In an All Ministry Church

It is impossible to speak on the laity apart from an ecclesial point of view. It is the Church - and the local Church - which is the sole environment in which the laity can act, in order not to create an association of little groups which would become insignificant precisely because of their exclusivity. When dealing with the laity we must be attentive not to recreate that feeling of being separate which tends to render in vain the work of the religious who, by definition, are in the Church with universal breath.

The objective of "communion" is the very heart of the ministry. It is the Church which is the valid protagonist of the mission. The mission cannot be usurped, it cannot be fragmented.

In addition, today the mission must characterize itself by a proposal of spirituality. Forming the laity means communicating to them the awareness that the Christian fact "informs" human life in all its manifestations; Christ remaining always the "form" to be re-expressed, both as He is and as commitment.

At the ecclesial convention in Palermo the Italian Church rightly specified the primary objectives of ministry action precisely in this perspective: formation for communion with a view to the mission with spirituality as its objective. It is spirituality, therefore, which is both communal and missionary.

Spirituality, understood as the sense and meaning of living Jesus Christ "in the situation", is the crises point of today's Church. It is a Church which is too "rational" and too "organizational". At the same time, clear signals of recovery are coming from spirituality (not only in the movements and not only in the religious life).

In the new Constitutions our spirituality has had a significant theological re-expression. The pastoral consequences of this rethinking are still to be indicated. When we talk about being pastoral here one must understand that we mean that kind of re-guiding people to the concrete collective life which permits the Christian experience to make itself visible and credible.

Our spirituality contains all the postulates for it to be meaningful in a totally missionary way. Indeed, we have a proposal which is simple and, at the same time, global. We must present this to the Christian community in order to bring about a renewal which appears possible to propose to the world, so that it may believe:

- the proposal of God as love-mercy;

- solidarity with "distant" sinners (this is more than ecumenism) in order not to create barriers between those who are inside and those who are outside;

- reconciliation, therefore, understood not only as peaceful co-habitation intolerance, but as the sharing of the same hope (the implicit vision of a less juridical or legalistic relationship with God - an idea which is less ethically minded than sin, in the light of a mercy which is creative and not only "obliterative");

- the "hope" principle, founded on the primacy of grace and livable in the abandonment understood as fides-fiducialis;

- the priestliness of the laity, not reduced to concerning the ministry but made real in solidarity as the imitation of Christ in the genuine offering of their life;

- the practice and maximization of charity, of "patience" (which is equal to the bearing of pain for its redemptive meaning) and of obedience (or acceptance, both committed and committing, of life's situations, with their providential limits and resources).

The Soul of the Dehonian Apostolate

In these assumptions lies the soul of the Dehonian apostolate. They indicate the outlines of a testimony which is credible, "modern", and capable of being transmitted throughout all of our work: preaching and service. In any case, either these assumptions exist or the meaning of our Institute is made useless.

These are assumptions to be shared in communion with the laity (if we do not wish to live our charismatic personality only as something which exists in the intimacy of the Institute). For it is precisely the laity who will teach us, in return, how to maximize, in a totally missionary way, (with a view to the world) that which has been given to us, but which is not only for us.

This way of living our ministry, which asks S.C.J. religious to make themselves formation directors in the Church and to be in harmony with other charisms, may be realized in many forms which should not be opposed:

- with the formation of groups which are almost like a community or are in part a community (where the associative form is reconsidered but not put to one side) - this can only be done provided that these groups explicitly are careful about the manner in which they are inserted in the Church, placing themselves somewhat like leaven;

- with our collaboration in other people's initiatives, provided they are and because they are meaningful;

- with a general witness which is not yet specific, ready however - on demand - to present reasons for our motivations.

Because of the professional competence of their service, our collaboration with the laity is also a serious matter when they are co-responsible with us in our works. One should not neglect the indirect contribution which working together makes to our learning how to be with the laity.

All the organizational forms - both strictly ministerial (parishes, catechesis, catholic schools, etc.) and indirectly related to the apostolate (business initiatives for the managerial support of our service) - must be subject to and conditioned by the primacy of our proposal of life. And all the inducements for proselytizing which push us to "get a big number" of people around us so that we can count them, must be corrected so that they do not compromise the authenticity of our witness. Proselytizing is the death of mission.

It remains important for us, as S.C.J., to actively study this formative-pastoral transmissibility of our great themes. Until our spirituality becomes meaningful for the Church with a view to its action in the world, it will remain a theological complex, but not an experience of Church.

Some Footpaths for Sharing our Charism

When dealing with the theme of sharing our spirituality and our charism with the laity we must include a series of things which, although they are closely linked to each other, are not of the same nature. They could be gathered around three poles: religious life, Christian laicity, the charism of the Founder.

1. - Certainly one must continue to study in depth the charism of Fr. Dehon. This touches on the theme of being ourselves, and of doing so in a meaningful way today. And it is also necessary that we clarify in which sense and under what conditions our charism would be found attractive or useful for the laity.

During these last years some Provinces have made great progress on the theme of spirituality. Certainly there is still much to be done, but one must not start from this point because this is not the real problem.

2. - The theme of the laity needs to be gone into deeply, above all regarding the aspects that contribute to our being insured that the laity will remain themselves, and will do so against every risk of instrumentalization and clericalization, and of all those devotional derivatives which are sought after by many lay persons (and particularly "lay women"). Though sought after they respect neither the lay condition nor a style of life which is animated in a truly charismatic way. Though sought after they do not contribute to the growth of a laity capable of expressing a meaningful presence in today's secularized world.

3. - A point too often ignored, yet the source of many misunderstandings, is the following: What do we mean when we say that we are sharing a spirituality and a charism?

- Behind the word spirituality one finds thematic contents which are felt to be inspiring, but these contents stay the way they are only "in so far as they are lived".

There are, therefore, two aspects:

a) the spirituality or the spiritualities which have characterized, and still characterize, the life of the Church (and which are an objective patrimony, well known to all);

b) the "life in the Spirit", that is, the spiritual life of those who, guided by the Holy Spirit, live a specific spirituality and are characterized by it.

- The reality of our charism refers to this latter aspect: it is not simply an objective fact or some doctrine (that would be living according to the "letter of the law": the very thing which has been surmounted by the charism); the charism is rather like "a way of living": it is the reality of the spiritual life which the Holy Spirit awakens and nurtures in the children of God, in our case it would be in we Dehonians.

If we want to share our spirituality or charism with the laity, what we must share with them is our way of "living" those values which animate us and also the various ways in which we commit ourselves to live that which we want to share.

And it is also important to remember that not only is there spirituality behind the word "charism", there is also mission; and this must be shared too.

4. - Evidently the sharing of spirituality, understood in this way, makes us take a second look at our communities: at their way of living and of operating, and especially at the how they relate to external reality, both ecclesial and social.

There are two main things that are requested of our communities:

a) to be present within the Christian community, and among all the people, as "open communities", willing to share their own journey of faith and Christian life with those who come to them;

b) to make room for the laity within the apostolic services to which the Institute is dedicated, that is, within the mission: in the works and in the various types of apostolic presence which characterize us.

5. - There is also a third, fundamental thing which the mission must do: contribute to the formation of an adult laity in the faith, one which is capable of entering with full rights into all things merited by them because of their baptism and of their being Church.

The following is what was placed at the beginning of the document on the laity which was approved by the last General Congregation of the Jesuits: The Church of the third millennium will be "the Church of the laity"; Since we consider this a grace we intend to collaborate with it:

- by supporting the laity in their formation;

- by re-forming ourselves in turn, in a new way and with them;

- by discovering a new kind of meeting and collaboration, all to be invented but which cannot be renounced.

The context in which this collaboration is set is that of formation.

In order to be effective the formation of the laity, in the environment of faith and Christian life, is the correct and first task which must be performed by the religious, precisely because they are the religious. And it is within this situation that our meeting with the laity, including those established on a spiritual level, can mature.

When we speak of having a relationship with the laity we always run the risk of having a kind of short circuit: we think either immediately or only of the aggregation of the laity around our spirituality, and possibly of a group of people in voluntary service which supports our works.

We must, instead, take a wider, more ecclesial view of the events. It is necessary that the communities feel themselves involved.

That does not mean that individual religious cannot organize people around the spirituality of the Institute, or for some other, specific purpose;

- what must be avoided is that everything is reduced to this;

- or worse, that this becomes the official line of the institute.

The result obtained would be exactly what has happened: the lack of interest, not to mention opposition, of the very communities which should, instead, be the fulcrum around which the entire adventure is centered.

6. - If we accept the idea of opening our communities to a true sharing of life, and hopefully of apostolate, with the laity, the most diverse things can happen:

- some people will receive and go away, improved one hopes (which is, after all, the most important thing);

- some people will receive and feel involved, that is, they will find their own identity in the lifestyle and service of the community and ask to be able to participate.

When people feel involved the sharing of charism becomes more explicit and can give birth to a wide variety of results. However, we must leave these to the fantasy of the Spirit, without presuming to enclose everything within our schemes and our programs, codifying things before we have understood how the Lord wants them to evolve.

7. - By opening our communities we also allow that another very important event can occur:

- the laity that we meet, and that we assist with formation, will be able to remain themselves. They will feel that they are being sent back home to their own context of life, without there being any risk of that ever-threatening chance of their being clericalized.

We cannot forget that there are:

- many lay people who are more clerical than the priests and who wish to remain so;

- lay men and women who are merely seeking a crutch or a refuge in the Institute;

- lay men and women who are running away from meeting the hard and uncomfortable tangibility of secular reality.

There are, however, also lay men and women who nourish themselves on a spirituality which is simply devotional, and this is what they seek in the Institutes.

Our meeting with the laity must contribute to forming a laity which is itself, adult in faith and with an intelligent perception of history. They must also be capable mediators of the Gospel in the secular city, in politics and economy, in work, in the professions, etc.

8. - In conclusion: It seems that as far as we are concerned what we find here is a very important and urgent argument, also because it has never been dealt with in depth and shared.

- We must clarify what sharing spirituality and charism with the laity means and what it involves "for a religious institute".

- It is necessary that we try to find a clarification of this discussion, in the hope of reaching an agreement which lays the premises for a journey which looks ahead (not backwards).

- We much reach an agreement which is capable of arousing the interest and the involvement of our brethren and "of the communities", because this is exactly what is lacking.

9. - Further deepening our studies of the thematic content of our charism is important, but it is not enough. These studies could produce a few good ideas for those individuals who know the thematic content and wish to assimilate it, but it would not change anything of the quality of the evangelical and Dehonian life of our communities.

This is a method used during "the 50s", when "associationism" was prevalent. Today we must go farther than that.

The question of the new relationship between the religious life and the laity has a substantial effect on the renewal

and re-acculturation of the religious life.

the growth of the laity (cf. The Jesuits "The Church of the Laity") calls into question the way of being a priest (that is, the ministry) and the way of being a religious who lives the apostolic life:

- the priests must render to the laity what belongs to the laity;

- and must equally be a religious, rethinking their position and identity.

If we think about our relationship with the laity without considering this, we are ignoring that which is most important and the subject has no future.