will use these as heuristic devices to “see” how charismatic-inspired action not only expresses the ministry of the church but also joins other creative action in history. By introducing a concept of action which consistently takes account of this creative dimension of action, other modes of action can be assigned their logical place.28 In the church, a deeper appreciation of charism can be an avenue to integrate ethical, spiritual and social action into a more unified whole. When Joas surveys types of action in history, he focuses on three areas to capture this more dynamic aspect of the human living: expression, production and revolution—or acting in freedom, the attempt to make new beginnings.29 While these do not define all of human living, they point to ways its creative dimension is expressed; in this they provide a lens on charism.

Expression The human capacity to take a perspective on the world, offer a window to others to see the realm of their inner life, lies at the heart of expression. Over time, the depths of human life have been expressed through the arts, music, drama, literature, as well as the artistic and intellectual tradition of peoples across the globe. Human creativity does not occur in a vacuum; rather it happens in situations which call for some solution. Many of our experiences of charism in the Church, involve the gift of just this window, often from the

Joas, The Creativity of Action, 5. Ibid., 75–116.

28 29

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mystical tradition, which offers a window on the God–human relationship; and shows a “way” within the Christian life for others to meet God. Today a stirring of charism is needed as Christians share in the search for truth, justice, goodness and beauty with all people of good will. This expressive dimension of church life is not in competition with the sacramental order of the Church. It is offered in sermons, theological treatises, witness under persecution, mystical poetry, letters, rules of life, public actions, music, drama, literature, media productions, rituals and traditions which express the wisdom which comes from living. In its wake whole new approaches to the Christian life have been expressed under new circumstances, and deep values of the church are communicated to society at large. These traditions would die with their interlocutors had not communities in the church taken a literal form of expression and translated it into a living witness to the world. Today new gifts of expression, often arising from peoples and cultures not previously given expression in the church continue to spring up in the church. Recognition of this creativity of expression is needed both to bring forward what should not be lost and to translate what must be new. Expression also is needed to develop contemporary approaches to the vocations of marriage, priesthood, consecrated life and intentional singularity. Each vocation has to integrate adaptations needed for these times, yet promote the integrity of their adult life form in the church. Expression is the means to evangelize the culture, bringing the power of Christ to the arenas of politics, law, the arts, higher education, media and entertainment.

Production In economics, production is the addition of value. Scientists, inventors, mathematicians, astronauts, astronomers, social scientists, and physicians among others have literally made the world a different place. For the church, the lens of production focuses on how the church impacts the world. In different centuries the church has adopted distinctive strategies to express its church–world relationships. Expressions of charism fulfill these purposes, and in some instances charismatic movements call the church to new approaches. This interchange between the charismatic and institutional dimensions of the church is a constant in church history—they are not opposed, rather are



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inseparable.30 However, the church interprets charism through the lens of its current church–world relationships; and as these change, interpretation of charism has to adapt. Historical circumstance impacts what charism “produces” both for the People of God and the society in which it is embedded, as well as for the institution of the church itself.

From Catholic Action to Today Prior to Vatican II a key pastoral strategy for the Church to carry out its mission and support its members in this new industrial society was Catholic Action. The aims of this movement were to repair or reconstruct Christian civilization where it has been injured or destroyed through the forces of modernization. Its three strategies were: to disseminate a better knowledge of Catholic social principles and ideals as well as the Catholic faith itself; to reorganize the public life of individual nations in accordance with Catholic standards; lastly, to counteract the poverty, insecurity and material misery of the laboring population.31 Characteristic of the implementation of these strategies was the internal ecclesiological understanding of the time. The lay apostolate, at this point in church thinking, was at root, a participation in the apostolate of the hierarchy and was to be carried on always in subordination to it (QA 96). Pius XI recognized a special role of the laity as workers. They served as apostles to their fellow workers. But he described those lay “apostles” as “auxiliary soldiers of the Church.” The Church here was clearly the hierarchy.32 Another aspect of this strategy to carry out the mission of the church and support its members was the creation of parallel institutions within industrial society. Catholic hospitals, schools, newspapers, political parties and the like were organized under the banner of “Catholic Action.” Professions had their own Catholic associations as support to their faith and their contributions Karl Rahner, The Dynamic Element in the Church, “On the Charismatic Element in the Church” (New York: Herder and Herder, 1964), Chapter 2, 55. 31 Hubert Jedin, “Popes Benedict XV, Pius XI, and Pius XII,” in History of the Church in the Modern Age, Hubert Jedin (ed.) (London: Burns and Oates, 1981), 26. See also Edward Cahill, S.J. “The Catholic Movement: Historical Aspects,” in Readings in Moral Theology, No. 5 Official Catholic Social Teaching (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), 5. 32 Peter Hebblethwaite, “The Popes and Politics: Shifting Patterns in Catholic Social Doctrine,” in Daedalus. Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 111 (1) (Winter 1982): 87. 30

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as doctors, lawyers, educators etc. in society. The goal was to be involved as Catholics in the fostering of a new society, yet also protect them from elements in the society which could destroy their faith. The “production” of charism operated within this wider pastoral identity of the church. Lay associations operated under the auspices of the bishop. Religious orders established schools and hospitals to meet the model of Catholic action. By the time of the 1950s religious life had become so unified through the Canon law code of 191733 that religious congregations were asked to study their “primitive spirit” or foundational charism as a lens on renewal of their congregations for changing times.34 Vatican II embraced a changed understanding of the church and its mission which shifted how communities and individuals understood their charism. The Catholic Action model was gradually abridged by this new understanding; however, issues from this change are far from resolved in the church. Vatican II placed the theological and pastoral treatment of the Church at the forefront. It emphasized the religious nature of the Church through images of the Church as the People of God, the Body of Christ, and the sacrament of salvation. The shift at Vatican II from an institutional to a theological understanding of the Church proved significant for defining the Church’s social mission.35 When the Church is seen in its religious nature and understood as a sacrament, rather than simply in its institutional structures as a hierarchical organization, its social mission is reinterpreted. The interpretive frame for understanding the “productive” aspect or works dimension of charism therefore also shifts. The social mission is no longer one of the tasks that the institution performs. Instead, the social mission is a symbol and sacrament of the religious nature of the Church. The Church expresses and symbolizes itself in doing its social mission. The Synod of Bishops in 1971 claimed justice is a constitutive dimension of the Church. “Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church’s Merkle, A Different Touch, 129–30, 143ff. Maryanne Confoy, Religious Life and Priesthood: Rediscovering Vatican II (New York: Paulist, 2008), 178ff. 35 Francis Schussler Fiorenza, “Social Mission of the Church,” in The New Dictionary of Catholic Social Thought, Judith A. Dwyer (ed.) (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1994), 151–71. 33 34



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mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation” (JW 36). A note in the study by Maryanne Confoy concretizes the shift this meant in religious orders. Her comments concern the understanding of mission by the Christian Brothers, a religious order of men in the church. The Christian Brothers were initially established in Ireland with an international educational outreach. However they moved from education in schools to establish a collaborative Edmund Rice International, a non-governmental organization committed to advocacy on behalf of children and young people who are marginalized because of poverty, legal status, environmental degradation, or adult wars. It is sponsored by the Congregation of Christian Brothers and the Congregation of Presentation Brothers. It is a partner organization with Franciscan International in Geneva.36 This change is symbolic of those of many congregations in the church who diversified their ministries from what may have been their initial focus. The Brothers maintained many of their schools, but they also engaged in new endeavors. The change in the understanding of the mission of the church called them to reinterpret their charism. There were also blocks to such a re-interpretation of charism in some congregations. Studies commented that while religious congregations were asked to return to the spirit of their founder, absence of corporate commitment to embody the group’s response to current unmet needs stood in contrast to the collective vision and action that marked the birth of most apostolic, monastic or contemplative congregations.37 The type of communal culture which was present at the founding of a congregation no longer existed in modern society. This raises the question of the type of communal culture which carries charism today, and whether the communal formation of the past is the only possible corporate carrier. Changes in religious congregations also impacted the laity. After Vatican II congregations developed lay associate membership as an effort to collaborate with the laity in their mission, and to offer their charism as a focus to assist lay people in the church to move from an anonymous identity in the church Confoy, Religious Life and Priesthood, 322 n.251. David Nygren and Miriam Ukeritis, “Executive Summary of Study on the Future of Religious Orders,” Origins 22/15 (September 24, 1992): 270, as quoted in Confoy, Religious Life and Priesthood, 250.

36 37

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as “people in the pews” to a deeper focus on their baptismal mission. They also saw this as a mutually beneficial relationship, as lay associates brought to the congregation, expression of charism as it was experienced in a different calling in the church. Currently, in the United States and Canada there are approximately 50,000 lay associates of religious orders.38 These changes also impact marriage and family life. Catholic families no longer live in a Catholic subculture; rather the impact of secular society challenges marriage in new ways. Changes in the patterns of work and family, breakthroughs in science and family planning, a conflict between marriage as “pure relationship” and the solidarity, communication and life disciplines required to maintain a home, and the psychological stresses of secular life all impact the balancing necessary to foster a healthy marriage.39 Protestant theologian Don Browning claims that modern cultural values such as expressive and utilitarian individualism cannot sustain marriage without a public theology of covenant and subsidiarity which defines marriage not only as a deeply meaningful personal and spiritual relationship but as a public institution.40 Groups in the church founded to promote marriage face the challenge to address these contemporary concerns, and find new ways to foster marriage as a vocation in the Church.

Revolution, New Beginnings, Acting in Freedom This last lens of the creativity of human action is perhaps the most ambiguous. Religious charism was integral to various reform periods of the church. When we imagine however a Spirit of revolution in the Church, we are apt to visualize some movement of the Spirit outside the structured community. The Spirit operates, not simply as a Church of the Spirit, without the Church as an ordered community. The Spirit of Christ acts through the audible word and the visible sacraments. The Spirit institutes ministries in the Church which are in service to the word and the sacraments, and are shepherds to the faithful. See: North American Conference of Associates and Religious. Website: nacar.org (accessed October 20, 2015). David Matzko McCarthy, “An Overwhelming Desire for Home,” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America 63 (June 2008): 60. Andrew J. Cherlin, “The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage,” Journal of Marriage and Family 66 (4) (2004): 848–61. 40 Don D. Browning, Marriage and Modernization: How Globalization Threatens Marriage and What to Do About It (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 75. 38

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The Spirit functions through the Church as “house,” a structure, an ordered assembly. The Spirit operates through the role of the bishop, as part of the official order of the Church, as one to discern the Spirit. The Spirit operates both in the charism of the member and the charism of the office of bishop to whom the function of charism in the church is submitted. In other words, there is not a church simply of the Spirit as enthusiasm without the Church as an ordered community. This proves to be however a double-edged sword. Actual changes do happen in the structures of the church. At times we imagine the Spirit moving just in intentionality without making any real structural change. When we imagine revolution, new beginnings and freedom, the mix of the concrete and its demands are in the picture. The image of the Church as sacrament—the place and instrument of the Spirit—helps to overcome extremes in thinking regarding the role of the Spirit in the Church. It can balance an extreme enthusiasm that excludes the sacramental and ministerial mediation, as well as the extreme of a purely hierarchical-institutional view of the Church which identifies the Church with the ecclesiastical establishment and overlooks the sign and service nature of the church.41 The communio structure of the Church therefore involves an ordered interaction of different ministries and charismata, but in a manner which can be called an open system, rather than an integralist or totalitarian one. In other words, there is no one point or one instance which can direct or manipulate the ordering of the parts of the church. Kasper asserts that the Church is an organism of manifold charismas whose unity realizes itself in a mutually complementing and supporting dynamic interaction. No role can replace or displace another. In other words, no one part can do away with another; rather they fulfill their respective service only in the spirit of communio. This involves listening to each other, in showing mutual consideration, in complementing each other, in tolerating and correcting each other and in the cooperation of all. It is only in this openness in which it is possible for the new of the Spirit to show itself in each respective situation which occurs. The expression of charism in this situation of the church depends therefore on the quality of community life. This is essential in manifesting charism, in Kasper, The Catholic Church: Nature, Reality and Mission, 141.

41

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all its dimensions, especially in new beginnings. Practically, the charism of the laity needs the creation of real structures in the church to actually incorporate these charisms into its life. The charism of women, especially in their capacities for leadership also requires changes in attitude and appointment. Women cannot “will” themselves into leaderly roles in the church without the concomitant support from those in the community to accept their leadership, as well as the openness of those with the authority to affirm appointments. More globally, the integration of the charisms of “local churches” diverse across the world will happen only by moving from a Western church to a world church. Hence how we imagine community in the church, as well as its structure as a community in ministry to the world has a lot to do with our understanding of charism.

Ministry, Community, and Institution Through most of the modern era, up until recently, the Papacy faced a world of national churches. In some countries the church was well established, in others it was a minority. Yet in both situations the power of the state had great influence over the church. The struggle to fight against state control was the fight of the nineteenth and twentieth century, centered in ultramontanism. Ultramontanism was the affirmation of papal power against those in Europe, especially Northern Europe, who saw power from “beyond the mountains (Alps)” as an infringement on the national identity of the church. In 1829 there were 646 diocesan bishops in the Latin Church; 555 of these were appointed by the states, sixty-seven by diocesan chapters, and twenty-four by the Pope. By 1917, with the revision of canon law, came the statement: “inherent in Papal primary was the right to appoint bishops through the Catholic Church.”42 Today the church, and many international congregations and movements have an unprecedented degree of centralization. These structures seem to militate against the church of “nearness” and “proximity” which is Pope Francis’ image of the needed church today. The challenge is how to

Nicholas Lash, Theology for Pilgrims (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 230, as quoted in Taylor, “The Church Speaks,” 23.

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hold together in one universal church, and bond together in one sacramental union not only modes of faith in different cultural expressions but those with different expression which have at present difficulty in finding any affinity for each other, and are tempted to exclude the other from orthodoxy. While the model of church as communio is a hopeful ideal, we recognize also that community today is not the same model as in the past. What model of community then do we use to inform the theological understanding of communio? Spirituality without community is unimaginable in the Christian life. In fact community may be the single factor that will sustain the church into the future. The sociologists of the nineteenth century focused community on geography, common values, ethnic identities, common nationality and so on. We think of the parishes in the United States of the nineteenth and early twentieth century with neighborhoods with an Italian parish on one corner, German on another, Polish on a third and Irish on the last. There were black and white sides of the railroad tracks marking areas of the city where the other did not travel, and religious orders defined by their nationality of origin, and divided by race. These communities of the past cannot be sustained in the conditions of the future, so where do we turn for models? Theorists claim that a shared history, identity, mutuality, plurality, autonomy, participation, and integration mark modern community.43 If we hold that the charismas in the Church are held in an open system of communio, then it may be fruitful to reflect on the qualities which mark a community in the modern era, while they exist in tension with one another. We do this assuming that the revolution and new beginnings of the creativity of charism will certainly be expressed in a renewed quality of community life in the Church.

Toward a New Community Shared history assumes that customs, language, geography, shared events, and crises bond community more than abstract ideals. Ethical vision, or a Story The following analysis is based on and adapted from the work of Larry Rasmussen, Moral Fragments, Moral Community (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 110ff., and his use of the work of Philip Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth: Social Theory and the Promise of Community (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 183–90, 357–65. This is also developed in more detail in Merkle, From the Heart of the Church, 241–65.

43

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in which members can interpret their story, is latent in a community’s shared culture. Yet this story has to be multi-cultural, open to the movements of people across the globe, and respectful of diversity, race, ethnicity, financial status, age and religion. There is need to maintain a balance between openness to secularity, and the need to create a climate for the sharing of faith in community. We need a place to interpret our experiences of selftranscendence. Without it, we are forced to remain silent about them, and prevented from entering into their meaning for our relationship with the divine.44 Aspects of a shared history can be pathological, as in ethnic cleansing, fundamentalisms, racial wars of genocide; and insidious intra-ecclesial polarities. The community of the future has to be built differently if it is to be more than a tool of hatred or for group preservation, based on a negative identity. A community with a shared history is one marked by participation, the optimal inclusion of all involved voices in a decision and in the sharing of the burdens as well as the benefits of life together in a given locality. The participatory quality of community requires structures for the engagement of the laity and women in church governance, as well as those which foster continental church decision-making. Identity refers to the kind of persons being formed by a community. The formation of identity in community involves a “we” that does not destroy individuality or is based on a hostile moral tribalism where “we” is seen always opposed to a “they.”45 In the Catholic community identity is fostered by its sacramental character. The liturgy is the possession not of individuals but of the Church; it is fundamentally a communal entity.46 Christians in the Eucharistic assembly find their identity now as continuing the “passage” from death to life, the paschal mystery of Jesus, and take up in Christ the call to manifest God’s faithfulness and love to the world, trusting in God’s promise. This evokes a joy and confidence, which, even though it might not be “felt” by all who participate, belongs to the whole Church and is its prayer for all. A community of identity is marked by responsibility. Consequences are not lost in scales of action whose range of impact makes no one responsible. Joas, Do We Need Religion?, 16. See Merkle, Being Faithful, 147ff. This chapter addresses the possibilities for good of groups of advocacy and identity in a plural society, as well as potential moral pitfalls. 46 Bruce T. Morrill, S.J., Anamnesis as Dangerous Memory: Political and Liturgical Theology in Dialogue (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2000), 196. 44 45



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Clashes of values among the spheres in modern society make a communal ethic seem more suitable to past communities of kinship or to the purely personal realm.47 In contrast, the Eucharistic identity of a community in the modern church is itself a charismatic force. The charisms of individuals ultimately find meaning in this whole.48 The call to responsibility of a community fosters in it a sense of authority. A workable community creates responsibility on a scale that people can handle, and it makes plans that are subject to alteration and correction by members. Authority is not uninhibited power and non-approachable disinterestedness, rather broader responsibility among members focuses the ministry of authority at its appropriate level. Responsibility in the Catholic community is supported by the principle of subsidiarity, which holds that nothing is done by a higher authority or larger organization that cannot be done as well by a lower or smaller one.49 Subsidiarity directs that authority in the church promotes circles of conversation relating to how the community of the church relates to the public domain. History shows that major church initiatives opposing racism, denouncing weapons and strategies of war, and defending conscience were begun by individuals and movements that at first were denied official recognition and support.50 Mutuality is the atmosphere of interdependence and reciprocity in a group. People sense they need one another in some way and gain from cooperating with each other. The reordering of relationships in society involving race, class and gender needs a basis in community experience where the skills of such interaction can be learned. Mutuality therefore is essential to the relationship of solidarity, seeing the neighbor, “on par with ourselves” (SRS 39). Solidarity carries mutuality to the willingness to go beyond oneself, to sacrifice in order to recognize the worth of another. It implies a spirituality of Robert N. Bellah, “Max Weber and World-Denying Love: A Look at the Historical Sociology of Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 67 (2) (June 1999), 277–304. 48 Gallagher, Faith Maps, 69. “In fact, Lonergan (like Charles Taylor) insists that the person is not the primordial fact. What is primordial is the community.” Bernard Lonergan, “Philosophy of God and Theology,” Three Lectures in Philosophical and Theological Papers 1965–1980, R. Croken and R. Doran (eds) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 211. 49 Michael E. Allsopp, “Principle of Subsidiarity,” in The New Dictionary of Catholic Social Thought, 927–9. 50 Gordon C. Zahn, “Social Movements and Catholic Social Thought,” in One Hundred Years of Catholic Social Thought, John Coleman, S.J. (ed.) (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), 53. 47

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the cross; a self-emptying that attentiveness to the other requires.51 Living with solidarity and mutuality in communities and movements means to live beyond “structures of sin” and to live with a new imagination (SRS 40). The feminist community points out that mutuality counters a dominating attitude that others know what is good for women and minorities, without including them in the conversations, that defines the problems and proposes their solution. Mutuality builds on a sense of responsibility and creates a climate of accountability. As the structuring of responsibility, both to others and to the earth, accountability marks a community vision with structures and procedures for holding decision-makers accountable. It checks a growing world reality where the weak have no influence on those in charge. It avoids the definition of sex differences to ground differences in power and role. The mutuality between the sexes can be defined so that the biological differences between them overshadow the interpersonal mutuality they should share.52 Use of gender stereotypes can cloud the parallel participation by men and women in both the social and the domestic aspects of marriage. Plurality is the most modern of the characteristics of community. It connotes that people will belong to more than one community at the same time. Modern community is not a totalizing one. Membership in a variety of groups does not threaten a group but enhances it. It extends the community into wider spheres of influence and brings to the community the well-being of family, occupational, recreational, ethnic, and religious groups other than its own. Equity marks the way of proceeding for a pluralistic community. When there are a plurality of perspectives, lifestyles and backgrounds, then procedural justice takes on an importance which at times is overlooked in homogeneous groupings. As basic fairness in distributive and procedural justice, equity bridges the gaps between the ways of living and being human that exist in Church and society today. This is especially important as the laity is incorporated into what have been historically “clerical” or “religious” circles. What might have been resolved at the breakfast table in past church climates has to This image is an important symbol for the whole church. See Renewing the Church in a Secular Age: Holistic Dialogue and Kenotic Vision. International Conference held at Gregorian University, Rome, March 5–6, 2015. www.youtube.com/watch?V=4g1JoWrcoVa (accessed October 20, 2015) 52 Christine E. Gudorf, “Mutuality,” in The New Dictionary of Catholic Social Thought, 655. 51



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hold to the discipline of strict policies and agreed-upon rules of procedure in order to actually be fair, rather than intend to be fair, in more mixed settings. In Catholic circles, a preference for the poor, or for the “least” also characterizes equity, as in society equity is only approximated. Advocacy for those marginalized from current arrangements of equity moves a group or society closer to its reality. This is a different posture than that held by government and other political entities, which generally hold the current balance of conflicting interests in social arrangements. The flexibility of community in new standards of equity can be charismatic in beginning the changes needed at a broader level. The restructuring required by option for the poor must have power in the wider society before it has governmental support. Autonomy is the ability of a community to develop responsible individuals as it incorporates them into a complex of relationships, which gives them a social self or “we.” Genuine autonomy is the capacity to foster self-direction that avoids both the illusion of unlimited choices within the group, and the brutal crushing effect of the group on the individual. Autonomy has to be held in tension with other values in order to take its place in the matrix of values which mark healthy community. In decision-making in American society, autonomy can seem like the only value, “whatever he or she decides” we say. However, it can cloud the reality that other values should be considered in getting to the heart of what is right or wrong in a decision. The same attitude can be taken over by groups whose sense of independence becomes such a high value, that dialogue with others in the church becomes impossible. In the church, therefore, autonomy is nuanced by the principle of mediation. Mediation is the belief that created realities mediate the grace of Christ. In the communio of the Church, one expression of mediation is collegiality. It is not the case that only those outside the hierarchical offices of the church need to respect mediation. Pope Francis witnessed to a startling sense of collegiality in his encyclical on the environment (LS). The text values the contributions of dozens of bishops’ conferences around the world, from the USA to Germany, Brazil, Patagonia-Comahue, and Paraguay. He draws on the contributions of other thinkers, such as Catholics Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Romano Guardini, Dante Alighieri, Argentinian theologian Juan Carlos Scannone; as well as Protestant Paul Ricoeur and the Sufi Muslim Ali Al-Khawwas. He reminds the world, that we are all human beings, we are all inhabitants of the

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same common home, the earth, and suffer the same threats. The autonomy of the Petrine ministry utilized the mediation of many others, as grace, to fulfill its unique duties. Autonomy of a group is not for itself alone, but for a purpose in the wider life of the Church. Enough autonomy needs to be respected that the charism of a group can be expressed, while the very identity of its charism, as a grace for others, calls the group to collaborate in the structures of mediation. Grounding autonomy with the horizon of mediation empowers a group to own its own mediating role in Church and society and to contribute its voice. Sufficiency fosters the autonomy of a community. Sufficiency is the commitment to meet the basic material needs which are appropriate for its operation, and the call to evaluate its own operation in terms of its adequacy to meet the needs it seeks to serve. Some are life communities, and these needs and their obligations are more serious. However material needs are more than money. They involve management structures, personnel, energy of members. Other groups need to consider their role in the transfer of funding and expertise; in raising awareness of and serving ministerial needs; in assessing the focus of their spirituality in terms of its relevance for service to the world, and asking if they as a group are sustainable for the future. This calls groups to plan with questions in mind which cause them to do more than maintain the status quo. It may mean they must enter into new structures of authority and ministry rather than perpetuate former patterns which no longer meet the needs of the church or society. They may need to merge, or create new outlets of service; all which reflect their readiness as a group to take up their charism in a manner which best serves others. Communion is a call to integration, and is at the heart of the image of church as communio. It is not only our effort to be moral, that holds the church together. We can count on the action of the Spirit to take us “beyond our lights and shadows” when our energies prove to be not enough. Communion balances and mixes the values that norm community. No one value alone is a mark of an adequate community, although the values we have discussed are important for a “new” sense of community in modern society. A shared history grounds a group in relationships which are irreplaceable, however it has to be balanced by a sense of pluralism or there will be a closed group. Autonomy alone is insufficient, without a practice of mutuality and



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participation. Identity needs to be guarded, and its boundaries respected, yet it must be flexible to be sustained in a world of change. Communion is that integrative capacity to keep a healthy tension between qualities of community in a manner that is unique to the group, the culture, and the context. Here charism takes on a directive capacity, as the “mix” of these qualities of community will differ from group to group according to how they understand the grace of their identity in discernment. Some cultures support a less autonomous and more group-centered identity. Others tap into the individuality of the culture, and build community with a deep consciousness of the unique individuals in the group. Participation depends on the capacity of the members to share in the responsibilities of decision-making, and the time they desire to allot to make decisions prudently. The move toward communion and integration is the opposite of dysfunction, that is, when elements of the group’s life live in contradiction to one another and reduce the effectiveness of its mission and its reality as a context of human flourishing and Christian spiritual growth. To live beyond Weber’s “iron cage” and its utilitarian climate will require a capacity for solidarity that is only learned in community. This may call some Catholics to “believe again” and “opt for the church,” maybe not for the same reasons once believed and practiced, but because they see a new reason to center their stance of faith in community. The Church can no longer provide an encyclopedia of answers to the pressing problems of our times. The “answers” given by the Church to the world are its members, animated in the spirit of their charisms, nourished by the sacraments, as non-poor formed with an option for the poor; as poor, ready for voice and enablement, both competent and open to the new challenges ahead. If community is the bridge to the transcendent in secular society today, and will create the field hospital the church is called to be, we can be sure the Spirit will enable it with the charisms to create it anew.

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Christian Identity and Charism: Beyond Ideology

Was Vatican II the end of the renewal of the Church or its beginning? Is Catholicism a phenomenon dominated by a culture (Greco-Roman, European, Western, etc.) or is it a communion guided by the Spirit, able to transcend and enlighten every particular culture?1 The differing narratives regarding the council expressed in these questions also represent the polarity among viewpoints in the church. Some see Vatican II as a charismatic event in itself; others see in its effort to adapt the church to the modern period, an actual departure from its tradition and a capitulation to the humanism which penetrates modern society. Divisions within the church have formed along the fault lines of this discussion, and fueled the identity politics of the church. The identity of charism is tossed on the sea of this debate. Communities of both perspectives produce good works, and can reduce the meaning of charism to its effect within a set understanding of ministry.2 Does charism however have markers of identity which stand outside these postures toward the church and its future? A deeper inquiry into the identity of charism will explore these questions of its meaning.

What is Identity? Identity is a set of qualities and beliefs that make one person or group different from others. It involves being who or what a person or thing is. Beyond this Massimo Faggioli, Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning (New York: Paulist, 2012), 124. Ideology, as used here, is simply a worldview, or framework of understanding to interpret a reality; not the negative term often implied in a false consciousness.

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stable feature, identity involves a relationship to oneself marked by a capacity for self-communication and constructive action which also characterizes interaction with all that does not belong to the self. Identity in this sense is the precondition for creative intercourse with others, and for a sense of difference.3 In a postmodern context, ego identity and personality structure are both understood as socially constructed. Yet difference between people, even those socialized in a similar manner, is a strong element in a modern understanding of identity. Human identity is neither formed in isolation from others, nor does it lose its unique character through social interaction: rather, the radical difference remains between individuals even despite the essential connection between them. Even intense experiences of religious or sexual fusion with another; and the self-transcendence this entails, stems from the fact that even in a commonly shared cultural experience, people experience unity with other individuals only in the form of the brief transgression of the boundaries of self.4

Identity of the Church The identity of the Church in a secular culture shares some of the characteristics of human identity. As human identity is unique and stable beyond its social interactions, so is the nature of the church. While Vatican II named the Church a sign and instrument of the Kingdom, the Church is a multifaceted reality. Its many aspects cannot easily be brought together in one term or summarized in one definition. The New Testament uses many images and symbols to describe the nature of the Church. The Second Vatican Council expressed these images/symbols: people of God, sheepfold, land to be cultivated, tillage of God, vine, building, family of God, temple of God, body of Christ and bride of Christ (LG 6). No one image can express the mystery of the Church completely, yet they cannot replace one another in their own unique expression. Vatican II referred to the charismatic element of the church, as the understanding of the Church in the power and dynamism of the Holy Spirit and Hans Joas, The Genesis of Values, Gregory Moore (trans.) (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 160. Ibid., 156.

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as an organism built up and inspired by the Holy Spirit.5 The identity of the church is grounded in its apostolic heritage, yet the life-giving character of the Spirit keeps the tradition of the apostolic heritage free from stagnation, through charismatically gifted people throughout time. A new way open to the future is created in the Church through key personages and renewal movements, new forms of piety and spiritual life in times of crisis. The church expresses its identity in the world amid the tension between two realities. On the one hand, the identity of the church in the world is conveyed by acting on its values in a consistent manner. If the church, and its communities, are a sign of the Kingdom in the world, as a community it has to be more than the mere juxtaposition of persons who say, think, and do things that are completely different or even opposed to each other.6 On the other, cultural theorists suggest that a Catholic culture is less likely to be a unified set of beliefs simply transmitted to every Catholic and is closer to a common engagement around key beliefs, especially those centered on human dignity. Kathryn Tanner, in Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology, criticizes earlier concepts of culture which suggest that a culture is static, and filled with a coherent order. In this framework, cultures form a distinctive unity of life and can be identified with a characteristic set of norms, values, beliefs, concepts, dispositions or preoccupation of a particular people. The elements of a culture are seen as interrelated, providing a form of meaning and order. Since each culture possesses an internal organization, social scientists hold that by studying a specific context of living, this “snapshot” provides a key to understanding culture in the wider whole.7 However, this view of culture forms the basis of conflicting narratives regarding the “snapshot” of the “real” Catholic. Today most religious groups experience more regularity of pluralism, than an inevitability of unity. The diversity within the Church in the twenty-first century reflects a very different Catholic culture than that of pre-Vatican church life. In Tanner’s viewpoint, the cohesiveness of Christian life is not that it creates a separate culture with uniform behavior, but that it provides an abiding reference point for the Kasper, The Catholic Church: Nature, Reality and Mission, 138. See also 119–45. Juan Luis Segundo, The Sacraments Today, John Drury (trans.) (New York: Orbis Books, 1973), 68. 7 Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1997), 38; 25–9; 46. See also: Merkle, Being Faithful, 84–8. 5 6

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direction of one’s life, both in and out of Christian community.8 Theologian Richard McBrien notes that there are three characteristics of Catholicism which marks its uniqueness even in a modern pluralistic setting: mediation, sacramentality, and communion. These dimensions mix with other more broadly held values of human dignity and serve to clarify the identity of a Catholic in society today.9 The expression of charism today traverses this cultural world of pluralism, identity, and difference, as well as the world of the buffered self in secular society. Communities who seek to reinterpret their charism today grapple with the unique characteristics of this new situation. How can one be faithful in a modern cultural situation of fluid boundaries? Tanner claims that cultural identity today is more a hybrid, where gospel ideals are lived out in relationships of resistance, appropriation, subversion and compromise.10 The gospel is expressed most clearly through concrete interaction in our secular situation, than in an assumed unity of common culture.

Identity, Faith, and the Buffered Self Differing interpretations of Vatican II center in part on conflicting opinions of how the Church is to express itself in secular culture. Some feel the church went too far at Vatican II in accommodating to the modern age and its models of understanding. Others sense the church has not gone far enough in expressing the spirit of the gospel in a manner which engages the modern imagination. Another group claims they must leave the church to find the Spirit. A recent Pew Report claims that one in four Christians in the world are Pentecostals.11 Those who feel the church has given up its “difference” from the world, and lost its identity in secular society, see these reasons as explanations for the problems of the church. People observe the falling off of vocations to the priesthood and religious life as a lack of interest in the spiritual. Some Tanner, Theories of Culture, 98. Merkle, From the Heart of the Church, 41–59; 241–65. 10 Tanner, Theories of Culture, 58. 11 Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, “Global Christianity—A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population,” December 19, 2011. See: http://www. pewforum.org (accessed October 26, 2015) 8 9



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claim people can “do” many of the good works done by priests and religious without the constraints of their lifestyles. All these questions and predictions have implications for the identity of charism today.

Buffered Self A prime characteristic of a modern self-identity is what Charles Taylor calls the “buffered self.” This self, identified by Max Weber, was the result of overcoming belief in an enchanted world of the spirit, and living in a world of rationality alone. The result of this “turn” in human understanding is a disengaged, disciplined, buffered self, and the world it has built. Romantics provided an early criticism of this line of development, and charged that the repression of feeling which the rationalism of the Enlightenment created, alienated human beings from their deeper emotions. This world was too narrow, self-enclosed, and denied a greater reality both within the human person and in the world at large. The reasonable religion of moralism was the result of continued disengagement from spiritual desire and devotion. Duty to God consists in establishing and conforming to the moral order he had designed for us. Proofs of God’s existence and goodness point, not to union with God, but to his design of a world in which this order is appropriate. It is an order which God endorses through the rewards and punishments he stipulates. Lost in this view of the world, is the sense that devotion to God, for its own sake, is the center of the religious life.12 If life is absorbed in conforming to certain rules, what is missing is a bigger picture, a greater fulfillment, without which the Christian life has lost its point. This is not a dismissal of the need to express one’s faith in a moral life, but it misses the heart of religion, that one’s motivation for this is the love of God.

Deism and the Perils of Moralism Deism arose out of this climate: a belief in a supernatural being, but one who does not intervene with the universe. This intellectual movement holds there Charles Taylor, “Perils of Moralism,” in Dilemmas and Connections, 355.

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is a God, but not one who interacts with humankind. Deism allows people to intellectually retain belief in a higher being, as well as embrace fully the ideals of the age. The pursuit of human perfection, entrepreneurship, and responsible citizenship are areas left solely to human initiative. Realms of politics and commerce are autonomous, beyond the norms of religion. It isn’t that rationalism led to human depravity; there were new codes of honor and virtue. Thomas Jefferson was a Deist. James Martin remarks that Jefferson went so far as to create his own Gospel by focusing on Jesus’ ethical teachings and removing from the narrative the miracles and other indications of his divinity. This Jesus Jefferson could rationalize and contain, there were no surprises or challenges. “After studying Jefferson’s edited version of the New Testament, the New Testament scholar E. P. Sanders concluded that the Sage of Monticello created a Jesus who was, in the end, very much like Jefferson.”13 A sense of the divinity of Jesus Christ, his transcendence, is missing. These cultural trends gradually dimmed the light in the modern mind as to the role of religion in human fulfillment. This solely “rational” approach to life also involves a disengagement from the world of nature. Nature is instrumental to human ends, but not a source of life and meaning. Today we are aware of an equilibrium in nature which is its own, and not created by instrumental rationality. It stands as a reality to be respected, or humankind suffers the consequences; however, this reality was overlooked. The ecological movement today senses this gap in human understanding. It draws on the sense that there is something fundamentally wrong, blind, hubristic, even impious in approaching the environment exclusively in terms of the human purposes to which it can be put.14 While believers and nonbelievers seek a renewed connection with nature through the ecological movement, this sentiment has special significance for believers today. Many religious congregations and movements in the church have adopted ecological awareness as a key lens in their renewal. This fact, together with the recent encyclical of Pope Francis on the environment, carries a poignant meaning. The movement toward ecological awareness is not only an issue of world citizenship but it symbolizes a malaise in our spiritual culture as well.

James Martin, S.J., Jesus, A Pilgrimage (New York: Harper Collins, 2014), 4. Taylor, “Perils of Moralism,” 357.

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The culture of Deism also produced an overly benign notion of Providence. All things fit together for the good according to God’s laws, it purports. God put the world into motion with these laws, as a watchmaker creates a watch and then lets it run. A providential framework provides God’s design for humans and human beings honor God by living this moral code.15 At first glance, this view seems consistent with Christian hope. However, Deism held that human beings through reason were perfectly capable of reading this design, the resources for moral growth therefore were within human nature itself, and there was no necessity of grace. The cultural confidence in the human power to do good relied mainly on the powers of reason. The buffered identity, capable of disciplined control and benevolence, generates its own sense of dignity and power, its own inner satisfactions. In Taylor’s analysis this cultural movement leads to an exclusive humanism.16

Exclusive Humanism Exclusive humanism is an approach to human life which sees its meaning totally eclipsed in human life itself. Deists held that life can be lived fully and completely without reference to a transcendent reality. What remained however was how to explain the moral and spiritual resources which could sustain that life. The idea of benevolence replaces the Christian notion of agape as the basis of society. Society is considered an order of mutual benefit, and it is within human power to realize this order as far as possible.17 Such a total confidence in self-reliance places religion under suspicion. The need for grace is considered a sign of weakness and a compromise of the autonomous freedom which is iconic of this age, and our own. As moderns we can feel sympathy with the sense of responsibility of Deism. However, what it was unable to address was the unexplained suffering in the world. While suffering came into life, the ideal put forth by exclusive humanism is to face it squarely, and avoid the weakness which reliance on God displays. A common objection of belief in Christianity by this movement is the charge that it portrays a childish and benign view of human life, where Taylor, A Secular Society, 233. Ibid., 262. Ibid., 245; see also 800.

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everything will come out right in the end. A mature person, one without religion, cannot believe this outlook, and is willing to do without it. The ideal modern claims the courage to face reality as it is.18 In this sense, the strong person is seen as one able to look at life squarely with its misfortunes without a claim to a higher power to make all things right. Key to an exclusive humanism is a rejection of transcendence, fearful that religion cannot help but “crush, mutilate or deny what is essential to our humanity.”19 This argument sees religion as a denial of the joys of human fulfillment. Religion offers either an approach to life which emphasizes mortifying oneself regarding the ordinary joys of living or the need to set ideals and hopes low enough that they are not jeopardized. Taylor counters this mentality with the charge that it is exclusive humanism which holds a too benign picture of life as it is, and places the human condition in a distorted light. The denial of suffering is often hidden by blaming the victim. Suffering becomes invisible in society as the needs of those who suffer are explained away or left unaddressed. The negation of the reality of suffering leaves human life in a vacuum. A better approach is to hold onto the goodness of life, as well as the reality of suffering. Along with communion, there is division, alienation, spite, mutual forgetfulness; a type of suffering which appears never to find a reconciliation.20 The reason for this denial of suffering is it cannot be addressed through the lens of mutual benefit. Exclusive humanism calls for a taming of aspirations which exceed ones of mutual benefit among rights-bearing individuals. Those needs which fall outside this framework cannot be heard, grounded or explained. Nor can a realistic look at all sides of life be maintained. It is difficult to find the meaning and identity of charism in this context. There is no denial that the world of exclusive humanism has brought into Western society an attention to the rights of human dignity which is unpre­ cedented in human history. Charism in the Christian life has been involved and expressed in this very same order of value held by these humanist ideals. The defining ideals of the modern moral order have also been aspects of the expression of charism: justice, benevolence, equality, democracy, peace, Taylor, “Perils of Moralism,” 357. Taylor, A Secular Age, 640. Taylor, “Perils of Moralism,” 358.

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prosperity, freedom, individualism, and community. Each has an analogue in the Christian tradition. In the midst of the promotion of human flourishing, those who live within the framework of charism find there is yet an even deeper meaning available. A paradox is accepted in faith and reinforced in experience. Only by acknow­ ledging and pursuing goods that transcend human flourishing can human beings maintain the inner-worldly thriving they can achieve on their own. In the midst of a culture of a buffered identity, the living of charism demands openness to a new meaning structure that gives reason to finding meaning in life, supported by values which transcend human flourishing.

The Cross The mystery of the crucifixion, of the world-healing through the suffering of the God-man cannot be understood within the frame of exclusive humanism or its blocking out the dark side of Creation.21 How can the excesses of a Francis of Assisi, whose idea of the Christian life went beyond the identification of the Christian life with an order of civilization, be explained simply in immanent terms? Values such as mutual benefit or the upholding of rights, as important as these are, are not up to the task. The aspiration that drove the saints and the people who followed them would be viewed as senseless enthusiasm in the framework of exclusive humanism. What is held as exemplary in Christianity is often viewed as unpleasant, futile asceticism, troubling, maybe even a symptom of mental unbalance in a framework which states meaning only in immanent terms. The reality in which relationships can be potentially transformed through forgiveness or a life situation changed through “gift” or mercy or selfless love, beyond mutual benefit, is difficult to discern in a world of exclusive humanism. The true identity of charism lies within another setting; while at the same time, it touches on the shared values of human flourishing upheld by believers and nonbelievers alike. Charism, as a dimension of the church, is a sign and an instrument of the Kingdom. It shares qualities with the Kingdom: it is already and not-yet; and is a sacrament of something more. It appeals to the modern sense of transcendence, even if this awareness yet remains an intuition Ibid., 359.

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without words, a stirring without a known source. It expresses the energy of the Spirit who enlightens our every effort, and beyond our lights and shadows continues to renew the earth.

Identity, Conversions, and Transformations There are different narratives which inform the popular meaning of Catholic identity. On the one hand, we find a tendency to moralism, equating Catholic life primarily with adherence to practices and public support of areas of Catholic moral teaching. On the other hand we find adherents to Tanner’s viewpoint that a religious culture, like Catholicism, in modern society is more a hybrid, where gospel ideals are lived out in relationships of resistance, appropriation, subversion and compromise. While both positions can be over-stated and caricaturized, a deeper meaning than morality or utility is necessary to keep the tension between them. We are challenged to frame the identity of the Christian life, and charism in the paschal mystery of Christ. In other words, the conversions and transformations involved in following a charism go beyond the moral rectitude of exclusive humanism, and are brought to light only through the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ.

The Law of the Cross The conversions and transformations of the Christian life and of its communities are found in the model of Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection. Bernard Lonergan looks at the story of Jesus’ passion and finds in it a law which also governs the life of a Christian disciple. The New Testament message of the death and resurrection of Christ is the key to every aspect of human life. The Law of the Cross is that God decided to take away the evils of the human race not by an act of power but by transforming those evils into a supreme good through the working of a just and mysterious law of the cross.22 Charism finds its deepest identity in this mystery. Bernard Lonergan, S.J., De Verbo Incarnato, 524, as quoted in Vernon Gregson, “Theological Method and Theological Collaboration II,” in The Desires of the Human Heart: An Introduction to the Theology of Bernard Lonergan, 112.

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Lonergan holds that religion announces the solution to the problem of evil which God has provided. However, that solution cannot be a theory or idea, but must release an emotional energy that moves people at the level of deeds.23 God’s truth must change our lives, motivating us to a self-sacrificing love and opening us to transforming change.24 The Scriptures present three steps as reality in Christ, which also serve as a pattern of salvation for the rest of us. The steps are: sin produces its own evil effects in human life; those evils, resulting from sin, can be transformed into something beautiful and good; and, God blesses that transformation. This law of the cross shows itself as a process in Jesus’ life as: his suffering and death as the results of sin; his acceptance of that suffering and death out of obedience and love; thus transforming the evils into something morally good; and God’s raising him from the dead. What happened to Christ is a general law for members of Christ’s mystical body. This pattern of salvation is not one which glorifies suffering, rather one which respects true freedom. All human beings are called in freedom to turn themselves toward God, rather than having God passively convert them. While all will not respond, i.e. Nietzsche called Christianity a “religion of slaves” and Marx, the “opium of the people”, for those who are free to respond, it is the law of their lives. The Law of the Cross explains what happened in redemption, or makes it intelligible. The Reign of God in human affairs entails mercy as the Father is merciful, love of enemies, offering no resistance to injury. The intelligibility of the redemption is the victory of God over evil in history precisely through the absorption and elevation of the plane of living that is only possible through grace. The result is not just the transformation of the person, but the transformation of the world, redemption operative in history. The just and mysterious Law of the Cross, the matter of returning good for evil, transforms the evils of the human race into the whole Christ, Head and members, in this life as well as in the life to come, in all the concrete details of human living, and all the relationships of that community, including the community of saints.25 Lonergan uses the Thomistic terms form and matter to Lonergan, Insight, 721. See Jean Higgins, “Redemption,” in The Desires of the Human Heart, 201–21. 25 Robert Doran, S.J., “The Nonviolent Cross: Lonergan and Girard on Redemption,” Theological Studies 71 (2010): 56. 23 24

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explain this theologically. The whole Christ, Head and members is the form that the Wisdom of God ordained would be introduced into the “matter” of the human race. As it is, the human race is affected by original sin, burdened by actual sins, entangled in the effects of sin, in the sin of the world, alienated from God and fragmented and divided both individually and socially. The form makes sense out of the human race through the transformation of evil into good. The self-communication of the Trinity in our lives actually effects an imitation of their relationships. The human community, through the Law of the Cross, not only transforms the individual, but becomes a new community, built on transformed relations, based in the capacity not to return evil for evil but to shift through grace the entire plane on which human relations unfold.26 Since the mystery of redemption is to reach all aspects of human life, redemptive love is integral to the meaning of charism. The Gift of the Holy Spirit not only provides hope for the next life, but draws us into the quality of relations in divine life which aids us through charity to manifest these in the human systems in which we live. Charism therefore is given its identity as integral to the ministry of redemption and inseparable from the Law of the Cross. Charism especially touches the area of the “supreme good,” that which transcends history and our notions of human flourishing. The Church is part of this ultimate Good, God’s gift to human history. However, Christ’s paschal mystery does not make the massive histories of suffering intelligible or meaningful in themselves. Rather the paschal mysteries transform us, in the dialectic of community, within and outside the church, intensifying the tension of community, heightening our awareness of the sufferings and needs of humankind.27 The massive wounds of global society can only be healed by a living faith, hope and love attentive to the mysterious presence of God calling every human being into a Triune community of intelligence, understanding and love. Charism is a manifestation of this call, in all areas of human life, both within and outside the church. As Church, charism creates a new locus Ibid., 57. Matthew L. Lamb, “The Social and Political Dimensions of Lonergan’s Theology,” in Desires of the Human Heart, 255–84.

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of psychic and social integrations embodied in Christian communities of worship, prayer and socially transformative action. Charism is a gift which unifies a life around a pattern of practice that over time draws men and women more fully into the mystery of redemption, their own and that of the world. Bernard Lonergan provides a map of this adventure. The nature of the roads which need to be traveled; the path of conversion and transformation they will evoke, and the new human avenues they must create is our next concern.

Conversions A person can experience, understand and judge something to be valuable or true, yet they still have the task to follow their judgment. Just because a person wants to respond to a need, recognize a personal charism, take seriously an attraction to a group or movement in the Christian life, it is not a foregone conclusion they will act on their inspiration. For Lonergan, people who really desire truth and value travel three roads in their lives, which carry them on a path where, on each road, they change. These roads are another name for conversions. Their common denominator is each marks a move from an erroneous perspective to a correct one, from a less adequate perspective to a more adequate one. Together they comprise the path of authentic living. The term “conversion,” or major alteration in viewpoint or attitude, is a movement from an established horizon to a new horizon of knowing, valuing, and acting which involves intellectual, moral, affective, and religious conversion.28 Our deepest conversions happen at the level of why we do what we do. One does not follow Jesus in his paschal mystery all at once, but rather through a process which happens over time.29 Conversion leads to human and spiritual integration and it involves vertical and horizontal dimensions. These differences, while seemingly indistinguishable externally in day to day life, make conversion distinct from the noble becoming of exclusive humanism. Richard N. Fragomeni, “Conversion,” in The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, Michael Downey (ed.) (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1993), 234. 29 For patterns of conversion in major contexts of adult life: church and family, work, professions and small groups, in the post-modern situation of individualism and in advocacy groups see Merkle, Being Faithful, 98, 110–13,138–43, 162–5. 28

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Intellectual An experience of intellectual conversion is portrayed in the story of Jesus and the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Lk. 24:13-35). After the apostles, who did not recognize Jesus, find it almost impossible to conceive he is uninformed about the events they were discussing, his passion and death, they tell him all. The apostles here are like us, we already know everything and how things are. Often we think we know why people do things, their motivations and reasons. Jesus’ response to them is simple, “What little sense have you!” Jesus then explains things to them. As they reach Emmaus they asked Jesus to stay with them for a meal. When Jesus blesses and distributes the bread to them, they recognize him. This recognition led to decision and action. “They got up immediately and returned to Jerusalem.” They knew Jesus beyond their first impressions, or their second, or their hundredth; and this ongoing experience is the heart of intellectual conversion in the Christian life. We know we are open to intellectual conversion when our encounter with Christ can change our mind about life, about people, about ourselves in an ongoing way. Intellectual conversion is our capacity to be willing to be open to what is true, what makes sense. Intellectual conversion is tied up ultimately with the heart of what it means to be human. To engage in this process, we have to use our human capacities to experience, understand, and judge with all the resources available to us. Failure to convert intellectually can come as much from the line of least resistance, and gossip, as it can from obstinacy. It can be rooted in our natural bent to bias, thinking which serves our immediate gratification rather than an understanding which leads to a more accurate picture of what is really true and will lead to what is ultimately good. Neurotic bias, egoistic bias, group bias and the bias of common sense all have in common this conscious or unconscious blockage of what is true. “The truth shall make you free,” (Jn 8:32) is the promise of Jesus at the heart of this conversion.

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do. We recognize first that we have the capacity to love, to uphold values and support others, and we allow this to challenge us. We first have to see ourselves as someone who is a resource of goodness for others, not just a receiver of goodness. We have to take responsibility for our lives with its capacity to offer our gifts to the world. We shift our criteria for decision-making from the satisfaction of the self as the basis of choice, to the discovery and pursuit of value. Charism provides a path of moral conversion, as the Christian moral life is not just one of avoiding sinful behavior but of cultivating virtue, becoming a new person, and promoting values worth the effort. Recognition of and an outlet for a personal charism gives focus to one’s life as all adults come up against the limits of “ I cannot do everything” and the challenge, “but I can do something.” In following communal charisms, there is a gestalt of values which offer a path of becoming with which the individual finds a “fit.” One associate of a religious congregation remarked that she can see her whole day within the horizon of the communal charism, and this awareness provides focus and meaning to her life. Other members of movements find in the wider association a sense of identity in the church which assists them in attending to their spiritual lives in a secular world. Moral conversion is the gradual process by which we do things, not just for the satisfaction it brings us, but because it is the right thing to do. Moral conversion is the pursuit of a life of integrity; however, it has to be assisted by other conversions to bear up over the long haul.

Religious Simplicity, the heart of religious conversion, helps us to know not only God’s love, but our incapacity for sustained spiritual development apart from God’s ongoing redeeming love for us. Without this gift of simplicity in our lives we dodge the need to “know ourselves,” which is key to ongoing conversion. We may immerse ourselves in worthwhile activities, but we refuse to be open to an ongoing awareness of the impact of our own words, actions and mixed motives on ourselves and others. We may mete out praise and blame to others, and simply ignore any assessments of ourselves.30 Without the Lonergan, Insight, 599.

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consistent openness to the grace of simplicity and an ongoing openness to moral conversion, we can rationalize away our moral responsibilities. We may revise what we know to fit with what we do, rather than question ourselves and our biases. Lastly, we can subtly give up hope, and no longer meet the challenges it implies. When as Christians we give up hope we enter into a dynamic of decline, either personally, or in the groups to which we belong. We lose sight of the Risen Christ active in our history and our daily lives individually and as a group.31 Decline is generally not something anyone intends, but it can be a subtle way we cope with our times. If the above dynamics predominate our lives as individuals or groups, we can be in decline and call it something else. Then we support deformed notions of what is good. We can allow there to be the promotion of the interests of some, at the expense of others and call it something else. We can give into the depression which comes from being more limited in our options, either because of physical decline or struggles in our families, communities or work ministry that block our efforts. Openness to conversion requires remaining in the tension in life between limitation and transcendence.32 When we lose this balance held by limitation, i.e. we overstate what we cannot do, and fall into depression. Many human beings settle for a displacement of this energy in the direction of depression; Kierkegaard’s “too little possibility.”33 Instead of losing balance in favor of limitation we can also displace psychic energies in the direction of transcendence, overstating our capacities, leading to schizophrenia, or other forms of frenetic activity. Simplicity opens us to the grace of ongoing moral conversion in our lives as it is the priority of the heart of the gospel that focuses us on God.

Affective The last conversion is affective conversion. Affective conversion is the transformation of desire. It is a turning away from selfish desire to desire for Brian V. Johnstone, C.SS.R., “Transformation Ethics: The Moral Implications of the Resurrection,” in Resurrection: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Resurrection of Jesus,” S. T. Davis, D. Kendall, and G. O’Collins (eds) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 339–60. 32 Robert Doran, “From Psychic Conversion to the Dialectic of Community,” Lonergan Workshop. Vol. 6, Robert C. Croken, Frederick E. Crowe, and Robert M. Doran, S.J. (eds) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 94. 33 Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: Free Press, 1973), Chapter 5. 31



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generosity. It is a reorientation from the possessiveness rooted in obsessive concern for one’s own needs to the self-giving of intimate love and generative care of others. It is passionate commitment. It is the re-orientation of our motivations, not just our behavior. Deep within us is the capacity to transcend ourselves, to go out of ourselves in love rather than into ourselves in egotism. We can act not just for ourselves, but for others. When a person falls in love, that love is expressed not just in this act or that act, but in a dynamic state of being in love. Today this is a good image for being in the state of grace. Being in love is the center from which all else flows—one’s desires and fears, one’s joys and sorrows, one’s discernment of values, one’s decisions and needs.34 Such falling in love is a radical transformation of a person’s life, life is never the same. There is a shift from one’s interests alone to a concern for the good of others. If in moral conversion we see the possibility which is open to us to do the right thing and feel its challenge, in affective conversion we find the power to make an effective response and execute that decision over the long haul and against serious obstacles. In Robert Bolt’s Man for All Seasons, the daughter of Thomas More asks him if he has not already done as much as God can reasonably want. He answers, “well, finally, it isn’t a matter of reason; finally it’s a matter of love.”35 Doing the right thing, actively being someone who witnesses to goodness by her choices and creates goodness wherever he can is the warp and woof of affective conversion, however, it is not all of it. Affective conversion deals also with the affectivity of being in love. Mary did not dutifully care for Jesus but she carried in her heart the whole posture of the Christian life, a deep and sustaining love of God which held nothing back to the end. Here the emotion of love, as a feeling, is more than a feeling of physiological origin, like fear when a drooling dog with big teeth decides to jump out at you on your evening walk. Emotion can have both a thinking dimension and an evaluative one. Rosemary Haughton’s The Passionate God, holds that we can make sense of how God loves us by looking at the way people love, particularly the way of love called passionate. By “passionate” Haughton means to evoke something—to put something in motion, strong,

Lonergan, Method in Theology, 105. Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons (New York: Random House Vintage, 1962), 89.

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wanting, needy, concentrated towards a very deep encounter.36 Romantic love is experienced as a breakthrough that smashes ordinary awareness and creates an exchange of spiritual power. Here something happens which shakes a person loose from normal expectations and settled attitudes. Pedro Arrupe, S.J. captured this sentiment in his advice. “Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in quite an absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evening, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.”37 Haughton points out here that we can recognize a value so strongly that the response to it transforms vague longing into intense passions. It can engage “the thrust of the whole personality towards the strange home it perceives.” But the same recognition can be so profound, so complete as to be ineffable, and is experienced as a gap, a void. Passion is the thrust which leaps that void, without guarantee or even knowledge; it is a leap of faith. In this passionate love, Haughton stresses, lovers come to self-awareness in the awareness of the beloved; they are defined in the very exchange of life that is love. This leads us again to the cusp of religious conversion. For Lonergan, the question of God and ultimate transcendence flows from our core capacities as human beings to experience, understand, judge and decide. These aspects of our “radical intending” are the ground of our ongoing pursuit of specific questions, projects and life decisions. They are the way we continually seek the intelligible, the true and the good. Unless the human spirit is truncated, it spontaneously will ask about the whole, the ground, the origin, the term of itself and the world; or the question of God. God therefore is part of human authenticity because what is human by nature requires constant self-transcendence or unfurling. It involves the constant struggle not to let narrower capacities define our meaning, and the meanings of our communities. God also is the ultimate basis of all our loves: in friendship, in marriage, in church and society. These loves actualize our capacities for self-transcendence, and point to its ultimate

Rosemary Haughton, The Passionate God (New York: Paulist, 1981), 6. See Pedro Arrupe, S.J. 1909–91 at http: www.ignationspirituality.com (accessed October 26, 2015)

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source, God’s love which is God’s own doing. Mark 12:30 tells us we can love God with our heart, with our soul and with our mind and with our strength. Romans 5:5 reminds that hope does not disappoint because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. A god who is only our construction is no bigger than we are. The God of biblical faith is the God of mystery who can change our lives. Hence the love by which we respond to God in religious conversion is unrestricted; it sets up a new horizon. Religious experience is not something that we can know or understand as we can know or understand other experiences, work out their meanings and realities through the processes of being attentive to experience, understanding and judging. Rather than these prior three levels of consciousness, religious experience is a fourth level of consciousness, of choosing and loving what we have sought through these other modes of being human. Here one makes judgments of value in contrast to judgments of truth of meaning which characterize the third level of judgment. The pursuit of what is of ultimate value fulfills all the intentional desires the person sought consciously. There is a difference between the self-consistency we seek between knowing and doing on a third level of consciousness, through awareness, always seeking deeper understanding and making judgments; and the decision which stems from religious conversion, the fourth level. While both involve the grace of God, the one stemming from a religious conversion is of an unrestricted orientation to “know and do, not just what please us, but what is truly good, worthwhile,” and so to “be principles of benevolence and beneficence, capable of genuine collaboration and of true love.”38 This being in love in an unrestricted manner is, in the Christian life, a share in the divine nature. Conversion therefore is a turning toward what we have been made or called to be. The catechism of the Council of Trent asks and answers the question, why did God make me? The “answer” is, to know, love and serve God and to share with God the happiness of heaven. Lonergan just spells out in more detailed form what this involves. This transformation of the person is co-extensive with the animation of community at a familial, social, cultural, ecclesial and global level. Bias and

Lonergan, Method in Theology, 35. See also Robert Doran, “Discernment and Lonergan’s Fourth Level of Consciousness,” Gregorianum 89 (4) (2008): 790–802.

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dysfunction at all these levels block the human drive toward authentic living, human dignity, ecological integrity, international peace, civic security, racial equality, gender equity, family integrity and nonviolence. To the degree that individuals and groups are willing to walk the path of human and spiritual conversion there exists the possibility that real transformation of these realms can occur. Conversion on a personal level involves the challenge to the ideologies and patterns of conduct which maintain all these systems which inhibit human flourishing. Different however from an approach to these issues at the level of exclusive humanism, in the Christian life the awareness there is something more than human flourishing, does not detract from investment in human affairs, rather it animates it with a hope which comes from the gospel.

Charism and Conversion The path of conversion is the path of every Christian. So what does charism bring to it? Charism can be a gift of the Spirit for a moment; as when someone says the right thing at the right time, or shows up to give aid when it is unexpected. God “uses” a person or event to get through to me, and I “hear” what I need to hear at a deep level. Theresa of Avila speaks of these interventions in our lives as “locutions,” ways God speaks to the soul, not just extraordinary souls, but those who seek God. They are characterized by the power and authority of the word; the great peace or quiet left in the soul; and the fact the experience is remembered for a long time. These locutions are part of the experience of charism, gifts of the Spirit, gifts given for the good of all. We can recognize these experiences over a period of our lives; in this sense charism is transient. It is given for the moment, but the moment can be a turning point. A person receives the “right words,” an inner sense of truth or fact, or a picture of an imaginative vision that affirms God’s presence. Along the journey of conversion, someone who truly seeks holiness and wholeness will encounter many experiences like the above. Charism is operating both in the giver and in the receiver of these spiritual gifts, and they are given not just in an unusual way, but belong to a life of faith.39 Christopher O’Donnell, “Charism and Spiritual Direction in the Life and Writings of St. Therese

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However, charisms can also have a role in shaping one’s entire journey of conversion; and in this sense they are more than transient. These are gifts of the Spirit, unique to the individual, which overtime link the pursuit of human authenticity to the transcendent reality of union with God. Beyond the goals of exclusive humanism, the path of human conversion is measured not just along the path of human flourishing, but in its witness to the holiness of the church. Karl Rahner points out that the Church is not only the ‘holy church’ in the objective sense, a community of the holy one, the dispenser of the goods of salvation, in virtue of her truth, her foundation by Christ, her sacraments and the salvation present in her. She is also an eschatological community, sustained in being by the victory of God’s grace, and holy as a totality in virtue of the love of God and neighbor practiced by her members.40 The church manifests itself, in this sense, as one who both demands faith and provides the basis for it, therefore the church must bear witness to her own nature and she does so through the working of the charismata. Even the sacraments are effective for sanctification only through the extra-sacramental grace of God which predisposes us for them. In certain circumstances, even one who has been sacramentally justified needs special and exceptional measures of extra-sacramental grace.41 Do the parents of a handicapped child have a gift of the Spirit to give that child the special care he or she needs? Does a couple in a difficult marriage receive a gift to persevere in a love and mutual support despite physical and emotional challenges? Is a member of a religious community called to go beyond the good work of the congregation to embark also on a deeper spiritual journey? Is charism expressed only in service, or is it also a character which can mark a life transition, like aging, sickness and dying with dignity?42 Rahner would say yes, even beyond the grace of the sacraments, the Spirit enables the holiness specific to these challenges through the gifts of charism.

of Lisieux,” in Seeking the Seeker: Explorations in the Discipline of Spirituality: A Festschrift for Kees Waaijman on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday (Leuven: Peeters, 2008), 343–65. Karl Rahner, “Observations on the Factor of the Charismatic in the Church,” Theological Investigations, XII (New York: The Seabury Press, 1974), 83. 41 Ibid. Rahner cites DS 3013; 1526; 1559; 241 supporting his assertions here. 42 Ronald Rolheiser, Sacred Fire: A Vision for a Deeper Human and Christian Maturity (New York: Random House, 2014), Chapter 9, “Radical Discipleship: Anticipatory Incompletions,” 283–313. 40

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Henri de Lubac claims the whole natural order is permeated by the supernatural, which works on human beings and draws what is human on.43 Charism flows from this core relationship between the natural and the supernatural, and concretizes it in a form in which this more transparent reality is made concrete and witnessed to, often through the natural gifts of a person, and beyond them. Charism and human gifts therefore are related, as grace and nature are not separate realms. The church itself is not simply a society made up externally by its institutional factors, nor only a means of salvation. The church does not save through its organizational prowess or simply through the scope of its international operations. The church is also the fruit of salvation herself. Spirit and grace are constitutive for the Church as an eschatological reality, meaning the gifts of the Spirit; the “charismata” are not just present in the church but actually are constitutive for her and for the life that is proper to her.44 In other words, the gifts of the Spirit, in charism, belong to the very nature and life of the Church just as much as the institutional factors, as charism and institution are not opposed. Charism can be individual, but it also can reflect a deep story of a community, often begun by the holiness of a founder or foundress, which over time becomes concretized in a gestalt of virtue to which a person can adhere through a community of witnesses, in a tradition or patterned “way” to God within the Christian life. While this model of charismatic life, together with the witness of the early Christian community recorded in St. Paul are forms with which we are most familiar, some ways we have distinguished charism from other graces in the Christian life are not always that clarifying regarding its identity. All graces are given not just for the individual, but have some benefit for the Body of Christ as a whole. Also there is a fluid relationship between what is ordinary and extraordinary in the Christian life. Since charism is more than what was given initially in the Church, even the charism of a religious community is developed and expressed differently overtime at least in the forms which give it expression through the fidelity of its members in changing circumstances in church and society. Charism therefore manifests itself in fresh and unexpected forms and needs to be discovered anew. Stephen J. Duffy, The Dynamics of Grace: Perspectives in Theological Anthropology (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1993), 300. Rahner, “Factor of the Charismatic in the Church,” 82.

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Vatican II specified that charisms can be extraordinary, exceptional or equally simple and broadly disseminated. So is there any way to distinguish charism from the Christian virtues? Rahner finds a distinguishing element of charism is the public witness of Christian virtue. Charisms convey Christian virtue as an outward sign of the Church. They also express her nature as a society, of revelation, of the creed, of witness and of mission on the Church’s behalf.45 Charisms also have significance for the world as well, as through them the Church fulfills her mission to the world as a sacrament of the world. The witness of movements; heroic faithfulness in coping with everyday life, in standing firm in situations which are unfavorable to religious life, there is special witness given through the functioning of these charisms. Different charisms are needed for faithful membership in the church internationally. I recall a recent international conversation where it was being encouraged that the church be more fluid in its stance before postmodern society. A member of the discussion from an Eastern European nation, still experiencing the aftermath of the iron curtain, said, “But our people need clarity of church identity, so they know why they suffer.” By endurance and the force of convictions in the midst of the conditions of modern society, or in the totality of a life well lived, charism in its members gives the life of the Church an indefatigable force which testifies to the power of the Spirit of God alive and well in the world.

The Witness of Charism Charism witnesses to the open quality of the path of human fulfillment as well as the open nature of the Church in modern society. Charismata in the church, and in its members, convey that the identity of the person and the church is oriented beyond itself. Charism in this sense expresses the eschatological nature of human life—its meaning is not eclipsed by human flourishing—as well as the eschatological nature of the church. In this way charism has an important role at this time in defining human identity beyond the confines of Ibid., 87.

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a “buffered self ”; as well as marking the church in the world, beyond its lights and shadows as an institution, as a bearer of the Spirit to humankind. Karl Rahner points to the role of the charismatic in fostering a sense of the Church as an open system. The relationship between an open and closed system in the church has a parallel in the contrast between a re-enchanted and a buffered self. A closed system is a complex of realities of various kinds which, despite their variations, are related to one another and contribute toward a common task; and it is defined and directed from a point within the system itself. The Church as an open system, means that no one point within the system of the Church can adequately define the Church totally. In other words, Church as an open system means it cannot be defined in any adequate sense in terms of any one point immanent within the system itself.46 Why is this important? To regard the church as closed runs the risk of envisioning it as a self-contained totalitarian system. A consequence is, a closed system can eclipse the church’s real authority with a type of authoritarianism. While in the church there is recognition of a supreme universal authority, which is not itself in turn dependent upon any other legal authority as such—i.e. the Pope in union with the bishops of the church. This recognition of true authority does not make the church a closed system as long as in practice it is not construed as Peter is the Church, and the Church is Peter. Rahner contends that the history of the church shows a genuine pluralism within which the papacy has a position of its own. Yet all initiatives in the church do not stem from the papacy itself.47 The first Councils of the church, the history of dogma, the origins of religious orders, the greater part of the history of spirituality, the life of the Church of the Far East including their juridical systems, the history of theology, and much more, have developed without any notable influence on the part of the Pope. We know that the Pope, in union with the bishops, holds supreme authority in the church. Yet more happens in the church than what can be traced to their contribution. In this sense, the charismatic in the church is not something just to be tolerated, but embraced as necessary and vital.

Ibid., 89. Ibid., 91.

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The point outside the system which defines the Church is the dominion of God who continually through the Spirit enlivens the Church with gifts. The charismatic element in the Church is that point in the Church at which God as Lord of the Church presides over the Church as an open system.48 In other words, the “definitive state” or identity of the church is only defined in terms of a point outside the system, and is not exhausted by any element within the system itself, even elements of its essential constitution. All the elements which either condition or constitute the life of the Church in all her dimensions, revelation, the history of the world, the history of ideas, science, political influences that are brought to bear, have a mutual interplay and modify one another. In all this interaction the future is created, a future which is unknown, and both the charismatic and institutional elements in the church are key in this process. The church in this sense shares with all concrete forms in human history openness. The openness toward the future is not just something to be tolerated, but is essential for the church as a people on a pilgrimage. The church in this sense is she who is endowed with that radical promise and hope which cannot be defined in “this-worldly” terms. Living by this promise, the church wills the absolute future in God which is mediated through the willing acceptance of the openness to an unknown future within the present world. It is from the nature of the church as an open system, in a radical and abiding sense, that the charismatic element in the Church derives its clearest identity. It is here too we can see how charism functions in the conversion process of the individual Christian, beyond the boundaries of an exclusive humanism. The call of a charism is not just one particular individual factor in one’s life, introduced from without, as an element of disturbance. Rather, in the person, charism functions at what Lonergan calls the level of religious conversion, in which an incalculable, open-ended “yes” is given. For Rahner the word charismatic stands for that ultimate incalculability which belongs to all the other elements in the Church and in life in their mutual interplay. It seems fair to say for the individual Christian charism concretizes the transcendent dimension of his or her whole journey to God, either in an existential way in the situation in a moment in time, or in an essential way Ibid., 88.

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over time.49 As concrete and historical, the form this charism takes is characterized by a particular way creative freedom is brought into action in this world, through the grace of the Spirit, according to the context of a real life, in a way in which this investment into a path to the absolute future is made real. As the church, the path of human growth into integrity is not a selfenclosed one, but is an engagement with the transcendent reality of God. The identity of charism is at core, a lens on this process of Christian conversion. As human identity involves a relationship to work, a capacity for intimacy and a sense of stable presence to oneself and others, so also the fostering of charism in the church is not just a matter of spiritual awareness, but requires a ground in ecclesial and social identity. Charism in the Church must be fostered through renewal of ecclesial structures, the ongoing development of a theology of the laity, the inclusion of women in decision-making in the church and attention in the church to its multi-cultural reality.

The Chaldean Patriarch Mar Louis Sako remarked at a conference on peace in Rome, “Martyrdom is the charism of our Church in Iraq …” See www. aina.org/news/20131005124938.htm (accessed October 26, 2015)

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Part Three

Charism, Institution, and Society

7

Globalization: The Stirring of Charism in a New Church

The “world” of the Church is global today; the reality of globalization will drive the church–world relationship in the twenty-first century. Understanding a charism in this new situation means more than integrating its impact at the level of personal spirituality; it implies a fresh local and global orientation as well. To stand in the Church is to live in a world–wide relationship. The traditional distinction between the “local” and “universal” church, given global interrelatedness, is both theologically true, as well as operationally ambiguous. In view of global interconnectedness, no event is so isolated that it cannot be swept up into global conversation. The beheadings of Christians in Syria in the morning will be on the nightly news in the United States and Europe, stirring in believers and nonbelievers questions which need answers that reach into the heart of the Christian life. Globalization affects each area of the church; as well as prevents the culture of any one geographical area from naming the entire the church. For the Church whose historical identity is inseparable from the history of Western civilization, this marks a significant change. For Weber, a “charismatic” effect exists not only in charismatic personalities but also in major innovations in the society and culture, which occur as new expressions of human creativity and possibility.1 Seismic shifts like globalization change societies, therefore they too are considered charisma. We find an analogy to the factors which Weber termed elements of charisma in his century; in the Vatican II term the “signs of the times.” As movements in history which carry the call of the Holy Spirit, they challenge the church to a fresh response. Three of these signs: globalization, multiculturalism, S. N. Eisenstadt, “Introduction,” Max Weber: On Charisma and Institution Building, xvi–xviii.

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and technology invite the church to new forms and structures; to let go of what is no longer helpful; and to express its mission and identity in this new context. Therefore globalization, multiculturalism and innovations in technology have implications for the expression of charism today and in the future. The narrative of globalization is not a unified one; rather, accounts point to both its possibilities and failures in the human community. To understand that globalization is more than geographical awareness, requires consideration of the resistances to its impact across the world. The Church can grow to a new maturity in a globalized world; and at the same time, be in tension with, as well as fail to meet new needs. As the church tries to carry out its mission to a globalized world, there are elements of every culture which oppose its efforts and values. The church as well can fail to be a positive force in this changing world, and contribute to its dysfunction instead of its enhancement. These facts signify that the Law of the Cross as well as the experience of the resurrection will mark the response of charisms to these new needs. Confrontation of the hostility and alienation which the efforts of the church toward creativity, growth and authenticity stir in the modern world will require sacrifice. Humility will be needed for the church and its communities to repent their own failures. Globalization, multiculturalism and new technology challenge the church to stand in a signature moment in the world. Charismatic efforts in the church are essential to this challenge; and to the mission to contribute shared visions and institutional expressions for which we have few precedents to a new civilization (CV 24, 25, 26). This effort will cause the church to struggle with the contradictions from within and without which are part of modern life (GS 8).

Globalization Globalization is the increasingly interconnected character of the political, economic, and social life of the peoples of this planet. Better communications, the migration of peoples—often stimulated by war and terrorism, ease of travel, new opportunities for study and business, and international media coverage bring people, and members of the church, face to face with new

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peoples and cultures.2 Analysts agree that globalization is the historical equal of the agricultural and industrial revolutions in terms of transforming cultural impact. Globalization is a success story in the global reduction of poverty. At the same time, it is another name for a crippling colonialism which imposes Western corporate interests, and suppresses local cultures and values. Globalization is not an option which we can take or leave; it affects the poor, the rich and those in between without their permission. Problems, especially economic ones, can no longer be adequately understood within the framework of the nation-state alone. The fact that labor can be pulled from outside geographical boundaries and companies can move easily from one country to another, changes the way employment and unemployment functions. Employment affects family life. The quality of family life impacts human identity, health and well-being, education and the passing on of faith. All contribute to a new socio-political configuration which is multi-polar. These factors stimulate reactions and counter-reactions which keep violence and repression alive and well in the global society. Local cultures are not passive before the forces of globalization, whether national, regional or city. The cultural paradigms of the dominant actors are both “received” and restructured on local levels. Globalization also impacts the church. Robert Schreiter names the growing link between the local and the global level as the “new catholicity.”3 Globalization can suggest there is one global culture, a norm for all to absorb. But Schreiter claims we need two, not one, frameworks to understand how culture operates globally: an integrated and a globalized view. Each view of culture upholds an important aspect of modern living, and of the experience of globalization. An integrated approach to culture views it as patterned systems in which all the parts create a unified whole. For example, there is a sense of meaning communicated, identity formed and unity and harmony fostered when one is called a “global citizen.” Globalized approaches to culture reflect the tensions and pressure of living in a mobile world; as this perspective emphasizes how culture is constructed. It acknowledges the struggle between members of different groups to be Merkle, From the Heart of the Church, 182–5. Robert J. Schreiter, The New Catholicity: Theology between the Global and the Local (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997).

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recognized and heard because of inequality of power. A globalized view of culture takes into account how the common “narrative” of the dominant group is disrupted, in order to show that the way in which the dominant way of life is explained is really not the case for everyone. Creating a common culture involves creating a “space” between self and other where both can find a place. This alternative sense of culture is based on the recognition of differences within a local culture and the impact of global realities on everyday living.4 For instance, a popular TV program from the first world, viewed in Africa, will not model family life in Ethiopia, where malnutrition rather than shopping malls is a common denominator.5 Schreiter’s principles of the “new catholicity” can also shed light on the church itself. The difference of ecclesial culture between “seekers” and “dwellers” within a local church can embody the differences we find between other cultures. The life situation of some families today can make the ideal world of Catholic life seem unreachable and isolating. Cultures of clergy and laity; married and divorced; gay and straight; male and female; young and old; citizen and immigrant and so on highlight the bridge building that living in the situation of the “new catholicity” requires. The differences between a local and universal church are not so unique if one takes into consideration that uniformity is an unlikely quality of most local churches. The same skills needed to be a missionary, might be required in one’s own parish or community; all is part of the context for charism today.

Globalization and Change Globalization studies name four characteristics of the change which global­ ization effects in cultures. Homogenization is the flattening out or erasure of local cultural identities by powerful global forces. More powerful forces are often resisted by local cultures who make use of these outside forces in ways of their own. Homogenization can actually reinvigorate local cultures as they engage in acts of resistance.6 Ibid., 46–61. See Benjamin Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism’s Challenge to Democracy (New York: Random House, 2010). Barber argues that the future of democracy faces the challenge of two transnational forces: consumerism and tribalism. 6 In an earlier reference to the cultural work of Tanner, we spoke of “resistance” as a marker of 4 5

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Globalization also changes cultures through hyper-differentiation, or a segmentation of society brought about by all the possibilities that are on offer. For instance, in wealthy parts of the world, people can choose their sources of information or choose where they will live and with whom they will associate. The poor do not have these choices. In religious community today, hyperdifferentiation can affect the experience of what members hold in common, if markers of shared time and worship, conversation and shared efforts are lost. In family life, lack of meal times and recreation time together because of hyper-differentiated schedules breaks down family solidarity. Race, class, and ethnic relationships which never go beyond the segmentation of one’s society will simply mimic that society and not the Kingdom of God. Overcoming hyper-differentiation is a challenge charismatic living faces in modern life. The third characteristic is deterriorialization; meaning place no longer gives identity. People find themselves, not just alienated from the cosmos in a disenchanted world, but disembedded by the experience of being uprooted. People are displaced because of armed conflict, migration from their homeland, city dwellers whose location does not anchor their identity because of its anonymity; elderly people who are in the palliative stage of their life journey. Without the anchors of life-time homes, neighborhoods, parishes, furnishings, finances, and ultimately their health, the dispossession of aging robs them of place. Parishes and communities have a new role to walk with those who do not have territory as an anchor of their identity in a society where even stability is called into question by the mobility of work, the decrease of homeownership and the new family arrangements which arise from longevity. This reality turns on its head the gospel counsel to set aside roots, not to take a walking stick on one’s ministerial journey, and other markers of protection against transition. Expressions of charism can continue to offer stability for those who no longer have a place to anchor them. The fourth way globalization changes cultures is through hybridity. Hybrid identities are ones where elements that were previously discrete are now mixed together through cultural contact, multicultural societies, and displacement through war or natural disasters. These are more the rule than the exception

Catholic identity. Resistance can have various faces, and need not be contentious or unfaithful. This can be seen in a political response of the church to the State, or an inter-change between responsible parties in the church who are willing to dialogue.

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today.7 “Popular religion,” with its mixed elements of local culture and Christianity, has been associated with issues of Christian identity in missiology since Vatican II. However, today hybridity is not just “in the missions”—it is a worldwide phenomenon. A study of the sense of the faithful in six parishes in the Bay area in San Francisco, California reveals that members interpret their Catholic identity through a hybrid of traditional understandings and cultural symbols.8 The purity and orthodoxy we associate with “faithful Catholicism” is likely more complex than imaginaries of an essential “Catholic” culture can hold. The challenge is hybridity has to be held in tension with the core identity that church membership connotes; and that core identity needs to be impacted by the reality of hybridity. What does the church need to add to its own vocabulary of faith to meet new cultural needs? A foreword to a Vatican study of New Age religion notes that the research invites the readers to take account of the way that New Age religiosity addresses the spiritual hunger of contemporary men and women. It reminds readers that the attraction that New Age religion holds for some Christians may be due in part to the lack of serious attention in their own communities to important themes of spirituality which are actually part of the Catholic synthesis. Among these are the importance of the spiritual dimension of life and its integration with the whole of life, attention to ecology and creation, the desire for personal and social transformation, and the rejection of a rationalistic and materialistic view of humanity.9 Sharing spirituality today has to take into account the needs of a person who will patch together a spiritual outlook from many sources. A particular challenge in ministry is also the hybrid social service organization, which indirectly carries out the social mission of the Church. A recent study of the social mission of the U.S. Catholic Church notes the hybrid identity of some Catholic organizations today. For instance, Catholic Charities, since the 1960s, has expanded greatly, because of government Robert Schreiter, “Missiology’s Future at the Intersection of the Intercultural and the Interreligious,” in Mission and Culture: The Louis J. Luzbetak Lectures (New York: Orbis Books, 2012), 279–80. I am indebted to Schreiter’s categories here which I have used differently, in order to show their relevance to the impact of globalization on the nature and practice of charism today. 8 Jerome Baggett, Sense of the Faithful: How American Catholics Live Their Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 9 Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian Reflection on the “New Age” (2003), as quoted in Jos Moons, “The Search for an Attractive Form of Faith,” The Way 46 (4) (October 2007): 17. 7

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funding. As the largest private human service provider in the United States, almost two-thirds of its budget comes from government funding, and many employees and clients are non-Catholics. While Catholic Charities may do more good today than it did in the past, it is unclear to some Catholics how “Catholic” it is. Does hybridity mean it can no longer be recognized as coming from the heart of the Church?10 Awareness of hybridity, as an element of a globalized church, can provide the recognition that ownership of works sponsored by the Church has to be based on new norms. Careful identification of these norms, in consultation with those within these services, can help to provide the communal support for this important work in the Church. Setting these norms will require balance between values, weighing the impact of hybridity. Among the various services provided by a social service organization to people of various faiths or no faith, some may be outsourced to agencies whose policies are in tension with church practices. In some instances of working for the social mission of the Church, however, it is not the whole church acting on behalf of the church, rather individuals or groups of Catholics among inter-faith groups who do not purport to speak for the church. The tensions of the line between hybridity in service and misrepresentation of the Church’s social mission are embedded in ministry because of wider collaboration today. Ministry is characterized by the hybridity which marks globalization as a whole today. Living out a charism is marked by investment in a framework of mixed identities, and the capacity to discern how the boundary issues of the church function in tension with its mission of charity and mercy.

Multi-culturalism A paradox of globalization is that people are aware as never before of the tremendous richness and diversity of life as it is lived globally.11 However, this has not always been the case in the Church. At Vatican II, the Church learned Charles E. Curran, The Social Mission of the U.S. Catholic Church: A Theological Perspective (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011), 91. 11 Linda Hogan, “Living the Magnificat in the Shadow of Globalization,” in Living the Magnificat: Affirming Catholicism in a Broken World. Mark Chapman (ed.) (London: Mowbray, 2007), 33–48. 10

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that it was not just Western and Eastern but also Asian, Latin American, and African. Council documents at Vatican II also had to take into account the “Third World” at that time.12 Thinking in terms of “context” became not only a theological option but a pastoral necessity. Expressions of Christian identity and mission were voiced, first distinguished by regions—Latin American, African, Asian European—and then by social groups such as the poor, women, blacks, Hispanics, and indigenous peoples.13 At the time of the council, theology written from these contextual perspectives was not available, therefore it was not able to challenge the liberal and conservative mindsets which predominated at the council and mainly were Western in their concerns. Some argue that issues facing the South were “patched in” the passages drafted originally with the Western world in mind. While imperfect and incomplete, the council began a process which postconciliar times and peoples developed and matured. Pope Francis, himself a Latin American, is influenced by the themes of theology written from his own context. In his emphasis on the poor and the need for the non-poor to address the idolatry of money, he pinpoints blocks to receiving the gospel which go beyond the more traditional sanctions against atheism. Pope Francis, while not directly embracing liberation theology, incorporates some of its major concerns into more formal documents and teachings of the church. The challenge of multiculturalism for the church is how to both preserve its unity, its catholicity, as well as to recognize more clearly that non-Western countries have their own history, traditions, social structures, and problems, and that none of these are to be treated as simply “add-ons” to those of the West. Within most countries, and local churches, there is need to address the interplay of cultures rooted in differences of race, class and gender, and develop new frames of analysis. With the migrations of peoples this complexity strains even the most sensitive schemas of analysis, and calls for the creation of new modes to understand the problems before us.14 Globalization requires dialogue between those immersed in these situations, and those who can contribute to these wider frameworks of analysis, for the good of the Church. Donal Dorr, Option for the Poor and for the Earth: Catholic Social Teaching (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012), 126–7. 13 Merkle, From the Heart of the Church, 175–208. 14 See: Kristin E. Heyer, “Reframing Displacement and Membership: Ethics of Migration,” Theological Studies 73 (2012): 188–204. 12

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Moving Beyond the Nineteenth Century Multiculturalism is the co-existence of diverse cultures, where culture includes racial, religious, or cultural groups. Culture is manifested in behaviors, cultural assumptions and values, patterns of thinking and communication styles. Multiculturalism, involves various levels of the belief that different cultures within a society should be given importance, and equal respect. The multiculturalism and hybridity of the global society challenges previous frameworks of understanding charism. Therefore, the Church cannot simply look to the past for what is normative as it seeks to recognize new charisms, and to re-interpret existing ones for the twenty-first century. Many operative communal charisms in the church either began or have been re-interpreted in light of the conditions in the nineteenth-century church. British historian Eric Hobsbawm characterized the nineteenth century in Europe as the “long century”—from 1789 to 1914, the French Revolution to World War I. Theologian John O’Malley extends the nineteenth century from the French Revolution (1789) until the death of Pius XII (1958). During this time there was centralization of papal power in the church, as increasingly strong national states, as well as revolutionary movements challenged the identity and autonomy of the church, and the right of the church to speak in public affairs.15 The church during this period used many of the same organizational and communication techniques as its rivals. The Catholic Action model was its primary strategy for mission. Beyond its approach to the lay apostolate, its concerns shaped the church at large. Charles Taylor refers to the beginning of the nineteenth century as the Age of Mobilization; as a new understanding of mission and evangelization evolved. Changes in society at large by the end of the eighteenth century brought the emergence of a viable alternative to Christianity in exclusive humanism. The Church reacted to these changed conditions of belief, and to the understandings of human life which produced it.16 The church response involved the nature of mission itself. Theologians debated whether the John W. O’Malley, S.J., What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), Chapter 2: “The Long Nineteenth Century”. See also Merkle, From the Heart of the Church, 66–73; 87–108. 16 Taylor, A Secular Age, 423–72. 15

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principal purpose of mission was the salvation of souls or the instituting of the church in new places. The first position, the Muenster school, had a Christocentric and personal approach, emphasizing proclamation of the gospel, conversion and the salvation of souls. The second approach, associated with Louvain, was “curial-canonical,” giving priority to the implantation of the church. It approached mission through the establishment of the hierarchy and an indigenous church. While focused on the church and territory, the Louvain school tended to be less Western and more sensitive to cultural differences.17 These two models however frame the understanding of mission in which many communal charisms were expressed, reconfigured and interpreted. Dramatic changes in society marked the nineteenth century. Europe saw the effects of the French Revolution and the political instability which ended in the collapse of three great imperial powers—Germany, Austria and Russia—in the First World War. Between 1750 and 1930, fifty million Europeans migrated, one-fifth of the European population. Recorded emigration had never happened on that scale, as the population increased more than fourteen times over.18 The dawn of the nineteenth century also brought the invention of the steam engine and the revolution of new travel options by land and sea. The development of the telegraph and the telephone compressed space and time in communications. Religious orders founded in Europe emigrated to the “new mission” land of America. Interpretation of charisms of religious at this time often went beyond previous rules of cloister to meet new demands of mission in health care, education and social services. Some religious orders reflected the cultural background of their founding, such as Irish, French, German, Lithuanian, Polish, Black, or Hispanic. These religious could serve parishes in the “new world” constructed around the same ethnic and racial identities. For religious in America, European standards of the “good religious” had to be set aside to adapt to their new context.19 The creation of the Catholic school system in the United States altered the economic conditions of religious women to the point it affected their lifestyle, financial resources, and mobility.20 Response to the ministerial challenges William McConville, OFM, “Mission,” in The New Dictionary of Theology,” 665. Larry Rasmussen, Earth Community, Earth Ethics (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), 45. 19 Mary Evans, The Role of the Nun in the 19th Century America (New York: Arno Press, 1978). 20 Mary J. Oates, “Organized Volunteerism: The Catholic Sisters in Massachusetts, 1870–1940,” American Quarterly XXX (Winter 1978). 17 18

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of this time impacted the meaning, interpretation and consequences of following a charism in significant ways. The Sisters of Charity withstood the anti-Catholic sentiment of Civil War times to nurse the soldiers on both sides of the conflict. Going onto the battle fields, their presence eased the anti-Catholic bias among Americans, and opened the door to an alternative posture towards the Church. The Church found itself mobilizing on many fronts responding to political, economic and social changes. Hosts of new religious orders of men and women were founded to address social issues of education, healthcare and social services on local levels as well as those with international horizons. Established orders and societies took up the ministry challenges of this new order both locally and at a distance. New structures were also established in the church. In 1822, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith was founded in France to mobilize the laity in support of foreign missions.21 In the midst of the Depression Era of the 1930s Pius XI established Catholic Action.22 The lay apostolate in this period was at root a participation in the apostolate of the hierarchy (QA 96). Yet Catholic Action provided a structure for the laity as “apostles” and as “auxiliary soldiers of the Church” to have a role among their fellow workers as carriers of the social message of the Church.23 New or renewed forms of spirituality tended to have a strong emotional appeal and helped people to function in their changed circumstances.24 In a Catholic culture still marked by the negativity of Jansenism, devotions fostered openness to a loving God, rather than a sanctioning one. Incorporation of spirituality into the ordinary life was promoted by the very popular devotion to Thérèse of Lisieux. Devotions allow people to express a life with God beyond that of liturgy and ethics followed by all. Prayer, meditation, the rosary, dedication or various acts of consecration to Mary or the Sacred Heart, allowed people to do something more focused, stronger, specialized and Robert Schreiter, “The Future of Mission Ad Gentes in a Global Context,” in The Gift of Mission: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: The Maryknoll Centennial Symposium (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), 36–54, esp. 41. 22 Edward Cahill, S.J., “The Catholic Social Movement: Historical Aspects,” in Readings in Moral Theology, No. 5 Official Catholic Social Teaching (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), 5. 23 Richard P. McBrien, “An Ecclesiological Analysis of Catholic Social Teaching,” in Catholic Social Thought and the New World Order, Oliver F. Williams, C.S.C. and John W. Houck (eds) (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1993), 153. 24 Robert Orsi, Thank You, St. Jude: Women’s Devotion to the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998). 21

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integrated to bolster their spiritual resources to meet the changing circumstances of their lives. They followed these devotions as individuals, as well as in groups. They offered a point of concentration and focus, a stronger center, a way to understand the whole picture of their lives with deeper meaning. Protestant Christians as well as Catholics participated in various forms of prayer revivals. Temperance leagues, retreats, scripture studies, pilgrimages and the like were embraced in this spirit; as well as trade unions, credit unions and charitable societies to meet the spiritual and ethical and disciplinary needs to function in a changed economy and society.25 This nineteenth-century church is not gone. In select ways, much of it still exists; many are most comfortable in it, and in the ecclesial culture it created, or at least in the post-Vatican II reconfiguration of it in the new reforms of the council. Pieces of this world are never lost; they exist side by side with new elements in the church which challenge previous styles and methods. When we look at our global multicultural society today we recognize that the hybridity of the globalization marks the multicultural identity of its peoples and affects the ministry of the Church. The world of the Italian parish in Chicago might today be filled with Vietnamese, Nigerians, people from Cuba, Lebanon and Brazil all restructuring their identities in light of the work and living possibilities their new situation provides. Multiculturalism both up close and at a distance will change the church again because the world today is multi-polar. The global society no longer exists in a political, military, economic, and strategic arrangement, in which just one power shapes history, nor tension between two such powers, as in the Cold War, shapes international relations, rather the solution of any world problem requires the interaction of multiple points of reference. Analogously, the Church of the West will never again be the one power to name the Church. Analysts project that the countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China by mid-century will comprise 40 percent of the world’s population. The Church will exist in a world in the future not clearly shaped by states or groups of states formed by the Christian tradition.26 The complexity and diversity awaiting the Church in an increasing multi-polar world, will require both Taylor, A Secular Society, 467–9. John L. Allen, The Future Church: How Ten Trends are Revolutionizing the Catholic Church (New York: Doubleday, 2009), 338–74.

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inter-religious and multi-cultural dialogue both to build relationships across cultures and to develop the church within diverse societies. It will transform the church universal as well as the local level. These calls, in themselves, are a charismatic factor in the Church. Answering this need is a directional sign to those who follow charisms today and in the future.

Expression of Charism Differentiation in society is one in which functions which are originally carried out together fall into separate spheres, with their own norms, rules and institutions.27 The expression of charism in the nineteenth century was driven by the need of the Church to impact society undergoing this change. Religion influenced society through structural interventions of its own. The ministerial efforts of the last long century resulted in education and health care strongly influenced by the Church. A type of faith-based culture was reinforced by creating “ghettoes” where Catholics, Protestants and Jews could reinforce their religious identity. Parallel structures in professions, recreation, media, politics and the arts both in the United States and in Europe supported the attempt to maintain a faith-based culture in an increasing secular climate. However, this synthesis has given way in many cases to state-sponsored finance and administration in most areas of modern life. Sociologists name differentiation as a key factor in the gradual secular­ ization of Western society. However, Taylor argues, that because this change in social structure altered the manner in which religion impacted society, it does not necessarily follow that new ways religion can influence society and its institutions cannot occur. Even though today society does not permit in the same way the older kind of faith-based norming, it “doesn’t mean that it cannot still be very much shaped by faith.”28 Even though religious belief, and charism, exists in a field where there is also a wide range of other spiritual options; there does not have to be a story of decline. The twenty-first century can be part of a narrative where there is a new placement of the spiritual and sacred in relationship to personal and social life. This challenge is the fertile

Taylor, A Secular Age, 425. Ibid.

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ground for the expression of charism today, with new attention to multiculturalism and inter-religiosity. Modern communication methods are also part of a new placement of the spiritual and sacred in the world today. Unlike the world of the ancien régime, where one’s place in the cosmos functioned from a sense of an ordered and enchanted universe, reflected in a hierarchical society, people today imagine themselves reaching beyond the limits of their own worlds. They see themselves as free, rights-bearing individuals in a dynamic society. People move beyond their personal boundaries through their contributions to the whole, the “other”—centered focus of their initiative and autonomy. A modern person begins with a sense of individuality as a starting point, and a climate of belonging then follows. “To reach out and touch” is not only an advertisement for a communications company, but a model of modern selfgiving. Yet modern technology is a new medium through which people are both called beyond their personal space and sometimes confined to it. It offers another lens to recognize the new challenges facing charism. We find that the expression of charism shares some of the possibilities, blind-spots, and social imaginaries linked to the whole of technological society today.

Technology Technology is indispensable to any discussion of globalization and multiculturalism. It is the means by which their impact and their damaging effect are fostered in the world. While globalization and multiculturalism suggest a more unified world, they also promote a trajectory of fragmentation, seen in the forces of nationalism, identity politics and religious fundamentalism. The use of technology in evangelization opens many doors to the church in the spread of the gospel. Even Saint Francis Xavier, the great missionary, would be jealous of the possibility of a televised Eucharist which could touch more people than he could in a lifetime. Involvement in the world of media and communications is a critical area where the charisms of individuals and groups can have an influence today. The positive effects of technology and communication which can broaden our vision of the world and its peoples can also undermine the positive

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society and church we hope to build. Vincent Miller charges that technology with its links to consumerism can tap into our good intentions for transformative living, and hijack them. Globalization and consumer culture can be powerful engines for cultural fragmentation. Consumer culture takes traditions apart by reducing them to collections of disconnected symbols, beliefs and practices. Since globalization frees us from the confines of space, technology can facilitate the process which takes communities apart, opening traditional, social, and religious spaces up to the freedom of choice. Fragmentation of community is caused by weakening our capacity to carry out meaningful social and political actions by reducing them to only our individual ability to sustain them. Most modern communications are geared towards individual choice, therefore, instead of taking us toward, they take us apart from “grounded communities and “traditional religious pathways.”29 Technology invites us into the balancing act between individuality and connecting with others central to the message of the gospel and the Church. Being Christian does not mean being anti-technological, but it does require reflection on the links between the values consumer culture upholds and their relationship to religious practice. Are people today more filled with greed than in previous generations? That is unlikely. However, the way the culture is organized can erode the conditions where the moderations which virtue once upheld are undermined. Because of the way the media foster a “common sense of the culture,” they go unrecognized for what they are, and where they lead. For instance, internet communities can provide opportunity for dialogue and exchange beyond the boundaries of daily life and face to face associations. Families, groups and congregations in the Church use web conferencing and other means of technology, not as matters of individual choice, but as ways to bond members who live geographically apart. To link technology with fragmentation is inaccurate. However, the success of these communities is based on bonds which go deeper than association through technology. Face to face and real life bonds already exist, and technology serves to support them when they cannot be reinforced personally. Vincent Miller, “The iPod, the Cell Phone, and the Church,” in Getting on Message: Challenging the Christian Right from the Heart of the Gospel, Peter Laarman (ed.) (New York: Beacon Press, 2006), 173–91.

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A purely technological connection, unlike the sometimes tedious quality of face to face communities, allows one to “drop out” of an online conversation if one is not interested or entertained. In this climate one can pick and choose “causes” in which one is interested, but divorced from face to face community, response can require, not the investment of manifold engagement, but simply a donation and a stamp. Miller remarks that as seekers in the spiritual marketplace we sample a hundred profound truths but our lives remain unchanged. Real change requires complex shared beliefs and practices, community support, and challenge.30

Consumer Society and Embeddedness Consumer society can be more than just a fact of modern living; it can be the real context of one’s embeddedness. Technology contributes to an all-pervasive culture of consumerism, which often remains just below the surface of consciousness. The technology–consumerist culture can infiltrate even our religious beliefs, and the process by which we adopt them. Beliefs and practices can seem as if they are consumer commodities; like a personal playlist, from which we can pick and choose. This separates their connection to the beliefs, symbols, and practices which give them meaning. The consequence is that a belief or practice loses its capacity to convey the alternative logic and desires of the gospel which can provide a horizon of moral meaning, and draw believers’ lives away from conformity with the status quo. For example, if a psychological definition of intimacy, is making room in your life for another, think of the difference between a practice of communal prayer such as the Eucharist, and the private “saying a prayer” when one feels like it. While both are important practices, the former is connected to a regular pattern of living where one witnesses to others and receives their witness of faith. In community, one hears the scriptures in season and out of season; especially the ones we would skip if left alone. The Church invites us to Advent and Lent, and it happens, without permission. In other words, different than DVR of favorite TV shows, the practices of spirituality embedded in the church, take one beyond one’s tastes, one’s own lights and shadows, spiritually. It also takes us deeper into the Christian life. Ibid., 179.

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Miller calls into question what dictates the meaning of religious symbols at a deeper level of our lives. What is the real culture in which we are embedded? Instead of the inherent meaning of religious symbols, unpacked over a lifetime, cultural models of the reasonably adjusted human being take over our imagination. Ethics of justice get collapsed into political correctness. Not getting arrested is the translation of a good life. Conventional understandings of the commandments, no adultery, theft, and murder seem to eclipse the deeper calls of the beatitudes or the two great commandments; which can seem rather excessive. When religious ideas are “consumed” in spiritual practice without connection to the communal and religious practice they are meant to represent, they fail to create a community of contrast to society. Miller charges that religious belief is always in danger of being reduced to a “decorative veneer of meaning over the emptiness of everyday life, as it is already spelled out in advanced capitalist societies.”31 Technology engulfed in consumerism advances this.

Ideology of Consumerism or Social Change? Zygmunt Bauman points to the role technology holds in promoting the ideology of consumerism in defining a successful life. Analyzing a street riot in the UK, he comments that a social minefield can occur, and an explosion can happen anytime, thanks to contemporary technology transmitting information in the real time and promoting a copycat effect. He suggests there is a type of superficial thinking promoted by a mass use of social networking. These particular riots in the UK were fueled by the combination of consumerism with rising inequality. This was not a rebellion or an uprising of famished and impoverished people or an oppressed ethnic or religious minority. Rather it was a mutiny of defective and disqualified consumers, people offended and humiliated by the display of riches to which they had been denied access.32 More than market initiatives, consumerism is a force which defines a good life. We have all been coerced and seduced to view shopping as the recipe for a Vincent J. Miller, Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture (New York: Continuum, 2004), 225. 32 Zygmunt Bauman, “Fuels, Sparks and Fires: On Taking to the Streets,” Thesis Eleven 109 (1) (2012): 11–16, esp. 11. 31

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good life and the principal solution to all life’s problems. In the case of the U.K. riots, a large part of the population had been prevented from using that recipe. The young people who participated in the rioting and the looting explained why they took action, not in their own words, or through their personal convictions. They heard in the media an explanation of their behavior, and used the language utilized there. They mimicked what others said of them. Through looting and burning shops they did not plan to change anything, replace the present order with another; or create something more humane or hospitable to human life. They did not rebel against consumerism at all. By looting they joined the ranks of consumers to which they had been excluded. Some referred to it as a shopping spree: yet one without a credit card. Bauman comments that the government, as could be duplicated in most first world countries, imposed a curfew, but did not address the sources of their humiliation, the rampant consumerism coupled with rising inequality in the nation. To address the latter would require a cultural revolution and serious reform in the ways society works. Through modern means of communication, people can gather on public squares to protest their situations, without any clear vision of what change they are advocating. In some situations, what they savor is the change of not being alone, of being with others who share the same set of emotions. The solidarity they seek is not in a clear idea of the cause and its solution, but more a sense of having a cause—which gives purpose and a sense of meaning—in having the same set of emotions. Bauman’s analysis is penetrating. For people who rehearsed verbally on Facebook and Twitter, they now fully could experience in flesh, a sense of purpose provided by the riot. People could act without losing the traits that made it so endearing when practiced on the web: the ability to enjoy the present without mortgaging the future, rights without obligations.33 The community, commitment, and the conviction that love is worth the effort is missing.34 Depth and longevity are involved in the difference between association on the internet, and in face to face community. The Internet before the invasion of Iraq mobilized protests of hundreds of thousands of people in a short period of time, while it took years for the Vietnam antiwar movement to

Ibid., 13. Merkle, Being Faithful, 143.

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produce such numbers. The possibility of quick communication had a positive effect on global reflection and reaction to a serious undertaking. However, rapid deployment, and staying power are not the same. Miller argues that the deep structures that propelled the civil rights movements were able, through the aid of the Black church, to sustain a multi-generational struggle. The movement was composed not just of committed individuals but of communities who shared beliefs. These beliefs, along with mutual challenge, encouragement, and shared experiences did support involvement in a struggle that was inconvenient, demanding, and dangerous.35 Part of the balancing act required of modern communities of faith, is to use modern communications as a means to enhance modern living, but not allow them to replace what only the investment of real relationships can sustain. We recognize today that through modern media the imagination of someone living in one world can take on the reality of another across the globe, at least in fantasy. The media which show the flow of migrants from war-torn countries into Europe can bring a stark reality into people’s living rooms. The Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a Vietnamese girl running because she was burning from napalm conveyed the horrors of war, beyond myriad explanations. Symbols or patterns that circulate the globe conveying ideas which capture our world are “cultural flows” rather than cultures, since they are insufficient to create a culture and are not received uniformly. They are accepted or rejected in local areas, and reconfigured according to local identities. The positive value of more important types of cultural flows is they can circulate ideas and sentiments that have limited power in one culture, but in a global context provide meaning to the experience of many. Notion of human rights, women’s equality, liberation, peace, and ecological responsibility are “cultural flows” that circulate the world today and have impact on the world and the church community. Many find in them images of what is alienating in their own lives and culture and define the transformations necessary to steer the world on a more constructive course. However, not all cultural flows are that constructive. The cultural impact of iconic global brands such as Coca-Cola, Nike, McDonald’s, and Disney both identify and hide how the cultural face of globalization challenges and Miller, “The iPod, the Cell Phone, and the Church,” 188.

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undermines local identities, traditions and social systems. The entire enterprise of global industrialization and services facilitates in some areas the operation of behaviors which are illegal and no longer culturally accepted in more advanced societies. Sectors of the hospitality industry foster trips for ecological awareness while at the same time advertise hotels which supply children for sexual recreation. The sweatshops, human trafficking, and threats to education that the globalization of industry hides exists alongside the job, road and occupational creation it provides. The fact remains, that many “safe” pharmaceuticals have been tested in third world countries.36 The arms sales that fuel local violence and wars all over the world, line the pockets of those who remain relatively safe in gated communities in Europe, the United States and elsewhere. Mixed realities can hide behind the web pages of global communications which promise the answer to most dreams with the click of a button and a credit card. Technology offers many a picture of a better world and frees them from ignorance and isolation, yet also makes the sins of humankind interesting and more accessible; and a vision of their solution at times more oblique. The paradoxical interplay of the global and the local is fueled by technology today. A newly coined term, glocalization, refers to the interpenetration of the global on the local and vice-versa. The distinctions between far-away and close-by have been all but made null and void once transferred to cyberspace, and interpreted by online or on-air logic. Glocalization both strips away the importance of place or locality while simultaneously adds to its significance, as initiatives begun locally can have consequences globally. At times this means they are beyond the steering powers, planning and predicting of people who began the initiative.37 The migration of peoples, fleeing local conflicts, stimulates a domino effect internationally, never intended by those who picked up everything to flee. A global initiative can be re-interpreted and re-composed, copied and even distorted by local resistance and adaptation, so that it is no longer possible for it to be implemented in the manner it was first intended. While the war on See: Thomas A. Nairn, “The use of Zairian Children in HIV Vaccine Experimentation: A CrossCultural Study in Medical Ethics,” in On Moral Medicine: Theological Perspectives in Medical Ethics, M. Therese Lysaught and Joseph J. Kotva Jr. (eds) (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 653–62. 37 Bauman, “Fuels, Sparks and Fires: On Taking to the Streets,” 16. 36

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terrorism is global today; a new generation of its adherents grows up in the midst of our cities and towns. It is inevitable that the local cannot be sustained without the global, for cut off from the movement which defines both the possibilities and alienations of our age, it has no autonomy or identity. Without the local, the global has nowhere to penetrate and establish itself in meaningful cultures. While this is a secular relationship, it also has parallels in the theological relationship of the universal and the local church, and will impact the operation of charism and the Church in the future. We can ponder how technology and its positive and negative influence will set the stage for the future in which charism will grow and flourish. Hopefully, we will find the Spirit in these new forms of human communication and direct them through the gifts of committed individuals, associations, and communities to serve the human good.

Charism and Beyond: A Whole Church Response A study of the growth of the Charismatic Church in Christianity notes there are three factors which have fostered its development. First, there is the use of the mass communications media to disseminate its ideas; second, there exists a social organization that promotes internationalism through global travel and networking, conferences and megachurches that function like international corporations; and third, there is a “global orientation” or global Charismatic “meta-culture” that transcends locality and denominational loyalty and displays striking similarities in different parts of the world.38 The call of Vatican II, however, was not to create a charismatic church in the midst of the existing one, or a parallel structure, rather to incorporate charisms of the faithful into the whole church. This charge has to be understood within the wider mandate to the church in a secular world, not to focus on the restoration of its former prominence, but to rediscover in these new conditions how to be a sacrament in the world of the love, mercy and care of God. The world in which this mission is placed is “joined together more Simon Coleman, The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity: Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 66–9. It is beyond the boundaries of this study to examine the global Charismatic movement itself.

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closely than ever before by social, technical, and cultural bonds (LG 1). Yet what yardstick do we use to measure this effort of the effectiveness of the Church in its mission? Massimo Faggioli claims the way we “weigh” the church must change in the twenty-first century. In the nineteenth century we asked, how strong is the church against dictators and liberal society? Later we examined, how active is the Church in the international political Cold War chessboard. Today we must inquire, what is the role of Catholicism and the Churches in the Western world—in the age of globalization and the meeting between civilizations and religions, in the political, cultural, and symbolic arena at the dawn of the third millennium? How do we understand this new role in light of the shifts in the center of gravity in the Church? There is no one pole by which to measure this; there are many poles and centers within the church, and her relationships. There is the relationship of the Catholic Church to a secular society, and the balance between the local dimensions of Church and the personal or virtual reality of being Church. There are the changes in the relationship between theology, liturgy and devotional styles in the contemporary Catholic Church. One must take into consideration the connection between “roots” of the Church in the West (Europe) and their reconfigurations in North and Latin America, Asia and Africa, and in light of the secular society in the West.39 To weigh the effectiveness of church requires all these areas, and more, to be taken into consideration. It seems fair to say, the role of charism, recognition of new charisms, and re-interpretation of existing charisms share in these new conditions of “weighing.” Max Weber measured or “weighed” an impact on society through the measure of “authority.” Authority is the ability to impact a society. He saw authority according to three models: traditional, legal and charismatic. No society operates purely out of one or the other, no society is ordered by one to the exclusion of the other “pure types.” Rather there is a balance of the elements in different proportions in every society. If we use this as a heuristic device to gain insight into the situation of the Church and charism in a

Massimo Faggioli, Sorting Out Catholicism: A Brief History of the New Ecclesial Movements (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2014), 4.

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post-Vatican II world, it seems unlikely that simply a charismatic renewal alone will be sufficient to sustain the mission of the church in the twentyfirst century. Nor will this renewal have a long-lasting impact on the future of the church without meeting challenges which exist among institutional aspects of the church. Interpretation of the tradition of the church and its legal code need to be adapted to the new situation, in order to incorporate the identity and function of charism into the church in new ways. Looking at all three areas can provide insights into the scale we must use to weigh the role of Catholicism and the Churches in the Western world—in the age of globalization; and their impact in the political, cultural, and symbolic arena at this time. This thought experiment will not offer solutions but may begin to articulate a direction for assessment of charismatic life in its new situation.

Tradition One benchmark of a modern spirituality which is “spiritual but not religious” is a certain mistrust of established churches and disciplines.40 The church can seem like a “magic ball” providing answers to complex questions which appear to overlook real situations filled with values and counter values not addressed. The struggle of the church to examine marriage laws and procedures for annulments is an effort to hold in one hand its deep beliefs in the indissolubility of marriage and in the other to address the realities that contemporary life, uneven qualities of Christian formation and non-formation, and the tensions which modern culture provide. The continued atmosphere of pastoral concern can lead the church to keep the balance it needs between its tradition and its role as shepherd of its people. The overarching need for the church to be more pastoral in its approach to modern society seems key to this impasse. A second area which can bridge this mistrust of the institution and adherence to its practices calls for a rethinking on the part of individuals. Modern culture can hold an all too rosy picture of human nature which leads people to regard disciplines, and long-term efforts at conversion in the church as unnecessary baggage on life’s journey. An outlook of exclusive humanism ignores that human nature is marked by grace and sin. Moderns seem to embrace “grace” Taylor, “The Church Speaks—to Whom?” in Church and People: Disjunctions in a Secular Age, 18.

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but not the concept of a “human nature” also with a bent to destructive choices. The need of religion, a community of support and a tradition of witnesses to faith seems more like perfume than oxygen in the spiritual life. It is acceptable to those who prefer it, but unnecessary for those who do not. Current first world society focuses on the moment, the event; keeping options open, making changes if something does not satisfy; in other words, switching channels in life, as one does in television viewing, if bored. The church draws attention to the role of practices over the long haul. These are the actions which are both means to a good life and a social situated good life itself. Practices differ from a good experience in that they re-occur. Practices are ritual actions which embody what is right in a context; they are those actions intrinsic to a way of life that center, sustain, and order that way of living.41 Practices also convey a commitment to the future, because they are integral to the formation of community and its character. Practices are similar to actions which comprise a sport. One day I observed a young boy sliding into a pillow thrown onto the ground in the backyard. He would run, fall to the ground, and slide into the pillow. He would repeat this action over and over again. Taken alone, this behavior is not easily understood. Unless one knew he was preparing to play baseball, this behavior was silly. However, knowing the frame, the behavior made sense. Today the practice of sharing, of prayer, of advocacy, is meaningless over the long term outside the expression of a total way of life; in this sense, practices in the Christian life are counter-cultural. Practices are also at the heart of moral communities. In order to hold certain values, one must experience them. A group has to live their stated values, in order to be a moral community.42 Doing shapes thought.43 This area of being a community of practice could be a fruitful area of cultural renewal for communities of charism now and in the future. However, practices also need to be examined as to their capacity to meet the spiritual and moral needs of the modern spirit. For instance, shame, the sense there is something profoundly wrong with me, rather than guilt, I did something wrong, can be paralyzing to the modern Larry Rasmussen, Moral Fragments and Moral Community (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 154. Alasdair MacIntrye, After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). See his discussion of practices. 43 Avery Dulles, The Craft of Theology: From Symbol to System (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 9. 41 42

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spirit. Past practices focusing on “sin” can evoke a type of negativity toward the goodness of the person, rather than their deed, which can cripple rather than grace an individual with a gospel based spirit of healthy contrition as a loved sinner. However, today shame rather than guilt marks the lives of many. The healing of the spirit, needed in a church which is a “field hospital” has to be the light which guides practices in the church.

Legal A major issue in carrying out the imperatives of Lumen Gentium 12, which calls for attention to the charisms in the church, is the ecclesiological ramifications. In other words, what structures in the church facilitate this movement? Legal authority is based on a system of rules that is applied administratively and judicially in accordance with known principles, and reinforced by written documentation. The persons applying them are appointed or elected legally; and even superiors are subject to rules that limit their powers, and separate their private lives from official duties. In the Church, legal authority is clarified in canon law. While the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity discusses charisms in terms of their significance for the Church and the world (AA 3), and stresses that the laity have a right and duty to use them, Vatican II did not provide structures to make this happen. The canon law of the Church has leaned toward a type of clergy–laity separation, which has focused on the clergy holding and exercising the role of governing the church in all its ministries, and the laity focusing on “temporal affairs.” In pre-Vatican times, the world of clergy was the church and the world of the laity was civil society, there was no image of both clergy and laity serving the church and the world. The role of the clergy was to govern the church—to organize structures, shape practices, create laws, set policies, enforce norms, judge difficult cases, and issue directives with authority. The laity was to adhere to these directives, follow the lead of the clergy especially in the area of religion, adhere to the norms and regulations, and obey authoritative commands.44

See: Stephen J. Pope, “Introduction,” in Common Calling: The Laity and Governance of the Catholic Church, Stephen J. Pope (ed.) ( Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), 5–9.

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Even the provisions of Vatican II do not clarify the issue for the church: the lines between clergy and laity get blurred in practice. Vatican II follows a threefold distinction between clergy, vowed religious, and the laity (LG 31). However, religious, vowed sisters and brothers are usually associated with the clergy by ordinary Catholics, but they see themselves as lay because they are not ordained. Since lay deacons have regular jobs, are married, have children and do not wear clerical garb, they are assumed to be members of the laity. However, when they are ordained to the diaconate, they become members of the clergy. Some blurring of the lines also occurs when lay people hold ministries within the church as lay Eucharistic ministers, directors of religious education, pastoral associates, retreat and spiritual directors, chaplains and campus ministers. While the details of the canonical interventions which have yet to be made are in the hands of the canonists, the principle that the capacity of the Church to live up to its mission also rests on its willingness to foster legal reforms is clear. People need the support of law to have the authority to do their jobs. Areas of decision making in the Church can be carried out competently by those who are not ordained. Law alone cannot foster this transformation in the Church, but without it, it will not happen.

Charismatic Vatican II offers an alternative view to pre-Vatican customs, and regards both laity and clergy as called to serve both the church and the world by virtue of their baptism. This grounds the ministry of all the faithful to build up the Body of Christ and to transform the world. Clergy and laity alike share in the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit. Sacramental ordination gives to priests and bishops a unique responsibility of pastoral leadership, symbolized most profoundly in their presiding at the Eucharist. But ordination does not mean the clergy is to be focused only on the church, to the exclusion of the world. As well, the laity are immersed in the conditions of society through professions, works and civic involvement; however, they are not to do this ignoring the church, nor apart from their charge by the Church to consecrate the world to Christ. They are also called to act for the common good of the Church. In order for laity to do more than simply follow the directives of the clergy, their role in the church needs not only canonical clarification but structures

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need to be reformed to provide an orderly preparation and incorporation of the laity into new roles. While much has been done in some parts of the world for the pastoral preparation of the laity, it needs to be developed where there is none, and be extended where it has begun. Also if there are no structures to receive an educated laity once initial formation has been completed, or no formal organizations to support them while in ministry, then the invitation of the Church to “come and see” is misplaced. This is also the case for the charisms of life vocation, especially marriage. Groups in the church dedicated to the support of Christian marriage have to have the finances and latitude to do more than advocate for the Church’s policies regarding marriage in the public arena. They, as married people, need to foster reflection and be part of the discussion of the new concerns of family life in modern society. The charismatic aspect of these reforms is critical to their legal incorporation. It is only through the charisms of those who hold office well, as well as the openness of the member of the parish or diocese, that the attitudinal openness to foster these changes will occur. This broader issue encapsulates the more neuralgic question of the role of women in the church. Eighty-three percent of parish roles in the church are held by women, however, women are suited to lead in roles on the diocesan, national and international levels of the church. The involvement of women in decisionmaking roles which do not require ordination is both a necessity for the good of the Church, and for its witness to equity between the sexes in modern society. Both the clergy and the laity are to be leaven in the world. Vatican II transformed this powerful image from just being applied to the laity to pertaining to the whole church.45 Part of the “weighing” of the Church in meeting the needs of the new millennium will be the coherence of its decisions within the Church, to the contribution it wants to make to the global society. Meeting these new challenges will call both the church and its members “beyond its lights and shadows” to take the necessary steps to allow the recognition of charisms to forge the church of the twenty-first century. The effectiveness of the Church in this new situation will require a blending of traditional, legal and charismatic action in light of the special challenges presented by globalization, multiculturalism and technology in the church and world today. Gaillardetz, Ecclesiology for a Global Church, 189–90.

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In the gospel parable of the “Talents” the master gave his servants different sums of money to invest until he returned (Mt. 25:14-30). We know the story well. The one with five talents, made five more. The one with two did the same. But the servant with one talent was afraid and buried the talent. Even without risk he could have invested the money with moneylenders and gained some interest in the financial systems of New Testament times. Even this he did not do. On the master’s return he reprimanded and expelled the servant saying, he knew what the master was like, “I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter.” Scripture scholar John L. McKenzie remarks this parable was likely meant for the officers of the Church. The message is the powers conferred on the disciples grow with use and wither with disuse. “The punishment for this type of infidelity is as severe as punishment for more positive sins; it is expulsion into outer darkness.”1 This parable carries a message, not only for the officers of the Church, but for the Church at large. What will it mean if we take up the call of Vatican II to call forth and utilize the charisms given to the People of God? What are the consequences if we do not? The Church includes all, those who hold office and those who do not. Despite the theological definitions of Vatican II, some still equate the Church with the clergy; if that is the case, then “they” must do something. The truth of the parable is all must assume responsibility for the life of the Church in new ways. For those who have the authority to facilitate the changes for this to occur, it necessitates openness to foster the new church John L. McKenzie, S.J. “The Gospel According to Matthew,” in The Jerome Biblical Commentary, Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, and Roland E. Murphy (eds) (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Pearson, 1968) 43: 176, 107.

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this will create. For all it involves not just a change in structures, but a renewal in spirituality. We are all challenged to move beyond a Church that we know, even a Church of convenience and custom, to one able to witness to the gospel in a globalized, multicultural, technological, and secular age.

Charism in Focus Our focus has been how the gift of charism, always present in the church, might impact the Church, the lives of the People of God, and the world today. We recognize that charism does not belong only to the Catholic Church or to Christianity alone. However, our interest has been to consider charism in the Church, in light of the issues of the twenty-first century which impact the practice of religion, as well as those which foster the recognition and renewal of charismatic life today. To fulfill the call of Vatican II to integrate the charisms of the People of God into the church and society, there is need for a renewal of spirituality as well as for suitable structures in the Church. Charism and institution are not opposed, but exist in an interdependent relationship. A special summons is to create ways that the laity can move from their more generalized identity in the Christian community into new roles in the Church, through a reinterpretation of traditions, the support of canon law and a change in the culture of the Church. Two ways this has already occurred is through new movements in the Church since Vatican II, and the creation of lay associates of religious congregations. Whether these movements are permanent factors in the Church or transitional steps to a more clarified lay identity is not known. However as phenomena they reveal some of the benefits and conflicts which exist along this path.

Religious Congregations Today religious congregations are a mix of older communities established in the Church, like the Benedictines, Augustinians. Franciscans, Dominicans, and Basilians, and groups formed since the Middle Ages around new apostolic needs and spiritual charisms. In modern times we have pastoral associations, missionary societies, and apostolic-charitable communities, along with



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the monastic orders whose focus is prayer and contemplation. During the nineteenth century there arose numerous new communities of simple vows who, avoiding the enclosure of the more cloistered orders of the past, engaged in the ministries required of them by the developments of that period. They were also founded on spiritual charisms which supported a type of contemplation in action, and action which flowed from contemplation which combined the spiritual life of the cloister with the active works needed for the times.2 Since Vatican II these have all been termed “institutes of consecrated life” comprised of societies of apostolic life and religious orders, distinguished from secular institutes and new spiritual movements. Religious orders are an icon of how charism and institution permeate each other. They are not opposed to the Church as institution, yet, according to their own charism and “patrimony,” their spiritual charism and heritage, live within the Church, with its formal approval. Orders can represent their legitimate institutional interests, and are permanent charisma in the Church. They have independence within the Church which is not absorbed by the institutional structure of the Church. This integrity is recognized publically and functionally, and those in authority within them hold ecclesiastical office. Yet they also exist in union with the Church, can be sanctioned by it, and follow the law of the Church in its canonical codes for their functioning. Some orders have a long tradition of “lay” members, as technically all those who are not ordained are laity in the Church. Today however the inclusion of “lay” members has taken new forms. Recently there is more possibility to have some level of association with religious institutes; this possibility is available for those living without public vows, married people or those with a single vocation. People are associates, co-workers, companions, etc., from various walks of life, some working in the apostolates of the order, others not. Most forms of association provide a spiritual and ministerial component, often the ministry being an intensification of the calling already pursued, or some sharing in the work of the order. What associate membership provides for people is a community relationship, tested charism, and alternative spiritual life, in addition to the life of the parish, for those seeking a new focus in their spiritual and ministerial lives. Associates report that the charism of Merkle, A Different Touch, 125–35.

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the community helps them focus and interpret their everyday life through a spiritual lens. Associate membership of religious orders is one way members of the laity are seeking a new place in the Church.

Movements A discussion of charism would be amiss without some attention to the growth and significance of movements in the Church since Vatican II.3 Movements have various faces in the Church and society; however at core they are a group of Christians that presupposes a firm commitment and a rule of life that may be habitual or in written form.4 Characteristic of major new movements in the Church is they cut across Christianity as a whole, they are transnational.5 Secondly, many are of a dialectical nature; in that they are “for” a certain posture in the Church, or interpretation of Vatican II, that is not necessarily held by all. Thirdly, movements are often comprised of married people, priests, single people and religious. Faggioli’s study illustrates that movements have a paradoxical bent. They can find themselves in tension with the local and Episcopal structure of the Catholic Church; yet can also cut across the ecclesiological model of papacy-bishops-ordained ministry, since they embody a more fluid hybrid membership.6 A fourth characteristic is some movements function in a less visible manner than other groups in the Church, which contributes to their “unreadable” quality. Movements stand in contrast to the normal way the Church has publically instituted itself since the Council of Trent. The Church in this sense has its own institutional, political, and sociological legitimacy and boundaries. This self-identity excludes the possibility of an element that is not legally regulated with regard to the canonical norm of the institutional church. Movements in This vast topic is beyond the scope of this study. See Massimo Faggioli, Sorting Out Catholicism: A Brief History of the New Ecclesial Movements, Demetrio S.Yocum (trans.) (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2014). Kevin Ahearn, Structures of Grace: Catholic Organizations Serving the Global Common Good (New York: Orbis Books, 2015). The latter refers to non-official structures, lay and religious ecclesial organizations which are transnational, national and local. 4 Faggioli, Sorting Out Catholicism, 4. 5 Among the movements are: Communion and Liberation; The Charismatic Movement; The Focolare Movement; Cursillos; The Neocatechumenal Way; The Schonstatt Movement; The Community of Sant’Egidio; The Neo-Monastic Communities of Taize and Bose; “We are the Church Movement”; Opus Dei; and Legionaries of Christ. 6 Faggioli, Sorting Out Catholicism, 6. 3



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this sense are unique. There are movements of reform in the Church and in society. They identify as pilgrims and converts, lay, spiritual and ecclesial. There are movements of institutional, spiritual-emotional and ascetic-sectarian mobilization. They embody spiritual and apostolic commitment, Christian animation of temporal realities and Christian inspiration that expresses itself in temporal realities. There are also movements of spiritual and apostolic intra-ecclesial commitment.7 Movements, therefore, display a variety of styles and goals, and some have contradictory purposes.8 Some movements can be characterized as adhering to one or the other opposing interpretations of the Vatican council, conservative or progressive; in this sense, they have very different visions of the Church and its future. The existence of movements however reflects the need to live the Gospel outside the imposed or socially inherited conventions of parish and diocese, in communities that go beyond “associative” boundaries and even symbols of creed and sacraments available to all.9 Members of movements are seeking a unique dwelling place within the house of the Church. Movements provide a charismatic center of meaning which provides focus. Faggioli goes so far as to suggest movements are providing a new dualism in the church beyond the clergy-laity divide, to suggest a separation between “ordinary Christians”; the “loose laity” (unorganized, unaffiliated) and the elite troops formed by the members of ecclesial movements. Some judge this to be more the case in parts of Europe, than in the United States at this time. Movements in Africa, Latin America and Asia are more sizeable along the lines of Charismatic or Pentecostal leanings. Yet religious movements can be seen as a response to the end of the inherited religious identities, with the group supplanting in some way the crisis the institution of the Church as a whole faces in addressing this dilemma. Movements reflect a type of “mosaic’ in the Church where an assemblage of many different ecclesial groups and communities, some which fall outside current canonical vision, continue to grow as a functioning Church across the world. Ibid., 10. For an example of the moral challenges facing groups of advocacy and identity in a pluralistic church and society see Merkle, Being Faithful, 147–70. 9 Faggioli, Sorting Out Catholicism, 13. 7 8

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At the Synod of 1987 some bishops expressed a concern that some movements were exclusivist and sectarian, if not fundamentalist in their orientation; while others were becoming “parallel churches.” Cardinal Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith encouraged these groups not to absolutize any one charism or mission but to remain loyal to the totality of the Church. At the same time there was an effort from Rome to accord a diminished role to bishops’ conferences with respect to the Holy See’s authority. Many of the movements were personally supported by the Papacy in different post-conciliar periods. Instead of seeing themselves in primary relationship to a local bishop, some members of movements envision their relationship to the Church primarily through the Pope. The implicit ecclesiology of the movements, therefore, is different from both the “bishopcentered” ecclesiology of the collegiality between the pope and the bishops and the “theology of the laity” that emerged after Vatican II.10 Faggioli suggests that Benedict XVI’s focus on the negative side of the modern world and especially of Europe in extreme secularization strengthened the worldview of many of the movements and led to the tendency of the Vatican to rely on them—more than on local churches or religious orders— in the effort to proclaim the Gospel in secularized society. Pope Francis addressed movements, however, from his perspective of “the theology of the people” a belief that the people are active subjects of the evangelization work of the Church. His emphasis however reaffirmed the role of movements in their respect for the local churches, and the need to work in harmony with the leadership and programs in the church in which they are inserted. They need to follow the dynamic of their own charism, yet acknowledge that all gifts of the Holy Spirit have their ecclesial dimension.11 The phenomenon of movements provides a snapshot of the issues confronting the formation and interaction of groups and new charisms in the church today. It is not an outreach without conflict, yet any approach to the incorporation of charisms of the Church has to include mechanisms for working out conflicts. Response to and inclusion of new expressions of charism in the church in the twenty-first century therefore requires a blending of personal, ecclesial For instance, some movements were very “leader-focused” in their attention, and lacked the participatory culture of a post-Vatican II theology of the laity. Faggioli, Sorting Out Catholicism, 130–44.

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and global responses. Key aspects of this integration are markers of Catholic identity, as mediation, sacramentality, and a call to communion.

Charism in the Twenty-first Century Personal Charism is more than a personality characteristic or style of behavior; rather it is the capacity to put people in touch with the power of the gospel. Its recognition requires a community of faith, who can provide support and an alternative framework for faith formation in a secular society. Attention to the reality of charism in one’s life confronts a person with the current climate of religiosity as a whole. Awareness of charism will not as likely be passed on from one generation to another, and its acknowledgment will happen in the midst of other alternatives. At a fundamental level, response to Charism will touch into the human search to discover meaning in life and follow a personal path of selftranscendence. People will be drawn to those persons or groups who in some way confirm the meaningfulness of this search, and provide a means to interpret their lives along a path of becoming. Response to Charism will not come from willpower alone. People will catch a Charism from entering into patterns of cooperation which appear to them to have a direction and purpose. Max Weber attributes response to a charismatic personality to the fact that a person addresses the deep hurts, alienations and needs of an age. Charismatic expressions of ministry appeal to those aspects in every society where there is the most hurt and alienation or greatest need. Since needs change, some groups will interpret their charism in new ways, they will leave what can be done by others, and take up what is necessary. Response to Charism will be accompanied by an awareness of community. Others will be more than just the stage on which an individual expresses their gift or Charism. Rather ongoing transformation will occur through communal interaction. Charism in this sense is more than something the individual decides to follow or not. It is a reality beyond the individual which is a calling; one which needs a community over time to help integrate the gift which has been offered.

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The transformation of an individual through the living out of the Charism is an expression of the transformative nature of the church, a sign of its own creative fidelity. The perspective of sharing in the love God has for this world enlarges the personal horizon beyond whatever is normally understood as human flourishing. It transforms the identity of an organization, from wellfunctioning to its significance for mission. It witnesses to the presence of the transcendent in a new way. Ongoing response to a Charism focuses the human drive to be attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and responsible within the context of religious conversion or love of God, expressed in ever expanding and complementary networks of community. Since the question of God is implicit in all human search and questioning, response to Charism in the church and the witness this requires is a sign of spiritual renewal among the faithful. It carries special significance today in a culture where God can seem to be unnecessary. Even more than what people can do for others, is who they are before the world. Through the dedication of their initiative and autonomy, an individual joins the life of a concrete community and expresses the call of the church to enter into the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ and be a transformative community through worship, prayer, and action. It is a commitment not only to share the Gospel but to search for and recognize the presence and activities of the Holy Spirit wherever the Spirit is to be found.

Ecclesial The ecclesial identity of Charism is beyond sociology, therefore more than a person, factor or movement which fosters change. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church and its members. Recognition of Charism does not circumvent the reality of the Church; is not based on an entitlement to disparage the church, or the posture to excuse it uncritically. Living from a Charism within the church calls one beyond an overvaluation of the sacraments as the sole mark of a “practicing Christian” and an overvaluation of ethics—political or emotional or charismatic—as a wedding garment of salvation.12 The call to live out of a Charism within the church is to put life on the new footing. It is Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Interpretation of Christian Existence (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1995), 167–89.

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to see one’s life through a new lens. It is to count on grace beyond one’s lights and shadows. The life callings/vocations of marriage, priesthood, consecrated life, and the single life are not just career choices, they are callings.13 Recognition of the Charism involved in each of these callings takes them beyond the immanent frame which reduces life to our current definitions of social and individual success. It takes us beyond Nietzsche’s last man “who invented happiness” to the discovery of the real meaning of life. Calling offers a view of life opposite to the imagined superior being or overman, the new person of culture, who becomes tired of life, seeks only comfort and security and takes no risks. A sense of vocation in the church affirms those human experiences which are bridges to the divine, which convey a world beyond the self, a world not entirely under its control. These experiences of self-transcendence: falling in love, the birth of a child, finding oneself accepted by others; service to needs beyond one’s comfort zone, affecting a real change in another’s life, witnessing reconciliation and forgiveness, self-sacrifice in defense of one’s country link human transcendence to religiosity and calling. Religious traditions and practices themselves foster the interpretive framework in which new experiences of transcendence can be welcomed and God can be found in all things. In a faith community, events which already convey deep human meaning can be recognized as encounters and union with God. Whether at the level of experience, or in their religious significance, all testify to the truth that the person cannot give meaning to themselves in a total manner. Whatever our calling, we recognize the happy experiences and the difficult ones never afford the exact balance to prove once and for all that life has meaning. Life dictates that we must surrender in faith that God finally will reconcile their existence and our own. This trust gives ultimate meaning not only to our existence but to what the symbol of the Kingdom of God actually means when we pray, Thy Kingdom Come. While we cannot articulate often the “more” which our own sense of incompleteness brings to this prayer, Charism lived on an ecclesial level fosters an outlook and practice

For commentary on marriage as discipleship see Gaillardetz, Ecclesiology for a Global Church, 197–202.

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characterized by sacramentality, mediation and communion. This matrix of living centers our desire to be among those who await and foster the Kingdom each day. In turn, living our charism in the church and society provides a new lens on these dimensions of Catholic life.

Sacramentality In the Christian life, our symbols bridge the gap between God, ourselves and the world. Sacramentality is based on faith that Jesus Christ is the full embodiment of God. It affirms that God can be seen, touched and heard in the context of human living. The absence of God in secular society is not an obstacle to faith, as through sacramental mediation we confirm the reality of the Risen Christ in our midst. Even though we live in a society where the dialectic of critique penetrates every endeavor, through listening to the Word and worship, we move beyond our own lights and shadows and receive the life which only God can give. Discernment of Charism happens in the same context shared by religiosity as a whole. This is a climate marked by conflict of worldviews, the ambiguity of gospel values “hidden in the field” of new cultural expressions and plural communities; as well as in the presence of anti-values which are actually more popular. Therefore a sense of the sacramentality of life co-exists with a secular culture, yet embraces the belief that we live in a sacred world created by God. Every tangible element of creation from the natural environment to the human person provides an opportunity to encounter something of God’s presence. As those following a charism study the problems of society, the wonders of the natural environment and the conditions of the global order, they discover something about the presence of God in our midst. Charism, as a gift of the Spirit, calls all into encounters with others in service, the intimacy of family life, interactions of forgiveness, reconciliation, birth and death, joy and celebration—all as sacraments of God in the world. The rituals of the seven sacraments authenticate the public identity of a Christian life, centered in its baptismal call and focused around the reality of the Eucharist. These rituals also confirm the sacramentality of life, where God can be found in all things. Religious communities today can skip this



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grounding in baptismal identity in their appeal for new members, new helpers, and new associates. The religious identity which grounds the work of community leaders, nurses, teachers, social workers, and justice advocates can easily become privatized, and the grounding call of baptismal identity hidden. When this occurs charism can be interpreted only at the level of personal gifts and aptitudes for the common work of the community, and distanced from the energy of its spiritual center, as a gift of the Holy Spirit. It is not that a sacramental outlook is not present in a congregation; rather a secular climate creates an ambivalence regarding its public expression. A sacramental life also gains new meaning in light of the current cultural atmosphere of exclusive humanism. Exclusive humanism approaches life as if its meaning is totally eclipsed in human life itself. The sacramental life differs from this worldview. Exclusive humanism holds that life can be lived fully and completely without reference to a transcendent reality; therefore the moral and spiritual resources to sustain that life only come from within. The sacramental life confirms our personal resources yet unites them with Christ and places us in the long tradition of the witness of others in the faith community. It celebrates that we do not become Christian through our willpower alone. The sacramental order is a symbolic order. A symbol places side by side all the elements of the whole, and provides order in their relationship to one another. A symbol provides meaning by centering meaning in a world bigger than the self. Christians interpret life in relationship to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; the church considers the sacramental gestures and words it expresses as his gestures and his words. In the fullest sense of word the Church is the sacrament. The Eucharist is the structure of Christian identity and living out of Charism. There is the gift, its reception in the returning gift of concrete action in society which forms the ongoing process of Christian identity not only in the Christian individual and community but in the world. The Eucharist is the wholeness that all movements of conversion find their center, and the Word of God which it celebrates continues to call us to deeper conversion. Instead of justifying ourselves through our actions alone, we will welcome daily or weekly the spirit of the Risen One into our lives joining ourselves to His presence in the world.

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Mediation The Catholic principle of mediation holds that God ordinarily comes to us through the structures that are given: the Scripture, sacraments, apostolic ministry and the like.14 In contrast to a culture which sees the self as the primary reality, the church holds the meaning of life also is mediated to us from what is external to our personalities which interact with what is within. A common sense of mediation is conveyed in the “two ways” of development. These ordinary aspects of life: families, schools, local communities and healthy cultural atmospheres are essential to a life of faith and sensitivity to the voice of God within us. Theologically, mediation is the principle which holds that faith is not just a personal reality which I construct; rather it is lived in a tradition, the history of relationships, in an institution in a religious form. As institutional, it is doctrinal, moral, ritual, and so on. Even the Word of God is mediated in the body of Scriptures, formed through a tradition of preaching and belief and interpreted by a community. Mediation does not negate the role of personal freedom and conscience, however, it places these in a framework of reality which supports and forms them. Instead of the cultural viewpoint which sees the church as an optional extra, mediation highlights the importance of the church in the Christian life, and recognizes that God calls us through this ordinary path. We do not baptize ourselves; we are baptized into the “we” of the Church. Even the modes of Christian behavior which may appear most personal, such as meditative prayer, or the most authentic, such as concern for others, always emerge from a long apprenticeship. Both are the result of habits interiorized and inculcated for a long time from family patterns, education, and institutionalized in highly ritualized processes in the faith community. In essence this is the meaning of mediation. What is most spiritual always takes place in what is most corporeal. Charism receives its fullness of meaning within the institution. We understand ourselves as Christians, speak as Christians, and lead our lives as Christians through the church, through the mediation of the body, within society and through a particular context of life.

Avery Dulles, The Catholicity of the Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).

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The church also experiences mediation. The fundamental dependence of the church on its Lord is expressed in the Eucharist. In the Eucharist the church offers its own life and the life of its members through the sacramental offering of the body and blood of Christ. The church prays that the Holy Spirit may come over us so that through the church’s participation in the Eucharistic body, it may become the ecclesial body of Christ. We seek to make Christ present in the world through the love and justice we foster. The ultimate goal of the Eucharist is charity among members, and within the whole of humanity. Mediation does not mean the individual does not have the immediate access to God. The act of faith is not directed toward the church but immediately to God. The ecclesial mediation of faith simply serves and leads to this immediacy of the Christian to God. Personal faith is made possible, and supported by the “we” of faith, by the church as one people of God. The mediation of the Church is also one in which the Church is a pilgrim community; it too is on the way to God. The Church itself is to be an “open system” through the animation of the Holy Spirit who continually enlivens it with gifts. Past criticisms of the Catholic Church are that its powerful institutional and hierarchical character “screened out” the Spirit in its midst. While this can occur, there is not an inevitable dichotomy between charism and institution. Karl Rahner reminds us that the charismatic element in the Church is that point in the Church at which God, as Lord of the Church, presides over the Church as an open system. Openness to the future is not something to be tolerated but embraced as the Church is on pilgrimage.15 Endowed with the radical promise and hope by the Holy Spirit, the future cannot be defined simply in “this-worldly” terms or calculations, such as numbers of membership; rather the Church remains open to an unknown future within this present world. This open-ended “yes” of the Church to the call of God is the matrix to understand the meaning of charism itself in the lives of individual Christians. Charism is not a goal to be accomplished but a mystery in which to live. Mediation therefore assumes the search for truth is an open search. Culturally we become bogged down amid the multitude of truths which surround us. Truth is created: you have your truth and I have mine. The Karl Rahner, “Observations on the Factor of the Charismatic in the Church.”

15

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church by contrast sees mediation as the very milieu within which human beings attain their truth, and respond to the Truth which calls them. This seems at the heart of what Lonergan meant by intellectual conversion, moving beyond the bias which leads to personal and communal decline. This call to not only share the truth but seek the truth belongs to the Church, as a pilgrim people. This search for the truth, and the spirituality which sustains it, is the core of what can lead communities within the Church, especially in their differences, to embrace a common ground of reconciliation and peace.

Communion When Vatican II defined the Church it said the goal of the church is determined by the coming of God’s Kingdom and by the permeation and sanctification of the world through Christ’s Spirit. This “big picture” of the purpose of the Church was the setting for naming the Church as the People of God, as God’s people called together by God. All the baptized participate in the priestly, prophetic and royal dignity of God’s people. The notion of the People of God embraces both the hierarchy as well as the laity, and is prior to descriptions of office and roles in the church. The notion of the People of God, however, is not merely sociological, as one would think of those people constitutive by a common history, culture or common socio-political roots. The People of God is called and gathered from out of all nations and classes. To be a People therefore is a call to communion in its many forms. The communion of the church is both structural and qualitative. In a global, multicultural and technological world, communion is served by structures which unite the universal and local church, and integrate the many cultures and peoples which make up the church worldwide. The call to communion also engages the church to dialogue with those beyond its boundaries. A challenge to communion is the fact that the church today is made up of many communities and groups, which a prior understanding of the church may have overlooked. In pre-Vatican II times, with its emphasis on a hierarchical church, aspects of the church which did not fall within the purview of office were less recognized. Today the complexity of the Church, and its life in various small groups, movements, para-ecclesial efforts make living “in



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communion” in the Church a different type of project. Since Vatican II, there have been new opportunities for the laity through the call of their baptism to participate actively in the mission of the church, not just in the home and in the workplace, but also in the parish and diocese. There has been the establishment of various parish and diocesan councils; parish and diocesan finance councils; social action commissions; liturgy commissions; and diocesan, regional and parochial education commissions.16 Most of these were unheard of before Vatican II. These new structures offer a new challenge to the reality of communion. The spirit of communion involves the listening to each other, the mutual consideration, recognition of the complementarity of ministries, the toleration and correction of each other and the cooperation which extends beyond office and hierarchy.17 It means the creation of structures not just for the hierarchy to communicate with each other, or the laity to do the same, but for there to be ongoing conversation between the hierarchy and laity; theologians and bishops, religious and the people with whom and for whom they serve. It means abandoning schemas of identity defined as being against others, and embracing positive group identities which serve the common good. In other words, the communio of the church in practice depends on the quality of its community life, at every level of the church. Since the institutional and charismatic aspects of the Church are co-essential to its constitution, the Church recognizes the Spirit as the giver of gifts even beyond its boundaries. While the Spirit animates the Church, the Spirit also grounds what is true and holy in other religions. This calls the church, and those with charisms within it, to appreciate what the Spirit effects in other church and ecclesial communities. The Spirit leads the church to dialogue internally and externally. The need to dialogue, and openness to it, gives Charism in the church a special charge at this time in history. The ecclesial dimension of charism today calls people to a life which is characterized by sacramentality, mediation and communion. Foremost in this call, is a missionary outlook. James Heft, “Accountability and Governance in the Church: Theological Considerations,” in Governance, Accountability, and the Future of the Catholic Church, Francis Oakley and Bruce Russett (eds) (New York: Continuum, 2004), 121–35. 17 Bradford E. Hinze, Practices of Dialogue in the Roman Catholic Church: Aims and Obstacles; Lessons and Laments (New York: Bloomsbury, 2006). 16

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Global The global dimension of charism is more than an awareness of geography; it is a call to mission to the “other,” whether the other is across the street or across the world; through practices of solidarity, dialogue, inculturation, and the pursuit of justice. The global dimension of charism means our life in our local church is affected by consciousness of those who live beyond it.18 The global dimension of Charism bids us to recognize a type of transnationalism even in our local church. Migration is at an all-time high in human history. A new feature of migration is the ability of migrants to remain connected to their home cultures at the same time they are becoming immersed in new ones. Contemporary migrants neither leave behind their cultures of origin entirely, nor fully assimilate into their host cultures. Contact with family and friends is maintained through the internet; money is sent home to support families, visits back make it possible to maintain connections. The hybrid quality of living today, people living in two cultures at once, requires new ministerial skills, where we no longer wait for people to come to us, but we must reach out and adapt to them. Service in a church community of only one culture is not a common experience today; all ministry is in some ways global. Mission might not require long-distance travel; however it might be directed to the other in our midst; the immigrant, the homeless, the homebound, the one who has never considered Christian faith, the one who falls outside our pastoral plan. The global dimension of Charism might also mean we need like Peter to cast our nets on the other side of the boat (Jn 21). How do we dialogue with those who find life only with an immanent frame? Can we collaborate with people of good will, and find ways to join our efforts to work for a common human good, despite the fact there is not a common grounding in faith? Are there new social spaces where evangelization needs to take place: young families, single people, divorced, homosexuals, elderly, those in transition? The global dimension of charism calls us to serve in the field hospital of the church. If Pope Francis says the Church is to be a field hospital, what are the wounds of our contemporary world? How do we talk coherently about

Schreiter, “The Gift of Mission: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” 50–4.

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the growing income divide which threatens the democracy, and the security of the world itself? How do we bring a sense of dignity and taste to media today, where too often the banal reaches the least common denominator and fails to ennoble the human spirit? How do we encourage our young people to be creative in their world? The culture can encourage them to seek some corner of the world where they can live unencumbered by the needs of others, and work quietly on their own upward mobility. How do we help them not withdraw from the world, but enter professions with a vision to build their integrity? How do we respond to the truth that globalization leaves whole populations behind and sensitize those within our influence to the fact that problems are often more complex than the pundits suggest? How do we foster serious discussions in our parishes which carry over into political action? The global dimension of Charism calls us beyond remaining faithful only to those who are still practicing in the church, but to reach out to areas where the church needs to grow. This dimension of Charism calls us to be active in service, in charity, in work for justice. The renewal of Charism in the church however must do more than good works; it must create a community of faith, of prayer and a community of worship. In solidarity with the real problems, joys and hopes, fears and sorrows of the people it will move beyond the simple enclaves of consumption and entertainment, characteristic of modern life—to be a new church of God’s people, beyond our own lights and shadows.

Charism and Governance of the Church It is one thing to affirm the charisms in the Church; it is another to accept people in leadership and decision-making. However, law often follows practice. Since Vatican II there are thousands of parishes and other local Catholic congregations throughout the world led by non-priests. Laymen and women, deacons and religious, guide and are in charge of the pastoral ministry exercised within such communities. The vast majority of these ministers are non-ordained. Often they have been assigned or chosen by these communities to direct or coordinate the ministry within them. Canon lawyer James Coriden cites examples of areas where lay ministers exercise legitimate authority in the Church. Laity serve currently as judges, auditors, advocates,

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and notaries in diocesan tribunals, as chancellors, finance officers of dioceses and parishes, superintendents and principals of schools, directors of social service and health care facilities, superiors and council members in lay religious institutes.19 While the People of God are grateful for the dedication of its priests, the church struggles today to integrate the laity in meaningful ways in its life. While the Code of Canon Law explicitly provides for many of the offices, others are in need of definition. The term, “power of jurisdiction” which was the predominant canonical usage for centuries, has not been replaced by the term “power of governance.” Governance suggests the capacity to guide or direct, rather than dominate. This capacity is more than the appointment of office; it is also the inner quality of leadership, which is impacted by charism. Here, as with offices of the hierarchical structure, the inner quality of charism might not make a person a leader, who lacks leadership qualities naturally, but it might provide a willingness to learn and hone personal skills, improve through openness to others, and see one’s role as a service to God’s people.20 The ecclesiology which provides the framework regarding the relationship of the laity and the clergy in the governance of the church is both open and evolving, however functionally many find the issue of governance at a standstill. Vatican II opened doors which were previously closed to the laity; however some are calling for further reforms of Canon law to support these endeavors. One describes laity as a vocation in search of an official justification.21 The history of the American Church held in memory by some of the hierarchy punctuates the lay trustee crisis as lay-clergy relationships gone wrong. The recent experience of clergy sexual abuse adds tensions to lay-clergy relations as lay people feel the clergy, while not all, have seriously undermined the credibility of the Church. As much as lay people have been mobilized by the Catholic response to the social question, the structures in the American church concentrate the administrative as well as pastoral and theological decision-making in the hands of the clergy. James Coriden, “Lay Persons and the Power of Governance,” The Jurist 59 (2) (1999): 335–47. Sullivan, Charisms and Charismatic Renewal, 12. 21 R. Scott Appleby, “From Autonomy to Alienation: Lay Involvement in the Governance of the Local Church,” in Common Calling: The Laity and Governance of the Catholic Church, Stephen J. Pope (ed.) (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), 104. 19 20



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With diminishing numbers of clergy, and concern that the most able and healthy, are often the most overworked and in demand, the question of lay governance is a concern for the entire church. It does not mean that lay people will make better decisions than clergy, or anyone by vocation has an edge on ecclesial wisdom. It is a question whether in a climate where there is an educated and capable laity, are we really using the “talents” of the church, or are we burying them? The call for lay governance has to be backed with appropriate training, not just in the administrative disciplines of running an organization, but in the pastoral, theological and spiritual aptitudes we expect from leadership in the Church. Clergy are formed over time and in a serious manner, similar formation is also necessary in the preparation of lay leaders in religious institutions, especially for posts that have pastoral overtones. The multiplication of centers for the formation of laity for ministry in the Church has been laudable; and this tradition needs to be continued and spread throughout the global church. Changes in canon law can bring about the reality there are actually positions which can be filled by those with appropriate training. James Coriden reminds us that governance always exists in relationship within a community of faith, and it should be seen in that context, not apart from it.22 Accountability of lay ministers is just as important as it is for the ordained. He further suggests that in order to reflect the teaching of the Second Vatican Council regarding the laity and the incorporation of their charisms, the juridical norms of the Church, code of 1983, needs to be altered. Suggestions include adding, “or other members of the Christian faithful” to those canons which specify ministries and offices in the church which do not strictly require an ordained minister for their operation.23

Women in the Church In a sacramental church the special question of women and their role in the church has new significance. The inclusion of women in the governance of the church is not only an expedient decision but a symbolic necessity. If Charism builds on natural talents and aptitudes there has not been a century in the Coriden, “Lay Persons and the Power of Governance,” 344. Ibid., 345–6.

22 23

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church in which women have been more prepared for public ministry. While the status of women across the world is uneven, the participatory church that many members of the church want would expand the role and authority of women from what it is today. From the perspective of Charism, the long tradition of the church which affirmed the male character of the priesthood was so taken for granted for centuries that it did not need to be defended. It is only in the current cultural climate that an answer to the demand for female ordination in the Catholic Church has had to be made. The church argues that ordination is of divine origin and therefore unchangeable, since Jesus selected only males as his disciples who are the links to the apostolic succession of Episcopal male priesthood. While it is acknowledged as the current teaching and practice of the church, there is not a total consensus that this position is grounded in a theological argument with scriptural support.24 Others suggest ordination be restored to the permanent diaconate for women, as this does not hold the theological obstacles currently understood as impediments to priestly ordination for women.25 Others wonder what a single-gendered approach to sacramental ministry and the appearance of a “closed door” to the discussion creates for the interpretation of the significance of other gifts and charisms women bring to the Church. It is very difficult, in an ecclesial climate where males predominate in decision-making positions that a smooth path to recognition of women beyond familiar and culturally entrenched patterns of behavior can exist; although at present 59 percent of the American Church concurs that ordination should be extended to women. The unconscious characteristic of common sense thinking, as Lonergan would put it, raises the question of what can break the cycle. What can help the church to continue to separate bias from church basics and a more firm consensus reached? Even if some theological consensus may persist for some time that women should be excluded from sacerdotal/sacramental function, which should be reserved only for males, there is already greater difficulty in providing persuasive theological and moral rationales for excluding women from Jose Casanova, “The Contemporary Disjunction Between Social and Church Morality,” in Church and People: Disjunctions in a Secular Age, 127–35. 25 Phyllis Zagano, Holy Saturday: An Argument for the Restoration of the Female Diaconate in the Catholic Church (New York: Crossroads, 2000 [Kindle Edition, 2015]). 24



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other administrative decision-making roles within the church, for which they are well prepared. Bishops today, on the most part, are aware of these tensions. Rightly the bishops cite the continuing use of exclusive language in catechetical, pastoral, and liturgical materials as a source of women’s pain and as a contributing factor to the persistence of sexism.26 Yet, besides living in a culture which challenges religion itself, the same culture also holds the sacredness of the person in an esteem which transcends even rational argument. Attention to the sacredness of the person reflects a deep cultural transformation across the globe, which transcends religion. While the sacredness of the person is far from universally respected, offenses against it are met with outrage, not mere argument. Belief in human rights and in universal human dignity is the religion of modernity.27 While no one has a right to a particular ministry, the Church also desires to be intelligible in cultures where women have leadership roles in other areas of life. Now as always in the Church, the charisms of the Holy Spirit, given in fresh and new ways, require the wisdom of the Church to receive and foster them. We have no reason to doubt that the Church is up to the task, and can take the steps to move forward, into a new future. This hope, to stir the church, must also live in the heart of its members, that each may take their own charism seriously, and in the Spirit, do their part to foster “the renewal of the face of the earth.”

Lisa Sowle Cahill, “Feminist Theology and a Participatory Church,” in Common Calling: The Laity and Governance of the Catholic Church, 127–49, esp. 145. 27 Hans Joas, The Sacredness of the Person: A New Genealogy of Human Rights (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013). 26

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Index aging 163 Allen, John 182 Aquinas, Thomas 22, 25, 66, 95, 109, 110 Augustine of Hippo 4 authenticity 12, 90, 116, 163 autonomy 104–8 Baggett, Jerome 68, 176 Balthasar, Hans Urs von 109–10 Barber, Benjamin 174 Baum, Gregory 36, 27, 41, 47, 49, 59, 60, 61, 94 Bauman, Zygmunt 187, 188, 190 Becker, Ernest 158 Bellah, Robert 68, 92, 93, 105, 137 Bendix, Richard 41 Benedict XVI 64, 172, 204 Bettencourt, Estevao 18, 19, 20, 25 Browning, Donald 132 buffered self 88–9, 90, 147 Cahill, Edward S.J. 129 Cahill, Lisa 219 calling 69, 87–91, 102, 112–13, 207 institution 91–4 Nietzsche 97–8 transcendence 98–104 Weber 94–9 witness 109 canon law 46, 134, 195, 216, 217 Carroll, Anthony S.J. 30, 42, 45, 46, 49, 96, 120, 124 Casanova, Jose 218 Catholic Action 129ff., 179, 181 chain of being 89ff., 108 characteristics of Catholicism 146 charism (def.) 1, 6, 7, 8, 17, 18, 22, 25, 26, 29, 53, 54, 55, 123, 164–5 baptism 19, 208 conversion 162ff. deep story 110

evangelization 118, 214 evolutionary perspective 80–3 governance 215–17 human development 10–13, 126 institution 12, 44 Kingdom of God 151 mercy 15 ministry 124ff. mission 126, 177 office 50, 54, 55, 62 outside and inside the Church 20 religious congregations 3, 22, 23, 24, 112, 130, 131, 164, 180ff., 200–2, 209 reinterpretation of charism 183ff. scripture Hebrew 14–17 NT 17–23 search for meaning 9, 205 twenty-first century directions 205–15 ecclesial 206–13 global 214–15 personal 205–6 weighing of charism 191–7 witness 165–8, 206 charismatic authority 24, 33, 49, 62 Charismatic (Pentecostal) Church 191, 203 Chauvet, Louis Marie 80, 206 Church attitudes towards 117 bureaucracy 70–2 charismatic community 43–7, 144 charismatic and institutional (relationship) 52, 53, 54, 69, 132, 133, 196, 206, 210, 211, 213 communion 52, 65, 67, 77, 133, 212–13 community breakdown 72–8 Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) 26, 38, 53, 54, 64, 67, 78, 121, 144, 191, 195, 196 credibility 65, 92, 164, 216

234 Index culture 145–7 eschatological reality 164 faith (role in) 7 identity 144–6 institution 44, 66, 78, 91 Kingdom of God 53, 78 local and universal 67–8, 69, 171, 174, 191, 212, 214 mediation 210–12 mission 66, 77, 99, 130, 172, 177, 213 models of 180, 214 necessity of 64, 115, 210ff. new catholicity 173–4 open and closed system 165–8, 211 perfect society 25 People of God 67, 83, 212 pilgrim 79 pneumatological nature 51 sacramentality 64–5, 67, 130, 133, 136, 191, 208–9 weighing of 192ff. Coleman, Simon 191 common sense 108 community (def.) 58 nineteenth century 57–64 community life 133ff. characteristics 135–41 internet 188 manifold engagement 186, 189 transformation 206 Cone, James 5, 78 Confoy, Maryanne 130, 131 Congar, Yves 15–17, 21 Conn, Walter 100 consumerism 185, 187–91 contrast experience 5 conversion 155–62, 209 affective 158–60 intellectual 156, 212 moral 156–7 religious 157–8, 160 Copeland, Shawn 69 Coriden, James 216–17 creation theology 70 entropy and negentropy 81–3 cross 73, 151ff., 172 Crowe, Frederick S.J. 11 cultural flows 189–90 Curran, Charles 177

Davies, Grace 118 de Chardin, Teilhard 81–3 Deism 147–9 differentiation 183 Doran, Robert S.J. 158, 161 Dorr, Donal 178 Douglas, Mary 106–8 Duffy, Stephen 7, 102, 164 Dulles, Avery S.J. 91, 194, 210 Dunne, John S. 113 ecological movement 148 Eisenstadt, S. N. 24, 62, 171 embedded-disembedded 175, 186 enchantment-disenchantment 42, 61, 88–9, 90, 96, 184 Erikson Erik H. 6 Eucharist 67, 80, 137, 184, 186, 209, 211 Europe 120, 178, 179ff., 187–91, 203 Evans, Mary 180 exclusive humanism 149–51, 193–4, 209 Faggioli, Massimo 143, 192, 202, 203, 204 faith human 2–5 religious 5–10 Fiorenza, Francis Schussler 130 Fowler, James 92 Fragomeni, Richard N. 155 Francis of Assisi 151 Francis, Pope 1, 9, 15, 37, 108, 117, 134, 139, 143, 178, 204, 214 Freud, Sigmund 73 Frost, Robert 8 Gaillardetz, Richard 79, 197, 207 Gallagher, Michael Paul S.J. 69, 93, 105, 107, 137 Gemeinschaft and Gessellschaft 59–61 globalization 171–7 characteristics 174–6 def. 172 glocalization 190–1 Granfield, Patrick 67 Gratian 46 Gregson, Vernon (ed) 73, 76 group and grid 106–7 Gudorf, Christine 138 Gunneman, Jon P. 81

Index Haley, Peter 45, 47 Harrington, Wilfred O.P. 19 Haughey, John S.J. 29. 125, 126 Haught, John F. 103 Haughton, Rosemary 160 Hebblethwaite, Peter 129 Heft, James S.M. 213 Hegel, G. H. 58 Heyer, Kristin E. 178 hierarchy 25, 26, 38, 212 Hill, Edmund O.P. 68 Himes, Michael J. 51–2 Hinze, Bradford E. 213 Hirschfield, Mary E. 95 historical-critical method 44 Hogan, Linda 177 Holy Spirit 14–21, 47, 52, 66 and institution 51, 54, 144, 154, 167, 191, 195, 204, 206, 209, 211, 219 human development role of community 74 two ways 10ff., 104 ideal type 36 identity 143–4, 165–8 formation 111–12 hybrid 175–7 politics 143, 184 ideology 143 immanent frame 88–90, 207, 214 initiative 108–12 institution 1, 12, 13, 92–3 intentional communities 107 inter-religious dialogue 183, 213 Irenaeus 21 Ivans, Michael S.J. 103 Jedin, Herbert 129 Jefferson, Thomas 148 Jesus Christ 18, 46, 57, 101, 115, 136, 152, 206, 208, 209 Joas, Hans 40, 43, 75, 96, 99–100, 103–4, 110, 111, 124, 125, 126–9, 136, 144, 219 John Paul II 53, 66, 80, 96, 99, 103, 126 Johnstone, Brian V. C.SSR. 158 Kalberg, Stephen 35 Kasler, Dirk 40

235

Kasper, Walter 15, 20, 46, 50, 66, 77, 117, 133, 145 laity 54, 69, 131–2, 196–7, 213, 215ff. Apostolicam Actuositatem 38–9, 126, 195 Lamb, Matthew L. 154 Lash, Nicholas 134 Latin American Bishops 102 lay associates 3, 132, 201ff. lay movements 53, 64, 202ff. Leahy, Brendan 18, 20, 23 Lee, Bernard S.M. 110 Leo XIII 96 Lonergan, Bernard S.J. 10, 137 bias 13, 72–8, 161, 212, common sense 74 conversion 155–62 dialectic of community 75–6, 154 four levels of knowing 11, 13, 72, 73 law of the cross 73, 152–5, 172 two ways of development 10–13 Lyons, Sara 58 McBrien, Richard 181 McCarthy, David Matzko 132 McConville, William OFM. 180 MacIntrye, Alasdair 194 McKenzie, John L. S.J. 199 McLean, George E. 120 Markus, R. A. 49 marriage 132, 193, 197, 207 Martin, James S.J. 148 martyrdom 168 Marx, Karl 58, 73, 153 mendicants 23 mercy 80, 153 Merkle, Judith 43, 58, 74, 49, 93, 107, 108, 126, 130, 135, 136, 146, 155, 172, 179, 188, 201, 203 metaphysics 43 Middle Ages 22, 58, 200 migration 214 Miller, Vincent 185, 186, 187, 189 ministry and charism 124–6 models of creative action 126–9 expression 127–8 production 128–32

236 Index revolution and new beginnings 132–4 Missionary Activity of the Church, (Ad Gentes) 38 modernist crisis 44 Mohler, Johann Adam 50–2 monasticism 21 Morrill, Bruce S.J. 136 Morrison, Ken 35, 39 multi-culturalism 177ff., 179 multi-polar world 182 Nairn, Thomas A. 190 Nardone, Enrique 45 new age religion 176 Niebuhr, H. Richard 124 Niebuhr, Reinhold 124 Nietzsche, Friedrich 96–8, 153, 207 nineteenth century 179–83, 201 Nisbet, Robert A. 58, 59, 60, 61, 64 North American Conference of Associates and Religious 132 Nygren, David 131 Oates, Mary J. 180 O’Donnell, Christopher 162 O’Malley, John W. S.J. 179 Orsi, Robert 181 papacy 134–5, 140, 166, 204 paschal mystery 103, 115, 154, 206 Patrick, Anne C. 69 St. Paul 7, 18–20, 46, 57, 82, 87, 126, 164 Pie-Ninot, Salvador 64, 65 Pius XI 129 Pius XII 25, 50, 53 poor (option for) 139, 141, 178 Pope, Stephen J. 195 Potter, Roland O.P. 25 prayer 110 primary charisms 87–8, 91–4 prophecy 26, 49, 53 Puebla 102 Rahner, Karl S.J. 6, 27, 53, 79, 101, 129, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 211 Rasmussen, Larry 58, 135, 180, 194 redemption 72, 99, 131, 152 re-enchantment 90

religion (nineteenth century) 44 religious congregations 1, 69 revelation 7 Rolheiser, Ronald 163 Roof, Wade Clark 118 Rotondra, Vinnie 93 saeculum 49 Sammon, Sean F.M.S. 29 Schillebeeckx, Edmund 5 Schreiter, Robert J. 173, 174, 176, 181, 214 science, and religion 39 secular (def.) 31 secularization 39 theory of 29–31 Segundo, Juan Luis S.J. 7, 82, 145 sexual abuse 115 signs of the times 171 sin 72, 79, 122, 138 single life 106–8 social contract 57 Society for the Propagation of the Faith 181 Sohm, Rudolph 45ff. Spadaro, Antonio S.J. 3, 117 spiritualist movements 21, 23 spirituality 78, 115–18, 200 and community 186–7 and evangelization 117 and practices 194–5, 205, 214 as representation 117 seekers and dwellers 118–20, 174, 186 Steck, Christopher S.J. 109, 110 subtraction theory 29–31, 117 suffering 149–50 Sullivan, Francis A. S.J. 19, 78, 216 Synod of Bishops 130, 204 Tanner, Kathryn 145, 146 Taylor, Charles 31, 43, 69, 88–90, 102, 105, 111, 112, 118, 146, 148, 149, 150, 179, 182, 183 technology 184–91 theodicy 39 Tillard, J. M. R. 78 Tillich, Paul 100 Tonnies, Ferdinand 59–61 transcendence 5, 9, 99–104, 110, 207

Index interpretation 101–6, 111 transcendent data 7–9, 103 Trinity 65, 154 Ukeritis, Miriam 131 universal call to holiness 121 Vanhoye, Albert S.J. 14, 18, 22, 23, 26, 53, 54 Vatican (Council) I 25, 50, 64 Vatican (Council) II 25, 26, 64, 65, 66, 69, 115, 121, 143, 144, 146, 165, 178, 191, 197, 199, 203, 204, 215ff. Wallace, Walter L. 33 Weber, Max 24, 32–4, 43 asceticism 120–122 other-worldly 94, 122, 123 secularization of 95 this-worldly 94, 95, 122 authority 192ff. bureaucracy 40–1, 70–2 calling 94 charism 32, 37, 44, 47, 96, 171, 205 community 61–4 disenchantment 41–2, 62

institution 47–8 iron cage 141 magic 36, 39, 88 magician 37 patterns of charismatic change 48–9 priest and prophet 36–9 Protestantism 34, 40, 95 religion 48, 120ff. roads to salvation 120 routinization of charism 62 spirituality 120–4 contemplation 121, 123 mysticism 120, 123–4 virtuosi 121, 122 women 71, 197, 217–19 Wood, Susan 67 World Church 122, 143, 192 Wuthnow, Robert 118, 119 Zagano, Phyllis 218 Zahn, Gordon C. 137 Zamagni, Stefano 125 Zamagni, Vera 125 Zarathustra 97–8 Zeitlin, Irving M. 71

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