The Lasallian Charism In Transition
Luke Salm, FSC
Proceedings of Regional Convocation II
Moraga, California
August 9-15, 1990
Friday, August 10, 1990
General Session - 9:15 a.m
The title assigned to this presentation in the
promotional literature for the convocation is three lines long. That was not unusual in
the 18th century, as we know from the full titles of the original biographies of the
Founder. But it hardly suits the contemporary style that prefers short titles for its
musicals, and acronyms for committees, corporations, and conglomerates. With that in mind,
I have decided to entitle this presentation The Lasallian Charism in Transition.
That title might remind us of the ancient formula used by the Chinese to curse their
enemies: "may you live in a period of transition!" More positively, an emphasis
on transition will help to focus on the particular aspect of the theme of the convocation
to be developed in this session, that is, "We tell our story - where we have been and
why it matters today." This wording seems to suggest that whatever history we review
today is not intended as an exercise in nostalgia, a leisurely stroll down memory lane. We
are expected, rather to find some clues in where we have been to help us understand where
we are and where we may be going.
It is not altogether true to say that the past is over and done with, or that the future
has not yet come to be. In one sense the past is still with us, and the future is already
here. As Richard Niebuhr puts it, we have the response-ability, that is, the
ability to respond, to the past and to the future: to the past by reinterpreting it, to
the future by redirecting it. The present moment, by its nature, is elusive. The
transition we are in has meaning because it incorporates the past and prepares the way for
the future.
This theme of transition will also condition the approach to be taken in this
presentation. My first inclination was to tell our story as a straight historical account
of the last three General Chapters. As I think you know, I was there as a delegate at all
of them. I have reason to believe that the planners of this meeting wanted to lure me by
this means into producing a book of memoirs before my physical and mental capacities fail
me altogether, as they have already begun to do. The first draft of this introductory talk
did start out that way. When I found that I already had ten single-spaced typed pages of
narrative, and had not yet come to the election of Brother Charles Henry, I realized that
what might serve as a draft for the book would never do for a convocation address.
Another possibility was to choose the anecdotal approach, to tell funny stories about what
went on at the Chapters. This I have often done in other circumstances, recalling the
humorous twists and human foibles in high places, and the subtle manifestations of the
sibling rivalry that goes with brotherhood. I admit that I have a flair for that sort of
thing. The stories can be quite entertaining: what happened at the planning meeting at
Plano, for example, or how we managed to get Charles Henry elected without violating the Rules,
the underground tactics used by the advocates for the priesthood, the resistance to the
interference by the Vatican officials, the bizarre arguments for maintaining the ban on
smoking and co-education, the revolt of the young French from their leadership. The
multiple authorship of the Declaration, the divisions in the General Council
between Chapters, the election and administrative style of the first Spanish Superior
General, and the mixed paternity of the new Rule - all very interesting, but not
substantive material for reflection in the days ahead. If you want to hear the stories,
provided you haven't heard them already, you'll just have to wait for the book.
A third possible approach would be to compare the last three General Chapters as I
experienced them. That would be easy, and I can do it right now. The 39th General Chapter
in 1966-1976, coming on the heels of Vatican II, was a heady experience. It was by far the
most exhilarating, the most revolutionary, the most productive of substantive texts, and
certainly the most unambiguous of the three chapters I attended. The issues were clearly
defined and so were the personalities, easily divided into the good guys and the bad guys,
us and them, depending on where you stood on structural reform and the movement for
change.
The 40th General Chapter in 1976 was unquestionably the most difficult of the three. It is
easy to understand shy. In the ten-year period since the previous Chapter there had been
some 5,000 requests for dispensations. There was talk of division and dissension in the
General Council. Rival positions among the delegates became frozen on where to put the
blame for the difficulties and how to resolve them. The attempt to structure this Chapter
as an exercise in discernment turned out to be a failure, and that only made the sense of
frustration all the worse.
The 41st General Chapter in 1986 was ultimately the most satisfying of the three to
experience. For one thing, the sense of unity in brotherhood seemed for the most part to
have been restored. This Chapter was the most prayerful of the three, not only in the
amount of time devoted to prayer together and the quality of it, but also in the sobering
awareness that unless the Lord were to rebuild the city, we would labor in vain to rebuild
it. In this context there was a realistic assessment of our situation, a consensus on the
major issues, and a firm determination to work together to bring into being something new.
I trust that there is some objectivity in this comparison of the three Chapters. There is
always the possibility, however, that my analysis may be conditioned by the fact that in
1966 I was 45 years old, one of the youngest delegates, the only one without a title, and
a bit awed at finding myself in such an assembly. Ten years later, most of the delegates
were my co-aevals, and none of them calculated to inspire awe. By 1986 I was shocked to
find myself looked upon as a venerable old man, the oldest English-speaking delegate, and
the eighth oldest in the Chapter. The Visitors representing their Districts looked to me
like a bunch of young kids.
THE JOURNEY NOT YET COMPLETED
So much for the history, the anecdotes, and the comparative analysis. We turn now to the
more difficult part: how to understand the meaning of all that has happened to us since
1967. We were convinced at the time that the Spirit was guiding the Institute, and we are
convinced of it now. But it may be that the Spirit has been leading us all along in
directions we would never consciously have chosen for ourselves. This reminds us of the
oft-quoted statement of the Founder that, had he known at the beginning of his involvement
with the teachers where it would lead him, he never would have had the courage to take the
first step. We can identify, too, with Saint Barnabas, whose faith, the Founder tells us
in his meditation, led him to set forth to preach the Gospel like someone going out into
the open sea without sail and without oars.
At the conclusion of the 39th General Chapter in 1967, however, we did not think of
ourselves as setting forth without sail or oars. Quite the contrary. We felt that we had a
fully equipped ship, set on a course that was clearly charted in precisely worded
documents, including an updated experimental Rule and a profoundly challenging Declaration
to proclaim our identity and purpose to the contemporary world.
To my mind, there are two reasons why we were not quite as equipped for the journey as we
thought. In the first place, the progressive optimism experienced in the Chapter was not
the experience of the majority of the Brothers. There was no preparation at the grass
roots for the radical character of the change that was under way. After the Chapter there
was no adequate educational program to communicate to the Brothers generally the concrete
significance for their lives of the Chapter's program for adaptation and renewal. Lulled
into indifference by a long tradition of passive response to Chapter decisions, the
Districts, communities, and individual Brothers were ill-prepared to cope with the
initiative that was being handed over to them by a new and revolutionary kink of Chapter.
A second reason may have been that, even for the delegates, the decisions of the renewal
Chapter, as it came to be called, were perceived as the end term of a process rather than
a beginning. The revised experimental Rule and the Declaration were though
to provide adequate motivation for the Brothers to lead a responsible religious life in a
changing world, to establish stable structures of government based on the principle of
subsidiarity, and to remove all questions about the nature, purpose, and identity of the
Institute - and the Brother - in the modern world. Subsequent events have shown that the
significance of the 1966 Chapter lies, rather, in the fact that these questions were
raised, rather than definitively answered.
I should like, therefore, to comment in some detail on four decisions of the Chapter of
1966-1967 that have effectively set the Institute on a journey whose course we did not
foresee at the time and whose end is not yet in sight. These decisions are:
1. the adoption of the principle of subsidiarity in
government,
2. the election of Brother Charles Henry as Superior General,
3. the rejection of the priesthood, and
4. the formal reception by the Institute of the teaching of Vatican II on religious life.
SUBSIDIARITY
So many complaints about imposed uniformity and centralized authority were circulating in
the early days of the 1966 Chapter, and position papers of such substance had been
prepared by our American Brothers, that the Chapter was led very early on to adopt as a
principle that subsidiarity would determine the reorganized structure for the government
of the Institute. As one old Assistant said at the time, "All we need now is good
strong superiors to enforce it!" That proved to be a prophetic remark in light of the
subsequent failure to appreciate the intent and the implications of the principle. For
some it was interpreted in the language of the time as "do you own thing." For
others it meant that the tyranny of the center was replaced by tyranny at the local level.
In any case, it did not take long for the traditional structures to collapse. Superiors
often found themselves powerless to act, while individual preference became a crucial
factor in determining both prayer life and apostolic work. It is my personal opinion that
this collapse of traditional structures, together with the rationale that supported them,
is the principal reason why so many Brothers asked for dispensations in the years
following the Chapter. The older style of formation had put a heavy emphasis on
institutional conformity. Once the institutional structures were dismantled, it is no
wonder that the religious formation centered on structures started to collapse as well. It
used to be said, "You keep the Rule, and the Rule will keep you."
Well, for those who bought into that, when the old Rule was no longer there to be
kept, what was there to keep them?
Another melancholy result of the turn to subsidiarity was the collapse of the external
practices and symbols that bound the Institute together: a daily prayer schedule more or
less the same in every part of the world, the school apostolate in our own schools as the
only outlet for apostolic zeal, uniform and carefully monitored programs of formation, the
traditional habit, and the anonymity of "religious" names. By the time the
delegates conformity and uniformity had concealed fundamental differences based on
language and culture, and substantial disagreement on how the Church and the Institute
ought to adapt to an evolving and increasingly secular world.
Painful as these results of subsidiarity were at the time, they constituted an important
experience of suffering and purification. They also set in motion a process that is still
under way of rebuilding a better structure to help the Institute fulfill its mission. The
Chapter of 1976, for all its divisive hesitancy in other matters, did manage to affirm
community at every level as the focus for reform and revitalization. That Chapter replaced
the misunderstood language of subsidiarity by a call to co-responsibility. In 1986 the
concept was updated and expanded to include the idea of interdependence.
Much has yet to be done before all the ramifications of subsidiarity and interdependence
are understood and implemented. Our experience has shown that not all Districts have the
resources, and not all communities have the will, to make subsidiarity work. Not many
Brothers are eager now to surrender the independence they have come to enjoy in the use of
money and the choice of assignment. On the international level there has yet to be
established a universally acceptable way for the center of the Institute in Rome to
monitor and provide mutual support among the regions of the Institute. Some Districts,
including our own, are fairly self-sufficient, while others are caught in a situation and
tradition of almost total dependency.
If I were to signal the one specific decision of the 1976 Chapter related to subsidiarity
that holds the greatest challenge to the Brothers and the most promise for the future of
the Institute, it is the mandated Community Annual Program. Already a source of community
renewal in many places, and still perhaps an under-utilized instrument in others, the CAP,
strengthened by a recommended program of personal renewal, is now an integral part of the
1987 Rule on Community Life. This structured opportunity for the Brothers to search
out together the will of God in the local situation is the best guarantee that all the
language of subsidiarity, co-responsibility, and interdependence will eventually be
translated into the lived experience of our brotherhood.
BROTHER CHARLES HENRY
A second achievement of the renewal Chapter of 1966 was the election of Brother Charles
Henry Buttimer to become the first American Superior General. This event can be and has
been interpreted variously. At its worst, the election of an American Superior with a
Ph.D. in Latin was interpreted as a way of getting even with the French Brothers for all
that they inflicted on us at the turn of the century over the Latin Question. More
positively, but still triumphalistic, was our collective pride at producing such a
well-educated and humanly accessible leader to bring the Institute into the post-Vatican
II era. This view of the matter was reinforced by the enthusiasm and affection the
Brothers all over the world felt for Brother Charles during the ten years he was in
office.
My own interpretation of that landmark election, one that continues long after the event
and holds promise for the future, is that the Institute thereby had effectively embraced
its international character. I developed this theme at some length in my address to the
convocation six years ago, and I have no intention of repeating it all here. Suffice it to
say that, in an era when ecclesiologists are talking of the emergence of a world Church,
while Christians in Asia, Africa, and the Americas wait impatiently for the Church to
de-Europeanize and de-Romanize, our Institute has long since become a world Institute in
its leadership, its structure, and its vision for the future.
In this connection it is appropriate to recognize the contribution that Brother Charles
Henry himself made to this process. Instead of Americanizing the Institute as many
expected - the afringamento as one young Mexican Brother called it - this American
Superior set about internationalizing it. No sooner was he elected Superior General than
he distanced himself gently but effectively from the USA delegates who had used every
legitimate strategy to get him elected. His Vicar-General was Spanish, his closest
advisers were French and Belgian, his playmates were Irish, English, and Canadian, he
nominated the first Australian ever to become an Assistant, and Italian became the
language and the lifestyle of the motherhouse. About the only signs of an American
influence in Rome were the newly constructed tennis courts and the installation of showers
in the bedrooms.
Brother Charles brought the Institute out of its ghetto in other ways. He became actively
involved in the Union of Superiors General in Rome, and helped to found a new organization
of religious institutes involved in missionary work. He have strong and effective support
to institutes of religious women in their struggle for an equal voice in the Vatican
deliberations pertaining to religious life. Above all, through long and exhausting
journeys, he brought the Institute to the Brothers in places where no Superior General had
ever been. He affirmed and exemplified the missionary character of the Institute. In
Third-World countries he became the confidant and advisor of bishops, who appreciated his
evident respect for the indigenous culture and the opportunities that he saw for the
Institute in its educational ministry to serve the Church in the work of evangelization.
The election, then, of this American Brother, which at the time was touted as the end of
an era, was in reality the beginning of a new one. No Superior General since, present
company included, has ever been able to stay for very long at this desk in the
motherhouse. Not only do the Superior and his council move around themselves. They have
become pretty forceful as well in moving the Brothers around to places where they are
needed most. The motherhouse has become an international and polyglot center where
Brothers from anywhere in the world can feel at home while they discover, at the same
time, that our brotherhood cuts across linguistic and cultural barriers. This very
convocation, which six years ago was pretty much an American exercise in self-sufficiency,
has been transformed into a truly international event with the presence of so many and
such distinguished representative from the rest of the world.
Brother Charles Henry was a talented but complex person, as I expect the long-awaited
biography of Brother Ronald Isetti will make clear. I consider Brother Charles to have
been a personal friend of mine, in an uneasy and intermittent kind of a way. He certainly
was an important influence on my life, as I may have been in his. It is my own conviction
that the Chapter of 1966 chose the right man at the right time to guide the Institute
through the difficult early years of a transition that is still in process. My point here,
however, is that, independently of his personal qualities, the election of Brother Charles
Henry and his subsequent term as Superior led the Institute to recognize as never before
its global character and its global mission. The implications of that providential event
have yet to run their course, as the center of gravity in the Institute shifts from
Western Europe and North America to the Districts in the Southern hemisphere.
 
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