Church Leadership Program. In January,
32 church leaders from a variety of settings, participated in the Woodstock
Church Leadership retreat/ workshop. It was the largest event in the 2
½ year-old program. The participants included two bishops, a number
of pastors, heads of diocesan agencies, a diocesan chancellor, seminary
and college professors, writers, and retreat leaders. The depth of their
spirituality and their intellectual maturity were rich resources for the
week. The team (James Connor, S.J., director of Woodstock; Edmundo Rodriguez,
S.J., director of the Jesuit Spiritual Life Center at Grand Coteau, LA;
and Woodstock senior fellows Dolores Leckey, coordinator of this program,
Msgr. Richard Liddy, Michael Stebbins, and Fr. Ray Kemp) had made several
changes in the overall dynamic of the week, refining the process and including
more prayer and reflective time. The dynamics of the Spiritual Exercises
are now the centerpiece.
Evaluations reveal the retreat's effectiveness
in terms of depth and scope. One pastor wrote: "Our time together. . .was
one of the most intellectually stimulating, spiritually invigorating and
conversion-mind, spirit and heart-challenging that I have experienced in
the nearly 29 years since ordination." The director of a Hispanic ministry
center, a layman, moved by the week's experience, urges follow-up programs.
From a bishop: "There was not a single participant who was not engaged
in the process or who did not benefit from the enriching experience." A
laywoman on a seminary faculty said that the witness of numerous participants
from various states of life gave her a needed sense of solidarity. She
also said, "As an educator I was attentive to the dynamics, the processes,
and most admiring of the competence of the leadership."
At this time, one more five-day retreat
is planned for July of 1999.
The Woodstock team is always revising
the process (or so it seems), but discernment and decision-making remain
at the heart of the program. We continue to experiment with ways to illuminate
the experience which church leaders bring to the retreat-workshop and to
understand the meanings embedded therein.
Fr. Jim Connor, S.J., Director of Woodstock
Theological Center, believes that leadership in the Church must be intelligently
and courageously responsive to a range of opportunities and needs. In particular
he notes the need for a modern grounding of belief in God, a need for the
message of hope and for the experience of community, a need to respond
to the widespread and deep desire for prayer and personal spirituality
on the part of laity and clergy, and a need for church leaders (cleric
and lay) to pursue together a way to set sharper apostolic focus, select
priorities, and have greater impact in view of limited resources. He is
committed to the basic principle undergirding the Second Vatican Council
that the Church's mission is the pastoral care of society and the proclamation
and enactment of justice.
Obviously, the five day retreat-workshop
format cannot meet these needs, by itself. The hope of the Woodstock team
is that the initial event will sow some seeds; and that the Ignatian-Lonergan
method will continue to cultivate the ground of our intellectual, moral
and religious conversions.
We are beginning to sift through the learnings
of the several retreat-workshops with the goal of sharing them with the
wider Church community, through writing and public presentations.
Impact
These retreat-workshops have been blessed
in many ways. Here are a few comments from participants:
Richard M. Liddy
"Without a vision the people perish."
Writing in a recent issue of America,
Fr. Kenneth Schmitz described some characteristics of the Catholic priesthood
of the future. Prominent among these will be an intellectual creativity
for effective ministry within a rapidly changing world.
We envision a number of retreat/workshops
presenting this vision followed by the opportunity for sabbaticals for
guided readings and study. We have already given a week's retreat/workshop
presenting this program to a group of parish priests and we have received
very good encouragement and feedback. We are sponsoring another retreat/workshop
from Sunday evening, February 23 to Friday noon, February 28, 1997, at
the new Continuing Education Center at Saint Mary's Seminary in Baltimore.
We look forward to this time for consultation with a group of priests from
around the United States and for effective planning for the future.
The presenters of the retreat-workshop
will be a Woodstock team consisting
of James Connor, S.J., Director of the Woodstock Theological Center; Father
Ray Kemp, Director of the Woodstock Preaching
the Just Word program; Monsignor Dick Liddy, professor at Seton Hall
University and Woodstock Fellow; and J. Michael Stebbins, director of the
Arrupe Program in Business Ethics at the Center.
The context of the workshop will be one
of prayer and discernment. Within that context there will be presentations
on the "Ignatian-Lonergan methodology." There will also be ample time for
dialogue and feedback. Our conviction is that the renewal of the Church
and the transformation of our world involves the clearest possible theological
vision. We hope to share that vision during our days together.
News about Woodstock's Church Leadership
Program
For more information on the Church Leadership
Program, e-mail woodstock@georgetown.edu
March 1999
[Woodstock Report, March 1999, No.
57]
December 1998
The fifth Church Leadership Program will be
held at St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore, Maryland, January
17-22, 1999. The retreat/workshop is a process of reflection on the
critical aspects of leadership for the church in the contemporary world.
The next retreat is scheduled for July 18-23, also in Baltimore at St.
Mary's Seminary and University.
September 1998
To date there have been four retreat-workshops
(St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore; Holy Family Retreat House, Hartford, CT;
Los Altos Retreat House, California; Our Lady of Florida in West Palm Beach)
plus a preliminary version in New Jersey. 72 people have gone through the
experience:
New Directions
This retreat/workshop has helped
me take a step away from the everyday and become inspired to look at "things"
again, and focus more on the true values and significance of parish life...
The first result for me will be working with our Parish Pastoral Council
in a discussion of the character of our parish community and the directions
we can together move in faith with one another.
(A pastor and former seminary rector)
...Lonergan's concept of conversion
is a big piece in my forthcoming doctoral dissertation on the Church in
the Public Arena. . . . Needless to say the week was very helpful to me
on that level . . . . (A woman doctoral student)
I'd say it strengthened my
confidence that Lonergan's method is valuable and worth translating into
forms that can be implemented in parishes. One concrete application that
I and a colleague worked up here, at the request of our diocesan Office
of Pastoral Formation, was a workshop for parish business-managers that
sought to use Lonergan's method to address the "spirituality vs. business"
pseudo-conflict that many of them experience, and also to teach the method
as a help in making good pastoral decisions. (A New York pastor)
It was stimulating to be with
such a remarkable group of Catholics. Knowing about Lonergan's steps to
conversion and authenticity will be helpful. (A retired Ohio bishop
and a woman religious in team ministry)
Do not underestimate the intellectual
underpinnings of modern social movements. Even those very involved in the
social ministry would appreciate this presentation of our theological foundations.
(Brooklyn
pastor)
June 1997
A number of activities engaged the Church
Leadership Program during this past year. Among these activities were:
regular bi-weekly planning sessions developing our Ignatian-Lonergan methodology;
numerous planning meetings in preparation for our Church Leadership workshops;
creating a book of readings and designing a planning booklet for the workshops;
announcing the workshops and inviting participants, etc.. All these activities
culminated in two week-long workshops for approximately twenty participants
each: one in Long Branch, New Jersey and one in Baltimore, Maryland. Most
of the participants were Catholic priests and most of them were pastors
of parishes. Both workshops were very enthusiastically received. All of
us on the Church Leadership team came away from these workshops with a
deepened conviction that we are addressing a "niche," a felt need, in the
renewal of the Church. We are presently planning two more workshops for
the Fall: one in Hartford, Connecticut, and one in Los Altos, California.
November 11, 1996
[Press Release]
I have heard two priests speak
about what the priesthood today needs to become. One spoke of starting
a congregation of priests whose ministry would be in the parish, but whose
discipline would include strenuous study. Their academic work would include
not only theology and Scripture but also contemporary philosophy, sociology
and the like. (America, October 12, 1996)
Why? What's the point of such study, not only
of traditional theological subjects, but also of contemporary philosophy
and human science? The point is to understand our world and the world in
which our people lead their lives. It is a world of economics and increasingly
rapid social change. It is a world of underlying and often conflicting
philosophies. It is a world quite different than the world in which most
of us grew up and it has given rise to a great deal of confusion among
Catholics. It is a world that we have to know well in order to minister
well in it. It is the only world that is. We can go back in thought to
capture our original inspiration, but we can only go forward in action
in the world as it is unfolding. To do this we need an adequate philosophy
and cultural vision. As Bernard Lonergan once wrote of the cultural explosion
Catholics are presently experiencing:
When the natural and human sciences
are on the move, when the social order is developing, when the everyday
dimensions of culture are changing, what is needed is not a dam to block
the stream but control of the river-bed through which the stream must flow.
(A Second Collection, 52)
In that light, the Woodstock
Theological Center at Georgetown University is initiating a Church
Leadership Program inspired by Saint Ignatius's spiritual exercises
for the "discernment of spirits" and Bernard Lonergan's interdisciplinary
philosophy-theology. Our conviction is that both Ignatius and Lonergan
provide powerful diagnostic tools for effective ministry and leadership
in the Church today for the transformation of the world.
See also: