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New Perspectives on Religious Life in modern times.

New Perspectives on Religious Life in modern times. Prepared: M. McGuire 2007 Resource: J. Libano. Latin-American Perspective: The Impact of Socio-cultural and Religious Reality on consecrated life – J.B Libano. Religious Life is understood as having three structural elements ,

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New Perspectives on Religious Life in modern times.

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  1. New Perspectives on Religious Life in modern times. Prepared: M. McGuire 2007 Resource: J. Libano

  2. Latin-American Perspective:The Impact of Socio-cultural and Religious Reality on consecrated life –J.B Libano Religious Life is understood as having three structural elements, a founding experience of God, community life and mission, and not as based on the vows to a great extent. The latter are understood in relation to these three elements.

  3. Other types of Religious Life are being born, displacing the emphases and configuring new experience, especially on the community level.   the post-modern mentality, which demonstrates an ardent thirst for the sacred along with an invasive secularization, the allure of the Transcendent along with sexual coarseness, a thirst for love and intimacy along with an uncontrolled disorder in the affective life.

  4. Consistent cultural change is not possible without radical economic and political transformation. However, the principle role of Religious Life rests in the cultural, with an eye turned to the economic as the major factor. We have no need of Marxism to affirm this; we need only to look at the role of the economic dimension in institutions, even religious ones, to see that the aberrations produced by the economic are in flagrant contradiction to the guiding ethical principals.

  5. Forms of Religious Life {Latin America and Europe. The religious stage of Latin America is a dominant syncretism, a fundamental religiosity that is becoming fragmented and individualized, and a growing number of religious agencies involved in service. religion in Europe seems to be subject to a virulent process of secularization, despite also suffering from the “revenge of the sacred” and the presence of the “sacred savage”.

  6. An approach at leading to discernment of the real in its ambiguity, its perplexity and its paradox. four indicative verbs: to welcome, to let oneself be transformed, to begin a new praxis and to celebrate. It is being attentive to the new that is already coming forth as a gift from God, to that which will spring forth in the continuing present or in the unforeseen.

  7. Aspects of the Contemporary World 1. Fear of freedom and of responsibility 2. Loss of historical and ethical consciousness 3. The neo-liberal and media context 4. Confusion between vocation and career

  8. 5. The fallibility of institutions: the loss of the source of security 6. Fluid post-modernity in Religious Life 7. The Return of the External 8. The Problem with vocations

  9. 1. Fear of freedom and of responsibility Fundamental freedom, or the theological one, because it is interpreted in the light of revelation, refers to the essence of the self. This freedom encounters its most important, profound and radical moment when the self is put before God and must make the profound choice to accept him or to reject him

  10. Since such an act determines us for all eternity, we hold such a freedom with great dread.It is this freedom that is the fundamental question of Religious Life E. Fromm, O medo a liberdade, Rio de Janeiro, Zahar, 1960. The fear of taking this freedom into our own hands makes it difficult to take on Religious Life and its definitiveness with seriousness, because it involves human beings in their totality, for life and for death

  11. In a culture of the provisional and the throwaway, freedom, lived in its fullest sense as the giving of oneself to the Transcendent, terrorizes because of its definitive nature a freedom that is not realized in the world of things, but rather lies in confronting other freedoms that express and make concrete for us the freedom of the God who calls.

  12. Search for Freedom two fundamental perspectives in understanding freedom: conquest and gift. Psychoanalysis leads the fight for freedom for the unconscious. In this perspective, formation for freedom becomes an incessant struggle against forces that block freedom in and of itself all human freedom struggles with internal and external adversaries, and religious life is not exempt from such a situation.

  13. From a theological perspective, freedom is seen as a gift in the double order of creation and grace God creates a free human being and sustains his existence as freedom before Him. It is a freedom wounded by sin, but not wholly destroyed. It is liberated by the victorious grace of Christ. Pauline theology also confirms this. K. Rahner, Teologia da Liberdade, Caxias do Sul, Paulinas, 1970.

  14. Freedom seen as grace brings to formation, the call to bring forth an attitude of gratitude and of responsibility. It removes the bitterness of belligerent claims and postures of independence and total autonomy, and it situates formation in the path of fundamental relationship with God and with other freedoms, which are also gifts.

  15. Loss of historical and ethical consciousness The past is fading away, the future becomes more obscure, and the present remains without a history. The major factor at play here in this loss of awareness is information technology, transmitting data without context, orientation, without causality or end, totally immediate and continually “on line.”

  16. There is no tomorrow nor is there an accounting: Various terms describe this situation: the end of history and meta-narratives, the end of utopia, the deconstruction of history, and others. F. Fukuyama, O fim da história e o último Homem, Riode Janeiro, Rocco, 1992. Religious Life is also submerged in this wave.

  17. Superficiality prevents taking on definitive commitments With the end of history, responsibility disappears as do ethics in their unconditional dimensions. No one commits himself definitively to anything or to anyone. Each decision is a current one and can be revoked for another equally present

  18. Search for Answers Develop critical thinking and reflection developing in people a capacity for judging and appreciating their own experience, thinking, action and situation, becoming aware of themselves in given contexts. There are three fundamental aspects to the formation of a critical consciousness: awareness of situation, possible (feasible) consciousness, and awareness of the myths of the moment

  19. the double risk, however, of creating relativism and historicity. Relativism destroys any possibility of building something consistent, given that “all projects for social transformation are equally valid or equally invalid historicity that imagines history as a linear development, judging all eras and cultural stages, especially in peripheral countries, from the point of view of the development of the major countries

  20. see themselves as the linear model of development and determine the stages to be covered by those who come after, the way of growth of human beings never understand or imagine that a peripheral region could be much more developed in some aspect than a “developed” country.

  21. The neo-liberal and media context The strong impact of the media is dismantling universal and fixed points of reference, while multiplying the models and views of life. Propaganda bombards our motivations, creating a logic of stimulus-seeking, going well beyond the simple rules of capitalist supply and demand

  22. the supreme values are becoming devalued; the question “what for” lacks an answer and finality. “Nihilism is precisely atheism, not as attitude, but as spirit Neo-liberal ideology, sustained by the media culture, spreads values of healthy, a cult of beauty and the body and the decisive factor of appearance, a reign of the physical and of marketing

  23. In creating virtual identities, it leads to confusion between the real and the virtual. More serious still is that emotional communities of egocentric and needy identities are formed, with a clear loss of the social dimensionL. W. Storch – J. R. Cozac, Relações virtuais: o lado humano da comunicação eletrônica, Petrópolis: Vozes, 1995. context favors the creation of narcissistic identities, preferably directed to the cultivation of the self and of one’s appearance and towards groups that reinforce this existential dimension. All of this feeds upon the media for sustenance.

  24. In psycho-cultural terms, globalization depersonalizes, uproots, and causes people to desist, especially the poor and more simple, who have fewer possibilities for reacting and resisting. It also provokes in many places, reactions leading to racism, xenophobia, nationalism and the formation of castes

  25. Globalization can be interpreted through the metaphor of the Tower of Babel. An attentive reading of this text shows that the confusion of tongues is the work of God, and the desire for one language, of one speech, creating unity and uniformity outside, for the empire, and for the dominating force, is the product of human hubris. Globalization is the work of the power and the enforcement of the lords of the world who want to erect a great tower, and from its top, impose one language for the market. God comes and creates the confusion of the poor and of the peripheries, who do not accept such domination. God is the confusion of unifying power.

  26. God comes and creates the confusion of the poor and of the peripheries, who do not accept such domination. God is the confusion of unifying power. Putting the two metaphors together, globalization appears as an imposition that the Spirit of God destroys through a confusion of reactions (Babel), and through the different ways of receiving it (Pentecost). Uniformity comes from outside, the interpretive discernment from within, from experience, from freedom, from awareness Practice-enculturation

  27. Confusion between vocation and career A career means competence, efficiency, productivity, and social recognition. The religious requires and is involved with preparation for the exercising of it. A profession does not allow for failure. This ends when a person becomes incapable of exercising his profession due to age, illness or retirement. Time rules, and all are subject to external factors.

  28. Vocation - Motivation comes from within Vocation exists in a world of gratuitousness. The “more” is revealed in whatever activity the person engages in. In the most adverse situations, such as illness and old age, vocation persists, even if it is only in prayer and in the giving of one’s life. It is characterized by its perennial nature, specific to giving oneself to God.

  29. In Theological Perspective God in the vocation belongs first to the charism rather than to the institution. It finds its ultimate source in the call of secular life as well as the religious. The religious enters into a commotion of courses and degrees in order to acquire always more credibility in society and thus obtain success and remuneration. -somewhat as if in a career!!!!

  30. Vocation and career! not two separate entities, but two different dimensions of human activity with specific distinctions. The identity of the religious relies on an appropriate relationship between the two and is threatened when a career overwhelms one’s vocation.

  31. Vocation is primordial It gives meaning and motivation to one’s work and not vice-versa. Religious life sees professional competence coming from and as a function of vocation and not as an autonomous reality. Society today values career in such a way that it becomes the criterion for assessing the vocation. Crises continually flow from this.

  32. Crisis and Tension! The formative path seems to be the inverse: to look at a career in terms of vocation according to the Ignatian criterion of tantum quantum. The more the career the more help it is to vocation and to mission

  33. solution lies in the theological understanding of vocation as being a call from God, giving meaning to a profession. The latter enters into Religious life as the concrete expression of a greater vocation, a gift from God. There is no purely secular career in religious life.

  34. The fallibility of institutions: the loss of the source of security the Church itself recognizes its fragility- not from attacks by enemies. In Vat 11, the church is seen before the sanctity of Christ, called itself holy, but also sinful, needing purification and unceasingly seeking penance and renewal “Although she is holy because of her incorporation into Christ, the Church does not tire of doing penance: before God and man she always acknowledges as her own her sinful sons and daughters.”

  35. Loss of Security about Church! This an act of greatness of spirit, on the other hand, it produced some insecurity. If it erred gravely in the past, could the Church err the same way in the present? Crisis of trust exists about all institutions.

  36. Challenge! Formation to achieve “sentire in et cum Ecclesia” is difficult. This, “not only expresses a favorable feeling towards the Church, but also thinking with and an interior communion with the Church, with one’s head and heart.

  37. We are touching here upon the essence of the problem of grace made flesh. If in the time of Jesus, his flesh was scandal for many who could not go beyond it and recognize in him the Messiah, the One Sent by God, today the Church is the source of the same scandal.

  38. Modern Challenge! Believing in the saving sacramentality of the Church in a cultural moment when its fragility, its sinful condition, is exposed to the maximum implies a deep dimension of faith. Mistrust, suspicion and especially parallel behaviors are becoming very common in the Church itself, not to speak of Religious Life.

  39. It is time to look at the relationship between the Church and the Kingdom of God from the perspective of the parables of the Kingdom. The metaphors of the yeast, of grain and of the hidden pearl allow one to capture the dimension of the inner mystery of the Church, in spite of all the difficulties that come from the outside. Only a mystical experience of love makes such a reading possible, leading one to avoid the two extremes of iconoclastic rebelliousness and of obsequious subservience.

  40. Fluid Modernity and Religious Life. Centering on the individual as the axis of the source of values in contemporary society necessarily leads to relative values and traditions, and an accentuation of schools of experience without absolute criteria, stressing the flexible, the spontaneous and carpe diem.

  41. A painful fragmentation is pervading culture and individuals. Intellectual, spiritual, cultural, professional, leisure and pleasure activities and idleness are experienced alone and in disassociation.

  42. Fluidity of Modern Trends! Psychoanalysis itself favors a fragmentation of identity, upon looking at the conscious (ego) and unconscious (id, superego) psychic structures of the individual. People confuse their self-images, now seeking anonymity, now fleeing from stable relationships, now taking great pride in appearance, and now hiding themselves in virtual relationships.

  43. Living in a culture marked by hedonism, by immediate consumerism, by the preferential option for pleasure, sport and amusement, for the high-speed information media on the one hand, and on the other, marked by an enormous psychic vulnerability, there is great difficulty in working out frustration, anguish, expectation and difficulty in assuming a posture regarding macro-politics. Small short term transformations and small projects are preferred.

  44. The “Third Man” concept! With regard to Religious Life, a distancing of the new generation of religious with regard to the social body of the Congregation is occurring. . The “third man” is entering Religious Life. He knows the rules and doesn’t object, but follows them as he wills.

  45. There is a real schism There is a language for the external public, for superiors, colleagues and social expectations, and another real, internal, experiential language for the conscious realm. Not all of this is conscious. formators have doubts about the expressed motivation of those in formation, in terms of giving themselves to the poor like Jesus

  46. Formation Dilemma! They doubt their desires to be humanitarian, and their search for God. They do not trust the deep silenced conscious and unconscious motivation revolving around self-promotion, self-recognition, and the veiling of affective-sexual problems.

  47. Spiritual Traits in Modern Youth-People! Religiosity and spirituality are a whole other quantity in post-modernity. Its most significant expression is called New Age. characterized by an enormous syncretism and by freedom, plurality, subjectivism and religious forms becoming autonomous, with minimal or no links to institutions or formal religions.

  48. New Age – elements! Having a post-traditional view of God, of Jesus, of salvation, of religion/institutional Church, with a new religious awareness, tending towards Gnostic monism, esoteric mysticism, humanistic psychologizing, sacred holism, deep ecologic preoccupations, diffuse cosmic energy and so many other “isms.”

  49. Implications! There is a passage from “hard” faith to “soft” spirituality and religiosity. In a word, personal views of God are being fragmented, and these go as far as returning to the gods and a fluid understanding of the divine as energy, as adjective rather than noun, and even up to the death of God.

  50. the post-modern religious climate is invading all the spheres and styles of life by means of a diffuse de-institutionalized, anarchic, drifting, consoling spirituality that performs, that is closer to new age on the one hand, and on the other hand, closer to fundamentalism, offering speeches and practices that reach the sacred, guarantee salvation, and testify to miracles and divine blessings Both types offer consolation and identity to the faithful.

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