Occasional Papers

As the season of Advent 2012 began, the LCWR officers wrote to the members about the doctrinal assessment of LCWR by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. They noted that they found themselves "in the praxis of advent, waiting for the word to come to us from God as we enter into listening and conversing." As the conference continues its commitment to communal and personal contemplation on the work of God in our midst, LCWR offers this next issue of Occasional Papers as a reflection on living in fallow time. The articles and interviews are resources for exploring the riches and depths of this collectively quieter, more still time for the conference. The content focuses on the work of the Spirit, communal discernment, and on what both scripture and nature can teach us about fallow time. Writers also explore Joanna Macy’s "empowering shifts in perception" and how they may influence the exercise of leadership in these times.

This issue provides materials for further reflection on many of the significant events and movements in the lives of US women religious in recent years. These include the emphasis on intentional contemplation, greater awareness of the universe story, the apostolic visitation, the doctrinal assessment of LCWR, and all the dynamics that go with these events. How are women religious sensing a new consciousness of the significance of religious life in these times? How are religious sensing a shift in their own self-definition as religious and their understanding of what religious life can potentially be? The issue also provides a means for reflecting on the church’s "Year of Faith" and the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council. How is the fidelity of religious to the call of Vatican II fidelity to the invitation to evolutionary leadership in a living church?

Humanity finds itself in the midst of an explosion of new understandings of the universe, as well as an increasingly polarized world of political, ecclesial, and ideological tensions. Where do we find God in this? To what are women religious being called in light of these realities? What is the specific call to those entrusted with leadership at this time? This issue of Occasional Papers will explore these questions and more.

Members of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious have embarked on a corporate contemplative process to help shape religious life as it moves into the future in ways that are responsive to the realities emerging in the world and church.

US women religious leaders are navigating tumultuous waters these days as they respond to numerous challenges before them – whether those challenges are within their own institutes, their ministries, the church, or in the local and global realities that surround them. These are days that can be ridden with anxiety as leaders hold on to a vision for their institutes while dealing with daily realities that can cause them to question if the vision is still worth its cost. If leaders choose to move toward a vision while at the same time honestly acknowledging the realities of these times, they generate what is called “creative tension.”

This issue of Occasional Papers attempts to explore some of the challenges and questions religious life leaders face as they explore what it means to search for the limitless possibilities of God and courageously believe in a different future. Experienced leaders share what they have learned about living with profound hope in uncertain times. In addition, four younger women religious write with great candor about their convictions and questions regarding religious life as it moves into an unknown future.

In August 2006, Walter Brueggemann wrote, “In the ancient world of the Old Testament, prophetic imagination ... conjured a better world that extended mercy and justice to the weak and marginalized. In our contemporary world, prophetic imagination can do no less. Its task — neither conservative nor liberal — is to expose and critique the false ideologies of consumer militarism and to propose a better world of neighborly justice and mercy. As in the ancient world, so now in our contemporary world, such practice — rooted in old texts and memories —requires courage, freedom, and daring, nothing less than the work of voicing and enacting the world anew... according to the holiness of God.”

The 2008 LCWR-CMSM assembly provided a rich feast for reflection on religious life leadership. The major speakers encouraged leaders to face the realities and challenges of religious life today, but to do so from a perspective of imagination and creativity, believing that this time is ripe for change and growth ... This issue of Occasional Papers tends to the stirring of new life in LCWR member congregations. We invite you to read the pages that follow and be attentive to the life stirring in you that may be inviting your attention.

When the 2009 LCWR Assembly Planning Committee chose in September of last year to focus the assembly on the chaos of these times, little did they know the additional chaos that awaited! The ground has been shifting dramatically during the ensuing months, making the need to live with trust, hope, and creativity ever more urgent. In this issue of the Occasional Papers, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious calls upon its members and colleagues to offer insights and wisdom on what one writer terms “the balancing act of exercising non-anxious leadership without holding out false or premature security.” The writers suggest that these rapidly changing times may be just the impetus vowed religious need to find even deeper and more meaningful ways of living our charism and mission. They also offer invaluable suggestions for how leaders may bring their institutes to these new places.