A Global Mission Strategy

It is my hope that the previous presentation gave you some picture of the factors that need to be taken into consideration as you plan the next six years of the life and work of your Congregation together. The forces of globalization, marked by homogenization and localization operating at the same time, the continuing cry of the poor, and the interaction of cultures will all be of great importance.

In this second presentation, I would like to focus some of those factors upon two areas. The first has to do with what does it mean to be an international religious Congregation under the circumstances that are now emerging. This looks especially at how we are to negotiate the boundary between the global and the local in the many places we serve. It also considers some very concrete issues that will need to be addressed.

The second area has to do with the Church's sense of its own mission. What does it mean to bring and to live out the Good News of Jesus Christ in such a world? What concrete forms will mission have to take in this world? And what resources will be needed to carry out mission under those circumstances?

Both of these areas are being looked at with the realization that your Congregation does not define itself first and foremost by what you do, but by the Dehonian charism. That charism, leading to an ever deepening unity in love in the Heart of Jesus, informs whatever apostolate you may undertake. It has led your Congregation into a wide variety of undertakings for the sake of the Church and the furthering of God's Reign. My task here is to try to outline some of the issues and challenges that your charism will be called upon to address.

CHALLENGES TO INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS CONGREGATIONS

Yours is an international religious congregation, spanning many countries on five continents. Through the General Direction and various meetings, you are already long used to functioning as an international body. You have, on a more regional level, international centers for formation and animation. What are the changed circumstances in the larger world doing to our understanding of being international?

As has been already noted, the global and the local now interact with each other in greater intensity than ever before. This is due to communications possibilities that allow for near instantaneous contact , and travel times that foreshorten space. It also has come about through the greater permeability of boundaries of all kinds. And the migrations of peoples, of both voluntary and involuntary nature, have created new pluralisms in cities nearly everywhere.

What impact does all of this have on an international religious congregation such as your own? I would like to highlight four points where this might be addressed.

Allocation of Resources

One of the striking things about the profile of most religious congregations at this point in time is the location of their resources. Provinces in the wealthier parts of the world, such as Western Europe and Norther America, find themselves in numerical decline. Once the source of countless vocations, they now yield few if any new members. There was a time when the Netherlands and Ireland provided a substantial percentage of all missionaries in the world. But that is no longer the case and, it should be added, is not likely to become centers of many vocations again in the near future.

The origins of vocations rest finally with God. It is ultimately God who calls; it is something neither the Church nor ourselves are able to do alone. Yet one can discern some social patterns that contribute to the number of vocations that any country is likely to experience. I will focus here especially on the vocations of men; there are sometimes different dynamics involved in vocations of women to religious life.

Vocations generally are more frequent in countries with high birth rates, that is where families are larger. As has already been noted in the last presentation, birth rates tend to fall as people move up the economic ladder. This is for two reasons. The need to assure sufficient children to care for elderly parents is lessened as infant mortality rates drop. Secondly, as people move up social classes, the expectations they have for their children become more expensive, so that they concentrate their resources on fewer children. In large families, parents are more likely to encourage one or more of their children to enter religious life. If they have only one or two children, they will be less inclined.

Second, vocations flourish in countries where entering religious life is perceived to bring a higher status in society than the candidate now experiences. This is not universally true, but in many places candidates find themselves with more possibilities for education than would have been the case outside religious life.

Third, vocations flourish in repressive situations where the Church is seen as the main source of protest and resistance against the authoritarian regime. Those numbers drop dramatically when those regimes come to an end. The decline of number of vocations in countries like Chile and Poland after the end of the authoritarian regimes there is an example of this.

All of this is not said to reduce vocations to social and economic factors. It is only to point out that one cannot disregard factors in the environment that may encourage or discourage vocations.

For many Congregations, the recent growth in vocations has come in the poorer countries of the world. For example, today twenty percent of all the Verbiti (Society of the Divine Word), a congregation of German origin, comes from Indonesia. Since the middle 1970's, a third of all Jesuit novices have come from India. In my own Congregation, we have more seminarians in Tanzania and in India than in the all the other provinces and regions combined. What this means is that, within two decades General Chapters are going to start looking very different.

Along side the shift in human resources that is now so much in evidence is an awareness that the financial resources that support a Congregation still come largely from the same places as before: the wealthy countries who once provided also the human resources of vocations. How are these best to be brought together? In Congregations that have a central financing policy, this can be facilitated by the General Direction. But in Congregations that get central funds by assessing on a head-count, how is this to be done? This is an issue that many Congregations are beginning to face. How do you bring human and financial resources together effectively?

The issues are not only financial, however. Most Congregations have accustomed ways of doing things: how meetings are held, how decisions are made, how policies are developed and drawn up. These often reflect the countries of origin of the Congregation. What happens to these patterns as the members from newer provinces become the majority? Will these patterns be able to be altered by very different ways of interacting, conducting business, and making decisions? Will General Chapters be run in the same way in the future? These too are questions that will need to be addressed.

The shifts that are taking place in the source of voations and the implications of this for the long-term future of a Congregation are prime considerations for General Chapters, and deserve their attention.

Formation and Leadership

What will formation and leadership look like under the changing conditions of the world? Much has already been made of the relation of the global to the local, and that as the locus for the Church's mission in the future. What does that mean for the formation of candidates?

It seems to me that formation will require a deeper immersion in both the global and the local. On the side of the global, this will entail learning a language that will allow one communicate outside one's own immediate environment. In your Congregation, it would mean learning languages that would allow members to interact and participate in international meetings. Many of your candidates are no doubt already capable of that, but language learning needs to become an essential part of formation programs, especially candidates who come from large countries where there is no need to learn an additional language in order to communicate. Foreign missionaries are used to doing this, as are people who come from small language areas. But this becomes a need for all.

Language is not the only factor. An ability to be aware of and to situate my home culture as a culture, and not as the center of the universe, is another important element. This will facilitate international and intercultural communication. The cultural skills needed to cross cultural boundaries and situate one's self and others in very different contexts will have to be part of formation programs in a more intentional way. This is the case not only for candidates that will be foreign missionaries, but especially also for those who stay in their home countries.

There is also a need to help with a deeper immersion in the local. This concerns especially an ability to become aware how people construct their identities and meet social problems with the resources of their culture. As was seen in the first presentation, immigrants and refugees carry their culture with them, but that culture is constantly being negotiated against the power of the majority or dominant culture.

Much of cultural learning happens through the experience of difference and the ability to surrender autonomy so as to be able to learn something truly new. Difference is often experienced through travel, where we are confronted with genuine difference. One has to stay in places that are different long enough to lose one's power to control what is happening.

If a decision is reached that not all candidates can have extensive experiences of this nature, then provision should be made for a substantial number from each province and region to receive this kind of formation. Out of this cadre leadership for the future might hope to be found.

Which brings us to the consideration of leadership itself. What kind of leadership does one want for such a world, and where does one find it? From what has been said thus far, it is clear that leaders need to be able to see how the global and the local are interacting together. There is one area of leadership, however, that deserves a moment of attention here. It has to do with the demographic picture of men's religious Congregations.

Because of the decline in number of candidates entering religious life beginning around 1970, and the number of those who left religious life at the same time, there is a “hollow" in the population line of a congregation of those members between 45 and 55 years of age. That is to say, they are not as numerous as they would have been in the past. This is an important issue, because ordinarily this is where some of the greatest amount of activity should be present. It is also the age group from which leadership is drawn. Because there are so fewer people in this age group, Congregations are tempted to go one of two directions.

The first direction is to stay with the age group 55 and older as the likely source for leadership. There one finds experienced and proven people to lead the Congregation. This is true. This group, at the same time, may not be able to provide new ideas, or be able to look at familiar situations in a fresh way.

The second direction is to go with the age group younger than 45. They may well bring fresh ideas and perspectives to the challenges which the Congregation faces. They may also be inexperienced in some of the issues with which leadership always has to deal, and may find themselves becoming exhausted prematurely.

Age in itself does not determine outlook or capacity. And there is something else that might be kept in mind. Demographers have noted that “Birthdate is destiny." By that they mean that what was happening in the larger world when you came of age is likely to become the lens through which you see and judge events thereafter. Thus, if you came of age during the Second World War, or the 1960s, or during a dictatorship, these events may continue to guide your interpretation of events.

If the world in which we now live is fundamentally different from the one in which we came of age, our lens may distort our view more than clarify it. Some people are able to change their lenses (cross-cultural experiences often do that), but many are never able to do so. The conflicts we hear among generations often reflect the differences of lenses. Thus it is not infrequent in North America and Europe to hear middle-aged priests complaining about the “conservatism" of the youngest group of priests, because that younger group adapts a different view on certain issues. Middle-aged priests, whose lens was the experience of reform and experimentation after Vatican II, may not appreciate the youngest group whose lens was a world of too many possibilities without clear implications, and so see permanency in places that middle-aged priests do not.

If we think about the lenses through which we look at the future, we might capture something of those defining moments. That can be important in the selection of leadership as well.

Modelling a Way of Living

The third point regarding being international under these new circumstances of globalization has to do with modelling a new way of living. Religious Congregations have long histories of being transnational organizations. One of the gifts we bring to this new situation is the possibility of showing how people from very different backgrounds can come to live together. It is not as though we have always been successful in this regard. But we do have experience. If we look at the new initiatives formed in your own Congregation where SCJs from different provinces have come to work together, we have one possible set of models. In a world that is experiencing the pluralism of cultural difference in so many different ways in so many different places, insights into how very different people and communities might live and work together is something that is now badly needed.

As had been said earlier, such models go beyond a center-periphery approach, where all refer to the same center, wherever they themselves might be. And it goes beyond simply hearkening back to a province from another place that may have formed my province. It means beginning to network into unfamiliar areas. I have seen instances where provinces on the same continent will be able to relate better to their mother provinces in Europe than to one another. It is those kinds of patterns that need to be overcome and recreated.

A Vision of the International

What has been thus far about being international under current circumstances regarding resources, formation and leadership, and living together in a way to model community under these new circumstances. This kind of approach is good for laying out the issues, but it is insufficient when it comes to finding the spiritual resources and commitments to live out these possibilities. It becomes important, then, to provide a vision that can hold all this together.

Different possibilities are being proposed. I have suggested recently that the concept of “catholicity"might be expanded to provide such a vision in the ecumenical context. As part of the Dehonian family, however, it seems to me that you have a rich resource in the thought and spirituality of Fr. Dehon to create such a vision for yourselves. The very symbol of the Heart of Jesus is one of union and communion. “Sint unum," a phrase echoed so often in your General Directory and Constitutions, offers such a vision. The unity that we seek in all of this is always a communion; that is, we are not dissolved into a single entity. The use of the subjunctive in the phrase just mentioned, “May they be one," captures the incomplete character of our action to this point. There is still much to be done that we might become one.

The Heart of Jesus also captures the place of pain and suffering that arises from difference and the conflict that it engenders. But it holds out the promise of love and reparation as well. As you deal with the issues that you must face in the next six years, it would be my hope that you are able to draw upon this rich tradition to fashion a vision that embraces the international as it is now emerging.

THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH IN AN AGE OF GLOBALIZATION

This brings us to the second part of this presentation, namely, how to understand the mission of the Church as we end the century and the millennium. As you prepare your own strategy for global mission, it will no doubt be helpful to draw together what has been said about the times in which we live and what that means for the mission of the Church.

In order to show how some of this might be drawn together, it may be worthwhile to look back over the twentieth century to see how the Church's understanding of its mission cohered with an understanding of the world, and what the world needed. One can see three somewhat distinctive phases, and three concomitant understandings of mission. While these phases are distinct, they are not rigidly separated. Moreover, the style of doing mission associated with one phase does not cease when a new phase is entered. It will continue, but will not have the same prominence as was previously the case.

Mission, as you will notice, refers here to the outrech of the Church, the way by which the Church chooses to impart the Good News of Jesus Christ. It implies an analysis of what the world is lacking, and an offer from the riches of what the Church has received from God.

Phases of Mission in the Twentieth Century

The first phase was a continuation of the understanding of mission from the nineteenth century. It was already vigorously present at the beginning of the century and continued roughly until the beginning of the Second Vatican Council. It saw mission primarily as the expansion of the Church and the gathering of lost souls into the Church through baptism. In the language of the time, the tasks of mission were the plantatio ecclesiae and the conversio animarum. Alongside that was a “civilizing" or “humanizing" mission to the peoples, marked especially by the introduction of Western health and educational institutions. Western medicine would overcome disease and Western education would overcome ignorance to allow these evangelized peoples to participate in the wider world.

Needless to say, such a model of mission, especially in its civilizing side, was closely allied to the colonial outreach of Europe and North America. It is not surprising that, as colonialism itself started to wane after the Second World War, that this understanding of mission also came under critical scrutiny.

As the former colonies gained independence and missionaries were sometimes restricted or even expelled in the process, the question began to be raised whether missionary activity was even appropriate at all.

Consequently, some countries called for a moratorium on the sending of any further missionaries.

It was during the 1960s that a new phase of mission began to be born. This second phase drew its strength from a number of sources. One source was the identification that missionaries increasingly had with the people to whom they had been sent. In countries where Christians were likely to remain minorities, they moved to models of dialogue with their counterparts rather than relying on outright conversion. In Latin America missionaries were participating in a small Christian communities and reflecting on what was to become known as liberation theology. And in the 1960s, the rebuilding of the European economies brought visions of sharing the new wealth with the newly formed nation-states in Africa and with the countries of Latin America. There was the hope that there could be “development" of the poor countries, a development that would rather quickly put them on a par with the “developed" countries. There was a widespread optimism that change was coming, and that change would create a better, more just society.

By 1980, the questioning of whether mission should be engaged in at all was largely past. That was evident at the 1981 SEDOS Seminar in Rome where mission was seen to have four dimensions: proclamation, dialogue, inculturation, and liberation. Proclamation was a continuation of the earlier phase of mission, and was to be done in conjunction with dialogue, inculturation, and liberation. The other three were new, and reflected the new situation. These four activities -- proclamation, dialogue, inculturation, and liberation -- were clearly established as the hallmark of the second phase of mission.

If expansion and bringing in were characteristics of the first phase of mission, perhaps the word “solidarity" best characterizes this second phase of mission. Mission is understood less as going out to unreached peoples as it is an intense identification with them. One tries to identify with their view of God and the world in dialogue. In inculturation, one tries to see that the Word of God comes to dwell completely and fully in their hearts and lives. The word inserción, frequently used in Latin America, captures something of this intimacy and intensity. Liberation is concrete engagement and struggle to bring about a transformation of a situation of suffering and oppression into something more closely resembling the Reign of God. Solidarity tries to express the aim and direction of mission during this period. The term, drawn originally from nineteenth century trade union discourse, is now firmly rooted in Catholic social teaching, thanks to the writings of Pope John Paul II.

Note that this most immediate phase interacts directly with its context as well. It began with the optimism of the 1960s about the possibility of change. The language of solidarity developed in Poland in the 1970s overflowed into the rest of the world in the 1980s. Throughout this period, from the 1960s to the end of the 1980s there was for many a sense that things could be fundamentally changed and improved.

The events from 1989 into the early 1990s -- from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the end of apartheid in South Africa, the return of Latin American countries to democracies, and the spread of neoliberal capitalism -- suggest that such seismic shifts in the world will have to spell some changes again in how we understand mission. And, true to time, the four forms of mission from the second phase all seemed to have been called into question in one way or another. In Redemptoris Missio John Paul II felt called upon to defend the centrality of proclamation to mission. Many observers of interreligious dialogue and of ecumenical discussion wondered aloud whether dialogue had come to an impasse. Inculturation was held up as a value in theory but not allowed to happen in practice. Many pondered too what direction liberation theology should take under the new circumstances.

All of this questioning suggests that the ground is shifting under our feet. I would like to risk a suggestion of what might be considered as giving shape to a third phase of mission.

This third phase would take into account the world as we are now experiencing it, in its powerful homogenizing forces, its assertive particularity, and its dizzying plurality. It is a sense of mission in which diversity is honored, yet unity sought. It is one that is able to take into account the speed with which things happen yet create space for the slower rhythms by which we as humans run. It is one that stands by the poor and seeks ways for their empowerment when those means seem farther away than ever.

I would suggest that an overarching theme for this third phase is reconciliation in its biblical sense. Reconciliation is a gift from God; it is not something we achieve ourselves. It acknowledges the truth of suffering and oppression; it does not gloss over them to achieve some hasty peace. Reconciliation happens when the conditions of truth and justice occur. Reconciliation is about communication where no communication seemed possible. And reconciliation means coming to a new, as yet unimagined place rather than returning to the status quo ante.

Reconciliation is certainly a theme which the Dehonian family can embrace, close as it is a spirituality of the Heart of Jesus. Reconciliation, it seems to me, is the overarching theme under which a global sense of mission might be developed. Let me mention in connection with it two such elements that could become part of it.

New Forms of Mission for a New Phase

The first is new forms of solidarity. Solidarity is not a virtue only to be practiced in conjunction with the second phase of mission. Yet there are different forms that solidarity can take. The solidarity of the missionary in the second phase often meant personal identification with the victims: sharing their lives, sharing their sufferings. Such a form of solidarity is nearly always in place.

But there are other types that might well be added. What is emerging in interreligious dialogue, for example, is a move beyond a dialogue of ideas and a dialogue of life, to dialogue that leads people to work together to change society. We have already seen that inculturation takes on new forms under globalization, where culture becomes a key source of identity in an otherwise threatening world. Inculturation becomes an act of resistance. It can also become an act of insulation, to protect oneself from the too big, too threatening world.

Liberation is starting to show new forms of solidarity as well. As dreams of liberation on a national scale become more elusive, liberation as empowerment in the local community takes on more significance. Ways of building up communities and neighborhoods takes on new importance -- not only for the self-esteem of its members, but also as a step toward larger coalitions that might indeed one day bring about dramatic social change.

What we need to look for, then, are new ways of solidarity that strengthen the local community yet mediate that toward larger realities. As an international religious Congregation, our formation and our awareness should help us look in these both directions at the same time. Likewise, mission involves mediation of the global to the local -- the other direction -- as well. The larger world cannot be kept out. How it is interpreted, how it is received, how it is resisted all need reflection.

The second is shaping a new humanity. The technological developments with which we live, the centrifugal powers of cultural production that mark our lives, the ever deeper poverty and exclusion to which many of us are subjected all threaten to diminish and distort our humanity. People of very different backgrounds are being thrown together as perhaps never before. As we have seen, human conflict has accelerated nearly fivefold in a decade on the local level. What kind of humanity will emerge from this, and what should guide our forming a new humanity?

We will need to look in many places in order to find that answer. I would suggest you begin with the Dehonian charism. There is much in those reflections on humanity and the world in light of the Heart of Jesus that offers possibilities to come to a new vision of the human. It is a vision that will have to grapple with shifting identities, with living in a greater pluralism, that will come face to face with conflict, that will have to find ways to heal wounds and make reparation of wrongs done. It will have to hold up the possibility that there is more than all this suffering to life. I think that your charism and heritage have much to offer not only yourselves, but the rest of us.

CONCLUSION

When one looks to the future, one is always speculating, basing one's thoughts as much on the present as on the future possibility. At best, when we look to the future, we try to meet the conditions of possibility as we see them. My hope is that these presentations have given you some sense of the major elements now operative in the present that are likely to reach into the future, how these affect religious Congregations such as your own, and how we might respond to them -- not just on their own level, but out of the resources of your own Dehonian heritage. You have a rich charism, and a flexibility that allows you to meet new possibilities in a fresh way. My hope is that you will have the courage of your charism as you formulate your global mission strategy.

Robert J. Schreiter, C.PP.S.