Toward the end of her chapter, “Communal Quest Makes the Difference”, in Crucible for Change: Engaging Impasse through Communal Contemplation and Dialogue, Pat Kozak, CSJ, makes a poignant and startling statement:

• I believe it is essential to stand at the borders of these collapsing and dying [ecclesial and societal] systems and simply be present there, without confrontation or animosity or fear. I believe our presence there will provide a place of meeting and discovery. (p. 119)
  

As we fast-forward just a handful of years since the book was published these become rather courageous even prophetic words especially coming from a member of a women's religious congregation in the United States.

For now, in the year 2009, such women and their congregations are under the scrutiny of investigation by the Vatican.

I am not now nor have I ever been a member of a women's religious congregation but I have lived and worked among such women for most of my adult life. As I and so many came of age in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s in the midst of the beautiful flourishing of the post-Vatican II Church and the intensity of the Civil Rights and the Anti-Vietnam War movements, it was in their company and in so many instances their leadership where my own developing consciousness of social justice found welcome and nurturing.

As the 70s rolled on and the ferment subsided, I turned my attention for the most part to the comforts, joys, and struggles of married life and motherhood eventually choosing to make my own commitment to social justice the major focus of my work outside the home. For so many of my women religious companions their response to the Gospel call impelled them to live even more fully the spirit of Vatican II and their commitment to social justice.

This commitment found expression in their continuing ministries whether in the more traditional settings of classrooms, hospitals, and orphanages or 'in the trenches' ministering in shelters for the homeless and for battered women often set up with funds from their own congregations, and founding non-governmental organizations that educated and lobbied for peace and economic and ecological justice. Their work often took them into other innovative and challenging ministries where many dared not go providing opportunities for the voices of those who are often denied a voice to be heard.

Earlier in her chapter, Pat comments that one impact her participation in the Engaging Impasse Circles has had is enabling her to look around and “see, more slowly” (p. 113). It is a suggestion that I have taken to heart during recent weeks. I have tried to see more slowly the pain in the struggles of those put out of work in these terrible economic times, the grief in hearts of those who have lost loved ones especially in war, in terrorist acts, in natural and human-made disasters but also to see more slowly the beauty of nature, the wonder in a young child's eyes, the good that so many do in our world.

So this becomes my hope for those envoys from the Vatican - that they will come without “confrontation or animosity” and take the contemplative time to see more slowly finding themselves perhaps surprisingly in a place of “meeting and discovery” with the women who are members of women's congregations as they go forth carrying the spirit of Jesus into the 21st century.

If you wish you may send your reflection to circles@engagingimpasse.org. If you give us permission, a part of your reflection may be incorporated into a future Book Club entry.


Written by Mary Jo Klick

© 2009 Institute for Communal Contemplation and Dialogue
Reprint with permission circles@engagingimpasse.org

Return to Top

Back to Book Club