Paper presented by Myles Rearden cm to CORI Committee on Theological Reflection/Religious Life.

CORI deeply regrets the passing of Fr. Myles Readen cm. He died on February 25 2009. He was a committed and valued member of CORI's Religious Life committee. May he rest in peace.

Fr. Rearden’ s latest book is a translation of a work by Bernard Peyrous, A Guidebook to the Spiritual Life-How Should  One Live With God?” Columba Press 2006.

See also: “Pierre de Berulle’s Apostolate of the Incarnate Word” Myles Rearden cm Irish Theological Quarterly, 2007: Vol.72,n.2.

1.    Introduction

This is a development, requested by the Committee, of an earlier short discussion paper, which focused on ‘solitariness’ and ‘really deep spirituality’ in the religious life. These were the main points that emerged in discussions at the first two meetings of the Committee. The theme of solitariness arose from the theological literature, in particular Odilio Engels’ article on Religious Orders in Rahner’s Dictionary of Theology, 1975, which is an abridgment of Sacramentum Mundi. It is of current interest because of an increase in the number of religious applying for ‘single living’ outside their communities.

It will be better to cast the net a good deal wider than in that short discussion paper, so as to include the Biblical origins of the Religious Life, as well as some consideration of how particular forms of the religious life have arisen in response to crises of various kinds. Some consideration will also be given to the request from the Executive of CORI to the Committee to give some guidance on how Irish religious might ‘integrate respect for all creation.’

2.    Biblical reflections

There are two ways, at least, in which thinking about the religious life becomes biblical. The first relates to the origins of the religious life in biblical times and its validation in the teaching of the Bible and of Christ in particular. The second relates to the place of the Bible in the reflection and prayer of religious and in the way they actually live their lives. Perhaps the latter of these is more important, but the former also calls for careful attention. This is because of the clear teaching of Matthew 19 on the evangelical practices of celibacy, poverty and obedience, supported by some of Paul’s teachings, especially in I Cor 7, and also because of the way the phrase ‘apostolic form of life’ [‘apostolica vivendi forma’] is often used as a synonym for religious life. (As in the Post-Synodal Apostolic Letter Vita Consecrata, 1996, n.93). The apostolicity of the religious life is perhaps best illustrated by the life, including the interior life, of Paul himself, and by the teaching of the other Pauline writings, especially the Pastoral Epistles.

a.    The Biblical origins of the religious life

All the elements that ultimately came to be combined in the various forms of the consecrated life are found in the New Testament:  celibacy, poverty, obedience, apostolic preaching, contemplative and intercessory prayer, and community life. Celibacy is central in the life of Jesus, and  (in the sense of virginity) in the life of Mary, and also of Paul. There is teaching on it in Matthew 19 and in I Cor 7, as mentioned already. Poverty is practiced by the early Jerusalem community as described in Acts 2, by Jesus and the apostles, and by Paul, and it is what Jesus called the rich young man to embrace as part of following him. Obedience is exemplified by the youthful Jesus in relation to Mary and Joseph in Luke, and ultimately in his passion and death, as well as being required by Jesus from the apostles in relation to himself, and from others in relation to the apostles (cf. Matthew 10:14). Paul clearly regarded himself as having authority over his converts, and Church leaders as having authority over Church members. Apostolic preaching is what the 12 and the 70/72 were commissioned for, and being an apostle is listed among the charisms by Paul  (I Cor 12:28). Apostolic preaching is what Paul spend the greater part of his life doing. Contemplative prayer, as well as intercessory prayer, is what Jesus practised and invited others to practise: Paul’s accounts of his heartfelt prayers for his Christians are heart-rending. Community is exemplified in the life of Jesus and his disciples, including the group of women who supported them, by the early church in Jerusalem, and by the collaborative exercise of their ministry by Paul and his group of companions: as well as in the exhortations in the epistles to fraternal unity.

b.    Institutional beginnings

The earliest form of the institutional religious life seems to be that of the widows, as spoken of in I Tim 5. There is nothing quite so clear for virgins, who seem to have remained with their families under the authority of the head of the household. (cf. I Cor 7:28, with the reading ‘virgin’: See Jerusalem Bible.) The closest thing in the gospels to apostolic groups is the sending out of the disciples two by two to preach and heal, and the already mentioned companionship between Paul and his collaborators. There were of course Jewish quasi-monastic communities like the Essenes and the Qumram community.

c.  Later developments

The foregoing is very sketchy and unsatisfying:  it would be good to have extended accounts of how all these practices worked in the actual conduct of life, and how they were experienced by those who lived them. The most this account can claim is to have indicated that there were lived forms of Christian and apostolic life that must have resembled in their variety, complexity and attractiveness what subsequently developed into desert monasticism, both solitary and communitarian, and the more elaborate forms of later centuries, for example in the household of Augustine of Hippo. There are also intriguing hints (perhaps not much more) of apostolic bands, including men and women, in the Celtic church, that we would like to know more about.

3.    The constant centrality of the call to holiness

The call to holiness is evidently central in the New Testament writings. It seems likely that with the development of ‘mass Christianity’ as time went by, culminating in the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, a division would have arisen between Christians who sought to live out their call to holiness and others whose approach to their religion was much more minimalist. Inevitably, if regrettably, there will have then arisen the notion of ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ kinds of life open to Christians, with the particularly unfortunate consequence that married life became trapped, as it were, on the ‘lower’ side of the divide. In fact it seems not to have been until comparatively recent times (the Catholic Reformation) that lay life and specifically married life began to be seen again as a ‘way of perfection’, for example by St. Francis de Sales.

In any case, huge expansion of the monastic life, based on celibacy, community of goods and especially obedience (normal anyway in the feudal system) occurred in the middle  ages. This was in the wake of the medieval reformation of the Western Church led  especially by Pope Innocent III and the 4th Lateran Council, and preceded by the emergence of the Franciscan, Dominican and other orders. There is no denying that the history of religious or ‘higher’ life went through very turbulent times in the subsequent centuries, leading among other things to the suppression of the monasteries in Britain and Ireland, and to the emergence of new forms of religious life based on the growth of mysticism in Flanders and the Rhineland, Spain and Italy. This led to the appearance of apostolic communities, such as the Jesuits and many others, and female communities like the Ursulines and, later, the Daughters of Charity.

These were all centred on the Counter-Reformation practice of contemplation or mental prayer, as well as on the traditional vows of poverty, chastity and obedience:  and they were strongly conditioned by the need to actualise to the greatest possible extent the innate holiness of the Catholic Church, so as to confound her critics.

All of which continued through its own periods of turmoil, exemplified by conflicts connected with Jansenism and Quietism, and a steady loss of commitment to the life of holiness. It was in this weakened state that the Church met its next great crisis in the outbreak of political secularism combined with the emergence of modern science, and ultimately the French Revolution. All this was subsequently exported by the Napoleonic Empire to the whole of continental Western Europe and, with colonialism, beyond. In the meantime, Catholicism was severely repressed in the islands of Britain and Ireland, with the religious life having only a very limited underground existence, and little or none of that for women.

The huge reaction to the collapse of the Napoleonic Empire after 1815, and the loss of confidence in much that the French Revolution and its secularist enlightenment stood for, led not only to large-scale recovery of the pre-revolutionary forms of the religious life, but also to the emergence of many new specialised religious congregations, among whom the traditional values were combined especially with education, evangelism and, increasingly, medicine. This happened not least in Ireland, with the enactment of Catholic Emancipation in 1829. Then the opening up to Europe of the non-European continents in the course of the nineteenth century led to a major missionary movement, with the various religious congregations to the fore. Naturally, the inner life of the congregations and of the individual religious was along the lines of Counter-Reformation Catholicism, strongly contemplative and sacramental, but based on values that are prominent in the New Testament.

4,   20th Century Developments

What occurred between the First Vatican and the Second was a profound transformation of the whole of the Western European social order, culturally, politically, technologically and industrially. This challenged Christianity and Church life as it challenged everything else, in a way that does not ever seem to have been seen before. There is no point is trying to detail this any further. What the Church did in response to it was develop a new literature, beginning with the documents of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, continuing with many further documents from the Holy See, from national Episcopal Conferences, and from the central and provincial leaderships of  religious congregations, and of course commentary, research and theorising by scholars and writers. This literature in its successive waves was not accompanied to any sufficient extent by practical and well-prepared action, with an evitable resultant sense of disorientation. What emerged from it was a division among religious into ‘traditional’ and ‘liberal’ (to use words that are not very precise), depending on whether they aimed primarily to hold on to the values they committed themselves to in their religious profession, or whether they sought primarily to explore what was required and offered by the emerging and rapidly changing situation: with many religious trying to be equally committed to both sides of the divide. A great many decided – intuitively perhaps – to maintain their equilibrium by continuing commitment to their work, whether education, medical care, or pastoral involvement. Understandably, the number of young people feeling drawn to enter the religious life plummeted.

That at least is one way of  describing what happened – essentially a not particularly wise attempt to stage massive reorganization by decree, documentation and academic work. However it is to be described, what has resulted is a situation of no small turmoil or crisis:  it is this that has led to the establishment of the present committee of CORI.

5  Solitariness, solidarity and spirituality

In the original version of this paper, the position of Odilio Engels on the prominence of solitariness in the original emergence of institutional religious life was highlighted. He was to some extent at least influenced in emphasising solitary commitment, by the emergence of Secular Institutes at about the time he was writing. Originally, the solitaries in the desert were hermits – the word ‘hermit’ comes etymologically from the word for ‘desert’. It therefore had overtones of ‘flight from the world’, from cities and from human habitation generally. A notably different, but still perhaps significant, form of solitariness was important at the beginning of the modern era (five hundred years ago) when the then new forms of religious life committed themselves deeply to contemplative prayer – individual private prayer. Life itself in these orders and congregations was strongly communal.

Both of these forms of solitariness spoken of above are rooted ultimately in its more radical form that emerged with the coming of Christ: the personal awakening to the call of Jesus to follow him, as an individual, and the particular form that call and response take by way of celibacy and chastity. The disposal of property for the benefit of the poor was also a component of early religious life, along with living with the minimum of dependence on possessions, and the acceptance of apostolic or Episcopal, including Papal, authority.

Even within communitarian forms of religious life, the core of religious commitment as it has hitherto developed, is the contemplation of the person and the word of Christ, in the Bible, mystical union with him in the sacramental life, dispossession of personal wealth for the benefit of the poor, and commitment to the central apostolic task of communicating or proclaiming God’s word. All of which, taken together, constitute a commitment to real spirituality, even if they do not quite constitute its core element.

A major feature of contemporary life is awareness of forms of religious living that have nothing to do with Christ or Christianity, or in some cases even with God. The practice of a religious life that is at once authentically Christ-centred and still open to one that is not is difficult to  conceive, and there have been courageous and sometimes painful attempts to live it, notably by Henri Le Saux (Abhishiktananda, d. 1973). The attempt to live a solitary religious life in the setting of a modern secularised Western society can hardly be expected to be any easier. It is perhaps by reaching for what by any standard must be the core element of Christian religious commitment that the way forward for the religious life can be outlined.

The overall characteristic that any Christian religious person must have is love: all the elements of the life of such a person must  be driven by love for God and for the whole human race, so loved, on an individual basis, by God. The purpose of all prayer, contemplation and sacramental life must be to enter more and more into the life of perfect charity. So, will it be enough for this paper to conclude that perfect charity, predicated  on contemplative prayer and celibate chastity, which together constitute the core quality of solitude, and on poverty and acceptance of Church guidance, are how the religious life is most fundamentally to be defined?

6.    Integrating respect for creation

The present situation of both world and salvation history is conditioned by a set of unprecedented circumstances: the enormous size of the human population, with the corresponding demands it makes on resources, and the technological developments that make it possible, and even necessary, for the human race to consume and destroy great quantities of these resources, not excluding the earth’s atmosphere and the balance of its climate. Coupled with this is a post-modern disregard for rationality, which is something Christianity has rarely if ever encountered before in its history. This includes loss of faith in the universe’s being ultimately meaningful, so that care for the world and for the human race can appear not to be worth the trouble.

Among the works of cosmology that have been written to  oppose this despairing vision of the world is one called, The View from the Centre of the Universe, by Joel Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams (4th Estate, London, 2006). This work accepts all the findings and many of the theories of contemporary astrophysics and biology, but in addition proposes cogent reasons for seeing the human race as the supremely significant reality in the cosmos as we know it. The spiritual and moral importance of this position is enormous, although Primack and Abrams’ work is not strictly religious at all. Accepting the universe as created, in the sense of not self-explanatory, and of God as its creator, is all that is needed to copper-fasten belief in the ultimate value of the universe. Given this position, and the present crisis of the planet, it is clear that the survival of the world as we know it should be a matter of concern above all to religious, both in their prayers and in their other activities. Because this is a radically human concern, it is has to be of the deepest concern to Christ himself, and all his followers. What that ultimately implies is that the economy of salvation as we know it must a key element in  any global strategy.

7.    Conclusion

The Apostolic Letter Vita Consecrata (1996) and Starting Afresh from Christ (2002) are the most recent major church documents on the religious life, and but there is also a body of literature in theology and spirituality that needs  to be studied. In particular I would like to recommend another work, unfortunately not yet translated into English, by Noëlle Hausman, SCM, entitled Où va la vie consacrée?, ‘Where is the consecrated life going?’, (2004) as a wide-ranging and down-to earth study, especially of the apostolic religious life. What I have written above meant as a contribution to finding our way through the literature and to dealing with the contemporary critical situation. Not that adding to the quantity of available writing is going to solve anything by itself.
Myles Rearden cm.
14.10.2007