New Perspectives on
Religious Life in modern
times.
Prepared: M. McGuire 2007
Resource: J. Libano
Latin-American Perspective:
The Impact of Socio-cultural and Religious Reality on
consecrated life
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–J.B Libano
Religious Life is understood as having three
structural elements,
a founding experience of God,
community life and
mission, and
not as based on the vows to a great extent.
The latter are understood in relation to these
three elements.
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Other types of Religious Life are being born,
displacing the emphases and configuring new
experience, especially on the community level.
the post-modern mentality, which demonstrates
an ardent thirst for the sacred along with an
invasive secularization,
the allure of the Transcendent along with sexual
coarseness,
a thirst for love and intimacy along with an
uncontrolled disorder in the affective life.
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Consistent cultural change is not possible
without radical economic and political
transformation. However, the principle role of
Religious Life rests in the cultural, with an eye
turned to the economic as the major factor.
We have no need of Marxism to affirm this; we
need only to look at the role of the economic
dimension in institutions, even religious ones, to
see that the aberrations produced by the
economic are in flagrant contradiction to the
guiding ethical principals.
Forms of Religious Life {Latin
America and Europe.
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The religious stage of Latin America is a dominant
syncretism, a fundamental religiosity that is becoming
fragmented and individualized, and a growing number
of religious agencies involved in service.
religion in Europe seems to be subject to a virulent
process of secularization, despite also suffering from
the “revenge of the sacred” and the presence of the
“sacred savage”.
An approach at leading to discernment of the
real in its ambiguity, its perplexity and its
paradox.
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four indicative verbs:
to welcome,
to let oneself be transformed,
to begin a new praxis and
to celebrate.
It is being attentive to the new that is already
coming forth as a gift from God, to that which
will spring forth in the continuing present or in
the unforeseen.
Aspects of the Contemporary World
1. Fear of freedom and of responsibility
 2. Loss of historical and ethical
consciousness
 3. The neo-liberal and media context
 4. Confusion between vocation and
career
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5. The fallibility of institutions: the loss of
the source of security
6. Fluid post-modernity in Religious Life
7. The Return of the External
8. The Problem with vocations
1. Fear of freedom and of
responsibility
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Fundamental freedom, or the theological one,
because it is interpreted in the light of
revelation, refers to the essence of the self. This
freedom encounters its most important,
profound and radical moment when the self is
put before God and must make the profound
choice to accept him or to reject him
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Since such an act determines us for all eternity,
we hold such a freedom with great dread. It is
this freedom that is the fundamental question of
Religious Life
E. Fromm, O medo a liberdade, Rio de Janeiro, Zahar, 1960.
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The fear of taking this freedom into our own
hands makes it difficult to take on Religious Life
and its definitiveness with seriousness, because it
involves human beings in their totality, for life
and for death
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In a culture of the provisional and the
throwaway, freedom, lived in its fullest sense as
the giving of oneself to the Transcendent,
terrorizes because of its definitive nature
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a freedom that is not realized in the world of
things, but rather lies in confronting other
freedoms that express and make concrete for us
the freedom of the God who calls.
Search for Freedom
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two fundamental perspectives in understanding
freedom: conquest and gift.
Psychoanalysis leads the fight for freedom for
the unconscious. In this perspective, formation
for freedom becomes an incessant struggle
against forces that block freedom in and of
itself
all human freedom struggles with internal and
external adversaries, and religious life is not
exempt from such a situation.
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From a theological perspective, freedom is seen
as a gift in the double order of creation and
grace
God creates a free human being and sustains his
existence as freedom before Him. It is a
freedom wounded by sin, but not wholly
destroyed.
It is liberated by the victorious grace of Christ.
Pauline theology also confirms this.
K. Rahner, Teologia da Liberdade, Caxias do Sul, Paulinas, 1970.
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Freedom seen as grace brings to formation, the
call to bring forth an attitude of gratitude and
of responsibility.
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It removes the bitterness of belligerent claims
and postures of independence and total
autonomy, and it situates formation in the path
of fundamental relationship with God and with
other freedoms, which are also gifts.
Loss of historical and ethical
consciousness
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The past is fading away, the future becomes
more obscure, and the present remains without a
history.
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The major factor at play here in this loss of
awareness is information technology,
transmitting data without context, orientation,
without causality or end, totally immediate and
continually “on line.”
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There is no tomorrow nor is there an
accounting:
Various terms describe this situation: the end of
history and meta-narratives, the end of utopia,
the deconstruction of history, and others.
F. Fukuyama, O fim da história e o último Homem, Riode Janeiro, Rocco, 1992.
Religious Life is also submerged in this wave.
Superficiality prevents taking on
definitive commitments
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With the end of history, responsibility
disappears as do ethics in their unconditional
dimensions.
No one commits himself definitively to anything
or to anyone.
Each decision is a current one and can be
revoked for another equally present
Search for Answers
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Develop critical thinking and reflection
developing in people a capacity for judging and
appreciating their own experience, thinking,
action and situation,
becoming aware of themselves in given
contexts. There are three fundamental aspects to
the formation of a critical consciousness:
awareness of situation, possible (feasible)
consciousness, and awareness of the myths of
the moment
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the double risk, however, of creating relativism
and historicity. Relativism destroys any
possibility of building something consistent,
given that “all projects for social transformation
are equally valid or equally invalid
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historicity that imagines history as a linear
development, judging all eras and cultural stages,
especially in peripheral countries, from the point
of view of the development of the major
countries
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see themselves as the linear model of
development and determine the stages to be
covered by those who come after, the way of
growth of human beings
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never understand or imagine that a peripheral
region could be much more developed in some
aspect than a “developed” country.
The neo-liberal and media context
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The strong impact of the media is dismantling
universal and fixed points of reference, while
multiplying the models and views of life.
Propaganda bombards our motivations, creating
a logic of stimulus-seeking, going well beyond
the simple rules of capitalist supply and demand
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the supreme values are becoming devalued; the
question “what for” lacks an answer and finality.
“Nihilism is precisely atheism, not as attitude,
but as spirit
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Neo-liberal ideology, sustained by the media
culture, spreads values of healthy, a cult of
beauty and the body and the decisive factor of
appearance, a reign of the physical and of
marketing
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In creating virtual identities, it leads to confusion
between the real and the virtual. More serious
still is that emotional communities of egocentric
and needy identities are formed, with a clear loss
of the social dimension
L. W. Storch – J. R. Cozac, Relações virtuais: o lado humano da comunicação eletrônica, Petrópolis:
Vozes, 1995.
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context favors the creation of narcissistic
identities, preferably directed to the cultivation
of the self and of one’s appearance and towards
groups that reinforce this existential dimension.
All of this feeds upon the media for sustenance.
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In psycho-cultural terms, globalization
depersonalizes, uproots, and causes people to
desist, especially the poor and more simple, who
have fewer possibilities for reacting and resisting.
It also provokes in many places, reactions
leading to racism, xenophobia, nationalism and
the formation of castes
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Globalization can be interpreted through the metaphor
of the Tower of Babel. An attentive reading of this text
shows that the confusion of tongues is the work of
God, and the desire for one language, of one speech,
creating unity and uniformity outside, for the empire,
and for the dominating force, is the product of human
hubris.
Globalization is the work of the power and the
enforcement of the lords of the world who want to
erect a great tower, and from its top, impose one
language for the market. God comes and creates the
confusion of the poor and of the peripheries, who do
not accept such domination. God is the confusion of
unifying power.
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God comes and creates the confusion of the poor and
of the peripheries, who do not accept such domination.
God is the confusion of unifying power.
Putting the two metaphors together, globalization
appears as an imposition that the Spirit of God
destroys through a confusion of reactions (Babel), and
through the different ways of receiving it (Pentecost).
Uniformity comes from outside, the interpretive
discernment from within, from experience, from
freedom, from awareness
Practice-enculturation
Confusion between vocation and career
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A career means competence, efficiency,
productivity, and social recognition. The
religious requires and is involved with
preparation for the exercising of it.
A profession does not allow for failure. This
ends when a person becomes incapable of
exercising his profession due to age, illness or
retirement. Time rules, and all are subject to
external factors.
Vocation - Motivation comes from
within
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Vocation exists in a world of gratuitousness.
The “more” is revealed in whatever activity the
person engages in. In the most adverse
situations, such as illness and old age, vocation
persists, even if it is only in prayer and in the
giving of one’s life. It is characterized by its
perennial nature, specific to giving oneself to
God.
In Theological Perspective
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God in the vocation belongs first to the charism
rather than to the institution. It finds its ultimate
source in the call of secular life as well as the
religious.
The religious enters into a commotion of
courses and degrees in order to acquire always
more credibility in society and thus obtain
success and remuneration.
-somewhat as if in a career!!!!
Vocation and career!
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not two separate entities, but two different
dimensions of human activity with specific
distinctions.
The identity of the religious relies on an
appropriate relationship between the two and is
threatened when a career overwhelms one’s
vocation.
Vocation is primordial
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It gives meaning and motivation to one’s work
and not vice-versa. Religious life sees
professional competence coming from and as a
function of vocation and not as an autonomous
reality.
Society today values career in such a way that it
becomes the criterion for assessing the vocation.
Crises continually flow from this.
Crisis and Tension!
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The formative path seems to be the inverse: to
look at a career in terms of vocation according
to the Ignatian criterion of tantum quantum. The
more the career the more help it is to vocation
and to mission
solution lies in the theological
understanding of vocation as being a call
from God, giving meaning to a profession.
 The latter enters into Religious life as the
concrete expression of a greater vocation,
a gift from God. There is no purely secular
career in religious life.
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The fallibility of institutions: the loss of the source of
security
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the Church itself recognizes its fragility- not
from attacks by enemies.
In Vat 11, the church is seen before the sanctity
of Christ, called itself holy, but also sinful,
needing purification and unceasingly seeking
penance and renewal
“Although she is holy because of her
incorporation into Christ, the Church does not
tire of doing penance: before God and man she
always acknowledges as her own her sinful sons and
daughters.”
Loss of Security about Church!
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This an act of greatness of spirit, on the other
hand, it produced some insecurity. If it erred
gravely in the past, could the Church err the
same way in the present?
Crisis of trust exists about all institutions.
Challenge!
Formation to achieve “sentire in et cum
Ecclesia” is difficult.
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feeling towards the Church, but also
thinking with and an interior communion
with the Church, with one’s head and
heart.
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We are touching here upon the essence of the
problem of grace made flesh. If in the time of
Jesus, his flesh was scandal for many who could
not go beyond it and recognize in him the
Messiah, the One Sent by God, today the
Church is the source of the same scandal.
Modern Challenge!
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Believing in the saving sacramentality of the
Church in a cultural moment when its fragility,
its sinful condition, is exposed to the maximum
implies a deep dimension of faith.
Mistrust, suspicion and especially parallel
behaviors are becoming very common in the
Church itself, not to speak of Religious Life.
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It is time to look at the relationship between the
Church and the Kingdom of God from the
perspective of the parables of the Kingdom.
The metaphors of the yeast, of grain and of the
hidden pearl allow one to capture the dimension
of the inner mystery of the Church, in spite of
all the difficulties that come from the outside.
Only a mystical experience of love makes such a
reading possible, leading one to avoid the two
extremes of iconoclastic rebelliousness and of
obsequious subservience.
Fluid Modernity and Religious
Life.
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Centering on the individual as the axis of the
source of values in contemporary society
necessarily leads to relative values and traditions,
and an accentuation of schools of experience
without absolute criteria, stressing the flexible,
the spontaneous and carpe diem.
A painful fragmentation is pervading
culture and individuals.
 Intellectual, spiritual, cultural, professional,
leisure and pleasure activities and idleness
are experienced alone and in disassociation.
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Fluidity of Modern Trends!
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Psychoanalysis itself favors a fragmentation of
identity, upon looking at the conscious (ego) and
unconscious (id, superego) psychic structures of
the individual.
People confuse their self-images, now seeking
anonymity, now fleeing from stable
relationships, now taking great pride in
appearance, and now hiding themselves in
virtual relationships.
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Living in a culture marked by hedonism, by
immediate consumerism, by the preferential
option for pleasure, sport and amusement, for
the high-speed information media on the one
hand, and on the other, marked by an enormous
psychic vulnerability,
there is great difficulty in working out
frustration, anguish, expectation and difficulty in
assuming a posture regarding macro-politics.
Small short term transformations and small
projects are preferred.
The “Third Man” concept!
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With regard to Religious Life, a distancing of
the new generation of religious with regard to
the social body of the Congregation is
occurring.
. The “third man” is entering Religious Life. He
knows the rules and doesn’t object, but follows
them as he wills.
There is a real schism
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There is a language for the external public, for
superiors, colleagues and social expectations, and
another real, internal, experiential language for
the conscious realm. Not all of this is conscious.
formators have doubts about the expressed
motivation of those in formation, in terms of
giving themselves to the poor like Jesus
Formation Dilemma!
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They doubt their desires to be humanitarian, and
their search for God. They do not trust the deep
silenced conscious and unconscious motivation
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revolving around self-promotion, selfrecognition, and the veiling of affective-sexual
problems.
Spiritual Traits
in Modern Youth-People!
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Religiosity and spirituality are a whole other
quantity in post-modernity. Its most significant
expression is called New Age.
characterized by an enormous syncretism and by
freedom, plurality, subjectivism and religious
forms becoming autonomous, with minimal or
no links to institutions or formal religions.
New Age – elements!
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Having a post-traditional view of God, of Jesus,
of salvation, of religion/institutional Church,
with a new religious awareness, tending towards
Gnostic monism, esoteric mysticism, humanistic
psychologizing, sacred holism, deep ecologic
preoccupations, diffuse cosmic energy and so
many other “isms.”
Implications!
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There is a passage from “hard” faith to “soft”
spirituality and religiosity.
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In a word, personal views of God are being
fragmented, and these go as far as returning to
the gods and a fluid understanding of the divine
as energy, as adjective rather than noun, and
even up to the death of God.
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the post-modern religious climate is invading all
the spheres and styles of life by means of a
diffuse de-institutionalized, anarchic, drifting,
consoling spirituality that performs, that is closer
to new age on the one hand, and on the other
hand, closer to fundamentalism, offering
speeches and practices that reach the sacred,
guarantee salvation, and testify to miracles and
divine blessings
Both types offer consolation and identity to the
faithful.
Some Authentic Aspects!
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There are authentic initiatives in this climate, like
the Spiritual Exercises in daily life, providing a
contribution for deepening spiritual experience.
Such practices have been led by religious and lay
persons, directed toward faithful Christians,
including the lower socio-economic classes.
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Reading of Scripture has taken on two very
different forms in this movement. In some
cases, there is a seeking of a solution to personal
problems that is almost magical by means of an
uncertain subjective reading of Scripture. In
others, it nourishes the life of religious and
popular communities through Bible-reading
groups
Search for Answers!
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rediscovers the founding experience of God, the
true mystagogy, introducing religious to the
Sacred Mystery.
an absolutely incontrovertible element for a
Religious Life that wants to go beyond
emotional fervor and charismatic outpourings.
Positive Steps!
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A prayerful reading of Scripture leads to true
faith, according to the classic theological adage:
lex orandi est lex credendi.
Besides articulating faith and Scripture, prayer
and faith, contemplation should resonate
intimately with action and vice-versa: in actione
contemplativus.
Post-Modernity suffers from:
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thirst for love and an affective disorder.
We Need: the dialectic of love and setting up
pedagogy for it.
Instead of seeking self-realization through the
other, we find in the other the realization of
oneself. This is the profound paschal Christian
dialectic, that we only find life and our true
selves when we lose it, by going out of ourselves
and giving ourselves to others
Pedagogical Principle in this:
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An interplay between motivation and support
structures.
Trusting intentions and desires of persons a
great deal is not fruitful, since these are already
imbued with this culture and do not endure.
Situated as they are in time and space, such
motivations lack objective reality providing
constancy
Guide: what is not in the schedule does not
exist!
dose of existential realism
required by human living.
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How: to promote in the eyes of young people
that discipline and schedules are a school of life,
a condition of all normal human beings, which
bring us realistically closer to the life of other
persons
Motivation, interior energy and utopian energy
drive the motor, and the concrete, historical, and
practical interventions make the path to this
obvious
Ways Forward:
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guide such a seeking of the external through a
deep spiritual experience of God, cultivating it
through prayer, through the practice of faith,
hope and charity.
Requiring a minimal attention to silence, without
encountering one’s one inner self.
Pedagogy of solitude exists: a withdrawing in
order to be sent, a renewal of the spirit in the
face of the Mystery of God.
Before the Living God!
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ultimate need of human nature, realization of
the self through contact with mystery. Only in
this does one find meaning for life with its
suffering and failures.
the experience of mystery
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The only really absolute mysteries are the selfcommunication of God in the depths of
existence, called grace, and in history, called
Jesus Christ, and this already includes the
mystery of the Trinity in the economy of
salvation and of the immanent Trinity.
And this one mystery can be brought close to
man if he understands himself as oriented
towards the mystery which we call God. (K.
Rahner).
infinite and absolute God who is in relationship with us,
drawing us out of narcissism as well as the external
superficiality
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God has reality incline towards Him. Man is the
capacity of accepting or repelling God: this is
his mystery.
human being is structurally correlative to the
mystery, is mystery because in his nature he is an
intimation of the Mystery
erosion of traditional Religious Life
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increasing distance between the tenor of the life
of religious and that of simple, poor persons;
the loss of the life-blood of contemplation in
favor of routine spiritual practices or in favor of
external charismatic fervors of disincarnated
spiritualism
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uncontrolled purely secular activism; the
weakening of the idea of God; the dualism of
prayer life and apostolic activity; the gigantic
weight of works that foil missionary creativity;
the aging of members without an accompanying
influx of new generations
answer comes from the Spirit that gives rise to a
wonderful budding in the old wood of
traditional Religious Life
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Using the same metaphors of Babel and of Pentecost
that helped us understand globalization.
Only one speech prevailed in classical Religious Life, a
single canonical language that imposed itself in its
monotonous uniformity, and it was thus that God
comes to sow confusion among the tower builders.
We are before a proliferation of new religious forms.
This does not mean that all the effects of confusion,
caused by God are desired by Him. But they have to do
with his initiative, if we understand the Babel passage.
Unity is built from the inside and not from the
outside, as happens with canonical and legislative
leveling.
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new forms reveal the freedom of the Spirit.
Cardinal Ratzinger considers as marvelous, “the
energy and enthusiasm with which the new
ecclesial movements live faith and feel the need
to share with others the joy of this faith received
as a gift.
New Movements in the Church!
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These movements are characterized by their
birth through a charismatic leader, being shaped
into real communities, trying to live the Gospel
in its moral integrity and exigencies, and
recognizing in the Church the reason for living
without which they would not exist.
new expressions of Religious Life coming
forth from such movements.
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They enter into the apostolic mission of the Church in
a spirit of social service, based on a personal encounter
with the Lord, nourished by a faith rooted in the
Church
The Christological, pneumatological, ecclesial and
existential dimensions of a personal following of Christ
and an experience of the Spirit in the Church are all
here.
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The pedagogy of dislocation, of disruption,
relates to an ancient dimension and a
contemporary one.
The Gospels and Saint Paul stress that following
Jesus means a disruption, due to embracing the
Christian faith.
Sin, blindness and the old man come before
taking on the newness of grace and of light and
the new man. This is part of the old and most
genuine Christian traditions
conversion movements- to recover
sense of sin and guilt!
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They have returned to harping on sin, especially
in the area of sexuality, bringing about a new
type of guilt and feelings of anguish.
To be free from such a situation, they propose
the path of conversion, especially by joining and
participating in these movements.
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Joined to this experience of dislocation is a pedagogy
of early childhood education that produces strong
feelings of belonging and identity in the members.
They feel they are in a family, while living in a
fragmented society characterized by painful anonymity.
Religious Life fills an existential vacuum, giving the
sensation of having something precious and worth
celebrating. This reminds us of the metaphors Jesus
used to describe the reality of the Kingdom of God:
the yeast, the grain, the pearl, the banquet and the
wedding.
a collaboration needed on three levels is necessary,
the levels of the experience of God, of community
life and of apostolic mission
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We are moving toward an every more pluralistic
Church, and Religious Life will have a role to
play in this pluralism. Both forms can and
should mutually nourish each other
A recourse for Religious Life is to
create a sacramental model
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Dilemma: a) the ecclesiological tradition of
Trent and Vatican I, which strongly accentuated
the external elements of belonging to the
Church.
b) the tradition of the Reformation that stressed
the opposite pole
the Council found in the category “sacramentum”
a bridge between the two traditions
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The external dimension of the Catholic tradition
is maintained. There is no sacrament without
visible sign.
But the invisible side of interior grace
communicated and received is also present,
accentuated more in the evangelical pouring out.
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The fundamental question with regard to this
model is to ask about the meaning,
significance and inner reality of the rules,
regulation, signs, symbols and the practices
of Religious Life
If they do not promote any personal experience,
spiritual or inner, they have no reason for being
if the inner does not become external in some
form or practice, one can fear Religious Life
becoming pure arbitrary subjectivity.
This sacramental structure becomes a
criterion for discernment
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Religious Life withdraws from pure interiority,
affirming the incarnation of grace, as well as
rejecting pharisaism, legalism, and the
externalization of religious rites without a
corresponding inner experience
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The sacramental model, however, tries to
articulate internal convictions, the conversion of
the heart, and the conscious commitment to
address social and external needs, as consecrated
life within a social body
modernity and post-modernity that values the
inner person and his autonomy.
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Capitulation here runs the risk of degenerating
into subjectivism and arbitrariness.
Being committed to strengthening the external
signs of Religious Life, much to the liking of an
insecure generation, formed through the media
culture of appearance, can have an immediate
success, fascinating and ecstatic.
the sacramental model seems to be
the path to construction
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Mere Externalism: does not respond, however,
to the deepest part of Religious Life and is a
dangerous disfigurement of that life.
What is at stake in SACRAMENTAL MODEL
is the Christian mystique of a passionate
following of the person of Jesus and his style of
life as an option for life, and a founding
experience of Religious Life
Kingdom of God Reality!
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The Kingdom of God figures centrally in the
life of Jesus and of God of the Kingdom. In
this we find the unique and singular role of the
poor, the excluded, and the sinner as the prime
receivers of the Kingdom and the preferred
loved ones of God. In following Jesus, the
religious meets once again the figure of the poor
in all its clarity and exigency
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Jesus Christ is the door to the experience of God,
in which there is no separation between God and the
world of one’s brothers and sisters.
The evangelical model of living Religious Life
necessarily involves this openness to the poor, thus
becoming significant for the religious and for those
outside this form of life.
any re-founding, renewal or reinvigoration of Religious
Life must go through relationship with the poor. The
option for the poor is the greatest sign of the credibility
of Religious Life
New Situation of Religious Life.
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A number of factors, from the dearth of new
members to the rapid aging of persons, along
with the weight of apostolic work and a new
theology of laity, have moved Religious Life to a
new and promising relationship with lay persons.
new social movements
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What will be the participation of Religious Life
with regard to ecological movements, pacifist,
anti-armament activities, to questions of
ethnicity, gender, the defense of human rights,
the struggle for land for indigenous peoples and
the landless and homeless, the state-less, in other
words, with regard to an innumerable number
of movements?
in a growing post-modernity
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Nothing seems to mobilize people. All energy is
expended in the “carpe diem”, seeking the enjoyment
of the present moment. In all of this, people are
enclosed in a sad narcissism and materialism.
They cannot bear the mystery of the self, the
loneliness in the affective life, failure or any suffering.
The body receives the care and attention once devoted
to the spirit
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The young are extremely sensitive to the double
cult of an induced happiness and the wellmuscled body. Religious Life wants to find
followers among them, if it wants to continue.
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The first message to give them is one of hope.
Spes contra spem, hoping against all hope. The
cheerfulness of the religious, his enthusiasm for
his life, and his joyful going forth into mission
spread hope among young people who are
prematurely aging. Life is losing meaning
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The relationships that youth establishes wither,
and where there was the newness of love, there
seems to be only the enjoyment of the body of
the other. They learn a great deal about sex and
forget love. Religious can show a new form of
Loving!
A mature balance in relationships will continue
to be an ongoing challenge, especially in the
young generations with their open affective
natures and in the flower of their youth
Hope and love are two important
realities for Human Existence.
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All the works of the Church are about the Faith,
Hope and Love, to be instilled in the hearts of
men. (Rahner).
The Church seeks the heart of men, the
believing, hoping and loving heart that yields to
the mystery of God.
The agape dimension of Religious Life is its
greatest sign of credibility
“Only love is worthy of faith “
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The rejuvenation of Religious Life will depend on the
signs of love it can radiate inwardly and outwardly
The spirit of service and of poverty is closely linked to
gratuitousness. Both of these—service and poverty—
offers a new way of recovering the professional and
vocational relationship. The spirit of service is a quality
that any professional work or activity of a religious
should display. It is the vocation that provides the
elements of grace and spiritual beauty to the career
I believe because I pray
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(Rahner)
we are religious because we pray. The experience
of prayer nourishes Religious Life, without it,
the spring goes dry.
The Problem with vocations
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The new movements have created an interesting
strategy in terms of “concentric circles.”
dividing the young people according to different
levels of participation, formation and needs, and
to work on these.
There is a smaller circle that assumes a full-time
religious life in a consecrated form, establishing
close juridical links with the religious Institute.
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we have a larger circle of those participating in
the movement. They are attracted to it, without
having institutional links. Here there are various
degrees of greater or lesser closeness.
There are those who maintain contact by letter
or through contributions, who receive the
newsletter, and those who are at a greater
distance, maintaining, nevertheless, real
participation.
In practice, many change circles, going towards
the smaller circles and greater commitment.
pedagogical construct offers innumerable
possibilities based on the circumstances
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The important element is the intuition of the
work that is differentiated progressively with
regard to the members of the new generation.
other circles of persons with more or less
commitment can be revolving around the
smaller more committed nucleus of members.
risk – accepting all of the few fish in
the sea!
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John provides an expressive parable for
vocations: “Hearing this, the two disciples
followed Jesus. Jesus turned round, saw them
following and said, ‘what do you want?’ They
answered, ‘Rabbi,’—which means Teacher—
‘where do you live?’ ‘Come and see’ he replied;
so they went and saw here he lived, and stayed
with him the rest of the day. It was about the
tenth hour.”
(John 1:37-39)
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The question is do we have enough courage to
ask Jesus’ question and give the same answer as
he. What do we have to show?
Do we have zeal in missionary activity, faith
flowing from a contemplative life, a sense of the
church, prayerful discernment and simple and
fraternal community life?
Statistical Vocation Demography
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Vocations come for the poorer social classes to a
middle-class life of abundance, from the rural to
the urban world, from work to study, from
public schools to better schools, from lack of
social status to a place in society, and with an
affective transference from the father/mother
structure to that of the institution/formator
Post-modernity Gains!
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ability to experience pleasure while being
sensitive to the playful, to the festive; it values
the body and one’s own subjectivity without
being easily dominated;
it develops a sense of self-evaluation along with
a care of the self and intimacy with the self as a
defense against a dangerous, violent and
fragmented society; it can see its own limits
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with strong self-affirmation as an answer to
insecurity with regard to self-realization;
it displays rebellion in the face of backward
institutions and impatience with despotic
authority;
It shows feelings of belonging with regard to its
motivation and broad, democratic experiences;
it cultivates bonds of friendship between groups
with desire for a fraternal community life and
shared prayer, personal life and mission
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open to friendships with persons outside the
community;
it prolongs the timing of important decisions so
as not to put an uncertain vocation at risk;
it is more tolerant, has fewer preconceptions and
prejudices with regard to race and deviant
behavior;
it has greater sensitivity towards new forms of
life;
it finds relevance in the daily, the small, the
individual in the participation of microinstitutions leading to institutional flexibility in
Religious Life
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seeks transparency in the institution and in
authority for its decisions, especially in the area
of economics, social and working relationships;
it invests in community management, and shows
increasing ecological, pacifist and liberating
awareness with regard to gender.
summary of the post-modern
vocation
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“A God who is so generous that he gives one,
two, three vocations through which we can be
realized. For a God who is so close to us and for
a culture as relative as ours, the perpetuity of the
vocation is less important than happiness in it.
Vocation goes from being eternal—I was chosen
from my mother’s womb!—to being relative and
temporary—I was called to freedom. Can it be that a
vocation is less than it was in former times? Has
God changed his opinion? He has not, but we..
THE DYNAMICS
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1. In terms of theoretical intellectual exercise, how can
the culture of the joyful present of the young
generation grasp the existential exigencies of a
Religious Life lived through definitive commitments?
2. In terms of experience, how do I see the twofold
movement, the tension between the search for religious
externals and a narcissistic individualistic focus?
3. In terms of action, what concrete, visible practices
do we have to form young people according to the
sacramental model?