On Not Recognizing The Need For Structural Change

            John was the visionary. I appreciated his intuitions. He usually named what needed to be done over the long term. I usually agreed with his long term goals. However I often struggled with how all this applied to ordinary people. I often said to John, "If everyone needs to make the Spiritual Exercises and a 12-day workshop to learn discernment, then something is wrong. ... Only highly paid unmarried individuals or religious with a vow of poverty have that time and freedom!"

            One of the major signs of our times that we did not face as a staff was the fact that many among those to whom we ministered (as well as ourselves) were becoming grey-haired and they were dying off. If we were to have made an analysis of our retreat/workshop time structures we had in place, we could have realized as a staff that we were structured primarily for priests and sisters who were teachers or who were on sabbatical leave from the missions and from leadership positions. We had structured our programs to be long experiences. Lay people were allowed to come on board but within structures that were not primarily created for them. We could have recognized this as early as 1985, but we did not, and did nothing about it as a staff. 

            Nor did we fully adopt, as a staff, the School For The Spiritual Formation of Lay Leaders (SSFLL). Even though money and time were invested in the development of this school, most of the staff energy and time went into the other programs that were structured for sisters and priests. This SSFLL ministry was just an appendage on the side.

            Although John himself was committed to the laity and although he worked tirelessly with them in the development of CLC groups, he supported this extensive involvement with the longer structures. This continued even when, through John's encouragement, the staff, as a staff, more fully adopted the ICL by merging this ICL with itself in May of 1996. This move failed for a number of reasons. First of all there was a conflict of cycles. The staff that worked with deep involvement in the longer programs (cycles of 40 days and 8 days and workshops of 8-12 days) did not have the energy to work on the shorter and more frequent cycles of the weekends, the days of prayer, the 2-day workshops, the ongoing commitment to a once-a-week weekly program for a whole year. One cycle interfered with another cycle, unless we were super-persons like John himself. But I think that the chief reason had to do with underlying structures of the whole Guelph Centre Of Spirituality which was geared primarily for priests and sisters. The staff never faced the fact that these structures had to be surrendered if their energies and creativity were to be devoted to a primarily lay ministry. Just as with economic structures, the trickle-down theory of wealth never quite works, so, too, with clerical structures.

            Another element affecting the refusal to change structural paradigms was because of one of the ideologies of the Society of Jesus; namely, the belief that Jesuit ministry will be more effective if it deals with those in leadership positions. This was clearly a belief of Ignatius and the early Society and its practice. But in our day, it begs the question: Are those people who are in positions of authority necessarily the leaders? 

            It was only in the last few years of the ICL that John and the ICL staff began giving the ICL processes in shorter segments to the local boards of education. But by then it was too late since John was assigned to a position in Winnipeg (1997) and Sister Margaret Kane, CSJ (1999) to a leadership position in her religious congregation.

From One Type Of Perfectionism To Another

            Thirty to forty years ago, the person who wanted to develop a spirituality was faced with the trap of unhealthy introspection in the hope that one could modify one's behaviour and live up to some theoretical ideal that did not exist. This led to an external perfectionism. The RC church, having passed through an age of rationalism and ingesting the Cartesian exaggeration of the objectivity of clear and distinct ideas, had almost reduced our understanding of the spiritual journey to proper external behaviour and inner conformity to rules and regulations. Now, however, we are living through a recent age of subjective psychologism and, like most North Americans, we have absorbed the psychologism of our time. At the present time, a person seeking the inward journey runs the risk of going to the opposite extreme -- interior perfectionism.

           One can imagine C.S. Lewis writing a set of Screwtape letters establishing a recipe for this post-modern trap for our time in the history of spirituality. No doubt he would use what is a most evident result of our Western Culture -- our highly developed and intense awareness of our own individuality. Put this together with a surfeit of psychological techniques to understand our own unique individual and subjective self. Add the ever- present sense of separation or loneliness because of the loss of the extended family. Mix this thoroughly with some form of trauma and abuse in most of our past lives. Spend much time to allow one's woundedness to surface by removing the need to work for survival. Spice up the mix with the forty-year old belief that holiness is wholeness and instil the hope that total healing is possible. And then, voila, you have contributed to the development of a self-absorption by inviting persons to complete authenticity. Commitment will now be extremely difficult for humans to make because no one can be sure of one's complete (conscious and unconscious) motivation! Obedience will be almost impossible to practise because no one can be sure that all the parties involved have really done a correct discernment. And best of all, human life will appear so complex, with so many unconscious and deceptive factors involved, that humans will naturally gravitate to a more simple approach, to black and white principles which will ultimately lead to all sorts of justifiable wars, etc. 

            Without the counterbalance of interactive, collaborative, consensual, conscious, communal decision-making, does the directed retreat movement unwittingly contribute to the development of this trap? Does the directed retreat contribute to a situation where a good instrument, without the corrective balance, undermines the very thing it is attempting to enhance? On the spiritual journey, it is so difficult to keep a balance and to stay in the middle. What we forget is that we will never completely know our own mystery just as we shall never completely know God's mystery. 

            Our knowledge of ourselves is always partial. With this partial knowledge, we must live the journey outward. We live our lives between two unknowns, the unknown of self and the unknown of God. We do not have all the variables between these two poles. Yet we are invited to go the journey. We are invited to take responsibility by making responsible choices without the complete data. We live both the journey inward and the journey outward at the same time. In our time, it has been through the instrumentality of psychology that we have developed an explosion of self-knowledge. Spiritual directors sometimes trivialized the use of psychology. I used to judge that this was because they were afraid of using and acknowledging the psychological in their own regard. I have always maintained that in our western culture that the spiritual guide needs at least as much psychological literacy as any other adult professional working in the realm of human behaviour -- the nurse, the lawyer, the social worker, the pastoral counsellor. Without this psychological literacy, one cannot hear the human experiences being expressed, and therefore cannot help discern spirits and give spiritual guidance. Further, without such literacy one runs the risk of projecting one's unconscious on others. A spiritual guide really needs to be in touch with one's own less-than-conscious reactions. 

            But I do have a concern which does not contradict my stress on psychological literacy. My concern is that, now, many spiritual directors in exercising their role as spiritual directors, are only doing psychology in a devotional, prayer context and do not use a theological horizon. 

            Once again I got this insight through my association with John. I never met a spiritual director who consistently used the theological horizon as explicitly and consistently as he did in his ministry of spiritual direction. It seemed to me that as I observed, listened to, and worked with him, he never used the psychological model for his thinking but always used the theological and Spiritual-Exercises models. It was one or other of these two perspectives that usually governed his thinking. Yet he always seemed to be psychologically sound in his judgements of spiritual direction. John was not eclectic in the way I was. He was consistent within his frameworks. I got an insight into this from a short half-hour film that was produced in 1990 and featured his work at the Guelph Centre of Spirituality. It was called  A Heart To Understand. He was filmed during spiritual-direction sessions with a woman making the Spiritual Exercises. In one of the episodes he was listening to her expressing the kind of fear and anxiety that surfaced through her prayer that, for me and most other directors, would probably invite us to use a psychological model. However, when he was being interviewed for one of the voice-over explanations, he said something to the interviewer which indicated that he was using only the theological and Spiritual Exercises frameworks. For lack of a better term in my book Orientations Volume 2B, I came to call this skill, "Theological Thinking."

            In conversations with John, particularly when we evaluated the effectiveness of our Retreat Directors' Workshops, I would point out something that seemed quite evident to me. When giving and facilitating his presentations, John always gave them with the language of faith that was theological rather than devotional or psychological. I often observed, however, that most of the participants receiving his presentations were understanding them only on devotional and psychological levels. But John always took for granted that his presentations were being understood on the theological level he was using. My observation was clarified by some reflections of Gregory Baum in his article on the retrieval of subjectivity.⁽¹⁸⁾ In it, Baum pointed out how we, in western society, fell into the trap of using devotionalism, existentialism and psychologism in an attempt to pay attention to subjectivity. In the mid-sixties these seemed to be the only tools we had to reclaim the kind of subjective articulation of our religious experiences that the shifting exigencies of our world and the Vatican Council were urging. 

             In the popular culture of spirituality of the last thirty years there has been a lack of the desire to reflect critically. This means that many spiritual directors do not pay attention to the theological meaning present in a person's human experience. Thus, we should not take for granted that spiritual directors using the language of faith are actually thinking theologically.  I maintain that among the necessary skills in exercising the art of spiritual guidance, the ability to perceive the theological principle within human experiences has a high priority. This ability to reflect theologically upon experiences of prayer, along with the practice of conscious, communal decision-making, will go a long way in helping a spiritual guide from unwittingly contributing to their directees’ or their own addictions to interior perfectionism.

All Aboard A Ship Named, Theological Horizon

            I have always been interested in the early stages of spiritual direction and its connections with, and its differences from, the psychological realities that emerge in our hearts. I never felt secure in dealing with more programmatic individuals in personal spiritual direction. I recognize that the transition from Fowler's third stage to the higher stages of consciousness involves both affective and intellectual conversions. But the question for me still remains: How does the retreat movement foster and lay the groundwork for this transition? 

            This is a very important question because many of the people who still come to Jesuit weekend retreats in North America are people who are in Fowler's third stage of faith development (as I suspect are the majority of people who fill our churches on Sunday mornings). John never gave me an answer for that question. However, the witness of him just being himself with his authentic honest and genuine attempt at bringing people aboard his ship named "Theological Horizon," may be the most important part of the answer to that question.

            A wonderful tribute to John English took place  in the form of a symposium in his honour. It was sponsored by the Loyola House staff and particularly shepherded by James Bowler, SJ and Elaine Frigo, CSSF. As Carolyn Arnold, one of John's key secretarial assistants wrote, "I have been looking through all my 'stuff' on the July 18-21, 1999 Symposium. Boy, that was a great three days, we sure put on a terrific event! I love doing detective work. And I'm glad you have asked me to do this before I retire at the end of the year. ... Anyway, here is what I thought would interest you. The event was by invitation only. So invitations went to the myriad of people who knew John and invitations were sent to guest presenters, e.g. Michael Higgins, Gerry Hughes (England), etc., etc." 

            A booklet of interviews with John English was produced and given to the presenters as a point of departure for their own presentations during the symposium. It was also distributed to the participants. To read this booklet click here.

1. "Guelph Centre of Spirituality' was the name (between 1969 and 2001) that included Loyola House, Ignatius College and the Farm Community at Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Loyola House was the retreat house where John English was the director for several years and where he and I were staff members for much of the time between 1969 and 1997 (when John was assigned to the Jesuit community in Winnipeg). Ignatius College was a Jesuit residence and novitiate. At one point during this time it housed the Institute for Communal Life which was a separate entity from Loyola House and was dedicated to the promotion of Communal Spirituality. The Farm Community was made up of volunteers, Jesuits and challenged persons requiring supervision; this grouping lived according to a L'Arche style and worked on the farm as a vehicle of personal growth. At the time of writing this article many realities had changed at this location. This change has been reflected in its changed name -- Ignatius Jesuit Centre of Guelph.

2. Sometimes we refer to these various ways that persons experience the Spiritual Exercises as Healing, or Identity, or Call Modes. To further understand this terminology read Chapter 30 from Orientations Vol 2B by clicking here:

3. For a discussion of how to adapt the Exercises for a person in the healing mode click:

4. This workshop was for persons who had completed the full Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius under personal direction. It was intended for those who are interested in acquiring a greater practical understanding of the Spiritual Exercises and their application in today's world. It presumed that the applicants would come having had some experience of discernment and decision-making according to the principles and practice of the Exercises. In fact in preparation they were asked to bring with them a serious decision which required discernment. The workshop included a practicum during which the participants were to receive spiritual direction and were to give spiritual direction under supervision. To support these efforts to achieving its goals, this workshop was conducted in an atmosphere of prayer and reflection. And the three day directed retreat within the practicum was conducted in the same silence as required during the full Spiritual Exercises.

5. The full manual for the Week Of Directed Prayer can be found by clicking:

6. Information about the world-wide CLC can be found by clicking:

7. The first set of disposition days can be found by clicking:

8. Information on these books can be found by clicking here:

9. For two different methods for helping individuals to pray over their "Graced" history click here: bob/page7.htm#109 ; here

10. For information on the late George Schemel click here 

11. This is the title of a manual which resulted from an ongoing communal project from the late seventies through most of the eighties. It brings together the dynamics of the Spiritual Exercises with the dynamics of organizational development theory and various psychological dynamics of group life. The late George Schemel, S.J., one time director of the Jesuit Spirituality Center, Wernersville, Pennsylvania and, later, director of the Spirituality Center at the University of Scranton, Penn. USA led the project which gathered together many practitioners of the Spiritual Exercise to further its goals. Besides Judith A. Roemer and Jim Borbely, John English continued to collaborate with the project until its completion. Information on this project can be found by clicking http://www.isecp.org/ from which site you can get contacts to follow up your investigations.

12. The Management Design Institute website is: 

13. I personally found the experience heart changing and certainly it helped me to shift some personal paradigms.

14. For an example of what one of these workshops looked like click here:

15. A quotation from John English's tentative preface for the reprinting of Spiritual Freedom -- 2^nd Edition, Revised and Updated, in a completely new format and with several new chapters published by Loyola University Press, Chicago, 1995. 

16. The literal text of the Guidelines For Discerning Spirits can be found here:

17. For an example of an application of this process used for small faith groups click here:

18. Gregory Baum, Theology and Society (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), Chapter 15, "The Retrieval of Subjectivity," p.261ff.