Sisters doing it for themselves

Sisters doing it for themselves 

03 August 2016 | by Patricia Rumsey | Comments: 0

Vultum Dei Quaerere

Pope Francis’ apostolic constitution on the contemplative life for women, published last month, offers encouragement and challenges to Religious and contemporary society
Two years ago, contemplative nuns the world over expended much time and energy responding to a questionnaire sent out by the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. The survey centred on three aspects of nuns’ lives which were troubling the Vatican – formation, autonomy and federation. It is gratifying to receive in a comparatively short space of time the fruits of our answers, which have obviously been taken seriously by the Congregation, in the apostolic constitution from Pope Francis, Vultum Dei Quaerere (“Seeking the face of God”). It includes guidelines on formation, assets, prayer life, authority and autonomy.

Most of us will say, “All of these I have observed from my youth; what more have I to do?” The document goes a little further in giving contemplative nuns the freedom to answer this question and to make the decision for themselves. But does it go far enough?

Even in the title, the overriding question raises its head: why are contemplative nuns treated separately and differently from contemplative monks? Archbishop José Rodríguez Carballo’s explanation last month – that “the types of religious life lived by Catholic men and women are different” – simply doesn’t hold water. The frequent references in the document to “men and women” both being called to seek the face of God in the monastic life make explicit the reality that the monastic calling is non-gendered. Vultum Dei Quaerere rightly quotes chapter 13 of the Rule of St Benedict, where the aspirant’s motives have to be tested to ascertain that “he truly seeks God”. This is just as true of women.

The only difference, historically, is the stricter practice of enclosure, which since the  decretal of Pope Boniface VIII, Periculoso (1298), had been enforced on all monastic women. In this present document, for the first time, the actual degree of seclusion is left to women to decide for themselves, depending on the specific way they themselves wish to live out their contemplative commitment. It is interesting and perhaps significant to note that the list of documents dealing with various aspects of the life of enclosed women does not include the “Instruction on the Contemplative Life and on the Enclosure of Nuns” (Venite Seorsum, 15 August 1969). This backtracked on the more visionary aspects of Vatican II’s document on the renewal of religious life, Perfectae Caritatis, by setting out practical norms for enclosure, some of which were as restrictive as anything pre-Vatican II.

Much about Vultum Dei Quaerere is positive and offers contemplatives affirmation when, at least in the Western world, we face the diminishment of ageing communities and fewer numbers. We are rightly warned against the temptation to see life “in terms of numbers and efficiency”. An alternative to this is the exhortation to those living the monastic life to provide places of retreat and stillness in our busy world where people can come to find God in the silence, beauty and peace of the monastic setting. This does not depend on numbers, and maybe our great gift to the Church – and to wider, secular society – is our ability to provide centres of hope, support, friendship, comfort, and a sense of belonging where people can bring their troubles and know they will be received with warmth and understanding, and non-judgmentally.

Each monastic community has its own group of people centred around it, sometimes physically, sometimes – in these days of IT – virtually. That community is their spiritual home and they experience in their link with that community an identity, a sense of belonging and an inspiration and a focus for their prayer. This has always been part of the monastic charism; Francis makes it clear that it is more necessary than ever today.
As always in his writings, Francis challenges as well as encourages. He urges contemplative nuns to deepen the values which underpin their lives: namely silence, attentive listening, the call to an interior life and stability. In this way, he says, contemplative life can and must challenge the contemporary mindset.

He then calls on women Religious worldwide to review their constitutions and implement changes after reflecting on 12 fundamental aspects of the monastic tradition – formation (both initial and ongoing), prayer, the word of God, the Sacraments of the Eucharist and Reconciliation, fraternal life in community (the document is for women, but the language remains male-orientated), autonomy, federations, the cloister, work, silence, the communications media and asceticism – and he gives short paragraphs of comment on each of these.

The emphasis on formation, both initial and ongoing, is striking and apposite. It can be easy in these times of lessening nun-power to opt out of opportunities for growth, challenge, development and learning with the excuse, “We don’t have time”. It is precisely the fewness of numbers which makes these opportunities more necessary and essential.

Pope Francis makes the whole of this exhortation a clarion call for contemplatives to centre their lives on Scripture as it occurs in the monastic day as the Liturgy of the Hours and Lectio Divina. This emphasis on the centrality of Scripture at community level and for the spiritual lives of individual nuns is one of the document’s most striking aspects, providing a necessary antidote to the unhealthy diet of private revelations and pious devotions which was the lot of contemplative nuns for so long.

All this is encouraging and positive. But there are negative aspects to this document. There is throughout a serious ambiguity in the text, which points up the anomalous situation of contemplative Religious – both male and female – today, in the insistence on “separation from the world” (without, however, using the old monastic phrase, fuga mundi). Texts such as Laudato si’ enjoin all Christians to see the world in a positive light, the world created “very good” by God and a world where, because of the reality of the Incarnation, each thing in existence has been hallowed by Christ and become potentially Spirit-bearing. This is not a world to flee from, but a world to engage with in love and passionate concern at all levels.

Mary is the focus of the document’s paragraph 10. This begins by holding her up as the exemplar par excellence of the contemplative, as is usual in documents from Rome. Yet it does this without placing her on the completely unattainable pedestal where she has been unhappily enthroned for so long for so many Christian women, and with such dire results. Here, at least, she becomes more of a real woman with whom we can identify.

But it is not only “the contemplative” who “sees with new eyes”; surely all who follow Christ begin to see “with a new perspective” and the assumption that “those who immerse themselves in the mystery of contemplation see things with spiritual eyes. This enables them to see the world and other persons as God does”, whereas others “have eyes but do not see” for they “see with carnal eyes”, overlooks the fact that there are many deeply contemplative persons outside monasteries who also see life “with the eyes of the spirit”. In trying to uphold the contemplative lifestyle, this sentence is an insult to the integrity of those outside the enclosure.

Vultum Dei Quaerere promises a new instruction from the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life on how this document should be implemented – and I would hope that it will not nullify the slightly freer and more positive stance of Pope Francis. I would like to quote the last paragraph from my own community’s answers to the Vatican questionnaire with which I began this paper: “We would also like to point out that the norms for implementing the Decree on the Up-to-Date Renewal of Religious Life (Motu Proprio Ecclesiae Sanctae II, 6 August, 1966) make very clear that: ‘It is the institutes themselves which have the main responsibility for renewal and adaptation’ (Eccl. sanc. I,1,i). If this is truly so, as this document of Pope Paul VI states, then we would petition that we ourselves be able to draw up the necessary legislation for the renewal of our own lives.”

The urgent need is for communities of monastic women to draw up plans for their own renewal – not simply to implement those made for them by men.

Patricia Rumsey (Sr Francisca) is abbess of the Poor Clare Monastery in north London.