By Varghese Alengaden
Indore, May 22, 2022: I was thinking that changes will be more effective if they come from the top. With this understanding I had been making efforts to motivate and convince those who were in leadership positions for many years.
Several retreats and seminars were organized for bishops, superior generals and provincials hoping that they would be able to reform the dioceses and congregations. I was enthusiastic whenever I was invited to give animation and retreats for the participants of congregation synaxis.
I did not find much changes taking place despite follow up through personal meetings and letters with constructive proposals. Some of them have gone back to the old pre-Vatican practices and imposing more rigorous rules and controls. I still continue my efforts of persuading tirelessly knowing well that the mission of a prophet is a ‘cry in the wilderness.’
I also analyzed the reasons for the resistance and reluctance to change from the top leadership. Many provincials and bishops are helpless to motivate their members. “It is not easy to make these people understand,” “everybody has their own convictions,” ”we cannot make changes overnight,” “they don’t have commitment to their call and mission” are the excuses.
Through these statements bishops and provincials are exposing their lack of leadership. Many of them neither review the quality of formation nor look for innovative possibilities of motivation and renewal of their disoriented and stagnant members. Most keep up the status quo following the old routine ways.
While not giving up efforts to motivate people in top leadership positions, I started motivating the individual priests and nuns who live and work in small communities. A vast majority of priests and religious depend on bishops and provincials to do anything. They have adopted the policy of ‘following the routine’ and ‘be like everyone else.’ No one is willing to take risk and bear the consequences.
I started explaining to individuals that all reformations in the history began from the bottom, often with one individual. One single individual with clarity of vision and purity of intention is majority. That one person starts doing small things differently from the routine. Gradually others get inspired and start doing the same. In this process routine traditions are violated and better alternatives are innovated.
One single individual gets clarity of vision and conviction from personal contemplation of the sociopolitical and religious context. Contemplation provides insights and creative resolutions. Once a person is convinced of the vision of life and good of the community he or she would be courageous to do things without fear of any consequences. They start creating history through their small efforts which would gradually turn into a revolution.
In religious communities I have seen resistance to start small changes. Despite discussing and preparing elaborate action plans for creating an inclusive mission and building communion, the members resist including the girl who works in the kitchen to be part of community meal as an expression of table fellowship. Often hundreds of excuses are made not to allow her to be part of the community meal. ‘Some members don’t like it,’ ‘we need permission from provincial,’ and many such arguments are made.
The superior of the community should have the ability to make the community understand that this is what Jesus would do if He were here and now. This is synodality in action.
A young girl leaves her home and dear ones to work in a religious community because of her helplessness. Hence it is important that all community members make her feel at home and compensate the absence of her parents and dear ones at home.
There are a number of such small acts which can be done in the community. When such acts become normal way of life the members get educated and spiritually enriched. Gradually the practices experimented in one community become the order of the congregation.
When Augustinian monk Martin Luther challenged many practices in the Church contrary to the teachings of Christ he was excommunicated which resulted in the split of the Catholic Church. After many centuries when the visionary Pope John XXIII convened Vatican II most of the points raised by Martin Luther were accepted by the Vatican Council in its documents. Yet it took 500 years for Pope Francis to acknowledge and admire Martin Luther’s prophetic words and actions.
Change comes from the bottom often with the efforts of one single person. Only a person who contemplates will receive enlightenment and courage to dare to act differently without bothering about the consequences.
Story of USM mission (Universal Solidarity Movement) with its unique salient features is another example of changes emerging from bottom and affecting all over. Hence bishops, priests and religious who are in leadership positions go to USM for exposure and retreats.
(Father Varghese Alengaden is the founder director of Indore-based Universal Solidarity Movement.)
In his book Glimpses of Recent Pope’s the late Rev Desmond D’Souza CssR said that what comes from above is an imposition. What swells from below could lead to an implosion. We need to work at both ends for lasting reform and renewal in the moribund Catholic Church.
It is not clear what the writer means by “bottom” of the church. To him, it seems, priests and nuns are the bottom of the church. They are not. Lay people are the bottom of the church, not priests and nuns. In fact some priests and nuns are more selfish and arrogant than the bishops and provincials who are the deciding authorities.