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Cecil
McGarry, SJ Fr Cecil McGarry, SJ, gave a much appreciated key-note address to the AMACEA Plenary. He outlined the features of the ‘new world culture’ and how it effects our lives and what implications it has for our programmes of formation.
I would like to begin this presentation by attending in particular to one aspect of the realities of Africa today which I believe underlines the urgency and importance of the formation of the agents of evangelisation, from leaders and members of the small Christian communities to the clergy and the bishops themselves. It is a reality that we are all aware of but that is difficult to deal with. I refer to the new world culture that is spreading everywhere so rapidly. I will then say something about the kind of formation that can meet this reality. A new world culture For many decades now we have spoken of the world as a global village. For the past two or three years everyone speaks of globalisation to express the rapidity with which a new reality is emerging and perhaps beginning to engulf us. The word is used to express the fact that we are living in a world of immense changes affecting almost every aspect of what we do. We are being moved forward in a world order that nobody fully understands but that is affecting all of us, even in rural Africa, though less markedly there as yet than in our towns and cities. This world order is not only new; it is revolutionary. It is political, technological and cultural as well as economic. The chief influence that is bringing about this new world order has been and still is the rapid developments in systems of communications, which are affecting how we live, think, feel, organise ourselves and celebrate and share life. It is affecting our way of being. That is why I want to dwell briefly on the cultural effects of the phenomenon that we are experiencing, which provide a strong argument for the urgency and importance of formation at every level in the church. As these changes take place and gather momentum, they are creating something that has never existed before, a global cosmopolitan society. We are the first generation to live in this society. It is changing our existing ways of life, our expectations, the focus of our attention, how we think and how we feel. It is important that we realise that this phenomenon is not something ‘out there’, distant from us as individuals; it is about what is ‘in here’. Because it changes people’s ways of thinking, feeling and being, it affects their grasp of and adherence to the Gospel and its values. Today the boundary line between the Gospel and modern or post-modern global secular culture passes through the heart of each of us. Every agent of evangelisation feels the impulse to unbelief and to embracing secular values first of all within himself or herself — and I do not exclude priests, men and women religious or bishops. What is most significant is that this new global order is not being planned either by individuals or by collective human will. It is coming about in a haphazard way through a mixture of economic, technological and cultural developments and is driven largely by the motive of financial profit. In the first of the 1999 Reith Lectures on the World Service of the BBC, Professor Anthony Giddens did not hesitate to speak of "our runaway world" to describe our present global cultural reality.1 The family in a global cosmopolitan society Let me take an example of what I am referring to which should be familiar to all, the family. The family is the place in which the struggle between tradition and present day global culture is most in evidence. The African Synod said that the family is "the sacred place where all the riches of our tradition converge" (Message, n. 27). And, "in African culture and tradition the role of the family is everywhere held to be fundamental" (Ecclesia in Africa, n. 43). Yet even in the five years since the Synod, have we not experienced world-wide and in Africa increasing strains and rapid change in traditional family life and values due to many causes, but particularly to the continuing sexual revolution and the world-wide transition from the family understood as a basic social and economic entity, to the family seen as a union based on romantic love. In the traditional family the mother was a full time housewife and frequently also a provider of food, the father was the undisputed authority and chief provider, while the children and other relatives were equally or even more important than the married couple, which was only one part of the marriage. With the rise of romantic love, the couple, married or unmarried, has been placed at the heart of family life. When love and sexual attraction fade, the couple may feel free to dissolve the relationship, in spite of how this will affect the children and other family members. Until today, in the whole of human history there has never been a society in which women have claimed equality with men, in which human sexuality has been exercised so widely outside marriage and so regularly separated from reproduction, and in which romantic love was commonly accepted as the central constituent of married life. The family at the end of the 20th century has become something different, even if superficially it may frequently look the same. As I have said, the chief influence in world cultural changes has been and is the staggering and rapid developments that are taking place in systems of satellite communications. When the images of Nelson Mandela and Slobodan Milocevic are more familiar to us than the faces of the people who live in our apartment building or on our street, and attend our parishes on Sunday, something has changed in our everyday experience. The global image of Mandela and Milocevic is itself to a great extent the result of new communications technology. A world culture is created and images that come to us via satellite are changing our world. The 1989 revolutions in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries have been called the first ‘television revolutions’. Western television could not be kept out of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries. Democratic ideas and a desire for greater freedom and the fruits of a global electronic economy took hold. Street protests taking place in one country were watched by television audiences in other countries, large numbers of whom took to the streets themselves. The communist regimes, symbolised by the Berlin wall, collapsed in a matter of weeks. The seemingly impregnable apartheid regime in South Africa disappeared almost as if it had never been. Here we are touching one of the chief results of the new world culture: its power to sweep away what is not acceptable to it. The disappearance of traditions The new world culture that is constantly coming into being radically changes and even sweeps aside world, continental, national and local traditions. Traditions guided people in what they ought to do in almost every imaginable circumstance; people were not really called upon to make decisions, for only the traditional ways were socially acceptable. All that is rapidly changing. One of the most pernicious effects of the de-traditionalising of societies is what happens to people’s sense of self-identity. As the influence of tradition and custom grows less on a world-wide level, the very basis of people’s self-identity is seriously undermined. In traditional societies, a sense of self-identity was formed and sustained through the security of knowing what to do and the stability of people’s actions in the community, whether family, school, parish, village, town or city. Self-identity was formed and supported through people fulfilling the actions and roles that were expected of them. Each one had his or her own place. Those who have been given sound guiding principles of action and have interiorised them may flourish in this new climate. They find themselves living in a more open and reflexive way, in open discussion and dialogue leading to personal decisions by which they guide their lives. But how many of our people have been given such principles of action either in a close-knit family, in a school where good discipline reigns and where children are respected, assimilate shared values and act according to them, or in a committed faith community where beliefs and values are strong? To judge by some of the very disturbing incidents that have taken place in recent months in some of our schools in Kenya, there is reason to be seriously disturbed about what is happening to our young people in the vacuum of values and guidelines for conduct that prevails in this new global society to which they in a special way are heirs and in which they are so vulnerable. Young people have no guiding principles in a detraditionalising society. They can be swept away and lose themselves, taking the line of least resistance or being moved here and there according to the dictates of current fashion, often coming from abroad. When levels of frustration are high, violence is the almost inevitable result. Addictions Nor should we be surprised at the rise of addictions in societies that are losing their traditions. Both tradition and addiction are concerned with the influence of the past on the present. Tradition guided people about what to do in the present situation. Addiction does just the same. When people, especially young people, are unsure how to act in the present, they allow themselves to be guided by how they have already coped with their decision-making in a situation of anxiety, uncertainty or stress in the past. It is true that addictions to alcohol, drugs, sex, violence, crime, etc., often begin out of curiosity, bravado or a ‘let me try it once’ attitude. But addiction can take hold when a person, whose choice should be guided by tradition or by an educated freedom, finds himself or herself confused or uncertain about how to act. He or she got relief or pleasure or money through alcohol, drugs, sex or crime the last time, and allows the choice to be guided again this time by what gave relief before. People of an earlier generation guided their choices by tradition which took away anxiety about the decision to be made. Addictions flourish where there is lack of clearly taught and accepted principles to guide decision. Sometimes they are also the fruit of inherited characteristics. If we are in touch with our youth in and outside schools today, we know that many of them have acquired addictions of various kinds — to a very worrying degree. Fundamentalism Closely connected also with the global decline of the power of tradition to guide people in their decisions is the rise of fundamentalisms of all kinds. Fundamentalism is a return to basic scriptures or texts of another age which are read and lived literally today. Fundamentalism is tradition unable to deal with the uncertainties of new situations and taking refuge in literalism. It refuses to accept differences of context and tries to exclude all ambiguity for the sake of security in a time of uncertainty. Who is not aware of the havoc caused among Christians of the mainline churches in Africa by ‘the saved’ and other forms of fundamentalism in our places of work, schools and parishes? Since tradition is so central to the catholic church we, too, can easily fall into fundamentalism at a time like this, and we are not without evidence of it in various catholic groups throughout the world. One thinks of the Latin Mass Society, or Mother Angelica and other very conservative Catholics in the United States of America and Australia, who conduct witch hunts and then delate to higher authorities, pastors or authors who are struggling to present the Gospel in a way that can touch the lives of modern people and be relevant and credible to them. But tradition is not static; it is the living experience of Christians in each age who try to live their faith in ever new historical situations. We Catholics can also be in danger of repeating the answers of the past to new questions which cause uncertainty and even confusion among us. We can seek to have the security of ‘definitive’ solutions to questions that have not yet sufficiently matured to be decided. That is not the kind of certainty that the catholic faith calls for or promises to provide. We may be called to walk in great uncertainty over a period of time, as Abraham, our father in faith, did — our only security being God’s fidelity to his promise to be with us all days until the end of time. What kind of formation do agents of evange- lisation need in this context? What resources does the catholic church have to meet the very real difficulties to which I have been referring? My answer is the same as that of the African Synod: after the grace of Christ, the people. But a people well formed to live and witness as Christians in this new situation. The Synod saw that the key to the new evangelisation, for which Pope John Paul II calls without ceasing, is formation. "The whole people of God … needs to be trained, motivated and empowered for evangelisation, each according to his or her specific role within the church" (Ecclesia in Africa, n. 53). I believe that the context to which I have referred above also gives some guidance on the kind of formation that will be needed for all our agents of evangelisation. The undermining of a sense of self identity, with its consequent feelings of uncertainty and confusion in the modern global culture, indicates the need for a strong human formation; the expanding secular materialism and the lack of consensus on what are true human values, calls for a deep spiritual formation. These will be the foundation on which all professional and pastoral formation must be based. In the new cultural context to which I have alluded, a committed Christian life is possible only if we can form our people, our priests and our religious to make freely motivated Christian choices and decisions based on Christian values that have been personally and freely chosen as the guiding principles of life. This will be achieved by a deep formation of the human person to freedom and maturity based on Christian principles. We have to help all our agents of evangelisation not only to understand but to live their Christian faith freely and with conviction, with the help of God’s grace. Here we rejoin the African Synod, which insists that the life of every Christian should be the result of "‘a transforming encounter with the living person of Christ’ … an ‘overwhelming and exhilarating experience of Jesus Christ who calls each one to follow him in an adventure of faith’" (Ecclesia in Africa, n. 57). This calls for a change of approach in our way of thinking about and practising our Christian faith, which is not in the first place a body of doctrines and laws to be known and obeyed, but the following of Jesus Christ known personally and intimately, because he calls each one by name to follow him. People are changed and develop living convictions not through instruction but through experience. It is one thing to know about the personal love of Jesus Christ for each and every one of his followers, it is another thing to experience it. There is, I think, little doubt that the formation we have given to agents of evangelisation in the past has been largely intellectual. Now we must provide a formation that is experiential. Experience will be able to generate the personal convictions necessary to be a follower of Christ in a world so influenced and formed by a global secular culture. Inculturation of the Gospel in a new global culture I recall here that inculturation was the central theme and thrust of the African Synod. Ecclesia in Africa insists that: "... the Good News, the Word of Jesus Christ proclaimed to the nations, must take root in the life situation of the hearers of the Word. Inculturation is precisely the insertion of the Gospel message into cultures" (n. 60). The Synod itself concentrated on inserting the Gospel message into the cultures of Africa. But day by day in the years since the Synod we are becoming aware of how the emergence of a global information society is rapidly transforming the life situation of the hearers of the Word in our countries, and indeed the people themselves. We must hold on to the best values and expressions of African cultures but we must also take serious account of the de-traditionalising of all our societies, North and South, East and West, and of the relentless propagation of a world culture of freedom without any norms — which is, of course, a culture of licence. Our question as evangelisers is: how do we insert the Gospel message into this new life situation of our hearers? My response is: give our people, and especially all agents of evangelisation, a deep human and spiritual formation imbued with the values of the Gospel and of our African cultures. Incidentally, one of the effects already apparent all over the world of the spread of a common world culture is the felt need to support a weakening self-identity through fostering and strengthening regional and local cultures. This should make easier the task of a specifically African inculturation of the faith and life of the church. The Gospel of Jesus Christ also promotes a culture of freedom, but a freedom that finds its norms in the person of Jesus Christ and his Gospel. It is not an easy project, as Paul reminds us: "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery" (Gal 5:1). Our Christian people are sons and daughters of the age of universal communication and will be affected by the kind of freedom propagated by the new world culture. This means that the seed of the Gospel may fall on hard ground beside the path, on rocky ground or among thorns and will not take root or will grow up quickly but, not having sufficient soil, will wither and die. In spite of many years of ‘education’ and ‘formation’ that has been largely intellectual and confined to the class-room, some of our clergy, religious and laity, through no fault of their own, can resemble fields in which the seed sprang up quickly and died, or a field with many weeds that are choking the good plants. Without solid human formation laity, priests and religious can go through even extended courses of formation as if going through a tunnel, from which they can emerge largely unchanged and without having interiorised Gospel values. The values are known in the mind but have not taken root in the heart and are not lived. How else do you explain the painful relations of conflict that exist between priests in some of our dioceses, between religious in their communities, and between priests and people in the parishes? Spiritual values can only take root in well tilled human soil. When people cannot communicate on the human level, they cannot live in spiritual communion. Much effort and finances go into schools, catechetical centres, religious formation programmes and seminaries. Are we satisfied with the results? Are we satisfied with the yield we are receiving from so much effort, time and money? If not, what must we do? What model of church community do we wish to build? It is not so much new programmes of formation that are needed as new models that will give priority to human formation in order to produce mature people capable of respecting one another and relating and communicating with one another at depth, and a spiritual formation that will produce disciples of Jesus Christ committed to living and proclaiming his Gospel out of personal conversion resulting in deep Christian convictions. But even before thinking of models of formation, the bishops must ask themselves what model of church community they wish to build in the diocese, and what is their model of bishop and priest and other agents of evangelisation in that church? Is it a church that will be family, and in which the laity are adults whose contribution is sought and received as partners in evangelisation? Is it a model of church that is communion, in which priests, religious and lay people are truly the brothers and sisters of the bishop and of one another, and work together, sharing responsibility for decision making? If it is, the present model of formation is quite inadequate; for it remains substantially the model of formation that was used before Vatican II, which aimed at forming men and women for a church that was seen primarily as Institution, and in which the key concept was authority. Those in formation were taught to obey and to depend on higher authority; they were not encouraged to question or take initiatives in order to take their place as mature sons and daughters in the household of faith. Formation was something they received, not a process of growth to which they committed themselves in order to be responsible for the life and mission of the church, each according to his or her particular state and gifts. It is well-known that education and formation can be used to tame and domesticate people or to liberate them. If one looks at current church institutions in our AMECEA region that are engaged in formation of agents of evangelisation, it is difficult not to conclude that in quite a number of them, education is primarily aimed at domestication. I do not exclude our seminaries. A formation for a church that is family/communion, in which the central concept and agent is the Holy Spirit, who gives gifts to each one for the building up of the body of the church, must be a formation that liberates. St Paul insists that "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Cor 3:17). I think it can also be said that where there is no freedom, there the Spirit of the Lord is not present, at least in the structures. If we desire to form a church that is communion, as Vatican II desired; if we want to build a church that is family, which was the fundamental option of the African Synod, then we must change our model of formation and seek one that will aim in the first place at forming men and women who are maturely free, in whom the Gospel has been interiorised, who can communicate and collaborate freely, and who can recognise and accept authority as the gift of God to his church, without which unity cannot be maintained. Even if someone does not want to promote a church that is communion and family, it will be good to recognise that the present world culture will make a church/ institution based primarily on authority increasingly difficult to maintain — something you may be experiencing already. In a world so affected by universal communication, power that comes from the top down does not easily prevail any more. Witness the fall of so many dictators in the past few years in the world of statecraft. Dictators fall because the new world culture favours democratic ideals and people see that absolute power is no longer acceptable. We are witnessing this already in family life in Africa, where the father’s authority was once absolute. Some submit out of fear, but they are no longer engaged. Today, authority in every sphere has lost its monopoly of information in an intrinsically open framework of global communications, which have spread a climate of democracy. Our Christian people are part of this world, even when they are trying to live by faith and recognise that the church is not a democracy. They know, however, that if the church is not a democracy, neither should it be authoritarian, and that Jesus himself is the model for the exercise of authority in the church. A new model of formation for a church that is communion A model of formation for a church that is family/communion will not begin with intellectual content but with human and spiritual experience. Moreover it will recognise that, after the Holy Spirit, the primary agent of formation is the person being formed. The person will be helped in the first place to know self and what it means to be a human person. Christ (and the holy people who have gone before us, our elder brothers and sisters in faith) will be presented as the models of what the human person should aim to become, each in his or her own way. The one being formed commits all his/her energies to become like Christ and the Christian ancestors. The formators are there to provide the means to be used and the skills necessary to progress. They should also, to the extent possible, be role models for those in formation. Those in formation must first aim to become better men and women and better followers of Christ, to whom each one responds in freedom. In this way a strong sense of self-identity will be formed as human person and as Christian, which will enable our agents of evangelisation to have a clear identity and clear principles of action in the present state of confusion. Emphasis on human and spiritual formation Human and spiritual formation cannot rightly be separated; for the human person is spiritual and transcendent by nature. If some of our spiritual formation has not been as effective as we would have hoped, it is usually because the soil of our humanity has not been adequately prepared to receive the transforming word of God. Grace and nature work hand in hand. By human formation I mean an adequate level of self knowledge and self acceptance, some understanding of how human growth takes place, some grasp of what is moving us at the deeper levels of our being, what conflicts and unsatisfied desires exist at that level and how we may acknowledge and deal with them, rather than project them onto others in inappropriate conduct. Also an ability to communicate with others in simplicity and truth, to confront others when necessary, to deal reasonably with conflict, and to accept others as they are in their difference from ourselves. We can be helped by instruction in these areas, but growth takes place not through study and thinking, but through learning to know and handle ourselves in the encounters and experiences of daily life. The dynamic of formation, therefore, will be personal reflection on one’s daily human experiences, understanding of how one has acted, evaluating this in the light of the Gospel, and decision for the future. A necessary condition is that a person is growing in self awareness. This process will be greatly aided and supported, if a person periodically shares his/her experiences and reflection with a skilled guide. Because of the incarnation of the Word, we know that what is most fully Christian is most fully human and vice versa. Therefore in the Gospel of Jesus Christ we find all the human and Christian principles to guide our lives. But what is most important in spiritual formation is that the one in formation has a deep experience of Jesus Christ as creator, merciful saviour, the one who walks with him/her every day and by whom he/she is totally accepted and unconditionally loved. Such an experience provides sufficient motivation for all the sacrifices that will be called for in living a full Christian life and making choices that reflect Gospel values. In a word, the basis of life becomes the following of Jesus Christ, who has the words of eternal life, by whom one knows one is loved If all Christians need this kind of formation, how much more necessary it is for those who lead Christian communities, whether as lay leaders, catechists, priests, or religious men and women? We can only lead others to what we have experienced as valuable in our own lives. If we want to form our children in this way so that they may be able to cope with the modern world, we must first form their parents, their catechists and their teachers. In order to achieve this, we must form our seminarians, our priests and our religious women and men by a deep human and spiritual formation. If we do so, those who will be chosen as bishops will also be well prepared for leadership. Human and spiritual formation in the semi - nary The priest is a key person in the life of the Christian community. What new structures are needed in our seminaries to provide the kind of human and spiritual formation I have described, which will enable future priests to be leaders of the community in a church-as-family and to involve as many Christians as possible to participate actively and responsibly in the life and mission of the community? I have no blueprint to offer. What is clear is that our model and structures of formation must be very different from the largely academically oriented formation of our present seminaries. There will have to be life-groups in which the skills and arts of human communication are learned, in which trust is built up, in which accountability and responsibility for many aspects of seminary life are assumed by the seminarians themselves. They must become the agents of their own formation — which is formation to be leaders of a community, not strong individualists who have learned the art of survival. They must become good men and good christians before they can become good priests. Would it not be possible for seminarians to take much more responsibility in groups and in turn for many aspects of seminary life that are presently managed for them, depriving them of the possibility of creating their own climate of formation, preventing them from making a home in the seminary to the extent that this is possible? I think of their taking responsibility for overseeing such material areas of their life as kitchen, dining-room, grounds, cleaning, repairs, buying, budgeting, etc. If we train our seminarians to be served and not to serve, are we surprised if later they have difficulty in becoming servants of their communities? We have given them no experience of service. Also, could they not take responsibility for seminary discipline, recreation, liturgy, prayer, their retreats and recollections, faith-sharing and real communication between themselves about their ideals, their hopes and dreams, their fears, loneliness and disappointments? It is they themselves who must be responsible and accountable, in the first place, for seeking and using appropriate means of human and spiritual growth, without which they cannot be good priests. In all this, of course, they would be accompanied by the seminary authorities and staff. During seminary years those who are preparing to commit themselves to celibate chastity should be helped to face in open discussion and sharing the meaning and difficulties as well as the happiness of such a life. They should know that celibacy brings a loneliness with it, which can give rise to all kinds of emotional problems and mental stresses unless a man has grown in affective maturity, in a deep love of Jesus Christ, and a life of prayer. We know the problems of alcoholism, sexual addiction, and over-work used as compensations and escape mechanisms. We also know that it need not be so. It is only so because we do not sufficiently accompany seminarians in their human, affective and spiritual growth. Celibate chastity can lead to maturity and warm pastoral relations between priest and people, and to holiness; it can also lead to disaster and great unhappiness. The result in each case is determined to a great extent by the quality of seminary formation and the real involvement of seminarians in their own formation. If seminarians never speak of these matters among themselves and with their formators in an open way and in an appropriate climate of trust, if they never share together their experience as men living a celibate life, if they do not in the seminary experience relationships of trust and real communication among themselves, how can they support one another later in the stresses of priestly life? The first reaction of many may be to say: impossible! If you believe it is impossible, then of course it will be impossible. What you have to ask then is: do I really desire the end? If I do, I must also desire the means — and this requires much change. Another change must be in the relationship between authorities, teachers and other officials of the seminary and the seminarians, and between the seminarians and the priests and bishop of their diocese. It must be a relationship of elder to younger brothers, in which friendship, encouragement and trust are the dominant features, and fear is reduced to a minimum. This will not happen overnight and can only be worked out in fraternal dialogue. There must be an atmosphere in which questioning and dialogue are encouraged and not seen as signs of subversion to be suppressed or strongly discouraged. If their seminary experience has been the discouragement of questioning and open dialogue, we cannot be surprised if they adopt this way of acting with the faithful in their parishes in later years. All of the above would help to create a climate in which vocational motivation could be more easily discerned; and if there were authentic spiritual direction, not as a duty but as a desire of each seminarian to be accompanied in growth and in discernment of vocation, seminarians would be on the road to human and spiritual maturity. We probably have only a few seminary formators at present who could handle a programme on the lines suggested above. They will have to be prepared. I will conclude now, because the topic of priestly formation will be treated fully later during this study session, but first I just wish to add my conviction that seminary staff should be chosen in the first place for their human qualities, and secondarily for spiritual, intellectual and pedagogical gifts, which of course are also necessary. My concern has been to focus on two central elements — the human and the spiritual — in the formation of all agents of evangelisation, which will prepare them to deal successfully both with the increasingly secular global culture which is transforming the world and our African continent and with the demands of ministry, lay and clerical, in a church which is family and communion. Notes 1 Professor Giddens broadcast five lectures on the theme of Globalisation in April and May 1999. I am indebted to these lectures in tracing some of the characteristics of global culture in the first part of this presentation. Cecil
McGarry, SJ, Ref.: AMECEA Documentation Service, 16/1999, n. 506, 15th September 1999.
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