Glen Lewandowski, OSC
Tension between Living the Missionary Way of Life and Living the Mission of the Proper Religious Institute: The Case of the Crosier Order

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Just a few notes to help contextualize who canons regular are. Perhaps the most famous Canon Regular is the (probable) author of Thomas à Kempis’s IMITATION OF CHRIST. But, equally, Erasmus of Rotterdam registers in most people’s memory -- not as a canon regular, but as the great Dutch humanist, who (some may know this) left the canons regular. Further, Dominic of Osma started out as a Canon Regular and even seems to have intended his Order of Preachers on the foundations of the form of religious life known as canons regular. Later, of course, the Dominicans became assimilated into the apostolic movement of the mendicants and orders of the fraternal life (I will come back to this point presently). A few more scions of the canons regular include Hugh of Saint Victor and Richard of Saint Victor, two spiritual writers of note. Jan van Ruuysbroek, from the Groenendaal monastery, is another spiritual writer whom some of you may have read.

I note for you the datum from Lawrence Cada’s THE COMING SHAPE OF RELIGIOUS LIFE, which suggests that most of the order of canons regular disappeared during the suppression associated with the French Revolution. So it is that those groups that survived the suppression of the French Revolution are but a tiny fraction of the large showing in the statistics of Canons before the Revolution.

If we are going to explore the relationship between the charism of a religious Order and the involvement in the mission of the Church, there needs to be a significant enough presentation of the charism to begin to see how the problematic presents itself. We also need to address, at least in part, the form mission takes and how this interrelates within an Order’s charism.

Charism

The Crosier Order was founded at the tail end of the 12^th Century Renaissance,¹ coming into being in 1210, just before the ban on the establishment of any new religious orders in 1215. For most of the history of the Crosier Order, up to the modern era, the emphasis was definitely not on the type of religious life associated with mission. Like so many of the old orders in the church, the exact purpose (finis) for our founding was specifically religious. It was founded for the development of the members in the way of love cor unum et anima una in deum.² Having returned from the Crusades, Blessed Theodore and his companions joined together in a community dedicated to conforming themselves to the spirit and rule of the Cross of Jesus, abandoning a literal interpretation of waging a crusader’s battle of the Cross.³ The Crosiers, using today’s categories, can best be classed as a clerical order. The term “cleric”, however, in the 12^th Century was more associated with the scholars’ tradition of literacy and learning, along with the liturgical tradition of active participation in the rites of a local church, than it was specifically with ordination to the diaconate.⁴ The canons were constituted by all the clerics entering the order, both those students prior to ordination and those in major orders. The characteristic (indoles) canonical form of expressing a Crosier way of living for God was through the solemn celebration of the liturgy of the Church. By the time of the Crosier’s founding the distinction between the monastic form of the liturgy of the hours and the conventual or cathedral form⁵ of the liturgy had been lost. The Crosiers celebrated all seven canonical hours in choir and looked not strikingly different from the order of monks.⁶

By 1248 the rule of Augustine and many of the customs and institutes of the Dominican Order were taken over by the Crosiers, making the ethos of a strong Augustinian fraternal life stand out as constitutive. Augustine’s appropriation of the apostolic life as koinonia (founded in Acts 4.32) had been a strong contributing component for the entire Canons Regular movement from the middle of the 12^th Century on.⁷ But the Crosiers never took on the specific priority given to the preaching role that the Dominicans accepted. Nor did the chapters on study (preparatory to the preaching) and the accelerated form of celebrating the liturgy of the hours find its way into the Crosier’s appropriation of the Dominican statutes. Crosier commentators note that in our Order we did not want to develop in the line of the great intellectual-apologetic field the Dominicans did. Nor did we favor the itinerancy that gave the Dominicans mobility and broad, bold outreach. In that regard, the Crosiers were often more contemplative, much like the early Cistercians and western form of the Norbertines. This strong contemplative-communitarian strain of the fraternity lasted well into the 18^th Century, through the French Revolution.⁸

When the French Revolution banned the many religious orders from taking in new members, a key political criterion for the suppression was that these groups were useless to society and, worse still, a (pseudo-)aristocratic parasitic drain on the resource of the lay secular order. Because these contemplative forms of religious life were useless (did not meet a social need), they were proscribed as “not needful”. Most all of the Crosier monasteries – falling as they did within the territorial confines of the Napoleanic regime – were suppressed, the properties confiscated, and the moveable goods appropriated. Some very few of the Crosier canons incardinated into the diocesan priesthood as parish ministers, but many simply evaporated into history. On the other hand, many Crosiers also were of the opinion that religious life had finished its purposefulness. The new congregations of the 19^th Century – strongly mission oriented and founded to meet a specific social need – were clearly but paradoxically counter-marked by the enlightenment’s ideology of “usefulness to society”.⁹

The Crosier Order’s revival after 1840, having weathered the storm and having almost been shattered to extinction,¹⁰ took up some of the apostolic element of the charism of the newer congregations. At this point in history the Order changed to a vita mixta (contemplation AND ACTION), with an acceptance of schools, parishes, and missions. It was always maintained,¹¹ however, that these ‘needful’ activities in the apostolate were not constitutive for the Order, but rather were mediated by decision of the community chapter. Each local chapter of the Order might very well have a different apostolate. In other words, the particular apostolate was the local community’s chapter-chosen apostolate, not the Orders’ apostolate, imposed on all by the constitutions. That form of life makes for a great deal more local autonomy and decentralization, but at the same time curtails some of the critical acumen needed in distancing local issues from broader concerns for the common good.

Crosier Way of Life

This may, for some, seem all background and much ado about nothing. At this point, I want to move to a “case study” of the relationship between living the Crosier Charism and the concrete mission in which I had first hand experience. I want to highlight some of the difficulties we faced and some of the turns we had to negotiate.

Most of the “missions areas” the Crosiers undertook in the 20^th Century were (initially) not so much authentic “missions ad gentes” as chaplancies to colonial expatriates. The mission, properly speaking, ad gentes undertaken by the US province of St. Odilia in 1958, however, was clearly directed toward the native people the Asmat Tribe on the south coast of (Western) New Guinea.

This is not to say that all colonial warrants for mission are thereby outlawed. The “mission” was proposed to the Crosier Order just because our General Superior was Dutch and the Apostolic Prefect of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in New Guinea was also Dutch. The escalation of tensions between the Dutch government and the newly independent Indonesian government made it difficult (and in fact not acceptable) to supply the mission field with Dutch nationals, so the Crosier general superior approached the American province of Crosiers to consider undertaking the mission in Dutch New Guinea among the Asmat.¹²

Without detailing the developments and full history of the mission, I want only to note that effort was made, from the beginning, to undertake the mission by being sensitive to the best developing theology and praxis of mission current in the pre-conciliar period. The Crosiers clearly were not a mission society and were keenly aware that they were in need of learning from their predecessors: the MSCs. Pastoral Anthropology was the preferred learning tool and arena of praxis study. The mission area in Asmat was (and remains) very primitive – a taboo term in that time.¹³ The Melanesian society had never developed into the neolithic economy of agriculture; and even horticulture was not widely practiced. The entire area was a deluvial swamp that flooded daily from the ebbing and receding tide. The social organization of the people was tribal, with some marks of a matrilineal inheritance pattern. No literacy had infected the minds. Deities followed the dema-form rather than the dewa-form.¹⁴ Worship forms were stronger on rites of initiation and dramatic portrayal of the ancestor dema coming to be present rather than on sacrificial or meal offering (as in neolithic paradigms). Obviously social order was strongly vendetta controlled rather than ruled by state regulated law. There was no state level organization. The head-hunting cults in 1958 were flourishing and internationally notorious. Hunting and gathering provided the eco-sensitive form of food provision (not to be confused with production). Protein was scarce, malaria pandemic, and disease largely unmedicated. Life was nasty, brutish, and short.¹⁵

Contact with the Asmat had been limited to some occasional encounters by Dutch ethnologists in the 1930’s and a few Keise catechists had been placed among some villages of the Asmat, before the Second World War, but then the “mission fell apart” until 1952, when one MSC missionary returned and settled in Agats. The Crosier Order undertook the mission in 1958, working with five seasoned MSC missionaries. The first twenty-five years of work brought an end to head hunting (largely) and concentrated on setting up an infrastucture of mission schools, policlinics and parish centers with outlying stational churches.

The residence pattern of the Crosier mission followed a “proto-parochial” structure of one Crosier priest and brother in each of 8 location. The central mission house in Agats was more of a gathering oasis for tired missionaries than it was a Crosier community. It was also to become the diocesan see and logistic headquarters for operations. The Crosier mission superior in the first years was named “head pastor” and might live in any one of the village parishes. Communication between Crosiers took place routinely, twice a day, via SSB radio, at scheduled hours and with ordered opportunities to convey information. Crosier pastors made routine visits to their assigned stational villages and so were out of the central home village for weeks. In the early days the travel all took place in dug-out canoes, rowed by Asmatters.

Crosier community life – a very strong emphasis in the historic charism – came to be seen as occasional community life, and structured by a ‘monastery without walls’. In fact, rather serious reflection on the anthropological nature of the received tradition of Crosier life sparked formulations such as: in Northern Europe, with winters and seasons, there housing, daily ordered habits, and common life were integral to the Crosier life. In the tropics, people do not inhabit buildings so much as villages. In the tropics, clothes (and thus religious habits) are generally a nuisance. And common life takes the form of cyclic gatherings (several times a year) rather than daily life. Fraternity and community-building are for the sake of the church (viz. my parish) and fasting is pretty much a curse for everyone, especially the local people, who are protein- and mineral-starved and lack almost any vegetables and fruits. The “universal” liturgical cycle developed in the northern hemisphere, among Neolithic communities of farmers, with an astronomy of seasons and times and years, lacks any counterpart among the native Asmat. Even festive seasons among the Asmat are decided on (construed¹⁶) by the elders, who earnestly assess that life-force is being depleted and needs rejuvenation – rather than by the turn of stars, weather patterns, or ground yielding seedlings or fruit. Meals (communal or familial) were largely unknown among the Asmat. It was not eating together that counted at a feast, so much as fair distribution of game and ingathered fruits. After the distribution, each left the feast and ate his own supply at his own leisure. Thus even inculturating overtures to eucharist as a sacred meal, an eating together, a moment of participation in the bread (sic) of life and the cup (sic) of blessing, caused as much mental pain and serious doubt as they did solace for the missionaries. The Bible itself, these men reasoned, reflects the cultural patterns of the Neolithic and only rarely do we find there cultural data from a more nomadic and pre-Neolithic life style. Jesus’ preaching about the bread of life, using the ultra clear non-bread of mana [what on earth is this??] is probably the best gospel witness of gatherers calling not bread — what was clearly not such — bread [lehem, artos].

The Crosier religious superiors (provincials, generals) constantly urged and insisted that the Crosiers pray together, gather for relaxation and communal support, some shared meals, and days of recollection and retreat, as well as pastoral planning and shared study. Generally speaking Crosier missionaries did these things. But, this was not often motivated by “living out the charism” so much as it was to escape the loneliness and isolation of the mission swamp, internal confusion about what really one should be doing here on the edge of history, and the felt need to check on one’s post and read first hand some newspaper reports. Fraternal life rounded out to becoming a debriefing of the events, traumas, and tragedies of living under very primitive conditions and regression back to a physical environment of poverty and scarcity, with little felt success or accomplishment. Joys and jokes were laced with culture shock and hosts of tales of somebody else’s insanities.

It needs to be noted that the Crosier missionaries had all undergone together a similar Crosier formation in the United States, where not only education but communal formation and shared life had been part of the patrimony they experienced and brought along with them (at least in imagination and memory) as missionaries. Even at that, however, the “up-dating” and “appropriate” renewal that were happening Stateside left the missionaries somewhat lagging. Old angers and hurts, deep grudges about the received baggage of the past embittered several members of the mission. Departures from religious life in the States had parallel cohorts of people leaving Crosier religious life in the mission, but the processing of discernment and weighing of life choices often occurred more in silence, isolation and loneliness, more – that is -- than it did in conversation and in fraternal compassion.

Missionary Style of Life becomes Problematic

With the first acceptance of native candidates into the Order in late 1978, a new series of problems surfaced. By and large the missionaries had never come to found the Order among the people they served as missionaries. They had, in many ways, adjusted to being missionary-Pastors. Their set of life concerns had become parochialized and individualized. Young people interested in the Crosier way of life saw only missionaries, pastors, stellar individuals. The constitutions, the words of the formation directors, the jargon of religious life began to be explicitly surfaced, but their occurred – both for candidates and (already previously) for professed Crosiers – a disconnect between the stated ideals and the lived reality. Nothing seemed so constitutive of “Crosier” as the missionary way of life -- as it was practiced in fact. The missionaries themselves had made the mental notations and adjustments in self-understanding so as to be happy (happier!) in their parishes than they were among each other. Even the original 1958 pattern of placement – having a priest and brother living together – had eventually to give way by the 1980’s to the reality of living entirely alone in parishes.

In diocesan pastoral assemblies, some voices surfaced the insight that “in this diocese there is no room for community life” and “inculturation demands that we give up the baggage of western patterns of association and fraternity,” “our ministry is the reason we are here,” “communal life is an expensive luxury… when so many people are poor and like sheep without a shepherd”, “we must be a community without walls.” Further, the exemplary missionaries for the Crosiers, and the ones most referenced as models of what to do and live like, came from two distinct missionary societies: the Maryknolls and the Millhills. Each of these forms of consecrated life had clear and persistent constitutional commitments to mission and the mission way of life and found other forms of religious life to be curious, at best, outmoded, out of step and dysfunctional at worst. There was little reflection among the Crosier missionaries of what the form of mission attached to a conventual group might look like. Rather the full measure of what good mission needed to be was coming from the model mission societies.

The stimulus of the 1994 Synod on Consecrated Life and the 1992 Nygren-Ukeritis Future of Religious Life study gave cause for the Crosiers to reappraise what we were doing with religious life in the New Guinea mission. It was clear that the mission (viz. purpose) of the mission ad gentes was not negative, in itself. But not having any distance from the purpose of the diocesan mission was assimilating our energies. There were not any distinctive energies or ideas left among us Crosiers for religious life. All was being poured into the maintenance of the diocesan mission. The missionary Crosiers were pretty absolutely identified with the diocese of Agats, and only the formation personnel were struggling to rethink religious life. The window of opportunity to establish a Crosier way of life for native Indonesian members was narrowing. Foreign missionaries were under pressure, since 1977, to leave. For Crosiers [but, equally, for religious all over Indonesia] there had to be a more differentiated – less identical – relationship with the diocese. There had to be a more dialectical commitment – less absolute – to the purposes of the local church. The aim of Crosier religious life itself became problematic.

Sorting out what the purpose of the Crosier Order is all about was no easy task – one at which we are still working. The muddling of all the differing types of religious life into one generic form – largely driven by the apostolic model – had been part of the Crosier problem. In the apostolic congregations tradition, the purpose (finis) of the founder was clearly tied to a specific apostolic aim. Even though the remark gets made that the general purpose for all religious life has to do with the sanctification of the members,¹⁷ most apostolic groups recognize how constitutionally or constitutively apostolic their charism is. They have been founded for a clear apostolic purpose and can only honor their charism by serving that apostolic aim. The apostolic aim for mission societies has most often been evangelization ad gentes. The Crosier Order had no such founding principle. A distinct apostolic activity was never conceived as part of the constitution of the Order, but rather was always decided on and mediated by the chapter, more specifically, even, the local chapter.¹⁸ The form of the apostolate could be adapted, changed, evaluated and revised in light of changing circumstances and the contemporary assessment of the context for living the charism. No single work was constitutive.¹⁹ Further, the apostolate – according to the Constitutions – had always to be linked with a strong community life: “Since we have been called to service of the Church in and through community, we favor those apostolic endeavors which require or are enriched by community life and which in turn foster it.” [Crosier Const. 22.2] Becoming clearer about the value of fraternity and the centrality of community life in the conventual tradition has been a godsend to our present state of revision, self-recognition and structural reconnaissance.²⁰

A note on “mission” might be apt here. There has come to be a confusion in terminology between purpose, aim, mission (finis) and project, apostolate, ministry and mission (missio). The recent importance of working up “vision and mission” statements has contributed to some of the muddle. But even the conciliar discussions clarifying that the mission of the church is more than the mission ad gentes has broadened the scope of our understanding of mission. When Paul VI charged religious groups to formulate in their constitutions, their particular finis, natura, indoles and spiritus the task was not the same as that of writing a mission statement. The translation of finis with aim rather than mission seems helpful to me.²¹ It broadens the discussion of the religious aim of religious life beyond that of the topics of their mission, taken to mean, roughtly, apostolate and ministry. I find that specifying indoles (characteristic ways of doing things) can also be helpful for thinking about religious life: the Crosier Order prizes (local) chapters as the arena where decisions about the apostolate occur; and, further, that these chapter discussions are conditioned by the strong charism of our realizing fraternal life in community. This strong emphasis on fraternity is not the characteristic prism apostolic congregations and missionary societies would use to view religious life affairs such as work and activity.

Thus, we can say that the strongest tension for conventual religious forms of religious life, which are not mission societies per se, is felt when it comes to establishing the Order and the proper charism both through formation programs and in a new founding the Order in a new cultural situation, where the only previous lived experience of the Order was reflected through the missionary way of life. The missionary way of life, for conventual Orders, had never intended to represent the fullness of the conventual charism and often even moderated and adjusted it to the point of modifying the appearance of the Order into an apostolic society for mission. But now the challenge is exactly that: to found the Order with its proper charism among native members and in a new cultural context, and not merely to continue the foreign mission, with largely mission concerns and priorities.

Principles of Resolution

In this last section, to shift from a narrative approach of experience, I will condense my thoughts to some working principles for discernment in the Crosier context, rather than continue the narrative.

Religious life itself has become valued in the recent decade – a privileged worth that was not so evident immediately after the Council. The most major way Crosiers serve the church is to provide members of the church a focused way of life intent on God.

Community life is more than a social convenience (or burden). It is, in spe, the sacramental embodiment of the deep-structured communio of the persons of God, relating in unity and love. Community life constitutes conventual religious life in a more radical way than as a base for action. It is prophetic to the fundamental need in the human project to live “one mind, one heart, intent on God”.

Decision-making about the apostolate, particularly vis-à-vis the mission ad gentes, cannot be a generic ‘one shoe fits all’ pattern. The contemplative monk of Papua New Guinea²² urged – as his self-understanding as a missionary – that the most important thing happening in mission in Papua New Guinea was his community’s commitment to prayer, contemplation, and the pursuit of mystic union. The “development and economic growth” forms of mission were proving inadequate and unsatisfactory. The ‘evangelization of pagans’ model was also duly abandoned. The contemplative community had its proper role and purpose.

While the Crosier charism would not be as entirely contemplative as this monk suggests for emulation – or at least for his own self-understanding – it does raise to the level of discussion a specific religious community choosing to do mission work and witness out of its proper charism. As a group, the Crosiers may not as far along in precision or choice. But we are recognizing and claiming more that the public witness of fraternal life itself needs to be valued as apostolic.

There is a danger to the communal charism if individual members never live it. Although there is some constitutional and canonical provision for members to live alone, there is wisdom in limiting the extent of time for that living outside of community. Further, in assessing the health of the charism, chapters and superiors need to judge in the context of the actual order-province as a whole whether the charism is being sufficiently lived and transmitted. If a whole generation passes by and members have not experienced and lived the communal charism, the social embodiment of the actual, individualized, life²³ of a lone pastor “seems” to be it (the charism). None of the senior members, viz. native members, knows what to think, judge, or do to form the younger members into a pattern of Crosier community life.

Formation. Veteran missionaries [among Crosiers], it seems, are generally rather poor at formation tasks. It is not just a matter of accompaniment of the young – though that too causes difficulty. The motivation to establish the religious life charism does not appeal as clearly as does the vocation to be a missionary and to serve “the people”. “I did not join this outfit to be a [Crosier] religious, but because they had a mission …” is one formulation heard, particularly under the duress to contribute to the formation program and community life values. But even young, native-born, more senior Crosiers share some of the same aversion.

Formation into religious life must become a distinct value and priority. In our last General Chapter (2003), assessing the global situation of the life of the Order, it became clearer that formation into religious life, into our proper charism, a life journey of faith, into the identification with a way of life where members live for God, must have high priority in all our provinces, proprovinces and regions. It is especially important to focus the discussion and discourse among younger solemnly professed members – who, otherwise, could construct a form of formation that neglects conversation about consecrated religious life and settles for a generic and contextual-pastoral preparation for priesthood. Under that sort of view of inculturation, the single context for priesthood and service, coming to the fore, is social-cultural context for the pastoral-parochial task and not at all religious life context. The recent discussion begun – however haltingly – about the form of priesthood that includes greater clarity about religious life, is a very important lead for clerical institutes of religious.²⁴ Fr. Amadeo Cencini’s statement that “the only real problem of religious life today is formation”²⁵ carries similar weight and momentous necessity.

Leadership, both province and general level, has the task of establishing the agenda and stimulating the conversation for better integrating the concerns of the religious life charism and the proper mission in our formation programs. Toward that end, the Crosiers plan to convene an international formation policy-makers colloquium in 2006. The most significant agenda for conversation centers on grounding the works and apostolates, ministries and services of our communities and members in the proper charism of the Crosier Order. Unlike the message I’ve heard expressed often enough since I’ve been in Rome -- the message that says community is not an end in itself, but rather for the sake of the mission -- the old Orders, by contrast, and in particular the Crosiers, tack differently on community. Our Constitutions say:

[L]iving in community is itself a proclamation of the Good News to others. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13, 35). [Crosier Const. 21.2]

My conclusion is that our charism may not be well suited to the mission ad gentes, in the classic 19^th Century sense of first evangelization, establishment of the diocesan church, and its pragmatic development. The mission of evangelization ad gentes for Crosiers will need to be more communal, fraternal and neighborly. Depth will be sought in learning again the mystery of loving one another, and there knowing disciples.