"Break the Cycle"

Increasingly we hear talk of "cycles" these days. There is the cycle of poverty, the cycle of violence and crime, the cycle of vengeance, and even the cycle of despair. In these cycles, an action triggers a reaction, which then triggers a response, and round and round it goes. Look, for instance, at Bosnia or Rwanda or the Middle East. These "cycles" evoke images of a closed circle getting tighter and smaller, a whirlpool pulling us ever downward, a helpless sense of captivity. How do we break out of these cycles of social and personal decline? Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan goes right to the heart of the matter:

Decline...inflicts on individuals the social, economic, and psychological pressures that for human frailty amount to determinism...It is not propaganda and it is not argument but religious faith that will liberate human reasonableness from its ideological prisons. It is not the promises of humans but religious hope that can enable people to resist the vast pressures of social decay...[H]uman possessiveness and human pride have to be replaced by religious charity, by the charity of the suffering servant, by self-sacrificing love. (Method in Theology, 117)

On the basis of this powerful and countercultural insight, Woodstock has developed a distinctive method for addressing cycles of social decline in all our projects, whether, for instance, in business, politics, Third World development, or church leadership.

1. "Breaking the cycle" is the work of God, the grace of redemption freeing us humans from our ignorance, weakness, and sin. So at Woodstock we rely utterly on God and we pray constantly for the Spirit of intellectual light and moral courage as we go about our work.

2. "Breaking the cycle" can be done only gradually over a long period of time. There are no quick fixes. And so in all our work we pray for and try to exercise patience and perseverance. Some Woodstock projects take years to complete.

3. "Breaking the cycle" is necessarily the work of many, many people collaborating together. Since these cycles are enormously complex social phenomena, their resolution requires a variety of skills, perspectives, and intellectual gifts. So Woodstock projects are interdisciplinary, as well as interreligious.

4. "Breaking the cycle" of poverty, vengeance, or corruption demands the hard work of:

• familiarity with and thoughtful analysis of the concrete situation in business, economics, politics, or whatever it is that we are considering;
• imaginative brainstorming and detailed description of various ways of responding to the situation as we now know it, resulting in the proposal of several feasible courses of action; and
• a decision or recommendation of a course of action, based solidly on the facts as we know them and our best evaluation of the competing values, discerned against the "horizon" of our life experience and religious faith.

This is the process of theological reflection that we follow in all of our work at Woodstock. It is a pattern of recurrent and related operations that yields progressive and cumulative results. For us Christians, it is basically the Way of the Cross: "dying" to shortsightedness, prejudice, and intimidation so as to "rise" to genuine insight, freedom, and progress in community together. This continuing process of personal and group conversion (intellectual, moral, and religious) is, we are convinced, the only way of "breaking the cycle" of decline in society. And this is the "way" on which we invite your companionship and collaboration. We ask your prayers, advice, and, at this time particularly, your financial support. We are deeply grateful for your enormous generosity in the past. Be sure of our continuing prayers for your companionship into the future.

If you would like to send us a tax-deductible contribution, make your check payable to Woodstock Theological Center and mail it to:

Woodstock Theological Center
Georgetown University
Box 571137
Washington, D.C. 20057-1137

Yours gratefully in the Lord,

James L. Connor, S.J.