What
exactly is it that we want to change?
By Hugh O'Sullivan
We come at last to the
ACT session. It is always a little difficult to enter wholeheartedly
into the ACT session when you are miles away from home, and
surrounded by people who cannot exactly understand how busy you are,
or all the demands already surrounding you. But the fact is that if
we don't achieve a vibrant ACT session then all that we have so far
done will be wasted — just a lot of empty noise — what St. Paul
called a gong booming or a cymbal clanging.
Let us reflect for a
moment: we came here together in Manly as the Church — to discuss
the vocation and mission of the Laity — in the World. It is these
three concrete things that we have been talking about THE CHURCH THE
LAITY and THE WORLD. We have shared our experiences and our
understanding of these three things and have evaluated them in the
light of our personal reactions and in the light of our shared faith.
The question we now face is: What direction do we take in response to
all we have discussed?
The first question of the
ACT section always is: What exactly is it that you want to change?
There are many things perhaps that we could all answer to that
question. Tonight I would like to suggest three things one for each
of our three subjects the Church, the Laity, and the World.
1. AS REGARDS THE
LAITY
The first change I am
suggesting is this: We, as a people, need to build a deeper
understanding and conviction about the dignity and value of every
person — that every person has a mission to fulfil not only in the
ordinary events of their daily life — but through those ordinary
everyday events.
The
Dignity of Being a Person
What is the
dignity of a person? The dignity of a person in this world is that
the world would be pointless without us. Imagine the most beautiful,
powerful, luxurious car ever built turbo charged motor, computer
dashboard, velvet seats, great sound system, and a fridge in the
back. Suppose we put it aboard a helicopter and take it out and let
it down ever so gently in the middle of an impenetrable jungle. We
start the motor, turn on the lights and radio, and leave it there.
Alone now in the wild, the powerful motor continues to run, the
lights stab the darkness of the undergrowth, the fridge continues to
keep the beer cold, and the radio announces the world news to the
trees. All these things are working but there is no one to appreciate
them. That is a picture of this earth if there were no intelligent
beings on it.
The
Church had been the central cultural force in the Middle Ages. How
would it adjust to life in the new industrial cities?
What would be the point
of having coal in the ground, or the possibilities of electricity or
paper or steel or plastic, or any one of the things which earth has
given but human hands have made, unless there were human hands to
make them?
Human Work Serves God
and Develops the World
St Thomas Aquinas defined
a human person as a rational animal. That, indeed, sums up what we
are and what distinguishes us from other animals. But it is a static
definition — it says nothing of the dynamism or the mission that we
possess. John Paul II, however, defines a person as “a worker”.
When God created human beings, he created them in his own image and
so he put them to work. The world and all the things in the world
were given to us not just as an environment to pass through — but
as a world to develop.
Work, therefore, as Clare
told us on Tuesday morning, is something much more than what we do
for a quid. Human work is an activity at ail where a person freely
uses their creative mind and body to take hold of the world around
them, to transform it, to use it. and to make it usable for society.
When Greg sells plumbing
gear in a hardware shop, or when Helen teaches children in her school
— Jane's work as a painter, and Sues efforts to find paid
employment all of these are actions of intelligent human persons, and
these persons contribute by them to the developing of the world. And
this is a task that God himself gave. They are truly labourers in his
vineyard. I think that if you recall the presentation made Monday
evening by Linda and the Sydney YCW. you will hear them proclaim this
faith.
We are Co-creators
with God of the World
There is something more
in work than simply fulfilling the command of God and serving others.
What is that something more? I think it comes from the fact that what
our work produces results from the planned efforts of ourselves
united with the collaboration of God.
There is nothing that
gives a person as much energy as a vision that he or she is working
to bring into reality. People will give up sleep, food and comfort
for the sake of a project they love. There is something very holy
about a human being dedicated to a purpose — something more
precious than I can attempt to put into words. It is the miracle of
sharing in creation.
I remember my Dad. Sunday
night, after feeding the cows, he would drive the old truck to the
recently sown paddock of wheat. Then over the fence he would go, with
me in my short pants struggling along behind. Out a few yards, he
would scrabble in the dirt and pull up a wheat seed. Then he would
hold it out for me to see — a small bloated thing — with little
tentacles of roots hanging down. and a sturdy green shoot pushing up.
He'd look at it with a sort of triumph and a sort of wonder.
That seed had sat for
twelve months in a bag, like a dead pebble. Then a man, a human
person, got busy, cleared a bit of land, got rid of the weeds,
prepared a bed and sowed that seed. And God sent the rain that
brought the life in the seed to action. God and that man — two
Workers united in a partnership and collaborating with one another —
were together growing a paddock of wheat.
Later on that year those
seeds would be reaped into hundreds of bags of wheat that would put
loaves of bread on tables all over the world. My Dad's work united
him with God and with his brothers and sisters all round the world.
We have got to understand and be convinced of that — for that is
the meaning and the dignity of human work.
We Bring God's Love to
the World
Let us recall again that
presentation of the Sydney YCW last Monday. Those peoples concerns,
you will remember, did not only centre on the product and process of
their work. Many of their deepest concerns centred rather on
relationships. Danielle with her father and sisters — Stephanie
with her fiancé — Peter and Margaret with their fellow workers.
When
we talk about relationships we are talking about another gift of God
to people the power of loving. Many times we have been told that it
is love that makes the world go round — and all of us know the
ability we have to make the lives of those around us either
miserable or happy.
Greg invites the mates at
work to meet for a drink at the pub. Maria goes into a union meeting
to fight for a workmate. Stephanie tries to build a deep, loving
relationship with her fiancé. Peter cares about the girl who has
lunch all on her own. These are not selfish or “do-gooder” acts.
They are not done to get a reward later in heaven. Rather these
people know that God is loving and building the world through their
love and concern. It is not just their love that they are offering.
No, they stand in the place of God. They are sharing today with God
in his work of loving the world and they know that they are called to
this, that it is part of their mission in daily life.
We are Co-redeemers
with Christ
This morning Denis
Edwards told us that, while God was present and active in the world,
calling us to share in such things as his work of creating and
loving, it is also true that there is sin in the world.
Hot some people, the
organisation of their workplace makes work boring, onerous, or even
dangerous. I know, for instance, of a girl who sits all day in front
of a double row of those wooden sticks that are used for coffee
stirrers or ice-cream sticks. As they pass in front of her. She has
the task of pulling out those not fit for use. She is going blind
doing a job that is 9 out of 10 on the boring scale.
I know of cases where
sexual demands have been made on girls in return for promotion, and
cases where workers have been expected to work overtime without pay.
Many young workers today have their lives torn apart in homes where
alcoholism is a problem, or where their parents arc divorced. There
are cases also where the uses of the product you make are so
ambiguous as to raise doubts about the value of the work you do
there. How would you like, for instance, to have a job making bombs
or abortion machinery?
In situations like these
we are not called to try to sec that what we are doing is sharing
with God in creating and loving. Rather the situation cries out for
change and reform. We had an example of that this morning with Anna's
situation. The difficult task of organising and struggling for change
and justice is part of the mission of people in their daily life. In
this work they can see and know that they share with Christ in his
work of redemption that they are with him co-redeemers of the world.
In Conclusion
The dignity and mission
and spirituality of lay people in and through the ordinary everyday
events of their lives can thus be seen to be a Trinitarian thing.
They are called to share and work with God the Father in the work of
creating, with God the Son in redeeming, and with God the Holy Spirit
in loving their world.
What exactly would I like
to change concerning the laity was my question. My answer is that I
would like the whole church — priests and laity to grow in their
understanding and conviction on these points. I would like what
Cardijn called the “lay lay” life of the laity to be more talked
about, respected, and acknowledged, for the sacred thing it is. I
would like greater efforts made to form lay people to fulfil their
mission in their daily everyday lives.
For us priests, that will
mean new efforts to talk to and get to know the situations facing our
people. What image do we give when, for example, we come to a YCW
group to impart our wisdom about the Gospel but leave when workers
start to review what has been happening to them during the week?
And often it is true that
these things are right outside our experience. How many of us could
know the sorts of things that Anna experienced in her work as a data
processor? How many of us could really understand Marg's situation in
leaving work at AWD, moving to a country town, and having three
children in the space of 18 months? Yet for each of them this is
their life. Hidden in these situations is their sometimes so
difficult mission.
How do we build a
vision that knows that the mission of a factory worker is no less
than that of the guy who is an acolyte?
My Beginnings in the
YCW
I
remember as a young priest going to my first YCW meeting. I went as a
boy from the country, who had spent seven years learning that
the world, the flesh and the devil were evils to be conquered. I came
into a hall, to a group of young city workers for whom “the world
and the flesh” was their everyday preoccupation, and indeed their
mission.
I was greatly fortunate
in my first president. He would come around and see me regularly.
He'd tell me that my chaplain's talk at the last meeting wasn't too
good. I took that to mean that he didn't have brains enough to
understand it. Then he would tell me that I hogged the table tennis
table. I'd say that that was because I was winning. He would tell me
that 1 didn't have to win — that winning wasn't my job there —
that I was supposed to be talking to the guys about their lives. I
didn't understand that. What was I supposed to do? Take a guy aside
and ask him if he had done anything wrong that week?
Then he would send one of
the members around to me to prepare the Gospel. Afterwards he would
ring me up and ask me how it went. I'd tell him, OK — and explain
what I'd said about the Gospel. But he'd ask me what I talked about
in the life of this guy. What he was trying to say to me was: If that
Gospel is not an answer to him in his life today, then it is not much
use. It took me an awful long time and a lot of pulling into gear to
really learn that. And I reckon that the formation I received from
that president is something that not all of us have been fortunate
enough to receive.
AS REGARDS THE
CHURCH
In the first place I
would like to make it clear that when I talk about the Church here I
am talking about the Church as an organisation within society. The
Church as a structure in society does give an image of the sorts of
things that it is on about — and by its action and the way it
directs its resources it does give an image of what it sees as its
role within society.
Over the past twenty
years since Vatican II, the Church has been continually changing
things and involving itself in new ways. While I believe that most of
this has been good and that many great things have happened, I feel
that we have, to some extent, lost the sense of a strong leadership
in the Church giving unity of direction. Because of this we have
become a bit out of balance in our work of renewal. I believe that we
portray too much an image of a ministry-centred serving church,
rather than an image of an apostolic community. The overall effect of
this has been that the Church today is no longer seen so much as a
hierarchical institution. But instead our image in the world today is
of a bureaucracy with many departments. 1 don't think that anyone has
consciously worked to achieve this nor that it is the alternative
that any of us would want.
What exactly is it that I
would like to change? I would hope that we could build a church that
would be, and would be seen to be, an apostolic community centred
around the good of each of its members in the totality of his or her
life. This would involve a progressive move away from structures that
build ghetto Catholicism, organising a way for the Church to speak
more publicly on a wider range of subjects than it is presently seen
to do, and a greater balance being achieved between ministry-centred
renewal and formation of lay people for leadership in their daily
life.
A Starting Point
There are many good
things happening all around Australia in the Church today. We need to
know about them and to be proud of them and to identify with them.
They are the work of the Church — and we are all a part of that
church. If we think only of finances, we are all a part of financing
these works. A greater sense of identification with these things
alone would help to bring a sense of unity in what the Church is on
about.
The History of
Yesterday influences the Church of Today
The Church today is
naturally very much a product of its yesterday's history. We need to
know that and understand it to be able to analyse where we are today
and what steps need to be taken. If you recall the presentation made
by the Brisbane team, you will remember how the Church was the
central cultural force in the Middle Ages for the totality of life of
people on manor farms and in the craft guilds. Then came the
protestant reformation and the industrial revolution. The Church,
already on the defensive, found that it had no real say or point of
entry into the new industrial towns. The people there, mill owners
and mill workers alike, had a whole new way of life, and all that the
Church was on about seemed to them to be past history — to belong
to another life — it just didn't apply there.
And so what did the
Church do in response?
1. The mill owners had
refused to take on the by manor lords and the craft guilds. This
meant there were a lot of needy people. And so religious orders came
into being to provide care for the poor, the sick and the injured,
and the aged.
2. The environment of
life in the mill towns was destroying the faith of Catholics. And so
religious, orders came into being to take children apart from that
atmosphere and give them Catholic education.
3. The Church, not having
influence within the factories, resorted to speaking publicly, mainly
on three sorts of things — private morality, family life and the
public service of God (Mass, Sacraments, etc.).
This is the historical
basis for a model of Church that still has influence today:
Involvement — an
inadequate response
Over the past 20 years we
have reacted against the hierarchical set up of the Church. It is not
only because of a shortage of priests that we have organised such
things as acolytes, extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist, etc. We
have come to realise (as Denis told us) that all of us, clergy and
laity alike, are the “people of God”.
I think, however, that
due to inadequate analysis we have concentrated on hierarchy of
persons and forgotten about hierarchy of things. What are the most
important things that the Church is seen to be on about? The Mass and
the sacraments, the teaching of the faith, and the ministry to the
needy. It is in these things that status and responsibility in the
Church lie. Is that not true?
Suppose, then, we start
to break down the differences between clergy and laity — to talk
about our equality as all being the people of God. What happens?
Laity immediately seek equality in those areas where the status and
responsibility lie. And so we get laity involved as acolytes,
teaching the faith, preparing the liturgy, and employed in ministry
and counselling the needy.
All of these things are,
without any doubt, good things and real advances in Church practice.
What I am saying, however, is that far from addressing the problem I
am speaking about, they actually serve to worsen it. It can be truly
said that there was a far greater emphasis on the mission of the lay
people in their lives 20 years ago than there is today. Why is this?
It is at least partly because there is today very little Church
recognition or status for this apostolate. How do we build a vision
that knows that the girl who works in her office and is union
representative there has an equality of status in the Church with the
girl who has been selected as extraordinary minister of the Eucharist
— that the mother of three involved in her community is equal to
the woman employed on the parish team — that the mission of a
factory worker is no less than that of the guy who is an acolyte?
Hierarchies —
Bureaucracies — and People
The Church of 20 years
ago was an authoritarian church. When it spoke, it spoke
definitively. Who were the ones who wielded this authority in the
Church? It was the bishops, the priests and the religious — and
their right to speak with such authority came from their position in
the Church — from the very fact that they were bishops, priests and
religious.
Today the Church has a
more “professional” approach. In many of its seen roles in the
world (for example, in education and welfare) it stands alongside
parallel civic bodies. When it speaks on these issues it speaks with
the combined wisdom of the world. It does not, therefore, speak with
the same definitiveness. And the right to speak with authority in the
Church no longer comes with ordination or religious profession.
Church authorities now have degrees and have done professional
courses.
The
world today cries out for a new vision — a vision for people.
We rightly reacted
against a hierarchical church, hut perhaps in its place we arc
building a departmental bureaucracy. It could be said that instead of
dismantling the hierarchy, what we have done is to open the way to
allowing a few religious and lay people to take positions among the
higher echelons of the hierarchy. Even this could be a step forward,
but we have to be careful that we are not building an image of the
church as a bureaucracy with many departments and of religion as a
consumer product.
You know the sort of
thing I mean by that. You even hear people say: “Oh. I don't go to
Mass here in my parish. I go 20 miles away to Mass in such and such a
parish, because they have a better liturgy there. It's like saying:
“I don't shop at Woolies, I go to Target because the quality is
better there.” If Mass is a consumer product for each individual,
then it is natural that you go for the best bargains.
The Church is a Family
of People
We do have structures in
the Church — and it is important that they be efficient and well
organised. But they arc not the church, they arc like TVs in a home a
good thing, useful for education, communication, a source of acts and
ideas, entertainment and relaxation. Every home should have one —
but not if TV dominates home tile, eliminating communication, a
source of rows and wrong programmes. Then it would be better if the
TV was banned from the home for six months until the family learnt
once again to be a family.
When we talk about the
Church we talk about people. There is nothing new in saying this. But
culturally we have not been taught to think of the Church as people.
We have thought of the Church as an institution to which people
belong — which needs people to serve and support it. We think of
the Church as the preserver of doctrine and the container of the
gospel, needing its special servants to understand and expound these
truths. But the mystery of the Church is simply that it is People. It
is a divine society, not because of an infallible doctrine or an
incorruptible organisation, but because Jesus called people lo follow
him and still does.
In Conclusion
What does all this mean
in practice? I think that we, priests, religious and bishops, need to
give strong leadership here. We have almost to take what the
government would call 'affirmative action' in granting status and
recognition to the mission of laity in their lay lives.
We can do this by the way
we talk to them and the importance we place on learning about and
affirming the action they are taking in everyday living. We can do it
in our courses and homilies. We can do it by granting priority and
enthusiasm to movements or groups that are specifically aimed at
formation in lay life. We can ensure that a reasonable proportion of
church funds and resources goes in this direction.
Also, we can strive to
break down the image of the church as a bureaucracy. Sometimes the
very architecture of the parish houses or administration centres that
we are building is not helpful in this. To sec the priest can be very
much like seeing a doctor or a lawyer — even down to the secretary
who comes into the waiting room to say: “Father will see you now.”
Not all of us, (I'm not only speaking about bishops here) can do a
Helder Camara and move out of the palace into a house on the street
and not always would that be necessarily a good thing anyway. But we
all need to listen and be challenged by his action, and to respond in
our own way.
AS REGARDS THE
WORLD
You hear people today
talking about the first, second, and third world. What are these
three “worlds”? The first world has its centre in the USA and
includes all the capitalist nations that went through their
industrial revolution in the 19th century. The second world has its
centre in Russia and includes the communist nations that went through
their industrial revolution in the first half of the 20th century.
The third world refers to the areas of Africa, Asia and Latin America
which are only now going through their industrial revolution.
Each of these “worlds”
has a different key problem. The third world problem is economic the
suffering of the poor. The second world's problem is political —
the absence of freedom including religious freedom. Often these
problems are set up in competition with one another. So, if you speak
out against communism, they call you a cappo or a right wing
reactionary. But if you speak out against poverty in the third world,
they call you a commo or a pinkie. Helder Camara said: “If 1 give
food to the poor, they call me a saint. If I ask why the poor have no
food, they call me a communist.”
It is, of course, our
responsibility to speak out on behalf of others who are oppressed
economically or politically. But tonight I want to put it to you that
we need to clean up our own back yard as well. We don't have the
economic problems of the third world nor the political problems of
the second world. Our key problem is a cultural one — a problem of
meaning, of direction, of control. In the first world progress itself
is going through a crisis.
The Worship of
Progress and the Liberal Consensus
You remember Rip Van
Winkle in the Brisbane presentation? Science and technology
(especially in the years 1900—1970) did so much to conquer the
age—old curses of poverty, hunger, disease and toil. And so we made
gods of science and technology. We came to think that they would
solve all human problems and all human limitations and that this
would come about not by human virtue but by the advance of technology
alone. We believed that this could be achieved by concerning
ourselves with the increase of wealth and forgetting the problems of
the distribution of wealth. We thought that with sufficient overall
growth the condition of the poor would inevitably be improved. And
you can still hear politicians and industrialists saying the same
sort of thing today. It is what is known as the liberal consensus.
Well, we got our growth,
all right — phenomenal growth in wealth, technology and power
phenomenal growth also in consumerism. And what has been the result?
The hope of humanity had been that science and technology would
liberate humanity. The reality is that humanity is threatened with
destruction by scientific and technological means.
1. Instead of bringing general
economic well-being, we find the human community split with a
widening gap between the rich and the poor.
2. We are injuring the earth
ecologically, and so depleting the supply of non-renewable
resources that neither the poor, nor future generations, will have
enough.
3. Our weapons industry has resulted
in the possibility and the fear that a handful of people could
subject the earth to an apocalypse without help of God's
intervention.
I don't think that
anybody here will oppose these things as facts. Any study will show
them to be true. Recent popes have warned us of them time and time
again. But the problem of speaking out on these issues as Pope John
Paul has pointed out is this. The people who today most loudly
espouse these causes often do it from an ideological stance. Anyone
else calling attention to these things is accused of buying the whole
ideological stance. For myself: 1 wouldn't like you to think that I
stand behind every trendy left wing rally or greenie demo, or that I
subscribe to all the opinions of every peace group. But I know that
I, as a person, a Christian, a catholic, a priest, have no right to
stand silent before things that are such an obscenity, such a denial
of God's and people's rights, such a destruction of the world he gave
us to love and develop.
A Hope for the Future
What, then, is the
answer? What specifically is it that we want to change concerning the
world?
The modern world in first
world countries, founded on a vision of growth and progress and
prosperity that would come through gains of science and technology,
has grown too big and blustery and out of control. It has not brought
prosperity for all and, as Michael Campbell pointed out, it has
brought alienation for people.
The problem is a cultural
one and a spiritual one a problem of meaning. The world today cries
out for a new vision a vision for people. And I put it to you that
this could be a role that the Church could take — a leadership that
it could give.
A Parable of Hope
I would like to conclude
with an example that might serve as a parable of the sort of thing I
mean. The YCW national office is now in Granville, a western suburb
of Sydney. The YCW and the YCW housing co-operative own two houses
there, a hundred yards apart.
The area we live in is a
“type example” of much of what we have talked about here this
week. There are many nationalities represented in the community —
Lebanese, European, Vietnamese, Samoan, etc. Grandma next door is
Lebanese and can speak no English. The Vietnamese over the road are
“out-workers” with a shirt factory in the garage going day and
night.
There are families torn
apart by alcohol, poverty and divorce, and a family where the
traditional breadwinner lost his job and finally took his own life.
Unemployed youths use the lane at the back of our place as a place to
take, strip and leave stolen cars. There is racial prejudice and
tension. The unemployed are resentful of the out-workers. Many
workers are away from home twelve hours a day with work and travel.
And the over-riding atmosphere is of a people who are loners
individualistic — and suspicious of one another.
The YCW people walk the
street between the two houses and they have knocked on the doors and
met the people. They have barbecues and parties often — at which
neighbours are welcome and do come. They play cricket with the kids
in the street, and pull the community vacuum cleaner from one house
up the street to the other. And the Lebanese woman gives us Pita
bread and vegetable goulash. The Vietnamese help to set up the garden
and grow vegetables, a family lends us gardening tools, and a
neighbour comes in to help with carpentry jobs.
Without doing much, those
YCW people arc building a new world in that community by propagating
a new, a Christian, a spiritual vision. And its centre is not so much
a doctrine or an ideology as a set of values for life displayed and
taught by action — values of community, of trust, of modesty in
living, of openness to give and to receive. It is in the formation of
people to this sort of vision and action, and the recognition and
enthusiasm for this vision of life within work places, families and
communities, that 1 see the hope and the task of the future. And I
repeat I would like to see the Church invest time and resources, and
accept the role of leadership in this work.
Hugh O'Sullivan in Pathway for People, An Australian YCW Presentation on the Mission of the Laity in the Modern World, p. 38-45, Australian YCW, 1987
Acknowledgement: “Linking
Faith and Justice”, “The Modern Crisis of Progress” Joe Holland
and Peter Henriot S.J., Chicago Center of Concern.