Fall 2015 www.nrvc.net | Volume 40, Number 4
Family and vocations 3
Updates
5
Year of Consecrated Life Wake up, we have work to do! By Sister Angela Gannon, C.S.J.
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Families & vocations by the numbers By Mary L. Gautier, Jonathon L. Wiggins, and Jonathon C. Holland
13 Affirming a vocation culture in Hispanic families By Hosffman Ospino 20 What every vocation director should know about Filipino families By Sister Myrna Tordillo, M.S.C.S.
WAKE UP THE WORLD ! 2015 Year of Consecrated Life
26 Tipping Point tips for communicating vocation messages By Nicholas Collura 31 37
What do the Bible’s call stories tell us about vocation? By Sister Elizabeth Davis, R.S.M. Feed your spirit Detachment: starting place for prayer By Father John Orme Mills, O.P.
39 Book notes Sexuality on campus: can we talk? By Sister RenĂŠe Daigle, M.S.C.
Come relax, renew, and refresh your ministry with fellow pastoral ministers from around the world at Catholic Theological Union, located in the beatutiful Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.
HESBURGH SABBATICAL PROGRAM A curriculum-based, community-centered sabbatical program
For more details, visit: www.ctu.edu/hesburgh Or contact Rev. Msgr. Patrick Lagges, Director of the Hesburgh Program. 773.371.5482 or hesburgh@ctu.edu.
INSTITUTE of RELIGIOUS FORMATION Empowering formation leaders for a global Church The Institute of Religious Formation (IRF) at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago provides a unique, holistic formation program for diocesan and religious formation directors. With 35 years of experience and more than 1,700 graduates, IRF is a trusted source in formation preparation. Br. Paul Michalenko, ST, Director 773.371.5481 or pmichalenko@ctu.edu
www.ctu.edu/IRF
Editor’s note Quest for God begins in the family
“
I
WANT SOME OF THAT JESUS BREAD.” When my oldest son was just a toddler, he often said this at Mass, frustrated that he could not go to communion. He sensed that something important was going on, something valuable was being shared—and he wanted in on it. Like most people his first exposure to the faith took place within the family— attending church, yearning for the “Jesus bread,” learning to pray, reading Bible stories. Families set the foundation for faith (or the lack thereof) which, of Without a vibrant faith life, course, is the basis of religious-life vocations. Without a vibrant faith life, usually learned in a family, there are no vocations. usually learned in a family, Vocation directors, then, cannot disconnect the people who come to them there are no vocations. from their families. Who are the families in today’s contemporary church? How can vocation directors better understand them, their impact on discerners, their varied cultures, their struggles, their many ways of expressing Catholicism? The topic is huge, and this edition of HORIZON revisits it once again. We present the results of NRVC’s recent study on the impact of family life on vocations on page 9. We examine family realities for two important cultural groups in the U.S. church, Hispanics (page 13) and Filipinos (page 20). In this way HORIZON hopes to add to the discussion of family issues taking place throughout the church, most recently at the World Meeting of Families that took place in Philadelphia in September and in the Family Synod happening as this edition goes to print. Ideally all this focus on the family leads families toward the same yearning for God that my son felt so many years ago in his desire for the Eucharist. That longing for unity with God and one another is very much alive in the world today. I witnessed it first hand in the throngs of people in Philadelphia lined up for many hours to take part in Pope Francis’ final Mass in the U.S. Many of us traveled long distances, walked for miles, then stood in long lines to attend the Mass. Why? We all wanted to experience together and with Pope Francis just what the communion hymn that day encouraged: to “taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” That desire is the very heart Carol Schuck of vocation. Scheiber, editor, —Carol Schuck Scheiber, editor cscheiber@nrvc.net
Fall 2015 | HORIZON | 1
Visit NRVC.net for details on subscriptions, advertising, archives and more. HORIZON Journal of the National Religious Vocation Conference NRVC Executive Director Brother Paul Bednarczyk, C.S.C.
Additional subscriptions are $40 each for NRVC members; $95 each for non-members. Single copies are $25 each. Subscribe online at www.nrvc.net/signup_horizon. Please direct subscription inquiries to Marge Argyelan at the NRVC offices at 773-363-5454 or margyelan@nrvc.net. POSTMASTER Send address changes to HORIZON, 5401 S. Cornell Ave., Suite 207, Chicago, IL 60615-5698. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, IL and Toledo, OH, ISSN 1042-8461, Pub. no. 744-850.
HORIZON Editor Carol Schuck Scheiber Proofreaders Sister Mary Ann Hamer, O.S.F.; Virginia Piecuch Editorial Advisory Board Sister Susan Rose Francois, C.S.J.P.; Father Christopher Gibson, C.P.; Sister Cathy Jones, R.A.; Andrew O’Connell; Sister Mary Rowell, C.S.J.; Brother Tom Wendorf, S.M. Page Designer Patrice J. Tuohy
REPRINTS, ARCHIVES, ELECTRONIC EDITIONS Permission is granted to distribute no more than 50 copies of HORIZON articles for noncommercial use. Please use the following credit line: Reprinted with permission from HORIZON, www.nrvc.net. For other types of reprints, please contact the editor at cscheiber@nrvc.net. HORIZON archives, including files for mobile readers, can be accessed by subscribers at www.nrvc.net.
Cover Art Four trees, 1917 by Egon Schiele HORIZON is published quarterly by TrueQuest Communications on behalf of the National Religious Vocation Conference, 5401 South Cornell Avenue, Suite 207, Chicago, IL 60615-5698. 773-363-5454 | 773-363-5530 fax | nrvc@nrvc.net | nrvc.net
EDITORIAL INQUIRIES & ADVERTISING All editorial inquiries, including article proposals, manuscript submissions, and requests for writer’s guidelines should be directed to the editor: Carol Schuck Scheiber, cscheiber@ nrvc.net. For advertising rates and deadlines, see www.nrvc. net or contact the editor. © 2015, National Religious Vocation Conference
SUBSCRIPTIONS
HORIZON is an award-winning journal for vocation ministers and those who support a robust future for religious life. It is published quarterly by TrueQuest Communications on behalf of the National Religious Vocation Conference.
National Religious Vocation Conference Board for 2015-2016 Brother Paul Bednarczyk, C.S.C. Executive Director
Sister Michele Vincent Fisher, C.S.F.N. Region 3
Sister Priscilla Moreno, R.S.M. Region 9
Father Toby Collins Canada
Brother Ronald Hingle, S.C. Region 5
Sister Anita Quigley, S.H.C.J. Region 3
Sister Gayle Lwanga Crumbley, R.G.S. Region 4
Sister Maria Iannuccillo, S.S.N.D. Region 1
Brother Tom Wendorf, S.M. Region 9
Sister Anna Maria Espinosa, I.W.B.S. Region 10
Sister Kristin Matthes Region 4
Father Vince Wirtner, C.PP.S. Region 6
Father Don Miller, O.F.M. Region 6
2 | HORIZON | Fall 2015
Updates
From the moment he arrived in the United States, Pope Francis was greeted with enthusiasm.
During the same Mass, he also acknowledged the difficulty of the sexual abuse crisis for priests and religious: “... you suffered greatly in the not distant past by having to bear the shame of some of your brothers who harmed and scandalized the church in the most vulnerable of her members.... I accompany you at this moment of pain and difficulty, and I thank God for your faithful service to his people.” Pope Francis also canonized Franciscan Father Junípero Serra, O.F.M., patron of Serrans International, a long-standing lay group that promotes vocations. He noted the contributions of those who have dedicated their lives to spreading the Good News: “We are heirs to the bold missionary spirit of so many men and women who preferred not to be ‘shut up within structures which give us a false sense of security… within habits which make us feel safe, while at our door people are starving.’”
Religious rejoice in Pope’s visit Men and women in religious life were among the millions of enthusiastic Catholics who welcomed the pope to the United States for his first such visit September 2227. Consecrated men and women joined joyful crowds to celebrate Mass, listen to addresses, and take part in festivities that were part of Pope Francis’ time in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Philadelphia. Among the highlights connected to religious life were the following moments. Pope Francis specifically thanked women in consecrated life during his Mass at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, stating: In a special way I would like to express my esteem and my gratitude to the religious women of the United States. What would the Church be without you? Women of strength, fighters, with that spirit of courage which puts you in the front lines in the proclamation of the Gospel. To you, religious women, sisters and mothers of this people, I wish to say ‘thank you,’ a big thank you… and to tell you that I love you very much. Updates
Participants in NRVC’s 2013 Advent retreat take time to enjoy the outdoors.
Advent retreat offered The National Religious Vocation Conference (NRVC) invites vocation and formation ministers to renew their spirits at a retreat entitled “Advent Days of Renewal and Reflection,” to be held December 14-17 at the Redemptorist Renewal Center in Tucson, Arizona. Fall 2015 | HORIZON | 3
Co-sponsored by NRVC and the Religious Formation Conference, the retreat will be led by Sister Addie Lorraine Walker, S.S.N.D. It will offer opportunities to embrace spiritual practices characteristic of Advent: waiting, accepting, anticipating, pondering and listening with heightened awareness, gratitude and silence. A similar retreat was held in 2013 and was wellreceived by participants. Retreatant Sister Maria Brizuela, O.S.F. wrote that she appreciated “the opportunity to take the time to pause and breathe intentionally ... and in community with other vocation ministers.”
Order copies of VISION NRVC’s 2016 VISION Vocation Guide for men and women in discernment is now available. Order copies of the award-winning guide and 2016 VISION bookmarks for your ministry online at: VocationNetwork.org/orders, or by calling 800-942-2811.
Are your events on the VISION calendar? All religious communities are invited to post their events on VISION’s online calendar. Any event sponsored by a religious community or featuring one of their members may be shared, including talks, presentations, retreats, service opportunities, prayer services, and liturgies. Add an event directly at vocationnetwork.org/opportunities. Or email your information to oneillsiobhan@truequestweb.com.
Financial help for religious communities
“Today’s Catholic sisters” last symposium in Los Angeles in January The last of a series of four NRVC-sponsored symposia entitled “Today’s Catholic sisters: Who they are, why we need them” will take place January 23, 2016, 9 a.m. to noon at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Los Angeles. The first three gatherings—held in San Antonio, Texas; River Forest, Illinois; and Immaculata, Pennsylvania—attracted hundreds of sisters and their supporters and featured young sisters along with the authors of New Generations of Catholic Sisters: The Challenge of Diversity, Mary L. Gautier, Sister Mary Johnson, S.N.D.deN., and Sister Pat Wittberg, S.C. Each symposium consists of a main presentation, a Q&A session, a raffle, and refreshments. These symposia have been made possible by the GHR Foundation. Details, streaming video of the first two gatherings, and an online sign-up for the January event are at nrvc.net. 4 | HORIZON | Fall 2015
Religious communities can now receive two forms of vocation-related financial assistance. The Misericordia Scholarship Fund offers those under serious financial constraints assistance paying NRVC membership and program fees. For more information on the Misericordia Fund, contact nrvc@nrvc.net or call 773-363-5454. For NRVC member communities whose new candidates have significant educational debt, the National Fund for Catholic Religious Vocations (NFCRV) helps the member make the loan payments, so that the candidate is free to discern with the community. In August 2015 NFCRV distributed $213,000 to eight NRVC religious communities on behalf of 10 candidates. In January 2016 NFCRV will begin accepting new grant applications from NRVC members (men’s and women’s). For more about the NFCRV, go to nfcrv.org, or contact fund director Mark Teresi, mjteresi@nfcrv.org, or call 773-595-4028. n Updates
Year of Consecrated Life Photo: Courtesy of Clarion Herald
Special liturgies for the Year of Consecrated Life have been plentiful. Pictured here are religious celebrating Mass at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Prompt Succor in New Orleans in February, 2015.
Wake up, we have work to do! By Sister Angela Gannon, C.S.J. As the Year for Consecrated Life enters its final months— the official end is February 2, 2016—HORIZON presents these hope-filled words from Sister Angela Gannon, C.S.J., who shared these thoughts at a gathering of religious in her Brooklyn, New York diocese.
W
HEN I FIRST reflected on the slogan “Wake Up the World,” I thought of these scenes from my own life. As a young child my mother would shake me and say, “Wake up and get out of that bed. Get moving!” As a teenager, in Latin class immediately after lunch, Sister Regina Celeste would open the windows and direct us to stand up, breathe in the fresh air, and say, “Wake up, we have work to do here!” As an adult religious, I’ve often sung with gusto, “Awake from your slumber…. A new day is dawning.”
Year of Consecrated Life
“Get moving,” “We have work to do here,” “A new day is dawning,”—each of these phrases might be another way to reflect on this Year of Consecrated Life. When 50 years ago, the Second Vatican Council issued Perfectae caritatas and Lumen gentium, we, as consecrated religious, were encouraged to get moving—to reflect on our unique mission and charism, to re‐form our lives according to the intent of our founders, and to engage in ministries which responded to the needs of the times. Not only did we get moving, we hit the road running. And no one could keep up with us. We took this challenge very seriously. Being women and men of vision and zeal, we spent endless hours praying, dialoguing, and discerning on how consecrated life needed to change, how we would be in the world in a new way, and how our ministries would bring the Gospel of Jesus to all those with whom and for whom we served. In a Fall 2015 | HORIZON | 5
During the Year of Consecrated Life, many people have expressed thanks to religious. Pictured here is Bishop Joseph C. Bambera of Scranton, Pennsylvania, who told consecrated men and women, “Thank you for challenging us to put our trust in the same God who has filled your lives with hope.”
somewhat unfortunate way, the change in our clothing received more attention than the far more substantive changes that were going on in our personal lives and in our congregations. “We have work to do here!” And isn’t that true? The ministries of religious women and men have reached from the neighbor next door to indigenous communities in foreign lands. Anthropologist Margaret Mead has written, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” We are those people. Many of our vital ministries began when a small group responded to a local need in our area. Our history and heritage hold inspiring stories of women and men, who, in living their gospel values, effected major change. Their vision and fierce determination resulted in establishing schools, programs for faith formation, hospitals, and spirituality centers to address the physical, intellectual, and spiritual hungers not only of the neighborhood but of the world. Today religious continue to be passionate about immigration reform, the trafficking of women and children, care for the Earth, and other issues that diminish hope 6 | HORIZON | Fall 2015
for future generations. We recently had Nuns on the Bus moving around the country to advocate for social justice; we have a book, movie, and opera based on Sister Helen Prejean’s ministry to those on death row; we have sisters and brothers being honored by various organizations, both civic and ecclesial, for their service and leadership. The story is told that We knew we had work to do, and we did it—ofwhen the sisters arrived ten at a great price and in Boston on a Friday sometimes under difficult afternoon, they opened circumstances. But we are a school on Monday steadfast in our commitmorning. Now that is zeal! ment, and we are mission‐ driven in building up the reign of God. As I look at the sisters in my own congregation and the religious gathered here today, we have given the best of our years, the best of our lives to the various ministries in which we have been engaged. We not only gave, but we received—we received an abundance of blessings in the form of lasting friendships, collaborative partnerships, and renewed zeal for the mission of Jesus and of our institutes. And, we are not finished. It is not over as long as we continue to have that small group of thoughtful, committed members who respond passionately to their mission and charism.
We started small I think it is sobering, in these times of diminishing numbers in our religious congregations, to remember that many of our institutes were founded by a small group of members. In 1856, three Sisters of St. Joseph came from Philadelphia to start a new foundation in Brooklyn. They were welcomed at St. Mary’s Parish on Maujer Street in Williamsburg (now Brooklyn, New York) and opened a parish school within days of arriving. Not many years later, in response to the needs of other dioceses and without undue concern for personal cost, sisters from the Brooklyn foundation went to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania; Rutland, Vermont, and Boston and Springfield, Massachusetts. The story is told that when the sisters arrived in Boston on a Friday afternoon, they opened a school on Monday morning. Now that is zeal! I often have wondered when they were told that they were going to Boston—probably only a few days before! They didn’t seem to have a problem to get moving. Times have changed, and today many of us would Year of Consecrated Life
Photo: Courtesy of Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration
Religious communities around the world have opened their doors to the public over the past year for open houses, prayer services, volunteer service opportunities, and more. Pictured here is Sister Mary Kathryn Fogarty, F.S.P.A., of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration of La Crosse, Wisconsin, handing a plant from the community’s organic garden to a middle school visitor.
need a year to discern future commitments. “Awake! Awake from your slumber….” One slogan for the Year of Consecrated Life is “Wake Up the World.” But before we can wake up others, we ourselves need to be awake. And age is not necessarily the only determining factor. We have a sister who is 101 years old and who is more in touch with what is happening in the world, the church, and the congregation than many who are years younger.
God at work within us As women and men religious we live out our mission and charism to our last breath. It is not necessarily what we are doing but the persons we are. While the work of our hands might decrease, the work of our hearts continues in new and at times unanticipated ways. God never ceases to call us as we plod along on our journey. As we look back in grateful remembrance as Pope Francis has invited us to do, we are well aware that whatever we have accomplished is not all our doing. It is not all about us. Rather it is mission that drives us and enables us like Mary to praise our God who has done great things for us. Let us awake the world! We must awake the world to the gift of consecrated life, a gift to the church and to Year of Consecrated Life
the world. It is a gift entrusted to us as vowed religious to be shared with all of our brothers and sisters. If we truly embrace the future with hope as Pope Francis intends, we do so in the company of one another as Mary and Elizabeth did for each other. As Father Henri Nouwen wrote about Mary and Elizabeth: “These two women created a space for each other to wait. They affirmed for each that something was happening that was worth waiting for.” Something is happening that has been worth waiting for. Did not our founders have that same thought? And now we lift up what has already begun in us. We do so, not solely within our own institutes or even with others in consecrated life, but in the far wider circle of our lay sisters and brothers who with us continue the mission that first caught us up in responding to the call to consecrated life. There is little slumbering going on; rather it is an Advent time in our lives as we wait in joyful hope for what is yet to be. We wait, not passively, but actively engaged in creating a future for consecrated life that is yet to be revealed, a future that evolves from where we are today. We still get moving, we still have work to do, we still arise with the confidence that a new day is dawning— and that my friends, will continue on for much more than a year! n Fall 2015 | HORIZON | 7
The Message Matters Practical Tools to Strengthen Your Communication from the Authors of rebuil
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Michael White and Tom Corcoran sparked a firestorm in 2013 with their first book, Rebuilt, the story of how they brought their parish back to life. In Rebuilding Your Message, the award-winning authors now share their carefully honed communication practices to help priests, staff, volunteers, and parishioners better proclaim the irresistible and life-changing Gospel of Jesus Christ at every level. Perfect for vocation directors tasked with giving talks, leading meditations and prayer services, and offering presentations.
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A major study about family influence on vocation reveals that practice of faith matters, and even devout families don’t always raise the possibility of a church vocation.
Father Patrick Gilger, S.J. with his parents, Gary and Kristin, at his ordination.
Families & vocations by the numbers
T
HIS REPORT PRESENTS findings from a major study of the influence of families in nurturing vocations to religious life and priesthood. The National Religious Vocation Conference commissioned the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University to learn from priests, seminarians, women and men religious, and their families about the role of the family in nurturing their vocation. The goal of the research was to provide information to help families promote vocations to religious life and priesthood. For this study CARA surveyed men and women religious who had entered religious life since 2000, as well as priests and seminarians who had been accepted into formation for priesthood in dioceses since 2000. In addition to asking these participants about the influence of their families on their vocational discernment, the survey also asked respondents to give contact information for a family member. CARA then contacted those identified family Gautier, Wiggins, Holland | Families and Vocations
By Mary L. Gautier Jonathon L. Wiggins, and Jonathon C. Holland The three authors of this article are on the staff of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Mary L. Gautier is a senior research associate. Jonathon L. Wiggins is the director of parish surveys, and Jonathon C. Holland is a research assistant.
Fall 2015 | HORIZON | 9
Sister Colleen McDermott, O.P. signs her final profession of vows as the prioress general for the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael, Sister Maureen McInerney, O.P., looks on.
members with an invitation to complete a similar survey to gain insights on the topic from the perspective of the family member. CARA also conducted two focus groups with the family members of these religious, priests, and seminarians to explore more deeply some of the issues relevant to ACTIVE CATHOLIC FAMILIES this study as revealed by MORE LIKELY TO BE STUDIED the data. CARA sent a surThe professionals conducting this vey invitation to 2,172 survey relied on sisters, priests, women and men reliand brothers to provide names gious and 4,140 priests and contact information for family and seminarians beginmembers. (No other source for this ning in November 2014 data exists.) A natural tendency would be to refer family members and then conducted who are positive about church vocafollow-up through Febtions. Thus it helps to keep in mind ruary 2015 to achieve that the study may unavoidably have a high response rate. surveyed families more supportive CARA received comthan the norm. pleted responses from 1,279 men and women religious and 1,352 diocesan priests and seminarians for a response rate of 59 percent and 33 percent, respectively. The religious, priests, and seminarians that responded to the survey provided CARA with a total of 1,547 names and contact information (either a mailing 10 | HORIZON | Fall 2015
address or an email) for a family member. CARA then contacted those family members in late February 2015, in both English and Spanish, with an invitation to participate in a brief survey. By the cut-off date in early April, 892 family members had responded to the survey, for a response rate of 58 percent. Another 15 family members participated in one of two focus groups, held in Washington, D.C. and in Chicago, IL, in May 2015.
Family variety There is no such thing as a “typical� family of a priest or religious. The purpose of this study was not to discover a secret formula for creating religious vocations but rather to learn from families that have produced vocations to the priesthood or religious life some of their common experiences, practices, attitudes, and behaviors. The hope is that the characteristics and experiences of these families will be informative and perhaps instructive to other families who might be wondering if there is a potential vocation to priesthood or religious life in their midst.
Foundation in Catholic schools, faith engagement Family members of seminarians, priests, and religious are usually Catholic themselves and typically grew up in a family in which both parents were Catholic. One in 10 Gautier, Wiggins, Holland | Families and Vocations
responding priests, seminarians, or religious grew up in a non-Catholic family, however, and another 10th grew up in a family with only one Catholic parent. One in five Catholic families that produced a vocation had a priest or a religious already in their extended family. Catholic schools—As other surveys have shown, Catholic schools were important to those with church vocations. Women and men religious, priests, and seminarians are more likely than Catholics in general to have attended a Catholic school for some or all of their education. More than half of men and women religious and two in three priests and seminarians attended Catholic schools for some or all of their education. Importance of faith, prayer—The responding family members in families that have produced a vocation are more likely than other Catholic adults in general to say that their Catholic faith is the most important part of their daily life. Six in 10 responding family members say that their Catholic faith is the most important part of their life, and another third say that faith is among the most important parts of their life. By comparison, about half of Catholic parents ages 25-45 say that their Catholic faith is at least “among the most important” parts of their daily life. Among all Catholic adults, about four in 10 rate their faith as at least that important in their daily life. Consistent with the high priority they give their faith, these family members also report a more engaged prayer life than do other Catholic parents or other Catholic adults in general. Nearly nine in 10 pray daily, compared to just over half of U.S. Catholic adults and just over a third of Catholic parents between the ages of 25 and 45. They also feel more strongly than Catholic adults in general that it is important that younger generations of the family grow up Catholic.
Frequent religious practice growing up Mass attendance—Two in three responding men and women religious say that their family attended Mass or religious services weekly when they were growing up. Another one in 10 say they attended more than once a week. Likewise, responding diocesan priests and seminarians report attending Mass when they were growing up with that same level of frequency. Showing some cultural variation on this practice, Hispanic/Latino respondents are less likely than other cultural groups (66 percent versus 87 percent) to say their family attended Mass or other religious services at least weekly when they were growing up. Gautier, Wiggins, Holland | Families and Vocations
Family prayer—A third of men and women religious and just over a third of priests and seminarians report that their family prayed together a few times a week or more often when they were growing up. A large proportion of families did not pray together regularly, however. About four in 10 of each group say that their family seldom or never prayed together when they were growing up. Asian respondents and those born outside the United States are particularly likely to report that their family prayed together daily. Family members, women and men religious, and priests and seminarians were each asked to select which of 20 religious practices or customs were important to their family when they were growing up. More than half of respondents in each group reported the same five practices or customs as important to their family: attending Mass, grace at meals, religious art (e.g. crucifix, statues, pictures of saints), active participation in parish life, and sacramentals (e.g. cross, medal, prayer card, scapular). Active in parish—In addition to Mass and regular prayer at home, these family members were also engaged in their faith in more public ways. Parish life is important to families of priests, sisters, and brothers. Eight in 10 responding family members report that the family was active in parish life. Two in three say the family participated in Eucharistic Adoration, and three in five say the family prayed the rosary together, either at home or elsewhere. Family time a priority—Doing things together as a family also ranked high among families that produced vocations. These families typically ate dinner together on a daily basis, and two in three report that the family gathered together at least once a week for activities other than a meal, such as a game or movie night, family discussion, or family prayer. Engaged in Catholic media, volunteering—More than half report that Catholic media, such as books, movies, and TV shows, were important religious activities in the family. About the same proportion say that volunteer or charitable service in the community were important to the family.
Encouragement counts Three in five responding religious and more than two in five responding priests and seminarians admit that starting a discussion with their family about their vocaFall 2015 | HORIZON | 11
Brother Roger Lopez, O.F.M., with his mother Carlotta at his final vows ceremony. Photo by Father Frank Jasper, O.F.M.
tion was not easy. About a third of responding religious said their mother had spoken to them about a vocation to priesthood or religious life, and one in five said their father had spoken to them about a vocation. Parent encouragement of a church vocation was a little higher among diocesan priests and seminarians. In this group four in 10 said their mother had spoken to them about a vocation, and three in 10 said their father had spoken to them about a vocation. Family encouragement appears to play an important role. Although very few Catholics in general have ever encouraged someone to consider a vocation to priesthood or religious life, more than half of the responding family members in families that have produced a vocation say they encouraged a family member to consider such a vocation. And having had a family member ever speak to them about a vocation to the priesthood or religious life made the discussion about a vocation easier, according to the responding priests, seminarians, and religious. Among those who said their mother had ever broached the topic, more than six in 10 report that starting that discussion was easy. Similarly, those whose fathers had ever spoken to them about a vocation were also more likely to say that starting a family discussion about their vocation was easy. In 60 percent of families, at least one person was encouraging about a church vocation. When first considering a vocation, at least six in 10 seminarians, priests, and men and women religious report receiving “some” or 12 | HORIZON | Fall 2015
“very much” encouragement from their mothers, fathers, grandparents, and siblings. Mothers and grandparents are more likely than other relatives to have offered “very much” encouragement when respondents were first considering a vocation, with at least a third reporting “very much” encouragement from these family members. That zeal drops off when it comes to fathers. Just three in 10 religious and four in 10 priests and seminarians report that their father was “very” encouraging. Vocation encouragement seems to increase over time. Responding religious, seminarians, and priests report increased levels of encouragement currently in their life and ministry from all relatives. At least four in five report “some” or “very much” support from their mothers, fathers, siblings, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, and two in three report as much support from their cousins. Few respondents indicate that a family member ever discouraged them in their vocational discernment, but among those men and women religious who do, about a third indicate that their mother or sibling(s) discouraged them from considering a vocation. Among priests and seminarians, one in six say that sibling(s), aunts/uncles, or their father discouraged them from considering a vocation. Fewer received discouragement from their cousins or grandparents.
Promoting vocation in families More than half of responding family members say they have encouraged a family member to consider a vocation to priesthood or religious life. Most often, it is parents or grandparents who do so. Family members recommend acceptance, encouragement, and support for those considering a vocation. They suggest that families should uphold priesthood and religious life as options for young people when they are exploring and considering their future. Certainly the initiator of the study, the National Religious Vocation Conference, hopes that increased understanding of the role of families will help make that suggestion a reality. n
RESOURCES, STUDY RESULTS ONLINE The complete study, “The role of the family in nurturing vocations to religious life and priesthood,” can be found at nrvc.net under the “Publications/Studies” tab. Study fact sheets and handouts are also available.
Gautier, Wiggins, Holland | Families and Vocations
Photo by J.D. Long Garcia, courtesy of Catholic Sun
Vocation directors do well to understand Hispanic families, build on their strengths, and encourage a strong vocation culture among them.
Soon a majority of the U.S. Catholic Church will be Hispanic.
Affirming a vocation culture in Hispanic families
T
HE CHURCH HAS MANY TIMES SPOKEN of the family as “the source of vocations.” For instance, the 1999 apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in America notes the central vocational role of families. A Christian family that celebrates the Eucharist, embraces the sacraments, prays together, and practices God’s love while caring for others is without a doubt a privileged context where the young “discover a vocation of service in the community and the Church, and … learn, especially by seeing the example of their parents, that family life is a way to realize the universal call to holiness.” (Ecclesia in America, sec. 46). Without a doubt this is a very compelling vision. But Catholic families do not exist in a vacuum. Families are shaped by the conditions and circumstances of their particular society and moment in history. It would be unrealistic, then, to expect that Catholic families in the 2010s would mirror those of the 1950s. Equally unrealistic is to imagine that a Mexican Catholic family that migrated to the United Ospino | Hispanic Families
By Hosffman Ospino Hosffman Ospino is an assistant professor of theology and religious education at Boston College School of Theology and Ministry. He was the principal investigator for the National Study of Catholic Parishes with Hispanic Ministry (2014) and the National Survey of Catholic Schools Serving Hispanic Families (2015). He speaks and writes widely, focusing on the relationship between faith and culture, with particular attention to U.S. Hispanic Catholics.
Fall 2015 | HORIZON | 13
States would practice its faith exactly as if it lived in Latin America 20 years earlier. If the American Catholic family, in all its complexity and expressions, is to be a source of vocations—priests, sisters, brothers, lay ecclesial ministers, Christian disciples—we must have a good sense of what this family looks like and the circumstances in which it lives here and now. A closer look at Hispanic families seems to be a good way to begin.
Hispanics redefining U.S. Catholicism To speak of American Catholicism usually evokes the experience of Euro-American, that is, white Catholics and their communities. Whether one refers to American Catholic political, philanthropic, or A major portion—the ecclesiastical influence, largest! —of the next the collective imagination generation of American almost instinctively preCatholics is U.S.-born supposes this population. Hispanic and is essentially Yet, current demographics being raised by immigrant tell a different story. parents and relatives. Hispanics constitute about 43 percent of the entire U.S. Catholic population today. Yet most telling is the estimated 60 percent of all U.S. Catholics under age 18 who are Hispanic. (Note: while the focus of this essay is Hispanics, it is worth mentioning that the fastestgrowing population in the U.S. church is Asian.) These numbers reveal a major demographic transformation in the Catholic Church in the United States in a rather short period of time. Of course this is not the first time that U.S. Catholicism has experienced such transformation. Yet it is important to remember that when millions of Catholic immigrants from Europe settled in the United States as their new home during the 19th and early 20th centuries, there were meager structures in place, almost no personnel and no resources to welcome them. The new Catholic immigrant wave, however—mostly from Latin America and Asia—comes into an extensively more organized and resource-filled experience of being church. At the heart of these demographic changes is the decades-long, almost uninterrupted migratory wave from Latin America, especially from Mexico. There are approximately 20 million immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean living in the United States, about 70 percent of whom are Catholic. Every year the United 14 | HORIZON | Fall 2015
States adds about 1 million immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean to its population. In turn, Hispanics have one of the highest birth rates among all populations in the country. The majority of Hispanics living in the country (61 percent) are U.S.-born, and millions of them are very young.
Great variety within Hispanic population Technically speaking, Hispanics as a whole are not an immigrant group, which comes as a surprise to many, especially since most resources dedicated to Hispanic ministry focus largely on services to immigrant populations. Catholic self-identification among U.S.-born Hispanics is much lower than that among immigrants, which should be a major area of concern for pastoral leaders and anyone interested in vocations in the church. All in all, we are at a moment in which a major portion—the largest!—of the next generation of American Catholics will be U.S.-born Hispanics who are essentially being raised by immigrant parents and relatives. Catholicism (about 55 percent of all Hispanics selfidentify as Catholic) and the Spanish language (about 71 percent of Hispanics five and older speak Spanish at home) still serve as the two main characteristics that unite Hispanics. However, the shared religious and linguistic roots are no indicators of homogeneity. Arriving from more than 20 different countries, each with
RECOMMENDED READING Hispanic Ministry in Catholic Parishes, by Hosffman Ospino, Our Sunday Visitor, 2015 Hispanic Ministry in the 21st Century: Present and Future, edited by Hosffman Ospino, Convivium Press, 2010 Latino Catholicism: Transformation in America’s Largest Church, by Timothy Matovina, Princeton University Press, 2011 “Making a vocation journey with a Latino young adult,” by Father Robert Juárez, HORIZON, Fall 2008 “Study looks at vocation consideration; challenges among Hispanics” by USCCB, HORIZON, Winter 2013 “Latino diversity: complex but important to vocation ministry,” by Father Gary Riebe-Estrella, S.V.D., HORIZON, Winter 2013
Ospino | Hispanic Families
Photo by Ricardo Ricardo, Flickr
In Hispanic families, godparents tend to be much more than the people who take part in a one-time sacrament. They are comadre and compadre, co-mother and co-father, and typically have a lifelong, close connection to the child and the family.
a rich variety of subcultures, the Hispanic immigrant experience is quite complex. Also, the fact that nearly two thirds of Hispanics are U.S.-born, calls for an assessment of how we understand and approach the Hispanic Catholic experience. While Hispanics, particularly those who are U.S.born, are integrating fast into the larger culture and into the life of the church in the United States, this integration is simultaneously transforming church and society at their cores. We are witnessing the birth of a new way of being American and Catholic with a strong Hispanic identity and in dialogue with the many other cultural expressions that are reshaping U.S. Catholicism in the 21st century. The next generation of Catholic leaders, in the church and beyond, must be aware of these transformations. We cannot afford to ignore them. Doing so risks sidelining the largest and youngest portion of our Catholic community, thus becoming practically irrelevant to our own people. One question Catholic leaders may want to ask themselves is this: has our collective consciousness kept up with the changes that are transforming thousands of Catholic faith communities and families nationwide?
Let’s be realistic about Hispanic families One of the most common points I address in my writings and presentations as a pastoral theologian is the Ospino | Hispanic Families
idealization of the Hispanic family. I often hear from pastoral leaders that they like Hispanic families because they often see these parents and children come together to Mass and because these parents are having many children who in turn are brought to our churches to be baptized. What is not to like about this? Nationally, about two thirds of Hispanic households have a married couple. According to the National Study of Catholic Parishes with Hispanic Ministry, which I had the privilege to lead as its principal investigator (published in 2015 by Our Sunday Visitor), two thirds of all children baptized in parishes serving Hispanic Catholics are, in fact, Hispanic. These are positive realities that need to be highlighted as we serve Hispanic families and affirm a culture of vocation among them. Hispanics by and large have a strong sense of family life that naturally nurtures sensibilities about life in common and the possibility of dedicating one’s life to the service of others. This sense of family life has been deeply influenced by centuries of Catholic presence in the Southwest, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Another significant influence is the communal character shared by most Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Hispanic cultures. Certainly this meshes with the communal nature of religious life. But the uncritical celebration of a sense of family can obscure the importance of realities that, if ignored, may be detrimental to discerning vocations among Hispanic Catholics. Let me highlight three of those realities. Fall 2015 | HORIZON | 15
While new immigrants are an important part of the Hispanic Catholic population, the majority—particularly the young—have been born and raised in the U.S. Pictured here are Hispanic families in San Jose, California taking part in a 2006 immigrant rights demonstration.
Extended family is valued—An overemphasis on the nuclear family can prevent us from appreciating the importance and influence of the extended family (i.e., grandmothers, aunts, and uncles), which for Hispanics often plays a major role in the education of the young, religious self-identification, and the definition of career paths. The extended family often constitutes the first level in Hispanic families’ support networks, especially for women, on matters of care and the education of children. Poverty has real effects—One in four Hispanics lives in poverty. About another quarter lives near the poverty level. Hispanics who are more prone to live in poverty are those who are undocumented, those living in rural areas, and those with less than high school education. Poverty tends to go hand-in-hand with low levels of educational attainment. Only 17 percent of Hispanic adults have a bachelor’s degree or more. Seventy percent of Hispanic children are born to mothers with a high school degree or less, who tend to be twice as poor compared to the rest of the Hispanic population. Poverty among Hispanics also has an impact on parishes that serve them and on any programming that fosters a culture of vocation. When compared to parishes without Hispanic ministry, most parishes serving Hispanic Catholics struggle financially and are less likely to have a hired youth minister or sponsor a Catholic school. Both 16 | HORIZON | Fall 2015
of these ministries encourage faithful disciples, that is, Catholics inclined to consider a church vocation. Generation gap worsened by migratory dynamics—Regular intergenerational family (and church) dynamics are often exacerbated by cultural and migratory realities. The majority of the nearly 11 million unauthorized immigrants in this country are Hispanic, mostly Mexican. In 2015 about 1 in 15 of all children in the country—almost all born in the U.S.—live with an unauthorized parent. Adults who were born in a different country, hold particular sets of cultural values, and practice their Catholicism in very unique ways are raising children born in a culture that is in turn pluralistic, pragmatic, and rapidly secularizing. Just imagine having a conversation about vocation under these circumstances. Or let’s start by simply talking about why go to Mass and in what language! This same complicated dynamic is replicated in our parishes. The 2014 National Study of Catholic Parishes with Hispanic Ministry revealed that the majority of Hispanic Catholic pastoral leaders are immigrants: more than 95 percent of sisters, about 90 percent of priests, and 65 to 70 percent of lay ecclesial ministers are immigrants. They are serving Catholic families with children and youth born and raised in the United States. According to the March 2013 Current Population Survey, 93 percent of Hispanics under the age of 18 are U.S.-born. Are we Ospino | Hispanic Families
speaking common languages? Perhaps we do at a surface level, but the interpreting frameworks are profoundly different, and that needs to be taken into consideration when speaking about a culture of vocation. These three dynamics—extended family, poverty, and a generation gap with great cultural differences—illustrate the complexity that characterizes the lives of millions of Hispanic families. A future essay can explore other dynamics that deserve to be highlighted as well, including the pervasive presence of structural racism, the luring power of secularization making major inroads among Hispanic youth, and the lack of intercultural competencies among many pastoral leaders. It is quite tempting for ministers in our church to spend much time searching for a common approach (that is, a onesize-fits-all strategy) to Hispanic family ministry or to fostering vocations among Hispanics. If we can dwell for a while on the complexity of the reality at hand, we could then be more effective in affirming a culture of vocation among these families.
Build on strengths to foster vocation Duc in Altum! “Put out into the deep” (Luke 5:4). These words are often echoed in our faith communities when we speak about the call to missionary discipleship. They also ring loud and clear in conversations about our vocation as disciples of Jesus Christ and the various expressions of that vocation. Keeping in mind what we have
HONORING THE HISPANIC SENSE OF FAMILY How do religious order vocation ministers adapt their practices for Hispanic families? Some possibilities are: • Think beyond the nuclear family when serious candidates want family members to connect with the community. Family means grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. • Community members who are doing parish ministry might incorporate content about Catholic vocations during baptism preparation. Keep in mind that Hispanic godparents often play an important role in a child’s life. • Consider casting a wider net when sponsoring vocation outreach activities. Hispanic young adults may be more likely than others to attend activities with parents, grandparents, or other family members. Let them know they can.
Ospino | Hispanic Families
been exploring, it becomes imperative to ask: what does it mean to say duc in altum in light of the experience of the Hispanic family? What are the most prevalent elements of a culture of vocation rooted in that experience? It would be a major pastoral and cultural oversight to assume that Hispanic Catholic families lack an understanding of the idea of “vocation.” The fact that this is a common term in Catholic circles and that Catholicism has historically permeated much of the Hispanic cultural worldviews allows us to safely assume that most of these families have some form of understanding —even if rudimentary—of the term in its theological sense. This is certainly a good starting point. But we need to go deeper into the Hispanic experience and ask what else is worth affirming. A most obvious characteristic at the service of a culture of vocation is what has been identified as the Hispanic sense of family. The experience of family is often mediated through a commitment to traditional forms of family life (i.e., parents and children in a household), with strong participation from the extended family, particularly in affairs such as caring for and educating the young. But the sense of family does not end there. There is the role of madrinas (godmothers) and padrinos (godfathers) who are more than pro-forma participants in a religious ritual. They become de facto second parents and have a responsibility to children and the rest of the family. Parents and godparents become compadres (to be a father with) and comadres (to be a mother with). Vocation offices in religious orders and dioceses should work with grandparents and godparents, among others, so these family members can fulfill more effectively the accompaniment role they play in their families—not merely using them to transmit information, but empowering them to be agents of vocational life in the everyday. This certainly demands a much needed commitment to adult catechesis among Hispanic adults.
Learn the stories of the people Twenty-five years ago Catholic historian Moisés Sandoval referred to Hispanics as a people “on the move” (On the Move: A History of the Hispanic Church in the United States). His expression truly captures the experience of Hispanics in the United States territory during the last 500 years. The move for millions of Hispanics was unchosen in the case of those who were annexed to the U.S. territory (much of the Southwest), those who were colonized, and those who ended up on U.S. shores and borders in exile or fleeing some form of social ill (poverty, Fall 2015 | HORIZON | 17
process of formation and life-long mentoring. As I travel around the country listening to my Hispanic sisters and brothers, immigrants and U.S.-born, citizens and unauthorized, rich and poor, doctors and factory workers, young and old, in English, Spanish, and even in Spanglish, it has become evident to me that our church has much work to do to truly understand and sincerely embrace Hispanic families with “their joys and hopes, their griefs and anxieties”— to draw upon the wonderful words from Gaudium et Spes. In doing so we will be able to affirm the contributions of these families to a culture of vocation.
Investment rather than assimilation Sister Mary Ann Connolly, O.P. talks to visitors at the Dominican Sisters of Peace booth at the 2015 Latino Festival in Columbus, Ohio .
hunger, violence, persecution). For millions more the move meant searching for a better existence with the hope that they and their children could live with dignity. Today millions of Hispanics move across the country searching for jobs, from cities to suburbs, from places where they are persecuted or mistreated to others where they can experience the calm of a sunset in the warmth of their home. For millions life is una lucha diaria—an everyday struggle—to move through the structures of our society, often defying the odds, sailing against the winds of irrational biases, and relentlessly taking one day at a time. Vocation ministers cannot ignore these stories about Hispanic Catholics. In those stories and experiences their Christian vocation is fully experienced because God does not call us without those moments that have made us who we are, or without our cultural backgrounds, or without the people with whom we share our lives. In fact vocation for these many families who today are transforming the American Catholic experience is nothing less than God’s calling to prophetically defy sin in its many manifestations, to cross boundaries and witness the life of Christ here and now, to start anew transforming faith communities and social environments, to walk with the hope that Christ truly makes all things new. A culture of vocation among Hispanics incorporates these stories as testimony of what God has done for us. We are those stories. We share those stories with the rest of the ecclesial community. Supporting vocational discernment among Hispanics requires creativity and intentionality to incorporate such stories, the stories of our families, not only at the moment of identifying potential leaders, but throughout the entire 18 | HORIZON | Fall 2015
Pastoral policies and practices that promote simplistic calls for “assimilation” (regardless of what is meant by this rather convoluted term); ministerial formation programs in seminaries, universities, houses of formation, and pastoral institutes that fail to bring to the center the historical, cultural, and religious experience of half of all Catholics in the United States, namely Hispanic Catholics; and the lack of investment in Hispanic families, youth, parishes, apostolic movements, and organizations, constitute the perfect recipe for alienating what can be a most abundant source of vocations to single, married, consecrated, and ordained life. This observation about alienation is closely tied to a question I frequently hear: why are there so few vocations to the ordained priesthood and religious life among U.S.-born Hispanic Catholics? (Note: vocations to the permanent diaconate and lay ecclesial ministry are somewhat strong among Hispanics.) This is a big question, and I hope these reflections help pave the way to an initial answer. I believe that God has been copiously inspiring many vocations to Christian life and service among Hispanic Catholics in the United States for a long while. Evidence of this is the incredible energy among the faithful in parishes, youth groups, and apostolic movements, which cannot be but expressions of the presence of the Holy Spirit stirring the hearts of God’s people here and now. Hispanics by and large remain Catholic—even though about 14 million Hispanic Catholics do not selfidentify as such anymore. So the question is not whether God is calling, but whether we are listening! Without truly working with Hispanic families, accompanying them, honoring their stories, healing their wounds, and acknowledging their needs, what kind of vocational ministry can we claim to be doing? Let’s turn our attention to Hispanic families now. Ospino | Hispanic Families
SNAPSHOT OF HISPANIC YOUNG PEOPLE
Identity Seekers 30-45 percent
Immigrant Workers Mainstream Movers Gang Members & 20-40 percent 15-25 percent High Risk Youth 10-15 percent
Mostly born in the U.S.
Mostly of Mexican origin
Mostly born in the U.S.
Mostly born in the U.S.
Children of immigrants
Many are undocumented
May leave barrio behind
Anger toward society
Mostly bilingual
Mostly Spanish-speaking
Mostly English speaking
Limited bilingual abilities
Low self esteem
Have large families
Attend private schools
Experience despair
Struggle to finish school
Little formal education
College education
Little formal education
Unmotivated/apathetic
Motivated and hopeful
Motivated and hopeful
Most are unemployed
May find hope in work or family relationships
Willing to work hard
Willing to work hard
Many live in inner cities
Mostly lower-middle class
Mostly lower class
Mostly middle to upper class
Mostly lower class
May seek refuge in alcohol, drugs, promiscuity
Many seek moral and spiritual support from church
May leave Catholic Church
Many are incarcerated
74 percent are Catholic
May look down on other categories of Hispanics
May look down on other categories of Hispanics
Thank you to Marilyn Santos for providing this overview. The source for this information is Instituto Fe y Vida, feyvida.org.
There is already a culture of vocation there, a very particular one nonetheless, that is waiting to be affirmed and engaged. In order to do this we need to revise some current practices in our vocational ministry as a church. I offer three suggestions. Increase the focus on U.S.-born Hispanics—Most efforts in Hispanic ministry focus on the immigrant population, yet only 39 percent of Hispanics are foreignborn. We need to pay more attention to U.S.-born Hispanic Catholics, without abandoning immigrants of course. That requires significantly more investment. Develop, rather than import, leaders—Another practice that needs to be revised is the overreliance on foreign-born pastoral leaders. International priests and sisters from Latin America and the Caribbean who work with Hispanic Catholics are a blessing for which we must continue to be grateful. Yet, most are “parachuted” into communities with Hispanic families often without knowing their stories, their cultural realities, their life journeys, their symbols, and often their language —as in the case of intergenerational households, which is the reality for most Hispanic families. It takes a lifetime to learn any of these dynamics. Thus we must invest in Ospino | Hispanic Families
fostering vocations to ordained and consecrated life from among the families already living among us as much as possible. This seems to be happening naturally in the case of vocations to single and married life. Increase access to Catholic education—American Catholicism benefits from an incredible network of Catholic schools and universities, many run and inspired by religious orders. Every type of Catholic vocation is uniquely nurtured in these environments. However, the number of Hispanic children and youth in these institutions is significantly small. We need partnerships to increase Hispanic enrollment in our educational institutions, while envisioning ways to ensure these institutions are strong and will intentionally help Hispanics thrive. This will strengthen the environment for Hispanic youth and young adults to engage in vocational discernment. These suggestions, along with the rest of my reflections here, are just a beginning. My hope is to encourage vocation directors and pastoral leaders at all levels in our church to engage in a much needed conversation as we envision our ministries within an increasingly Hispanic church. May our conversation bear fruit in religious orders and throughout the church. n Fall 2015 | HORIZON | 19
Filipino families are fertile ground for religious life vocations. But vocation directors need to understand them to be effective ministers.
By Sister Myrna Tordillo, M.S.C.S. Sister Myrna Tordillo, M.S.C.S. is a member of the Missionary Sisters of St. Charles BorromeoScalabrinians. She is the assistant director of the Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church/Asian and Pacific Island Affairs at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops(USCCB) in Washington, D.C. She has worked at the USCCB for seven years in the Pastoral Care of Migrants, Refugees and Travelers.
20 | HORIZON | Fall 2015
What every vocation director should know about Filipino families
I
“All vocations make their first steps in the family.” —Pope Francis LIKE TO THINK OF MY FAMILY as a seedbed for my vocation. Prayer was part of the rhythm of daily life for us. As a child growing up in the Philippines in the late 60s, my mother would wake us at dawn to pray the rosary. I recall sluggishly mumbling the prayers with eyes closed. Every day we would also say the Angelus at 6 p.m. as a family. The highlight of our worship, though, was going to Mass on Sundays together as a family. Many things have changed in the Philippines over the years, including the cultural landscape, and today modern media and technology have greatly penetrated the fabric of Filipino daily life, and secularization is getting more pervasive. However religious practice there still shows signs of great vitality, and that vitality spills over into the Filipino American church and into Filipino American vocations to religious life. Because of their great zeal for the faith, Asian Catholics (Filipinos Tordillo | Filipino Families
being the largest sector of this group) have a disproportionately large presence in U.S. religious life. They only account for 2.6 percent of U.S. Catholics. But the 2009 NRVC-CARA study of newer members in the U.S. showed that Asians were 14 percent of all newer vocations, a percentage has slowly risen in recent years. What then, should vocation directors know about these Filipino families that are the seedbed for many of these vocations? I offer here some considerations for vocation ministers who want to better understand and work with Filipino American Catholics.
The Filipino diaspora
Key cultural and faith patterns
It must be noted here that while first generation Filipino Americans are familiar with the following cultural patterns, the second and subsequent generations of Filipino Much in the cultural Americans may not be aware of or acvalues of the Filipinos customed to these unless they are excan be enriched by the posed to, immersed in, or taught about these cultural values. gospel and, therefore, can Much in the cultural values of the contribute to meaningful Filipinos can be enriched by the gospel and mature Christian and, therefore, can contribute to meanliving, including life as a ingful and mature Christian living, insister, brother, or priest. cluding life as a sister, brother, or priest.
One begins to understand Filipino American families by exploring where they’ve come from. The Philippines is one of only two predominantly Christian countries in Asia (the other being East Timor), and it is ranked third in the world for the largest Catholic population, according to the Pew Research Center. About eight-in-ten Filipinos (81 percent) are Catholic. The number of Filipinos in diaspora is roughly 11 percent of the overall Philippines population. That means over 10 million Filipinos live outside of their home country, either on a regular, temporary, or irregular basis, and the U.S. is the top country of destination, followed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to 2013 figures from the Commission on Filipinos Overseas. Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Archbishop of Manila, on several occasions has highlighted the exodus experience of Filipinos to other parts of the world in search of better economic opportunities. In a lecture at The Catholic University of America which I attended last March, the cardinal mentioned he was invited to celebrate Mass at the Duomo, Milan’s iconic cathedral in Italy. He recounted that the cathedral was packed with over 9,000 Filipino workers, and even the plaza and surrounding streets were overflowing with Filipinos. Tagle recalled that the vicar for migrants whispered to him, “Behold the future of the church in Milan!” But he respectfully corrected the vicar: “Monsignor, they are not the future of the church. They are the present of the church in Milan.” Thus, Tagle added, “the migrants had found not only jobs, but a mission.” While Filipino families are prominent in the Italian Tordillo | Filipino Families
church, they are also an important and enthusiastic part of the U.S. church. A study commissioned by the Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church (part of the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Conference) shows that among Asian and Pacific Island Catholics in the U.S., roughly 51 to 65 percent are Filipino (depending on which data is analyzed). And out of 3.4 million Filipino Americans, 2.2 million are Catholics. These 2.2 million Catholics have very distinct cultural and faith patterns.
Family Orientation—Filipinos express genuine love for the family. They are family-oriented, and this goes beyond the immediate family circle of parents and siblings to the extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and godparents, among others. Deep love for the family motivates countless Filipinos to sacrifice themselves for the good of the other members. Family solidarity makes Filipino Christians relate easily to Jesus (Anak ng Diyos Ama, Son of God the Father), as a brother (kapatid) who in prayer they can easily turn to in times of difficulty and problems. Respect for elders—Respect for elders is embedded in the Filipino culture. Gestures and language convey respect for parents, grandparents, tiya/tiyo (aunts/uncles), older cousins, friends, and priests. Mano (hand in Spanish), is a gesture of bowing slightly and placing gently the right hand of an elder to one’s forehead. The word Po is used to addressed elders to show great respect. Meal orientation—Filipinos are meal-oriented and love to celebrate any event with a special meal. The Tagalog term for these occasions is salu-salo kainan. Filipinos are known to be gracious hosts, and even with unexpectFall 2015 | HORIZON | 21
ed guests, they try to offer the best of what they have. An example of this custom can be seen in the celebration of the Simbang Gabi—the Novena Masses during Advent. In most U.S. parishes that celebrate Simbang Gabi, after Mass there is food for everybody prepared by the local Filipino organizers. Gratitude or Utang na Loob—This value expresses a person’s deep sense of gratitude for help extended. Utang na loob implies a debt that can never be repaid, but can only be reciprocated in a sacrifiSurely growing up with cial manner on the part community-minded of the one returning the values, such as Pakikisama favor. In the Christian and Bayanihan, gives a sense, utang na loob person a good foundation can be a value and an for living in a religious experience of undying community. gratitude to Jesus who, out of sheer love, died on the cross to redeem all from sin. This in return demands a reciprocity from Christians by means of a sacrificial love, that is, to love God and neighbor in faith and action. Self-reliance or Pagsasarili—The Filipino attribute of self-reliance addresses the development of self-worth and integrity of a person. This personalism of Filipinos is a stimulus to relate to others and to the world on a personal basis. It is rooted in the recognition of the dignity of the human being. Pagsasarili in its Christian meaning is grounded in the truth of the dignity of the baptized as adopted children of God. They are then related directly to God our Father, to Christ our Redeemer, and to the Holy Spirit indwelling within us. However, pagsasarili when it is reduced to individualism can swing to the extreme of self-centeredness, which has harmful effects for national and Christian unity. Hence genuine personalism is necessary. Come what may, Bahala Na—Roughly translated, bahala na means “come what may.” Despite often being viewed as a fatalistic resignation, it can be seen positively as an attitude of courage in taking risks and of inspired fidelity when a person is put in a difficult situation. In the Christian perspective, bahala na is an attitude of trust, leaving everything in God’s hands when all human efforts are exhausted in the midst of suffering, pain, or loss. Hence bahala na can ground genuine faith and trust 22 | HORIZON | Fall 2015
in divine providence that will engender a Christian sense of peace and serenity in adversity. Shame or Hiya—The sense of shame encompassed in the value of hiya is a potent means of safeguarding individual morals and ethics within Philippine society. It is common to hear Filipinos remark, nakakahiya, (it is shameful) when they try to appraise behavior and actions that might lead to moral sanctions in society. Grounded on a Catholic understanding, hiya can be applied to the workings of sin and grace in our lives. Thus the discovery of one’s uniqueness and creative powers can help a person overcome the inhibitions and limitations of hiya. Camaraderie (Pakikisama) and Community spirit (Bayanihan)—These are among the cluster of social acceptance values. The thrust of these values is on working together toward the common good. Pakikisama, in the sense of getting along with others, fosters closeness. It is seen not only as trying to be nice in the presence of others. It also implies truthfulness and openness in relating to others. The Bayanihan spirit promotes cooperation among members of the community and has been given much emphasis in the thrust towards nation-building. Both values enhance the formation of a civic conscience which supports social justice. Surely growing up with these community-minded values gives a person a good foundation for living in a religious community. Thus Filipino cultural values hold great potential for growth and development in the formation of mature Christians. These values, when properly oriented and directed, will deepen authentic Christian living in a uniquely Filipino way. They include values that lend themselves to religious life, emphasizing gratitude to God and a commitment to a positive common life.
Filipino families and popular religiosity In the United States, as in their home country, the religiosity of Filipinos is so rich in images of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary that it never fails to amaze non-Filipinos. From the image of the Infant Jesus (Santo Nino), to the Black Nazarene of Quiapo, to Our Lady of Antipolo (also known as Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage), Filipino Catholics portray and venerate Christ and express their devotion to Mary in unique and colorful ways. According to the Catechism for Filipino Catholics, “A typical approach to Jesus Christ is with and through Tordillo | Filipino Families
Celebrating special events with food is important to Filipino American families. Serving a meal after a Simbang Gabi novena Mass during Advent are the members of the Fil Am Association of St. Anne’s parish in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Mary. Devotion to Mary has always been intimately intertwined with Christ.” For Filipinos Mary, the mother of Jesus, is their spiritual mother, and so she is the center of the family for Catholic Filipinos. In the annual pilgrimage to Our Lady of Antipolo held during the month of June, Filipino devotees flock to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. Prior to Mass, the program includes a procession wherein devotees carry many images of Mary, such as Our Lady of the Barangay, Our Lady of Peñafrancia, Our Lady of Antipolo, Our Lady of Lourdes, and others. Close to 2,000 pilgrims—including families, friends, members of prayer groups, religious organizations, and confraternities—attend this annual pilgrimage. The month of May is traditionally dedicated to Mary, and for Filipino American families the Flores de Mayo (Flowers of May) is a way to honor Mary in a special way. A statue of Mary is crowned by a child dressed in white in the presence of other white clad children who bring flowers to offer to Mary. This popular devotion in the parish is attended mostly by family members of the children. The feasts of the Filipino saints Lorenzo Ruiz and Pedro Calungsod are widely celebrated by many Filipino families in the U.S. In the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the Tordillo | Filipino Families
Filipino Archdiocesan Council forms committees a year in advance to prepare for the joint September feasts of these two saints. About 2,000 people attend the celebration, with Mass as the highlight, followed by cultural presentations, and of course, food for everybody!
Filipinos an important part of U.S. church As Filipinos have taken root in the United States, they have begun to take on leadership roles in the American church. In 2004 the first U.S. bishop of Filipino descent was appointed: Bishop Oscar Azarcon Solis, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. In that role, he was the first chairman in 2008 of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Island Affairs. This group of American bishops exists “to affirm the gifts and contributions of Asian and Pacific Island Catholics and to provide more opportunities for Asian and Pacific Island Catholics to engage in the life of the church and help shape its evangelizing mission.” Over 800 Filipino priests minister in the U.S. today, and they have organized the National Assembly of Filipino Priests-USA to address their own needs. In addition men and women religious of Filipino ancestry are serving the U.S. Catholic Church, but no data is available Fall 2015 | HORIZON | 23
RECOMMENDED READING Bamboo Bridge Across the Pacific: Reaching Out to FilipinoAmerican Catholics, by Loreto Gonzales and Valencia Rose, Filipino Pastoral Ministry, 2004 Building Intercultural Competence for Ministers, Committee on Cultural Diversity in the Church, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2012 Faith, Family, and Filipino American Community Life, by Stephen Cherry, Rutgers University Press, 2014 Filipino Thought, by Leonardo Mercado, Logos Publications, 2000 “Incorporating cultural diversity in religious life,” a study for the National Religious Vocation Conference by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. A summary, video, and full report are at nrvc.net/publications. Inculturation and Filipino Theology, by Leonardo Mercado, Divine Word Publications, 1992 “Who is the Filipino Catholic?” Catechism for Filipino Catholics, Word and Life Publications, 1997 (Note: copies of this catechism are posted online.) “Understanding and working with Filipino candidates,” by Sister Lovina Pammit, HORIZON, Fall 2011
about their estimated numbers. Many of those who have come from the Philippines have been assigned by their major superiors to be missionaries in the U.S., serving in a variety of ministries. What we see is a reverse missionary trend because the American church is now a receiving church for international pastoral ministers. The growth in the numbers of Filipino American priests and their “increased recognition” in the church is significant, social scientist Stephen Cherry has written in his book Faith, Family, and American Filipino Life (Rutgers University Press, 2014). But he also says scholars need to explore what Filipino “presence may mean to the reshaping of American Catholicism.” He adds that with the significant number of Filipino priests and the increase in lay leadership roles, “Filipino immigrants are a mounting force within American Catholicism.” 24 | HORIZON | Fall 2015
The American bishops have turned their attention toward Filipinos and other Asian members of their flock. They commissioned the “National Study of Asian and Pacific Island Catholics in the U.S.,” which was conducted by a team of social scientists and was released in August 2015, revealing that Filipino families are actively engaged with their Catholic faith. A few highlights: • Filipinos constitute the largest ethnic grouping among all U.S. Asian Catholics. • Even though just over half of Asian Catholics in the U.S. said their parishes do not host programs focused on respondent ethnicity, Filipinos were most likely to say that, yes, their parish has hosted a Filipino program. • Filipino Catholics are also more inclined than Catholics overall to indicate that the Vatican’s authority (69 percent) and celibate male clergy (61 percent) are “very important.” • While Filipinos are often also minorities in their parishes, they tend to have larger numbers and thus are a more visible and often vocal part of their parishes.
Family concerns to be aware of At the same time that Filipino Catholics in the U.S. are noticeably devout, the United States, like most Western societies, is increasingly becoming secularized. This poses a threat to all Christian families, including Filipino American Catholic families. Filipino Americans need to continue to strengthen the faith in their homes and be informal schools of catechesis within the family. Religious communities can support these efforts by reaching out to young people and their families. For their part vocation directors will want to minister with a sensitivity about Filipino family dynamics. The strong family orientation of Filipinos and their emphasis on respect for elders suggest that any Filipino discerning the priesthood or consecrated life may potentially consult family members in the discernment process. Thus it bodes well for vocation directors to be open to communicating with the family whenever appropriate. However, they also want to keep in mind that if cultural norms are not instilled among second generation Filipino Americans, the communication dynamic could be different from what is presented in this article. At a very pragmatic level vocation directors should be aware that Filipino American families give priority Tordillo | Filipino Families
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to the education of children. For college graduates, educational debt could be an issue for Filipino Americans considering a vocation to the priesthood or religious life. •• •• Last December, I went to the Philippines for a family visit and a bit of work. The Philippines is composed of 7,107 islands, and one of those is the island of Leyte where my mom and other family members live. From the airport in Cebu Island, I had to take a ship to Leyte. I was thrilled because the ship had a chapel with the crucifix and images of the Santo Nino and Our Lady of Lourdes. Then at 3 p.m., from the ship’s public address system, the Divine Mercy chaplet could be heard everywhere. I also flew to another island in the southern tip of the Philippines during Advent and had the opportunity to attend Simbang Gabi Mass for a couple of days. The cathedral in Davao City had three Masses a day for nine consecutive days during the Simbang Gabi just to accomTordillo | Filipino Families
modate the throngs of Filipinos who packed the church and filled the grounds outside. In the Philippines it is not unusual for Mass to be celebrated in big shopping malls on Sundays. These many expressions of faith during a single visit show that reliIt bodes well for vocation gious fervor and practice directors to be open still have great vitality to communicating with among young and old Filipino families whenever Filipino Catholics. As appropriate. these families move to the U.S., they bring this intense Catholic practice with them, making them fertile ground for religious life vocations. Certainly these patterns can change in second and third generations, but vocation directors in the U.S. still do well to begin understanding and reaching out to Filipinos and their families. n Fall 2015 | HORIZON | 25
Some ideas and trends capture public interest and spread. Vocation directors can build on what is known about igniting this kind of interest.
By Nicholas Collura Nicholas Collura formerly coordinated vocation efforts for the U.S. Territory of the Augustinians of the Assumption, and he has blogged for the National Catholic Reporter. He currently lives in Los Angeles and is beginning formation with the Jesuits.
The members of religious communities who are “connectors,” “mavens,” or “salespeople” should be consciously involved in vocation ministry. Pictured here, left to right, are Sisters Dorothy Ann Dirkx, S.S.M. and Sylvia Egan, S.S.M. with a young discerner.
Tipping Point tips for communicating vocation messages
I
N THE YEAR 2000, journalist Malcolm Gladwell published his best-selling book, The Tipping Point, which examined “three rules of epidemics”—factors that can cause the popularity of ideas, products, and trends to spread dramatically, like viruses. What caused Hush Puppies to become successful virtually overnight, or the murder rate in New York City to plummet by two thirds in the mid-90s? I would like to synopsize Gladwell’s book with a mind to how it might apply to vocation promotion. Naturally any analogy between suede shoes and a way of life as radical as consecrated life is bound to be tenuous; nor do I mean to imply that the success of religious life is a question of numbers or “sales.” Yet Gladwell’s persuasive analysis may give us ideas for creating a vocation culture in the United States.
The 80/20 principle Advertising materials are everywhere: online, on TV, on billboards lining streets and freeways. For this reason, though, they may be easy to relegate to a background blur. That is why many suggest that the best way to get the 26 | HORIZON | Fall 2015
Collura | Vocation Messages
message out about a particular idea or product is still the old-fashioned way, with which many of us in religious ministry are most comfortable anyway: through interpersonal networking. The first part of Gladwell’s book essentially has to do with word of mouth: its goal is to get people talking about you. But whose recommendations are the most compelling, the most likely to be heard? Throughout his book, Gladwell returns to the example of the midnight ride of Paul Revere. Others rode on the same mission, on the same night as Revere, without attracting any of his fame. My own uncle had an ancestor who rode with Revere. He claims that history has forgotten his forebear because his last name didn’t rhyme well enough for Longfellow’s poem. “What kind of verse were they going to write about a guy whose last name was Bissell?” my uncle asks rhetorically. “Listen, my children, and I shall whistle / of the midnight ride of Israel Bissell?” In fact, Gladwell suggests, there are far bigger reasons that Revere was uniquely successful in his route! Some people are prolific in what they do. Sociologists and economists talk about a recurrent “80/20 principle” that attributes a majority of productivity to a minority of participants in a given system. For instance, it generally appears that 20 percent of criminals commit 80 percent of a city’s crimes. Twenty percent of employees often do 80 percent of a company’s work. Twenty percent of motorists cause 80 percent of accidents, and 20 percent of beer-drinkers consume 80 percent of the beer sold in the U.S. The point of Gladwell’s first chapter, “The Law of the Few,” is to identify these “repeat offenders” who, like the particularly charismatic Paul Revere, have an outsized effect on the surrounding population. Gladwell identifies three kinds of people adept at spurring “social epidemics,” and calls them connectors, mavens, and salespeople. I’d like to describe these types, so that we can identify them in our work of vocation promotion. My basic point is that if an idea is to spread like an epidemic, we must “infect” others with our enthusiasm. We must turn everyone we meet into vocation promoters of a sort, so that we are not the only ones creating positive word of mouth about our congregations.
Connectors know people Connectors are people who, in Gladwell’s words, have “an uncanny genius for being at the center of events.” Paul Revere was apparently one of them: someone who simply knew a great number of people personally. To illustrate the idea, Gladwell refers to a famous Collura | Vocation Messages
experiment performed by Stanley Milgram in the 60s. Milgram chose 160 random people living in Omaha, Nebraska, and asked them each to get a package to the same stockbroker in Boston by sending it by mail to one person whom they knew personally. This recipient, now responsible for the package, would be asked to send it to one person that he or she knew personally, who would then send it to one person that he or she knew personally, and so on, until the package found its way to someone who knew the Boston stockbroker personally and could deliver it to him. Milgram found that it took an average of six mailings to get the package to that stockbroker; the famous phrase “six degrees of separation” originated with this experiment. It was a surprising result: most of us might imagine it would take hundreds of mailings to navigate limited sets of personal acquaintances, and certainly not as few as six. The reason it worked is that, as Gladwell puts it, “not all degrees are equal.” In all, “half of the responses that came back to the stockbroker were delivered to him by [the] same three people ... six degrees of separation doesn’t mean that everyone is linked to everyone else in just six steps. It means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few.” All of our communities have one or more of these fantastically prolific “people persons” who seem to be everywhere, talking to everyone at once: religious whose names always come up when candidates recount their vocation stories with a particular congregation. Those of us who are not connectors ourselves would do well to get to know them, and to make sure they know enough about our congregations that they can talk about them to the many, many other people they are likely to run into throughout their lives.
Mavens share information Mavens constitute Gladwell’s second category of prolific people. These are information specialists, people who are “pathologically helpful.” First of all, they have an obsessive interest in whatever their field is. If their subject of interest is baseball, they’re capable of remembering the whole starting roster of a particular team in a particular year; if it’s the stock market, they’re able to remember, to the cent, the price of stocks they bought three decades ago. Yet these mavens do not only absorb information for themselves; they love talking about their field and Fall 2015 | HORIZON | 27
sharing their wisdom with others. It can be awful to have them as enemies—they are the sort of people who will write in to company managers to complain about poor service, or who will write lengthy negative commentaries on restaurant review sites—but it is wonderful to have them on your side. In my own time in vocation promotion, I noticed that the congregation I worked for had great trouble “tooting their own horn.” They felt The point is to think they were doing the outside the box in work of the Gospel and spreading information didn’t want personal about your community credit for it. Yet this is by word of mouth and lethal for vocation procreating a vocation motion; how are young culture. Connectors, people to know about the good work we are mavens, and salespeople doing if we don’t talk can be found everywhere. about it? Mavens are people who will say good things about you if only they’ve gotten to know you. They may include the kind of “church people” who find themselves at the very center of a diocese’s ecclesial life, but they may also be those who are deeply engaged in your local civic community, municipal politicians or columnists for local newspapers. These are people who are always looking for good public interest stories and can toot your horn for you.
Salespeople are persuaders Finally Gladwell discusses what he calls salespeople. As distinct from connectors and mavens, salespeople are not necessarily well connected or knowledgeable, but are extremely persuasive regardless. These are people who are profoundly charismatic, the kind of people to whom you can’t say “no.” One of the most compelling passages in this section demonstrates how these salespeople are not limited to the chatty extroverts we may immediately think of. Some of them excel at sending subliminal messages without even realizing they’re doing so. Gladwell cites a study in which people were exposed to various stimuli (happy, sad, frustrating, fearful) and observed whether they expressed their emotional reactions visibly. Some of us, it turns out, are “senders”: our emotions show up particularly clearly on our faces. A 28 | HORIZON | Fall 2015
professor of mine once told me that whenever he lectured, he always looked at me to see whether the class understood him. Apparently my face is very expressive! What is more interesting is that the “senders” in the aforementioned study were put in rooms with more nonaffective people who had been exposed to stimuli of a different emotional nature. Within minutes, the senders converted the mood of the people in the room; even if the sender was the only one to have seen something sad and the other three or four were happy, they too became sad by the end of a few minutes’ talk. Affective people can change the mood of the room just by being present; their expressions are that contagious. One lesson here is to be aware of who is in the room when we are welcoming discerners! We should invite community members to be aware of how one person’s lack of enthusiasm can affect the mood of the entire assembly, even if the melancholy person is not giving a keynote speech but simply observing from afar. Conversely, it is good to find those people in our religious circles who simply radiate peace and safety. They can sell our way of life without being the chatty wheelers and dealers on a car lot that we imagine “salespeople” to be.
“Weak ties” reach new social circles As a general observation, it is very important for us to exploit “weak ties”—that is, acquaintances rather than friends, people who can spread information beyond our own social circles. At vocation fairs, there are innumerable orders competing for attention. Your Catholic friends may know a half dozen congregations they can recommend to people they meet. Yet you may be the only religious your Jewish dentist has ever known. She is your “weak tie” to a population you may not otherwise encounter. When she learns at Thanksgiving dinner one November that her brother-in-law’s niece has converted to Catholicism and is strangely considering becoming a nun, she is in a position to talk to that young woman about the order she has heard you gush about in between tooth extractions. The point is to help create a vocation culture by thinking outside the box in spreading information about your community by word of mouth. Connectors, mavens, and salespeople can be found everywhere.
Help your message to stick If “The Law of the Few” has to do with the character of the messenger, the second section of Gladwell’s book, Collura | Vocation Messages
“The Stickiness Factor,” has to do with the message. As Gladwell points out, Paul Revere was saying something important—not just that he had a sale on pewter mugs! Now, then, I would like to consider how Gladwell’s insights can aid our advertising efforts. What I got from this chapter is that there are basically three qualities to a good message: it has to be memorable, it has to be helpful, and it is has to be clear. Make it memorable—The message has to be memorable and seem important. It is amazing how many congregations, in the 21st century, still use old blackand-white photographs of their founders to headline promotional materials. Religious life is obviously not about sales and marketing, but it is about prophecy and evangelization, and our congregations will inevitably look archaic if our advertising materials are archaic. In the congregation I worked for, we realized we had no images of our founder apart from stiff, dour 19thcentury portraits. So we commissioned a contest among art students to come up with a dynamic, contemporary, symbolic rendition of the founder’s personality for use in advertising materials. Just as importantly, we gave preference to photographs of the congregation at work today among young people. [As HORIZON went to print the contest results were not yet in.] Many principles could be considered in order to make our advertising materials more memorable; in photography, for instance, close-up, dynamic action shots are far better than wide shots of an entire community posing lifelessly. Yet perhaps my best advice is to invest in hiring professionals who already know what they are doing: professional photographers, videographers, graphic designers, etc. Rather than looking for the best Catholic candidate in communications, here too we might want to find the best candidate, period. Make it helpful— Secondly, the message has to be helpful. Perhaps the most interesting study in Gladwell’s book concerns a researcher who gave a population of college students one of two brochures about tetanus. One brochure was fairly technical, dryly explaining the harmful effects of tetanus and the benefits of inoculation. The other brochure was graphic, displaying lurid color photographs of children with urinary catheters and tracheal scars. What was surprising was that within a month, only about 3 percent of each population had been to university health services to be inoculated. In a second phase of the study, the researchers slightly modified each of the two brochures, inserting a map of campus and a timetable of the health center’s operating Collura | Vocation Messages
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hours. This time both populations’ inoculation rates shot up to 28 percent. Most students probably already knew where the health office was, and could have guessed when it would be open. What they needed was a practical push, the power of suggestion, to get them to follow through with their resolution to get a shot. The need to prod and follow through may be the single most important thing to bear in mind as we promote vocations. I was in Paris recently and saw a series of posters in the metro featuring photographs of young children in tears. Superimposed on the images was the single hashtag: #MAKEACHILDCRY. You’d better believe I went online and searched for this marketing campaign to see what on earth these posters could be advertising! (It was a campaign for pediatric medical supplies for poor countries, the crying children getting shots and exams.) That is one way to prod further investigation: leave your audience curious, hooked, wanting more, intrigued by a mystery. Then, of course, you can be both clear and helpful in following up on the interest you create. The congregation I worked for asked a question on all of its promotional materials —“What is the secret to our Fall 2015 | HORIZON | 29
mental it is when people in a congregation do not know what its mission statement is. Everyone articulates a different message, and as a result, it seems that the congregation doesn’t stand for anything. Can everyone in our order articulate our “bottom line” clearly?
The power of context
This vocation poster asked a question designed to intrigue people— and send them to the Assumptionist website.
joy?”—and provided a web address where curious people might go for the answer. [See above.] Make it clear—Finally the message has to be clear. Gladwell illustrates this point by talking at length about Sesame Street. Over the years, Sesame Street’s producers found that scenes of adults arguing created confusion for their young viewers, rather than the excitement they’d hoped for; and that when kids were playing with toys while watching the show, they were able to follow just as much of the plot as if they weren’t. In each case, the lesson was not to worry that children would be bored, but that they’d be confused. Children are meaning-seekers, which is why they can watch the same Disney movie over and over, long after their parents are sick of it. Blue’s Clues dethroned Sesame Street as the number one U.S. children’s show by capitalizing on precisely that insight: rather than airing a new episode every day, Blue’s showed the same one every day for a week, and kids leapt at the chance to understand it better. Our discerners are not children, but they may be religiously illiterate. We need not overwhelm them with information; we need to figure out what the bottom line is, and stick to it. Everyone in a congregation needs to understand what the message is, and to reinforce it in conversations with discerners. I have noticed how detri30 | HORIZON | Fall 2015
If “The Law of the Few” was about prolific messengers and “The Stickiness Factor” was about what gets a message to stick, the “The Power of Context” is about the circumstances in which the message takes root. Gladwell explains that people were at home when Revere rode through town; the “afternoon ride” of Paul Revere, when everyone was away at work, may have gone differently. Gladwell also mentions the case of Bernie Goetz, an ordinary New York man who shot up a subway car full of petty criminals who hassled him for change; presumably Goetz would never have overreacted like this if there hadn’t already been a cloud of anxiety about street crime hanging over the city for months. One way to take advantage of context is to “read the signs of the times”—for instance, to ride the popularity of Pope Francis. Yet we must be attentive; trends can shift and end as quickly as they have begun. It is important, then, for religious to understand today’s youth culture as well as they understand their own congregations. A good question for vocation promoters may be: do I seek out young people who understand their peers better than I do, to whom I can listen, or am I only seeking people who will listen to me? This may seem obvious, but I once participated in a collaboration of vocation promoters where we debated among ourselves how best to reach out to young people. It only occurred to me later that this was a question we could have been asking young people directly. Gladwell gives another example (more benign than the Bernie Goetz case!) for the power of context: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood was a huge best-seller in the 90s because its multi-layered narrative about a group of close friends gave it appeal as a “book club book.” It wasn’t just individuals making the decision to buy it but groups of people who liked what it was about and committed to buying a copy for everyone. In a way, this brings us full circle, as the main idea of The Tipping Point is that if an idea is to spread like an epidemic, we must create a community of people who spread the word for us. The nature of epidemics is diffusion. Perhaps Gladwell’s principles can inspire new ideas for creating a widespread culture of vocation. n Collura | Vocation Messages
The Bible’s call stories reveal basic truths. God’s call is personal, is connected to the community, and is rooted in the interconnection of all creation.
Mary’s call, depicted here by artist Henry Ossawa Tanner, was personal, and it arose in response to the needs of the community.
What do the Bible’s call stories tell us about vocation?
W
“Come and you will see.... Follow me.” —John, 1:39, 43
By Sister Elizabeth Davis, R.S.M.
ITH JESUS’ WORDS in Chapter 1 of John’s gospel, an Old Testament tradition of “call narrative” continues—the telling of a remembered or imagined story of an invitation to a person or group to be in relationship and to become engaged in mission. The call narratives of the Old and New Testaments are personal, communal, and ecological. They are personal in that God, God’s messenger, or Jesus calls a person through an individual conversation to carry out a ministry in response to a crisis or need. They are communal in that persons are called to respond to that need in the community in which they live. They are ecological in that, embedded within the call, is a spiritual awareness that the one called is connected to the much larger reality of all creation.
Sister Elizabeth Davis, R.S.M. is the congregational leader of the Sisters of Mercy of Newfoundland with Sisters in Canada and Peru. She has been a high school teacher and health care administrator. Her passion is interpretation of the Old Testament, an area in which she is completing doctoral studies at the University of Toronto.
Personal: Here I am! Scripture scholar Rev. Norman Habel has identified six elements of the Davis | Call Stories
Fall 2015 | HORIZON | 31
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Old Testament call narrative: the divine confrontation, the introductory word, the commission, the objection, the reassurance, and the sign. The call comes unexpectedly amid the person’s everyday tasks. Moses is keeping the flock of his father-in-law; Isaiah is carrying out his work in the temple; Hagar is running away from her mistress who is mistreating her; Andrew is listening to John the Baptist speak; Mary Magdalene and Mary are going to attend the body of their friend in his new tomb. God, the messenger, or Jesus calls the person by name: “The word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision” (Gen. 15:1); “God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’” (Exod. 3:4); “The angel of the Lord said, ‘Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?’” (Gen. 16:8); “The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God’” (Luke 1:30); “She thought it was the gardener and said to him, ‘Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him, and I will take him.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’” (John 20:15-16). Father Jerome Neyrey, S.J. in the Spring 2006 HORIZON, pointed out that in the New Testament individuals who are called describe their commission in a variety of ways: as being “sent” (Matt. 10:5; Mark 1:1; John 3:17), “called” (Matt. 4:21; Gal. 1:15), “set apart” (Acts 13:2; Rom. 1:1; Gal. 1:15), “received grace and apostleship” (Rom. 1:5; Gal. 2:8), “called by the will of God an apostle” (1 Cor. 1:1; 2 Cor. 1:1; Eph. 1:1), or “chosen as apostle of God and servant of Christ Jesus” (Tit. 1:1; 2 Pet. 1:1). Having been given the commission, each person gives good reasons why he or she cannot carry it out. Moses gives a list of reasons, which God overrides one by one: “Who am I that I should go?” (Exod. 3:11); “What do I tell them?” (Exod. 3:13); “Suppose they do not believe me or listen to me” (Exod. 4:1); “I am slow of speech” (Exod. 4:10); and “Please send someone else” (Exod. 4:13). Isaiah says, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips” (Isa. 6:5). Jeremiah objects, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy” (Jer. 1:6). Mary’s words to Gabriel are, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:34). To each one, God or the messenger responds with reassurance and a sign. God speaks to Abram, “Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can. Just so, he added, will your descendants be” (Gen. 15:5). The angel of God calls to Hagar, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not fear; God has heard the boy’s voice in this plight of his” (Gen. 21:17). Then God opens her eyes, and she sees a well of water. Jeremiah tells about God’s words and sign, Davis | Call Stories
you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless “‘Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a you—oracle of the Lord.’ Then the Lord extended his blessing” (Gen. 12:1-2). hand and touched my mouth, saying to me, ‘See, I place Moses is to lead the oppressed Hebrew people to my words in your mouth!’” (Jer. 1:8-9). their own land: “I have witnessed the affliction of my Gabriel says to Mary, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for people in Egypt and have heard their cry against their you have found favor with God. Behold, you will contaskmasters, so I know well what they ceive in your womb and bear a son, and are suffering.... I am sending you to you shall name him Jesus” (Luke 1:30Pharaoh to bring my people, the Isra31). To the two women who came to elites, out of Egypt.” (Exod. 3:7, 10). anoint Jesus’ body, the angel said, “Do God’s choice of the Hagar is told, “I will make your not be afraid! I know that you are seekperson is consistently descendants so numerous, that they ing Jesus the crucified. He is not here, unexpected. Usually will be too many to count. You are now for he has been raised just as he said. the person called is an pregnant and shall bear a son; you Come and see the place where he lay” outsider or one deemed shall name him Ishmael” (Gen. 16:10(Matt. 28:5-6). The most common words to have little value. 11). Likewise Mary is told, “Behold, of reassurance given by God or Jesus you will conceive in your womb and are, “Do not be afraid for I am with you.” bear a son, and you shall name him JeAnd the most common response of the sus. He will be great and will be called person who has been reassured is, “Here Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the I am.” throne of David his father” (Luke 1:31-33). God’s choice of the person is consistently unexMary Magdalene is sent by Jesus, who tells her, “Stop pected. Usually the person called is an outsider or one holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Fadeemed to have little value: an old man (Abraham), a ther. But go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am going to person from an oppressed group raised in the home of my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’” the oppressor and struggling to find his roots (Moses), (John 20:17). Three times Jesus says to Peter, “‘Simon son a woman (Deborah), the youngest child (David), a perof John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you son believed to have a serious mental illness (Ezekiel), a know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep’” teenage peasant from a remote country village (Mary), a (John 21:16). simple fisherman (Peter), or a foreign woman (Ruth or The person is sent because the community is in the Samaritan woman). Each person called knows that need. It is in the community that the person becomes a she or he does not have the strength, the skills, or the leader or prophet or special presence, always the agent of ability to do what God is asking. God’s presence in the God’s presence, word, and action. The community also person’s life and the person’s faith-filled response are the remembers or imagines in written story how the invitacore elements in the relationship that is created by the tion came to the person, tells and re-tells that story, and invitation. Paul says it well, “But we hold this treasure in preserves it for communities that will follow. The story earthen vessels, that the surpassing power may be of God told and re-told becomes the public affirmation of the and not from us” (2 Cor. 4:7). God’s choice of the person community’s trust in this person’s relationship with God. is gift, not asked for, not earned. The repeated story legitimates the action that flows from that relationship. Communal: as the Father has sent me, Sometimes the community itself is called. In the Old even so I send you Testament, that community is the people of Israel. While that call is usually indirect, e.g., through Abraham or In the elements characterizing the call narrative, the Moses, there are moments when the call is direct. This commission is central. The person is being invited to a is most evident in the book of Isaiah, chapters 40 to 55, relationship but is also being sent to act. The relationship when the people are living in exile and appear to have no is the impetus and energy for the mission. The mission hope. We read in Isaiah 41:8-10, is always in the context of the community. Abram, the leader of a nomadic clan, will become the father of a But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, great nation, “Go forth from your land, your relatives, offspring of Abraham my friend—you whom I have taken and from your father’s house to a land that I will show Davis | Call Stories
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from the ends of the earth and summoned from its far-off places, to whom I have said, you are my servant; I chose you, I have not rejected you. Do not fear: I am with you; do not be anxious: I am your God.
In Isaiah 55:1,3 God says, “All you who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money, come, buy grain and eat.... Pay attention and come to me; listen, that you may have life. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, the steadfast loyalty promised to David.” In the New Testament, the community is called and sent. Paul writes the first letter to the Corinthians (1:2), “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to you who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be holy.” Again he writes to the Romans (10:14-15),
In every biblical call, there is an awareness of a larger reality than that of the human person or human community. Indeed the very first biblical call narrative is found in the story of creation.
But how can they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach? And how can people preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring [the] good news!”
The writer of the letter of Jude addresses the letter to “those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept safe for Jesus Christ” (Jude 1). The universality of the call in the New Testament is succinctly but powerfully expressed in the words of Peter at Pentecost, quoting the prophet Joel (2:28-29): “It will come to pass in the last days,” God says, “that I will pour out a portion of my spirit upon all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams. Indeed, upon my servants and my handmaids I will pour out a portion of my spirit in those days, and they shall prophesy” (Acts 2:17-18).
Ecological: covenant of God and Earth The understanding of ecology that we have today would not have been present in biblical times. However in every biblical call, there is an awareness of a larger reality than that of the human person or human community. 34 | HORIZON | Fall 2015
Indeed the very first biblical call narrative is found in the story of creation recounted in Genesis 1. God calls all creation into being with a word, “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth—and the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters—then God said: Let there be light, and there was light” (Gen. 1:1-3). Father Richard Rohr, O.F.M. reminds us, “Two thousand years ago was the human incarnation of God in Jesus, but before that there was the first and original incarnation through light, water, land, sun, moon, stars, plants, trees, fruit, birds, serpents, cattle, fish, and ‘every kind of wild beast’ according to our own creation story” (Gen. 1:3-25). In the subsequent call narratives, there is an appreciation of the interconnectedness of all things in creation. This interconnectedness is shown in the first covenant recorded in the Old Testament (Gen. 9:9-13): See, I am now establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you: the birds, the tame animals, and all the wild animals that were with you—all that came out of the ark. I will establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood; there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth. God said: This is the sign of the covenant that I am making between me and you and every living creature with you for all ages to come: I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
In almost every call narrative, this spiritual understanding of a larger reality is present. The whole of the Old Testament is centered on the promise of the land, a promise given first in the call to Abraham (Gen. 12) and reinforced in the call to Moses (Exod. 3). The call to Abraham to become the father of a great nation is described in terms of the earth, the sky, and the sea. First is a reference to the earth: “I will make your descendants like the dust of the earth; if anyone could count the dust of the earth, your descendants too might be counted” (Gen. 13:16). Next God refers to the sky: “He took him outside and said: Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can. Just so, he added, will your descendants be” (Gen. 15:5). Finally God refers to both sky and sea: “I will bless you and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore” (Gen. 22:17). The call to the people of Israel in exile is strongly connected to a return to the land, “I will pour out water upon the thirsty ground, streams upon the dry land; I Davis | Call Stories
Hagar’s call is unexpected, but God offers reassurance. Pictured here is Sarah leading Hagar to Abraham in a painting by Mattias Stom.
will pour out my spirit upon your offspring, my blessing upon your descendants” (Isa. 44:3). The larger reality of both natural and supernatural worlds figures prominently in other calls, too. Moses receives his call and mission from God in the glow of the burning bush; in the desert, Hagar calls God by name and later finds the well of water in that same desert. Isaiah’s call happens in the presence of the seraphim; one of the signs given Jeremiah to explain his call is the almond tree; the angel is God’s messenger to Mary. Simon Peter and the other disciples receive their mission while they are fishing and while they eat fish prepared by the Risen One; the sign of the call given the disciple Nathaniel by Jesus is linked to the fig tree; the Samaritan woman receives her call at a well; and the empty tomb and angels are the signs for the women as they are sent to bring the Good News of Jesus’ resurrection.
Implications for us today The writers of the Old Testament books consciously choose a standard format to tell the call stories of the prophets and leaders, thereby strengthening the theological messages underlying the concept of each invitation to relationship and mission, an invitation graciously given by God and accepted in the context of community. The New Testament writers adapt this approach as they also understand the calls to the apostles, disciples, saints, and communities to be God’s invitations to relationship and Davis | Call Stories
mission. This link with tradition, modified by the realities of each age, continues in our experience of call today. From the moment of our baptism, we Christians believe that each one is called and sent. All of us have our own call narratives, the stories of how we were invited into this life of holiness. Pope Francis has said from the beginning of his papacy that all Christians are on mission. He states this most poignantly in his apostolic letter Evangelli gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel): In virtue of their baptism, all the members of the People of God have become missionary disciples (cf. Matt. 28:19). All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization, and it would be insufficient to envisage a plan of evangelization to be carried out by professionals while the rest of the faithful would simply be passive recipients. The new evangelization calls for personal involvement on the part of each of the baptized. Every Christian is challenged, here and now, to be actively engaged in evangelization.... Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus: we no longer say that we are “disciples” and “missionaries,” but rather that we are always “missionary disciples.”
Within that universal call, there are other invitations, each one unique, special, and personal yet rooted in the life and energy of the community. The words of the PasFall 2015 | HORIZON | 35
toral Plan of the Montreal Congress on Vocations (2003) remind us that “every Christian vocation is indeed a ‘gift of God, given for God’s people,’ a call to holiness, discipleship and service, oriented to the building up of the Body of Christ in the world.” The Pastoral Plan highlights the Trinitarian dimension in noting that vocations to single life, to married life, to lay ministry, to ordained ministry, to consecrated life, and to Christian witness in a secular society “will flourish in a Church The calls to prophets, where each member can leaders and people of the identify and concretely Old Testament and to the live out the Father’s call saints and communities to life and holiness, the of the New Testament Son’s call to discipleship find resonance today in and communion, and vocations to religious life. the Spirit’s call to witness Each call to religious life and mission.” And the is personal, an invitation document accepts the premise of the Scriptures to relationship and to that God’s call, while permission. sonal, is always situated in community, “Though profoundly personal, a vocation is never a purely individual project. Always situated in the broader context of the Church’s mission in the world, Church vocations respond to concrete needs in a particular time and place.” In our biblical tradition, the phenomenon of religious life is not present. However the calls to the prophets, leaders, and people of the Old Testament and to the saints and communities of the New Testament find resonance today in vocations to religious life. Each call to religious life is personal, an invitation to relationship and to mission. The mission is lived through a more intensive response to some valuable aspect of human life exemplified in renunciation of family and home (consecrated celibacy), total personal economic dispossession and interdependence (evangelical poverty), and ministry on a full-time basis (prophetic obedience in mission). The response is a lifelong commitment, publicly professed before the community. This personal ministry is marked by uncertainty and complexity and therefore requires a prophetic, creative, and flexible approach. Each call to religious life is communal, responding in concern for all creation, human and other-than-human. Sister Sandra Schneiders, I.H.M. articulates well the organic evolution of religious life into “ministerial religious life” within the context of the Vatican II ecclesiology of 36 | HORIZON | Fall 2015
the church as the pilgrim people of God. She believes that ministry which is intrinsic to ministerial religious life is the expression of a prophetic vocation and role in the church. In a paper delivered at the Conference of Religious of Ireland in April 2014, she describes the sense of identity experienced by those who have accepted God’s invitation to religious life today, This identity is deeply rooted in a mature spirituality, nourished by personal and communal prayer, and expressed in personally and communally discerned corporate ministry.... It is a genuine relationship-based perseverance in a relationship and a mission even in the face of darkness and opposition.
And each call to religious life is ecological, sharing in the sacred community of life that is creation itself. In U.S. Catholic (November 1999), Sister Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J. describes the communion of holy ones: The greatest community of all is the world itself, which has spawned the human race and which sustains its life every moment. In a physical and biological sense, interrelationship is not an appendage to the natural order but its very lifeblood. Everything is connected to everything else, and it all flourishes or withers together. In a theological sense, the same divine creativity that fuels the vitality of all creation also lights the fire of the saint. The communion of holy people is intrinsically connected to the community of holy creation, and they stand or fall together.
The mission in response to the call to religious life today is rooted in the personal invitation to relationship, in the public profession and response in community, and in the awareness of our oneness within the sacred community of all creation. •••• From Genesis 1 to John 1 to the apostolic letter of Pope Francis, we rejoice in the wonder and the depth of God’s invitation to persons, communities, and all creation. In every age the call is an invitation to relationship and an invitation to mission. It is personal, communal, and ecological. The response will be nuanced by the realities of the specific place and time in which the invitation is received. But always it is the same God who calls, the same God who trusts that each one will be a presence of compassion, gentleness, and peace for the community and for Earth. The God who calls and sends on mission also gives the reassurance of the presence of the Spirit poured out on each one. n Davis | Call Stories
Feed your spirit Photo: “Solitary” by spodzone on Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Breaking through to God—”ground without ground”— is a path to detachment and true prayer.
Detachment: starting place for prayer Vocation ministers are asked to have supreme detachment: to not focus on results, to allow discerners freedom in decision-making. The late Meister Eckhart scholar Father John Orme Mills, O.P. explores this theme of detachment, which is a major facet of Eckhart’s spirituality.
L
ET’S LISTEN TO MEISTER ECKHART giving advice in the middle of the 1290s to the young Dominicans in the priory at Erfurt. This is what he’s telling them this time:
Brothers, people say: “O Lord, I wish that I stood as well with God and that I had as much devotion and peace with God as other people, and that I could be like them or could be as poor as they are.” Or they say: “It never works for me unless I am in this or that particular place and do this or that particular thing. I must go to somewhere remote or live in a hermitage or a monastery.” Start with yourself therefore and take leave of yourself. Truly, if you do not depart from yourself, then wherever you take refuge, you will find obstacle and unrest, wherever it may be. Those who seek peace in exter-
Mills | Detachment
By Father John Orme Mills, O.P. The late Father John Orme Mills, O.P. was a member of the Dominican Order in England. He edited the journal New Blackfriars and at one time served as assistant to the master of the order in Rome. This article is part of a talk he delivered to the Eckhart Society, and is reprinted with permission. Find the full talk at eckhartsociety.org.
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Eckhart was certainly not a hermit—he was, on the contrary, a member of the Order of Friars Preachers, a Dominican. He was a man whom we know was constantly on the go, a man who was continually having to travel (by foot, remember), preaching and lecturing, making visitations to convents, attending meetings, deFirst of all, people should renounce themselves, and fending himself against his critics, relating to all sorts of then they will have renounced all things. Lo and behold, people. But detachment was not, in his opinion, someyet once again Eckhart is saying seemingly dismissive thing attained by busyness—by filling one’s life with all things about devotional practices and sorts of activities. Quite the contrary. withdrawal from the world and selfHis language and his thought were abasement—the things which were riddled with paradox, and you could considered so important in monasteries As far as Meister Eckhart also say this about his life. and convents at that time and which, in is concerned, to be The one thing that makes sense of various disguises, have gone on being all his teaching on how we can enter truly prayerful is to be considered important in much of the into union with God is his understanddetached. Christian world. He’s saying to this group ing of what God is like. He says someof young men that these things “cannot where, “If God is God, he has it from be the source of peace.” his immovable detachment, and from But I’ve picked this passage because this detachment he has his purity, his simplicity and his in it we hear Eckhart saying that if we are in a confused immutability.” God is profoundly unlike any creature. state of mind, if we don’t feel we’re making any progress To sum up what Eckhart says about God in a number of towards sharing God’s life, the answer is not to go rushplaces: he is not a being; he is eternal and changeless; he ing off somewhere, or go climbing rocky mountains in is wholly One yet present in the deepest depths of every bare feet, or whatever. No, we must, as he says, “start created being. As he puts it himself: with ourselves.” And what does this mean? He goes on to say we must “take leave of ourselves,” we must “depart God is infinite in his simplicity and simple in his infrom ourselves.” And what does that mean? finity. Therefore he is everywhere and is everywhere The key word in Eckhart’s account of how we human complete. He is everywhere on account of his infinbeings can enter into union with God, can share God’s ity, and is everywhere complete on account of his life, is the word in Middle High German abegescheidensimplicity. Only God flows into all things, their very heit, translated into modern English as detachment. As essences. Nothing else flows into something else. God far as Eckhart is concerned, detachment is the supreme is in the innermost part of each and every thing, only virtue, the virtue which in fact comprehends all the other in its innermost part, and he alone is one. virtues—even faith and love and humility. And, in answer to the question, “What does God This sounds very odd to English speakers of 2000 love?” Eckhart replies: “God loves nothing but Himself AD. Detachment is a virtue which we think judges and what is like Himself, in so far as He finds it in me should have and inspectors should have, and possibly the and me in Him.” It is for this reason that we are to seek people who assess your suitability for a job or a mortto become detached: for, in becoming detached, we begage, but we’re inclined to think of it as a cold virtue come most like Him, and, in Eckhart’s words, “God is which many of the most lovable people we know don’t bound to give Himself to a detached heart.” Note that he possess. But when Eckhart is talking of detachment he says bound. I leave you with his words from another ocis talking about something very different. As far as he’s casion: concerned, to be truly prayerful is to be detached. In one of his sermons he says, “All our perfection and all our True detachment is nothing other than this: the spirit blessedness depends upon our breaking through, passing stands as immovable in all the assaults of joy or sorbeyond all createdness, all temporality and all being, and row, honor, disgrace or shame, as a mountain of lead entering into the ground that is without ground.” And stands immovable against a small wind. This immovthat “breaking through” is what he means by “detachable detachment brings about in man the greatest ment.” similarity with God. n nal things, whether in places or devotional practices, people or works, in withdrawal from the world and self-abasement: however great these things may be or whatever their character, they are still nothing at all and cannot be the source of peace.
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Mills | Detachment
Book notes
Sexuality on campus: can we talk?
S
EXUALITY, SPIRITUALITY, romance and religion are words not often heard in the same sentence—let alone the same title— but these topics are exactly what Donna Freitas explores in an update of her 2010 book, Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance and Religion on America’s College Campuses (Oxford University Press, 2015). The book is based on Freitas’ interviews and extensive surveys with more than 2,500 undergraduates at seven colleges and universities across the United States. More specifically, the students reflected on how their sexual and romantic experiences, their spirituality, and their religious beliefs and practices influence one another—if at all. Freitas shares many anecdotes from her interviews, which gives the reader the opportunity to hear almost directly from the students. The introduction is extensive in telling anecdotes and setting the stage for how students describe their feelings about their sexual experiences in college. The book is then divided into five sections, with the first exploring the varieties of students’ religious experiences. The seven colleges were labeled as Evangelical, Catholic, Private-Secular, and Public; and the majority of students across the board consider themselves both spiritual and religious. Most students tended to define spirituality as one’s personal relationship with God and religion as having to do with rules and rituals. Religious rules did not carry over into students’ lived experience. Freitas writes, “Even among the Catholics, however, students had little to say about how their faith affected their lives—it simply didn’t. Catholicism seems to play almost no role in their studies or their relationships.” Freitas makes a distinction between the Evangelical schools and all the rest, which she calls “the spiritual colleges.” For the remainder of the book the schools are discussed as either “Evangelical” or “spiritual,” and her research revealed that while most students voice an interest in spirituality, faith, and religion, they rarely find productive ways to explore and express this realm, except on the Evangelical campuses. Section 2 highlighted the disconnect between romance and sex, citing the experience that “romance isn’t sexy and sex isn’t romantic.” It seems Daigle | Sexuality
By Sister Renée Daigle, M.S.C. Sister Renée Daigle, M.S.C. is the director of vocation ministry for the Marianites of Holy Cross and a campus minister at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. She has been involved with vocation ministry since 1996 and served on the board of the National Religious Vocation Conference from 2001 to 2007.
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students at spiritual colleges are having lots of sex, but apparently it’s not very romantic or very loving. The hookup culture seems to be alive and well, with “hooking up” defined loosely as people who have just met doing anything from kissing to having intercourse. Freitas discusses her findings on “the truth about sex on campus” in Section 3 and shares what I consider some disturbing truths about college students today. Hooking up and theme parties are common among the students, but dating usually happens only after couples have been Open, honest, intelligent, sexually intimate for quite holy conversations about some time. Most stusexuality and spirituality— dents did not seem happy beyond “what not to about hooking up, and do”— are sorely needed many had negative feelby our college students. ings afterward, yet they see participating in the hookup culture as a way to achieve long term romances, rather than getting to know each other through more traditional dating. Most of them felt that there was a casual attitude toward sex on campus and that sex was just something that is a normal part of college life. One table in this section shows that 74 percent of students surveyed from spiritual colleges have been sexually active.
Faith and sex in separate spheres Section 4 focuses on how religion and spirituality affect students’ sexual and romantic experiences, if at all. Using stories from her interviews Freitas illustrates the fact that most of the students (on spiritual campuses) split sex and religion into two entirely separate spheres, with their religious beliefs having nothing to do with their sexual beliefs or practices. “Their ideas about sex, sexual freedom and sexual responsibility are largely mediated by popular culture,” she writes. There is a strong disconnect—most students say they are religious or spiritual in some way, yet religion and spirituality have almost no influence on their sexual behavior. In the final section the author states her conclusions and notes some practical implications. This book conveyed throughout that while students are sexually active, their sexuality is far from integrated. I share Freitas’ opinion that “some organized effort to shape student attitudes about romance and sex, religion and spirituality, is necessary if students are to be liberated from navigating the shortcomings and pitfalls of hookup culture alone, 40 | HORIZON | Fall 2015
and empowered to nurture their seeds of spiritual and religious desire in community.” Most students are dissatisfied with the current sexual culture on their campuses, and spirituality is important to them, but they see these areas as very private, so do not discuss them openly with anyone ... not even with each other! The fact that they are dissatisfied is a sign of hope, though, and Freitas believes the next step is to help students become comfortable discussing these areas of their lives openly and honestly within appropriate settings. The hookup culture and its negative effects are discussed at length, and Freitas concludes by suggesting practical questions to ask of universities, and by suggesting ways that faculty, administrators, campus ministers, and student affairs staffs can respond to this culture.
Can vocation directors help? So what does this book say to vocation directors? First it is important for vocation ministers to be aware of the facts presented in this book, as this is the culture of today. The realities are hard to take in; yet they also speak of the great need students have to integrate their experiences, especially those touching on sexuality and spirituality. Campus ministers and university personnel have a direct responsibility to do something, and vocation ministers may be willing, available, and qualified collaborators in this area. Sexual integration is a significant part of both discernment and formation processes, and if religious congregations are seeking to welcome recent college graduates, it behooves them to help young people with that integration wherever they can. Sexuality may be a bit unnerving for vocation directors to talk about, but practical, rather than idyllic, sharing may open doors for students to explore their own deep thoughts. For my part, as both a campus minister and a vocation director, after reading this book I wanted to act. A student leader and I are planning an overnight retreat at my college, which will take place shortly after this edition of HORIZON is published. We hope to have a conversation about the two extremes: the hookup culture and all it involves and the “purity” extreme on the other end. Open, honest, intelligent, holy conversations about sexuality and spirituality—beyond “what not to do”— are sorely needed by our college students. Those of us who can be with students in appropriate, responsible ways would serve them tremendously by beginning these conversations ... and surely we will be greatly blessed in the process! n Daigle | Sexuality
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For Pastors/CateChists/Youth Ministers/Bulletin editors • Take Five for Faith: Daily reflections available in advance for bulletin insertion, faith sharing, class discussion, and retreats • Questions Catholics Ask: Thoughtful responses to common questions on church teachings and Catholic practice • Sign and Sacrament: Material for sacramental preparation
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