n
the reports from provincials there is a recurring concern:
their difficulties in providing suitable assignation
for brothers in their first years of ministry.
It
seems to me that there are two basic problems. First,
because of a lack of vision, planning and will at some
Provincial Chapters a provincial may be expected to
fill too many gaps to the detriment of young religious.
Secondly, sadly, there are often only a few communities
in a province that are open to be challenged by the
value that younger members represent and whose communities
give promise of a community life and apostolate in accord
with our legislation.
Planning
As
some of our provinces decline in number, their ability
to continue their apostolic commitments become progressively
more difficult. Provinces which confront this problem
and reorganize their commitments are in a much healthier
position than those who fail to do so. Postponement
of necessary reorganization only compounds the problems
which eventually have to be faced. Two examples of a
successful reorganization are the provinces of Mexico
and England. At successive Chapter they closed a number
of houses enabling them to deploy their personnel elsewhere
and engage in new apostolates. Such reorganization is
never easy but the future health of provinces and vicariates
depend on it.
The
Constitutions and recent General Chapters insist on
the need for planning. It is the responsibility of all,
not just superiors. It must be done in our houses as
well as in our provinces and vicariates. (cf. Walberberg
No. 17c, 78, 201).
It
is easy to examine commitments and identify new deeds
in an abstract way but when we are faced with closing
a house or withdrawing from an apostolate we are often
unable to act. You can see this in a small way when
a community comes to revise its Mass schedule. How often
the preferences of individual brothers come before the
actual needs of the faithful or the demands of the liturgy
with regard to participation and preaching.
What
Donald Nicholl writes about the search for truth and
knowledge and the pain that is involved in giving up
old formulations, images and symbols can equally be
applied to giving up places that are dear to us:
"I
puzzled in vain over this feature of our longing for
the truth for many years until one day when illumination
came to me:.. from Thomas Aquinas' commentary on the
beatitude, "Blessed are those who mourn".
There St. Thomas says that this beatitude is the special
beatitude for those whose calling it is to extend the
boundaries of knowledge. St. Thomas assertion is, to
say the least of it, intriguing and naturally provokes
one to ask why this is so. The answer Thomas gives is
that whenever our minds yearn towards some new truth
then we become afflicted with pain, because our whole
being wishes to protect the balance of inertia and comfort
which we have established for ourselves. To lose them
feels like loosing part of ourselves, and the pain is
a symptom of our distress at its disturbance. Moreover,
we experience a sort of bereavement ... For those formulations,
images and symbols have over the years become part of
ourselves. To lose them feels like losing part of ourselves.
And we mourn that loss as we mourn the loss of a limb".
(Sedos; February 1990).
We
must able to die in order to live. The pruning of the
Gospel extends not only to live but the houses in which
we live and our apostolates. In a number of places we
are over attached to buildings which are really museums.
Perhaps the State does us a service when it takes over
some of our buildings and keeps them open for the public
who thus continue to share in our material heritage.
Could we preserve priories like San Marco in Florence
and Santo Domingo in Oaxaca as well as the State does
and if we did so what would be the purpose? Young religious
cannot be assigned to communities living in old dilapidated
buildings.
Furthermore,
some provinces face the challenge of having, foundations
in locations which are no longer centres of population
or in areas which are adequately served by others. If
we tie our preaching project to such foundations are
we being faithful to our vocation "to be present
to God and the world" of our day? In the spirit
of the Gospel we should have the courage to "launch
out into the deep" and move to the new centres
of population. Jesus places people over things. This
does not mean that everything old must go. The maintenance
of some foundations may be the springboard for new apostolates.
It has been said that "the conditions for hope
and the conditions for despair are often exactly the
same". This is certainly my experience. It is our
attitude and response or lack of it, that makes them
so. Together, in the Spirit, at Chapters and at the
level of local communities we must plan for the future.
Traditional ministries must be scrutinized and evaluated
and new ways of preaching developed.
In
particular, we need to pay attention to the number and
quality of our parishes. The Avila Chapter recommended
that every request to take responsibility for a parish
should take into itinerant apostolates. It also reminds
us that parishes should not be accepted easily and should
be subject to periodic review at provincial chapters.
These principles must be applied to the parishes we
have everywhere.
A
similar evaluation must be made of our universities,
colleges, shrines and hospital chaplaincies.
Community
Life and the Insertion of Young Religious
My
second concern is the first assignation of young Dominicans
after completing initial formation. As I have already
said, in many provinces there are few communities which
offer young religious a place where they can live their
religious lives in accordance with a present day understanding
of community life and of an apostolate that is specifically
Dominican. There should be continuity between institutional
formation and the experience of the community life of
the province.
They
must be received as adults, not as children. We must
not look upon them merely as replacements for ourselves.
They have their own vision, their own hopes. As we learnt
from making mistakes, they must make theirs and learn
from them. I still recall the comment of an elderly
priest who said: "The young priests are our children,
they have to learn from us and they are not prepared
to do so". I replied: "Father, they are not
your children. They are adult people who come to an
adult community. They have much to learn but they also
have a great deal to give and it is not the relationship
of a father or a grandfather to a child. It is a relationship
of adults who have much to learn from each other".
I
think that we have to be very careful where young religious
are placed. They need an assignment where they will
not only find a welcome but where they can be very much
at home and be encouraged in their ministry. The advice
of those responsible for formation should always, be
sought. Remember, that for many, the first assignment
means a transition from stability to instability. One
of the problems seems to be loneliness, the feeling
of being left without support. We cannot take away all
the pain; the loneliness, the failures of the first
years in community and ministry. But we can be present
to them. If possible, let the new .brother be a part
of team or let him work with at least one other Dominican.
In the beginning, try not to assign them to projects
by themselves even if they are living in a community.
Do not assign them to fill gaps in old projects which
have lost their meaning. The apostolic team, the quality
of life in the house of assignment and a good relationship
with one or more members in the community are three
points of a triangle. The weaker one of them is, the
stronger the others must be.
I
fail to understand the mentality which assign young
religious to live and work alone or assignations to
communities in which there is not a healthy community
life. How can they survive? Furthermore, I question
the wisdom of sending them for further studies immediately
after initial formation. They need a year or more to
settle into the rhythm of their ministry. How many examples
there are of young religious who undergo a crisis in
the years immediately following ordination! There is
no certain way in which we can predict how effective
a supportive community life can be. When does anyone
of us cease to need encouragement and affirmation in
our work? Have some of us forgotten what it was like
to be young? Have we forgotten our first tentative beginning
to preach, our anxiety, failures, hopes and fears?
We
need to question ourselves regarding our attitude towards
young people and their world. Do we make the effort
to understand the feelings of the young who often have
a different cultural and religious experience to our
own? Are we able to enter their world, as they are expected
to enter ours? Many speak of the "good old days"
but of the promise and hope of today? The Chapter of
Avila challenges us when it says:
If
you really want to be open to the future a fundamental
requirement must be fulfilled: learn to really trust
the young. If we achieve this we will be able to accompany
them, able to maintain patience, able to understand
and share their hope, able to welcome the newness that
the young bring us. Moreover, we will be able to entrust
them with serious apostolic work, not only among people
of their own age : . but at the heart of our Christian
communities. We will also learn from them how to promote
the evangelization of the world .... (Chapter IV, NQ
67.3).
Young
Religious and the Four Priorities
Another
aspect of first assignations is the proper use of talents.
To think that a young religious can do everything or
even most things like the person before them is naive.
A community can provide the context of a ministry but
it is the individual religious who enlivens it according
to his own ability and talents. We allow others, not
the privilege, but the right to do things in a different
way; allow them the space to fly their own kite, whether
it is a striving towards excellence in preaching, studies
and teaching, human relations . . . We allow them room
to develop their initiative, creativity and organizing
ability - in a word, a climate which enables them to
grow and be themselves:
For
us, this development takes place within the Four priorities
which offer enormous scope for the development of a
brother's talents. In this regard each province might
ask itself the following questions: Is there evangelization
among those who do not believe in Jesus? Do we have
young men engaged in the intellectual work needed to
preach and in the culture of today? Are there some who
identify themselves with the poor and the struggle for
justice and peace? Are some involved in the social communications
media?
As
an Order we have a long tradition of apostolic creativity.
It is not the prerogative of youth. I still marvel.
at the creative response of an elderly German missionary
in Taiwan confronted with the rapidly changing society
of that country. But we must also encourage creativity
among the young.
For
centuries, one of the ways in which artists depicted
Dominicans was by putting books under their arms. Two
centuries before the print revolution the order played
an important role in making books a familiar communications
media. An incomplete list of Dominican authors includes
over five thousand names. A similar creativity was found
in the missions. In 1226 Honorius III, granted brothers
working in Morocco permission to adapt their dress to
that of the people to facilitate their work. In another
area Albert and Thomas adapted and assimilated the thought
of Aristotle putting it at the service of the Church.
There is a 15th century copy in the Vatican Library
of the famous moralized game of chess (De Ludis Scacchorum)
of Jacobus de Cessolis of our house in Genoa, about
1290. The first drawing is of a Dominican in a pulpit
with a chess board hanging over the front of the pulpit,
an early attempt at effective communication. Each one
of us is likewise challenged to write his own chapter
in the ongoing story of the Dominican family.
In
the pulpit; the media, in the development of Christian
thought and in the work of evangelization the Order
has demonstrated a high degree of creativity and adaptability
- so must we. The great danger is complacency and a
preoccupation with our own security.
Again,
young religious must have the courage to engage in frontier
apostolates but frontier apostolates need community
and careful preparation.
Above
All Preachers
Above
all we are preachers. In many provinces the preparation
for preaching in the years of formation is better than
ever before. They learn their skills in groups or a
community which encourages them to preach. I believe
that there should continue to be some communal experience
in the preparation of sermons and sharing of faith.
I continue to recommend communities to come together
and share their reflection, insights, experience in
preparation for the next preaching event. The ideal
would be to have some lay participation, sisters and
others involved in pastoral ministry. This could be
the structure on-going formation in preaching.
There
are over a thousand brothers in formation, a healthy
number in relation to our overall strength. It even
suggests that in the near future our will begin to rise
again. The future is theirs. 
Top
of Page
