2002 Conference Speaker's Texts

"An Obedient Church is a Listening Church"

By Sister Christine Vladimiroff, O.S.B.

Sister Christine Vladimiroff, O.S.B., accepted Call To Action's annualcommendation award Nov. 2, 2002, on behalf of the Benedictine Sisters ofErie, Pa. The award acknowledged the Erie Sisters' ongoing work addressingthe issues of peace and justice. During the three-day conference inMilwaukee, Sister Vladimiroff, who serves as her community's prioress, gavetwo workshops entitled, "An Obedient Church is a Listening Church." This text is excerpted from her workshop notes.

Mutual obedience makes demands on those of us who are, and would be, thecommunity of Jesus. Such a community is the Church in its purest form - layand clerical members together, engaged in the spiritual quest for God.Mutual obedience has something to offer those of us who want to acceptresponsibility for moving the Church to a new place. I remember the firstmeetings of Call To Action many years ago, and have watched with admirationthe constancy of your resolve, a resolve that grows stronger in spite ofobstacles, and even discouraging reversals. You are heroes to me. And whatis more important you are a sign of adults taking responsibility for thefuture. It is time to reconsider how decisions are made in the Church. It istime to ask what structures are in place for authentic consultation thatincludes all the People of God. It is time to look for effective mechanismsof accountability to the People of God for those in leadership roles.

While I must speak from the tradition I know, and without wanting to soundpartisan, let me just state that the Benedictine way of life has been aroundsince the sixth century. It is pristine, ongoing, and it was retrieved andrefreshed in new ways at Vatican II. It is also subject to corruption, withsnatches of history that include abbots as feudal lords, and a clericalismthat has evolved around what should be a basically lay monastic community.The sadness is that we all can be corrupted by the dominant culture.The Benedictine monastic model offers obedience as listening with the ear ofour heart. It sees obedience as part of our spiritual journey to God. Themonastic's single purpose, in fact, is the search for God. Everything mustsupport this goal. Benedictine obedience is a process of listening andtrying to discern what will bring us closer to God.

The Rule of Benedict is thus:"Listen carefully, my child, to my instructions, and attend to them with theear of your heart. This is advice from one who loves you; welcome it andfaithfully put it into practice. The labor of obedience will bring you backto God from whom you had drifted through the sloth of disobedience. Themessage of mine is for you, then, if you are ready to give up your own will,once and for all, and armed with the strong and noble weapons of obedienceto do battle for Jesus, the Christ. (Prologue 1-3)

One definition of obedience within the Church, is to imitate the obedienceof Christ, "who learned obedience from what he suffered." (Heb 5:8) Yet,just as Scripture teaches that obedience was submission to the will of theFather (Jn 5:30), it cannot be forgotten that Christ's obedience to theFather was not a servile kind of obedience, but obedience in a community ofequals - Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. God is trinity and, therefore, this"submission" was, and is, submission within a triune God of equality,perfect unity, harmony, and love. Indeed, love was the basis of"submission," not authority. When only the obedience of one member of thetrinity is emphasized, the dynamic can become distorted. While this is not anew theological insight, it is not one that many people are familiar with.To mirror this trinitarian life in the Church we must foster a relationshipof mutual communion, "communio," rather than an obedience rooted only inrelation to power and authority. Obedience is never one-sided.

In Benedictine leadership, I would ask for obedience, after much listeningand discernment, only if I think that what I am asking would be the rightthing for a person to do in order to become a better person. For example, ifI needed a social worker for our after-school program in the inner city, Iwould not force someone without the experience or passion to fill that job.I would not cite obedience in order to complete an organizational task. Iwould, however, call for obedience if I felt that it would move someonecloser to God. That's the whole idea in religious life today in terms ofministries, that you go where your gifts are. It is much the same in healthyfamily dynamics, you don't always do just what is good for you, you do whatis good for each other. You have a mutual giving.

Monastic communities, and especially Benedictines, are each founded to be acommunity of love, and out of that community of love comes obedience, but itis a loving, mutual, accepting obedience and not one that is the result ofrank or hierarchical structures. Obedience is definitely not a mechanism ofgroup control. It is finding a new way to give oneself to God. So we need toask ourselves: What does the obedience of leadership look like if we seeauthority as service to the community? Church leadership is meant to bementoring for holiness. How does decision-making function in a community ofequals on the journey of discipleship?

It is a matter of finding structures that foster growth, consultation, anddialog. Organizational structures are man-made, time limited, historical.Some structures enhance and expand life, some smother it. Traditions can beempowering, giving a group a sense of identity and a center of core valuesthat allow them to be free in inserting themselves in the ever-changingrealities of a lifetime. Traditions can also serve as old ruts in a road,not allowing us to move off into new space, but only to stay the course,even if it no longer takes us anywhere we want to go. Social forms,organizational paradigms, come into existence, change, and pass out ofexistence. No human institution can successfully and wholly embody for alltime the absolute "right way" that life is to be lived.

Church renewal can be very fixated on tradition. The people of Call ToAction bring a special passion to Church reform. You have made it yourmission to continue the agenda set at Vatican II. Church reform is a problemof practical theology. It presupposes a change of consciousness as much asit induces it into the community of God's people.

The modern, educated laity has many questions for which they do not acceptfixed answers. These are questions that cannot be answered adequately by oldformulas. "Do this because I said so," is the response of anauthoritarianism that lacks accountability for the individual or the group.With these words, the person of authority puts herself or himself above allothers involved, with no obligation to explain or consider group discussion.Lay people want to have some say in their parish, they want to be involvedin making diocesan policy, they want some way to influence the universalchurch and the statements that come out of Rome. And so there is thisyearning to define your role within the Church.

John Paul II told Cardinal Ratzinger and the Congregations for the Defenseof the Faith that they must learn to "collaborate" with the world's bishopsand get used to listening. The pope used the word "collaborate" five timesin his address to the plenary assembly of the congregation. He affirmed thatthe church needs "reciprocal listening" and a "continuous fraternalencounter between the entire Roman Curia on the one hand and the conferencesof bishops and heads of religious orders on the other." The motive expressedin John Paul's talk was that he was concerned that the documents of theVatican congregations have serious problems of "reception and assimilation"by the faithful in the pews. He is quoted as saying: There is "a problem oftransmission of church teaching" to the faithful, "to all people and inparticular to theologians and people of learning."

We need to change our mindset about what has come to us through Jesus Christand what we have built. One observer of the Church has called for a time ofmolting - shedding the forms of its older answers. And I would inject, toask new questions, so as to emerge from a situation of fixity of forms, andof constraint and narrow vision.

In the Hebrew Scriptures we had individuals who assumed the role of theprophet. The had the task to challenge and denounce all the partial or falseidols that both religion and society had erected to obscure the whole visionof God in their midst. The prophets evoked admiration and praise and theyelicited antagonism and hatred. Jesus came as a prophet, as well, withchallenges for the religious establishment of his time. The Church of theNew Testament assumed the role of prophet in proposing an alternative visionof how we should live if we follow Jesus. The Church's understanding ofitself gave movement to modeling a new arrangement of life, such as sharingall things in common, appointing deacons to serve the poor, preaching loveinstead of violence, and even objecting to participating in war for it was acontradiction to that of being a disciple of Jesus. In those initial years,the fire of the Pentecost was kindled and glowing.

Some scholars tell us that the prophetic nucleus has shifted fromindividuals to groups of people and communities. Groups are forming around agospel concept and calling all of us to insight and action on war, povertydiscriminations, and Church reform. These groups include, Catholic Worker,Pax Christi, Call To Action, Dignity, Future Church, Women's OrdinationConference, Voices of the Faithful. I believe these are movements of theSpirit, calling us to greater faithfulness in` our vocation as Christians.The true prophet poses a threat to the stability of the here and now and tothe security of the status quo. The theory and the theology of prophecy maybe acceptable, however, the practice of welcoming the prophetic presence andthe prophetic challenge is often questioned or thwarted, or punished. In herbook, Finding the Treasure, Sandra Schneider, I.H.M. holds up twocharacteristics of religious communities that make them prophetic. I believethey apply to all of us. She writes: Contemplative immediacy to God andsocial marginality are the coordinates of religious life as a prophetic lifeform in the Church." We must come out of prayer and we must not be seducedby the dominant culture of Church or society. Let us renew our courage andstir in us joy. Yves Congar, O.P., writes: "God is not only behind theChurch, at its beginning; he is also before it: he calls it to prepare andto anticipate the reign of God. The feeling of the never bridged distancebetween the historical church and its truth, that of its Alpha and that ofits Omega, is the major source of all reform movement."Listen with the ear of your heart. You will know what to do.