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Gary Kuchar. Southwell's "a vale of tears": A psychoanalysis of form Mosaic.-volver índice-

A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature. Winnipeg, Mar 2001
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Volume: 34, Issue: 1, Pagination: 107-120, ISSN: 00271276

Subject Terms: Poetry // Poets // Literary criticism

Personal Names: Southwell, Robert (1561-95)

Abstract:

Putting psychoanalytic conceptions of self-transformation through speech in dialogue with early modern devotional techniques of spiritualizing the physical, Kuchar asks how Robert Southwell's poem "A Vale of Tears" constitutes a work of mourning.
Copyright MOSAIC Mar 2001

Full Text:

Putting psychoanalytic conceptions of self-transformation through speech in dialogue with early modern devotional techniques of spiritualizing the physical, this essay asks how Robert Southwell's poem 'A Vale of Tears" constitutes a work of mourning.

Contemporary psychoanalytic discussions of subject formation attribute immense importance to processes of mourning. This concern with mourning in the work of post-Lacanian theorists, most notably Judith Butler and Julia Kristeva, is not simply a reflection on how one negotiates loss throughout one's life but more primarily how the subject is itself constituted by mourning: formed, that is, by and through loss. From this perspective, mourning is not simply something the subject engages in when confronted with abandonment; but, rather, the subject is itself an effect of loss-the product of a series of renunciations and compromise formations. For Lacan and his recent reformulaters, a primordial loss of an egoless sense of unity and fullness-the loss, in other words, of a past that could never have been present as such-is the condition of possibility for the emergence of a subject who is able to take itself as an object of its own thought. In order for self-consciousness to emerge, according to Lacan, a division (or Spaltung) between the emergent ego and the idealized mirror image with which the ego identifies, but which it subsequently fails to adequately incorporate, must take place. The ego's failure to incorporate the imago of this ideal ego results from the disjunction between the infant's actual motor incapacity, its real lack of bodily integrity, and the totality of the wholly integral self that it desires to emulate. To this extent, consciousness is structured by a disjointure, or gap, between the ego and its specular, imaginary Other that is set up within the self as both the condition and the effect of language. Self alienation, then, is the very basis of subjectivity-the ground of identity itself: "The only homogenous function of consciousness is the imaginary capture of the ego by its mirror reflection and the function of misrecognition which remains attached to it" (Ecrits 32). This formulation of the self as conditioned by self-difference, by an enabling emptiness or gap, has profound implications for the meaning and motivations of art and religion.

Indeed, Lacan states unequivocally, "In spite of [the formulation's] generality," at its heart, "religion [... I consists of avoiding this emptiness" (Ethics 130). Aesthetic and spiritual practices are, at bottom, modes of renegotiating identity, strategies of mourning aimed at confronting dividedness while living out imaginatively the sense of self-unity that the subject is constitutionally deprived of. As Kristeva puts it, symbolic language possesses therapeutic efficacy insofar as it "imposes itself as a means of countervailing the loss of Other and of meaning: a means more powerful than any other because more autonomous, [... ] it fills the [... ] psychic need to confront separation, emptiness, death" (Black Sun 129-30). Lacan provides a more specific view of the therapeutic efficacy of symbolic language when he claims that the process of psychotherapy operates by enabling the patient to "reorder the past contingent events by conferring on them the sense of necessities to come" (Language 18). In short, it is symbolic acts of interpretation that enable a subject to transform objectifying and traumatizing events into subjectively meaningful experiences. Devotional and religious writings often present explicit examples of this desire to mitigate feelings of meaningless and loss, centring as they often tend to do around the desire for identity with God as the absolute Subject, the source and the delta of all meaning.

This therapeutic dimension of devotional writing is evident in the work of the early modern Jesuit poet Robert Southwell, particularly his poem "A Vale of Tears," published in the year of his execution, 1595. Southwell's poem presents an unusually dramatic illustration of how the therapeutic efficacy of early modern religious poetry often derives from its careful organization, its movement from a rhetoric of division, emptiness, and loss to a language of union, identity, and wholeness. This movement occurs through the speaker's shifting disposition toward the Alpine landscape that he confronts in the poem. When the speaker begins, he perceives the landscape as a horror vacui, a wholly godless, objectifying, and alienating unreality. Through a process of poetic meditation, however, it emerges as an appropriate setting for a spiritually meaningful transformation of self that is enabled by an increased sense of God's presence. In this respect, Southwell presents a variation on the technique of spiritualizing the physical, a well-established convention that consists, as Saint Augustine says, in the knowledge that "every good of ours either is God or comes from God" (27). In "A Vale of Tears," the devotional practice of spiritualizing the physical consists in the act of relating elements of creation that appear void of meaning because they seem unrelated to God's goodness, back to their divine source. Through the poem's emphasis on paradox, visual and aural oppositions, and its insistent representation of an objectless but omnipresent mourning, it expresses the speaker's feelings of loss and self-division and his ultimate hope for union with God. The formal dimensions of the poem perform this movement from loss and division to the emergence of a meaningful sense of spiritual purpose.

Although it is not my intention to evacuate "A Vale of Tears" of its religiopolitical contexts, many of which would illustrate the dramatic kinds of separation that Southwell experienced as a Jesuit and eventual martyr, my primary concern is to trace the poem's rhetorical functioning. I trace the formal dimensions of the speaker's development toward a sense of spiritual identity at the end of the poem, examining how these formal elements engage the reader throughout the reading experience. By taking this psychoanalytically based formalist approach to Southwell's text, I demonstrate how its imagistic patterning, diction, meditative features, and religious themes possess a certain cathartic and sublimatory efficacy. In particular, I emphasize how the speaker's translation of an alien physical landscape into a symbolically significant expression of spiritual identity constitutes a therapeutic scene; how it stages, that is, the speaker's emerging awareness of his relation to God. I conclude by explaining how Southwell's translation of the Petrachan "plaint" for religious purposes constitutes a literary analog to Lacan's inversion of Freud's view of sublimation. And that this translation presents a significant moment in the literary articulation of desire as it develops in the early modern religious lyric.

A Lytton Sells implicitly reveals why Southwell's crossing of the Alps in 1586 provided an appropriate occasion for staging a struggle for meaningful spiritual identity when he observes that Southwell "could not but judge the mountains [in St. Gothard Pass] from the standpoint of his age which required 'nature' to be perfected by `art.' [... ] But he stands apart from his age in seeing something in this spectacle that does not displease him" (330). The first part of Sells's comment implies that a sixteenthcentury mind like Southwell's would have encountered the "wild, majestic and weird scenery in the neighborhood of the St. Gothard pass" (Janelle 278) as not only something imperfect or fallen but also something quite literally unthinkable, a paradoxical emblem, if you like, of that which stands outside the symbolizable. As Southwell puts it, it is a place "where nothing seemed wrong, yet nothing right" (line 32). To this extent, the landscape presents an encounter with meaninglessness, a scene, that is, where God's presence remains indiscernible. The process of bringing this empty and meaningless site into a meaningful relation with the self is consistent with locating signs of God's presence in the world, a process that in turn enables the speaker to locate his own place in relation to God. It is this process that leads Sells to observe that Southwell sees "something in this spectacle that does not displease him." In effect, what Southwell comes to see in the landscape is his proper relation to God through a deepened consciousness of sin.

Although Louis Martz's thesis regarding the direct influence of Ignatian meditation on Southwell's poetry has been seriously challenged on a number of fronts, by Joseph D. Scallon in particular, there seems little doubt that certain Ignatian themes and meditative patterns are significant to the poem and to the description of the landscape in particular. The poem presents the speaker's developing awareness of his consciousness of sin and ends with an emphasis on the spiritual importance of transforming "former faults" into "plainful thoughts" (69, 57). This thematic focus clearly resembles the meditative sentiments found in the meditations one sees in Saint Ignatius Loyola, where the practitioner "is to consider who God is against whom I have sinned, reflecting on the divine attributes and comparing them with their contraries in me; God's wisdom with my ignorance, God's omnipotence with my weakness, God's justice with my iniquity" (27).

This meditative process of focussing on one's lack in the face of God's perfection is, as Kristeva puts it in her reading of the Eucharist, to admit: "I am divided and lapsing with respect to my ideal, Christ, whose introjection [...] [incorporation] sanctifies me while reminding me of my incompletion" (Powers 118-19). To understand the therapeutic design of Southwell's "A Vale of Tears" is to recognize that the same logic of division and desire for union that is operating in Ignatian meditation also informs the structure of the poem. This is not to repeat Martz's thesis of a direct parallel between the tripartite organization of Ignatian meditation and early modern devotional poetry but to recognize a more general structural and psychological logic common to both. Indeed, Southwell's "A Vale of Tears" dramatizes the same feelings of longing and separation evident in Ignatian modes of meditation in which the practitioner implicates himself in the sufferings of Christ. W.W. Meissner, a practising psychoanalyst and member of the Jesuit order, sees Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises as, in part, "a manifestation of [Ignatius's] own psychic experience [that] reflects in some degree his internal world of dynamic and unconscious fantasy" (88). Meissner suggests that such unconscious fantasy is particularly apparent in the maternal imagery and its associated expression for union evident in the central Ignatian prayer Anima Christi:

Soul of Christ, sanctify me.

Body of Christ, saw me.

Blood of Christ, inebriate me.

Water from the side of Christ, wash me.

Passion of Christi strengthen me. (Loyola 1-5)

Meissner suggests that the "imagery of protection, being enfolded within the sacred wounds, recalls associations to a fantasy of reunion with the lost mother" (89). Whatever the biographical significance of the imagery here, however, be it fantasy for the lost mother or otherwise, what is important about the therapeutic dimension of Ignatius's imagery is the way it places impersonal images that have potentially tragic dimensions (Christ's body and blood) into (inter)personally significant symbols of union and meaning. It is not the referential function of the images to Ignatius's unconscious that is of therapeutic and poetic interest here, but the form and process through which Ignatius and the tradition to which he belongs that translates a scene of loss and non-meaning into a vision of union with the divine. Indeed, it is exactly this formal and thematic process-the process, that is, of translating a potentially meaningless and threatening encounter with an unfamiliar landscape into a spiritual and symbolically significant experience-that unfolds in Southwell's poem.

This process begins with Southwell's representation of the landscape in the opening three stanzas through the meditative dynamics of Ignatius's fourth exercise in the Spiritual Exercises (see Martz 207-08). This exercise calls for a meditation on hell in which the practitioner imagines hell using all five senses in order to envision its "length, breadth, and depth" (Loyola 29). Drawing on Ignatius's emphasis on the senses in the meditative process, Southwell begins his description of the Alpine landscape by evoking a world characterized by separation and loss. Between stanzas 2 and 3, the speaker moves from an emphasis on sight to sound re-creating the "composition of place" as practised in the Ignatian method: it is first a place "where eie-roume is from rockes to cloudie sky" (5) and then a site "where ears of other sound can have no choice / But various blustring of the stubburne winde" (9-10). What is most important about the influence of Ignatius's meditation on hell for the opening stanzas is that it provides an appropriate method for describing what initially appears as an outward and alien landscape.

Indeed, the opening line of "A Vale of Tears" initiates the dominating movement from high to low, from bright to dark, from vast space to encroaching sky, all of which create a disturbing effect of the landscape as a place of ubiquitous and incomprehensible loss: "A Vale there is enwrapt with dreadful shades / Which thicke of mourning pines shrouds from the sunne / Where hanging clifts yeld short and dumpish glades / And snowie floud with broken streames Both runne" (1-4). Although mourning is clearly a human activity, the landscape appears, nonetheless, objective to the speaker; it appears, that is, as a pure description of a world inaccessible to human intelligibility. Its motions are described as meaninglessly "diverse" as "eares of other sound can have no choice / But various blustering of the stubburne winde" (9-10, emph. mine). The Ignatian focus on the senses operates at this point precisely to undermine the power of human perception to locate signs of meaning in the landscape. This sense of alienation is most disturbing for the speaker as he views the "hollow clouds full fraught with thundering groans / With hideous thumps discharge their pregnant wombe" (15-16). The most terrifying element of the landscape remains its ability to reproduce its indiscernible and, at this point, terrifying features.

Having established his sense of terror at the meaninglessness of the landscape through visual and aural imagery, the speaker in "A Vale of Tears" thematizes its lack of discernible shape through the art/nature distinction so common in the period: "Resort there is of none but pilgrim wights, / That passe with trembling foot and panting heart, / With terror cast in cold and shivering frights, / They judge the place to terror framde by art: Yet Natures worke it is of arte untoucht" (21-25). An ambiguity begins to emerge here through the term resort that is crucial to the speaker's translation of the landscape from a site of division and meaninglessness to union and discernible form. On the one hand, these lines thematize the incomprehensibility of "Natures work" by emphasizing the sense that it is "of arte untoucht"; on the other hand, the term resort insinuates not only a "concourse or assemblage of people" but also "an opportunity for repair, retreat, or access to a place" (OED). This is the first point in the poem, in other words, where the speaker begins to advance toward a recognition of the "place" as a scene of repair, of communion, of meaning, rather than a site of sheer terror. To this extent, the speaker has implicitly begun to transform what is "of art untoucht" into spiritually and metaphorically meaningful terms. The poem develops by making this process of transformation increasingly explicit throughout. Indeed, the latent insinuation, in stanza 6, that the place is spiritually purposive rather than symbolically vacuous, becomes central in the following three stanzas. In the lines and stanzas immediately following the art/nature distinction, moreover, the coincidence of interior spiritual states and exterior physical motions is inscribed in the formal movements from alterity to identity, from opposition to union; rather than as an explicitly thematized recognition.

In stanzas 7 and 8, for instance, the oppositional elements of the landscape are tightly condensed into individual words set against one another, creating an uncomfortable sense of physical/spiritual dislocation: "Natures worke it is of arte untoucht [ ...] / With such disordered order strangely coucht, / And so with pleasing horror low and hie" (27-28). This dense juxtapositioning reaches its most condensed expression in the first line of stanza 9 as the word mated inscribes the dual senses of confusion and peace, loneliness and communion, fear and mutuality. Directly at the centre of the poem, the speaker tells us that the landscape is "a place for mated minds, an onely bower / Where every thing doth sooth a dumpish mood" (33-34). The term mated signifies both the sense of being "distraught" as in "the bitter smart that strained by mated mind" and a sense of likeness as in a "sweet union held of mated will" (OED). This sense of likeness or similarity refers simultaneously to the "Pilgrim blights" of stanza 6 as well as implicitly the identity of the speaker and the landscape itself. Thus the various forms of opposition articulated up to this point are momentarily united in this term, which carries multiple but not opposing meanings. The horrifying, alien landscape is now a "bower," providing a brief moment of comfort. The unification of subject and object, of the speaker's inner world and the external physical world, is not registered in terms of content as such but, rather, through the productive ambiguity of the word mated. Indeed, it is here, at the centre of the poem, that Southwell's reader, one spiritual pilgrim among many, is invited into the meditational process that the text presents. The place for "mated minds" is no longer a specific place: it is now a shared existential/spiritual condition, a state of being where one seeks to reconcile feelings of dislocation from God. The term mated, then, makes more explicit what remained implicit in the word resort.

It is at this central moment in the poem, what we might call the typological juncture, that the speaker offers the reader the opportunity to imaginatively realign the oppositions formulated so far. The formal and spatial motions of the poem, its movement from opposition to unity, from geographic particularity to spiritual generality, invite the reader to reinterpret a similarity as an identity, thus furthering the symbolic sense of self-unity that the speaker seeks to attain. Indeed, the chaos and "horror of this fearful quier," the constant jarring motion from sky to earth, heat to cold, reaches a still point in the poem's middle as the reader is invited to imaginatively unite speaker and listener, external and internal. This unification is then registered in the images as the "earth lies forlorne, the cloudie skie doth lower, / The wind here weepes, here sighes, here cries aloude" (35-36). The previous cacophony is briefly translated into a harmonious, if still deeply mournful, choir of sound and sight.

Even at the point of momentary resolution, however, a dear ambiguity remains that reflects the speaker's imperfect sense of spiritual purpose. This is evident to the extent that "soothe" signifies not only "comfort" but also "show" or "declare" (OED). On the one hand, then, the lines express a sense of momentary ease, a sense of spiritual solidarity amongst the various "Pilgrim Wights" sharing the "bower"; and yet, on the other, they further signify the way that the landscape cannot help but to "betray" a sense of loss that remains disconnected from the consciousness of the speaker. The sense of comfort attained here is momentary and imperfect, an imperfection inscribed within the ambiguity of the diction itself. Indeed, the speaker's language and the reality of the external landscape remain imperfectly matched at this point. The connection, in other words, between the interior state of the speaker and the outward world of the landscape has yet to be deliberately thematized, recognized, that is, as a meaningful identity.

After this still point, the imagistic and rhetorical oppositions are explicitly taken up again as the meditative process begins anew by referring back to the imagery of the poem's opening stanza: "The pines thicke set, hie growne, and ever greene, / Still cloath the place with sad and mourning vaile" (41-42). The resolution achieved through the "mated minds" figure proves to be momentary, but it is nonetheless crucial to the reader's deepening consciousness that the speaker is struggling toward a meaningful vision of the self in relation to the previously terrifying landscape. By identifying with the speaker and thus made part of the community of "mated minds," the meditative focus aims to deepen the reader's awareness of sin in conscious relation to the landscape. The landscape now becomes a fit place for self-analysis and the redeeming power of sorrowful repentance: "All pangs and heavie passions here may find / A thousand motives suitly to their griefes, I To feed the sorrowes of their troubled minde, / And chase away dame pleasures vaine reliefes" (53-56). We have now begun to emerge into a deliberately thematic recognition of the appropriateness of the landscape for religious meditation; the landscape is, effectively, no longer entirely "of arte untoucht."

Indeed, the landscape is now said to "conspire"-which carries the Latinate meaning of "to breathe together"-with the speaker and his fellow pilgrims: "To plaining thoughts this vaile a rest may bee, / To which from worldly joyes they may retire. / Where sorrow springs from water, stone and tree, / Where everie thing with mourners doth conspire" (57-60). These lines resolve the earlier ambiguity in line 33 ("sooth a dumpish mood") by making explicit the sense that the speaker now derives comfort, or 11 rest," rather than discomfort and terror, from the reflection of his sorrow in the "conspiring" world around him. The sense of "conspire," however, still implies that the landscape stands in an objective relation to the speaker, that its mirroring effect is more coincidental than providential. This changes in the following three stanzas as a series of auditory images is reconciled and the speaker places the landscape within a familiar biblical and eschatological context.

The passive constructions of stanza 15 shift into deliberate meditation constructed through a series of imperative forms in the following stanzas: "Set here my soule maine streames of teares afloate / Here all thy sinfull foiles alone recount, / Of solemne tunes make thou the dolefulst note, / that to thy ditties dolor may amount" (61-64). The "heavy notes," "fearfull quier," "marble grones," and "roaring beates" of earlier stanzas are now deliberately translated into signs of inward griefs, of "solemn tunes," that are not only discernible but also spiritually efficacious. The following stanza is alone in situating the landscape within a recognizably biblical context, thus marking the most explicit point in the transition from alterity to meaning, emptiness to identity: "When Eccho doth repeat thy plainful cries / Thinke that the erie stones thy sinnes bewray, / And now accuse thee with their sad replies, / As heaven and earth shall in the latter day" (65-68, emph. mine). The allusion to Luke 19:40 establishes the speaker's sense of self within a meaningful symbolic frame that explicitly extends into a view of eschatological history with the reference to the "latter day." The spiritual development of the speaker, then, is consistent with the development of the formal dimensions of the poem and the increasing thematization of the self's relation to the landscape: the initial resolution (at lines 33-35) occurs primarily in terms of a rhetorical still point, inscribing within it, nonetheless, a sense of unease about the relation between self and world, whereas the latter resolution functions thematically, as an explicit moment of reconciliation between the inward self and its outward expression. The reader, then, to the extent that he or she identifies with the speaker, moves from a state of unease regarding the discontinuity and ambiguity between self and landscape to a position of identity between interior and exterior worlds.

This process of securing a sense of identity and spiritual purpose by a recognition of the external state as an inward and symbolic reality is secured in the following stanza through a visual image that complements the auditory patterns concluded in stanzas 15 and 16. The imagistic dimension of this resolution is completed through the figure of the "Limbeck," which purifies the heart while providing a formal resolution, a means of retranslating division and cacophony into unity and harmony: "Let former faults be fuell of the fire, / For griefe in Limbecke of thy heart to still I Thy pensive thoughts, and dumps of thy desire, / And vapoure tears up to thy eies at will" (69-72). The pun on the word still, indicating both "distillation of sins and sorrows" and a sense of "stillness or peace," resolves the wanderings of desire at both imagistic and rhetorical levels (OED). Likewise, the figure "dumps," signifying both a musical composition characterized by its sad minor key (Brownlow 123) and the cavernous quality of the Alpine landscape, suggests the resolution of the visual and aural registers of desire initiated in stanzas 2 and 3. By resolving the imagistic and rhetorical oppositions in the poem, the speaker enacts the purifying or distilling process formally as well as thematically, moving from a consciousness of sin to the awareness of contrition, from noise to stillness, from physical and psychological division to imaginative unity. The function of ambiguity is no longer to insinuate division or opposition but rather similarity and identity.

The final stanza of the poem reveals the degree to which Southwell is self-conscious about his poem as both an imperative to, and an example of, the transformation of sorrow into song, of loss into an expression of the desire for union: "Let teares to tunes, and paines to plaints be prest, / And let this be the burdon of thy song, / Come deepe remorse, possess my sinfull brest / Delights adue, I harbourd you too long" (73-76, emph. mine). Southwell here thematizes his application of Petrachan motifs for religious purposes, changing as he does the object of the "plaint" from the courtly lady to God. The Petrachan figure of the "plaint," exploited by English sonneteers like Sir Thomas Wyatt, expresses, as Kenneth Graham argues, the speaker's desire for the courtly lady while implying an awareness of the speaker's unworthiness and lack of deserving of her love and desire (40-41). As a figure of the lover's "moan" or "sigh," the plaint tends to sign the inexpressibility of the lover's affection, as in Wyatt's plaining "without tongue" (Graham 42). In this sense, the emotional sincerity and the accompanying inexpressiveness of the lover's "plaint" might be opposed, as Graham explains, to the more self-consciously rhetorical and confident expression of a speaker's "complaint" (40-47). The figure of the plaint, indicating a sense of humbled "uncertainty" and "inexpressibility," is clearly ideal for the religious poet seeking union, through a deepened consciousness of sin, with the most inexpressible of objects, God. Indeed, Southwell emphasizes the sense of uncertainty around the figure of the plaint as an expression of "pensive thoughts" derived from "former faults" (69, 71). To this extent, the emphasis on plaint expresses the way that Southwell's speaker seeks to deepen his consciousness of separation from God to inspire his own worthiness for union. In Southwell, the "plainfull" speaker is the self-less speaker, a subject prepared to fully acknowledge his unworthiness and distance from the object of desire while hoping, nonetheless, that such an expression will conclude in union with the praised object.

Through this deepening consciousness of sin expressed as "plaining thoughts," Southwell's speaker seeks to meditatively inhabit the impossibly painful point of separation from the Father dramatized in the crucifixion. Kristeva describes this moment of division when she argues that the break, brief as might have been, in the bond linking Christ to his Father and to life introduces into the mythical representation of the Subject a fundamental and psychically necessary discontinuity. Such a caesura, which some have called a "hiatus," provides an image, at the same time as a narrative, for many separations that build up the psychic life of individuals. [... J It brought to consciousness the essential dramas that are internal to the becoming of each and every subject. It thus endows itself with a tremendous cathartic power. (Black 132)

The structural patterning and productive ambiguity of Southwell's poem aims to recreate, at the level of both form and theme, the cathartic power derived from the sorts of separations and unions found in the narrative dimensions of the Passion. Southwell's text seeks to spiritually purify its reader, inspire him or her to meditation to transform the wanderings of desire into contrite and purifying tears of repentance. By transforming a potentially meaningless and thus terrifying encounter with "Natures work" into a spiritually and symbolically significant meditative experience, Southwell anticipates the psychoanalytic principle that a therapeutic effect is evoked by "reordering the past contingent events by conferring on them the sense of necessities to come" (Lacan, Language 18). Moreover, by transforming the contingencies and "diverse noise" of "Natures work" into an occasion for contrite tears and by subsequently transforming those tears into "plaints" and "solemn songs," Southwell not only narrates the speaker's emergence into a sense of spiritual purpose, but he also thematizes the importance of what we can retrospectively locate as a particular understanding of sublimation. This view of sublimation reflects significant developments in the articulation of desire in the early modern religious lyric as well as its subsequent theorization by psychoanalysis.

This shift in the articulation of desire is evident to the extent that Southwell's transformation of the Petrachan figure of the "plaint" into a religious context presents a literary analogue to the principles behind Lacan's reversal of the Freudian view of sublimation. For Freud, sublimation simply consists in the displacement of instinct from an object that satisfies some direct material need to an object that bears no immediate relation to that need (39). For Lacan, however, the relation is inverted to the point that sublimation consists in investing a particular object, the example he uses is the lady of the courtly love lyric, with the sublime power associated with the source of one's lack, the emptiness around which one's identity is formed (Ethics 87-155). In the courtly lyric, the manifest desire for spiritual and sexual consummation covers over the masochistic reality that the lady functions as a stand-in for this nameless lack, which is the inaccessible source of the subject's desire, what Lacan calls the object-a. The courtly lady marks out, in other words, the emptiness that Kristeva speaks of concerning the "hiatus," or "break," represented in the Passion. From this perspective, the economy of sublimation in the courtly lyric tradition consists in the way that "the Object of desire itself coincides with the force that prevents its attainment-in a way, the object 'is' its own withdrawal, its own retraction" (Mek 96). In the courtly love lyric, this impossible situation remains implicit within the structure of the genre, in the way the speaker seeks, but must fail, to receive the lady's desire. In "A Vale of Tears," however, the impossibly divine nature of the object of desire is made explicit, made, that is, a deliberate thematic issue.

This self-consciousness is apparent in Southwell's emphasis on his "plaining thoughts," "plainfull cries," and "plaints," which make dramatically explicit the fact that his lyric voice simultaneously expresses both his desire for God and his unworthiness to be the subject of God's desire (57, 65, 73). To this extent, Southwell makes the impossible nature of courtly desire a thematic dimension of his religious lyric. By displacing an economy of sublimation orchestrated around a human object, however it may be constituted in pseudo-divine terms, to God himself, Southwell makes explicit what remained more or less implicit in the structure of courtly lyric. In this sense, he poeticizes a mode of sublimation that Lacan later theorizes.

By elevating the object of desire from a woman to God, Southwell's speaker seeks to fill out his own lack in relation to what remains, insofar as he is a body as well as a soul, an impossible Object. Within the sublimatory economy of "A Vale of Tears," then, the speaker, like the subject of Lacanian theory, knows himself by articulating his lack in relation to God (for Lacan the object-a) as the absolute aim and source of desire. For Southwell's speaker, the process of articulating a deepened consciousness of sin and the act of transforming this recognition into "plaining thoughts" of lack before God establishes his proper identity in relation to the Father. For Southwell, just as for Lacan, it is only by losing the self as ego, losing, that is, one's inwardly directed narcissistic certainty, in favour of a more consciously intersubjective understanding of the self, that a genuine subject emerges. By dramatizing the speaker's disavowal of "former faults" in favour of outwardly directed "solemn songs," Southwell poeticizes the psychoanalytic principle that a "genuine consciousness of self cannot be attained within the frame of phenomenological introspection but demands a frame of reference outside consciousness" (Lee 73). The speaker's encounter with a landscape that appears uninterpretable constitutes an occasion for inscribing his identity within an economy of sublimation where the self is understood as the subject of a desire for, as well as of, the Other.

Southwell's self-conscious thematization of religious desire in Petrachan terms reflects a significant moment in the history of anthropopathia (the rhetorical term for an expression of God's attributes in language that is normally reserved for describing human characteristics), as it occurs in the early modern religious lyric. By advocating a religious application of Petrachan modes, "A Vale of Tears" participated in a literary history that soon led to such radically anthropomorphic expressions of divine love as Donne's "Show me deare Christ" and "Batter my Heart." In these poems, Donne encourages his readers "to participate in the alarming extension of a traditional metaphor," drawing them into an "uneasy complicity" with the speaker's amorous passion for the divine (Kerrigan 338). Southwell's importance to the early modern lyric, then, is not simply a matter of his use of Ignatian exercises, which have been evoked in order to explain away Donne's violations of taste (338) but rather in his articulation and self-conscious understanding of religious desire in Petrachan terms. This articulation of a subject whose identity is dependent upon an "undeserving" desire for a divine, and in this sense, "impossible" Object, anticipates the theorization of a psychoanalytic conception of the self as the subject of its own lack. Indeed, the early modern tradition of religious lyric that Southwell's "A Vale of Tears" participates in not only presents a therapeutic poetics of sublimation, but it also thematizes a view of the subject as a subject of loss, which unexpectedly foresees psychoanalysis.*

*I would like to thank Mary Silcox and Sylvia Bowerbank for their comments on early drafts of this essay.

WORKS CITED

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Brownlow, F.W. Robert Southwell. London: Twayne, 1996.

Donne, John. The Complete English Poems. 1971. Ed. A.J. Smith. London: Penguin, 1986.

Freud, Sigmund. "Civilization and its Discontents." Civilization, Society, and Religion. Vol. 12 of The Penguin Freud Library Trans. James Strachey. London: Penguin, 1930, 1991. 243-340.

Graham, Kenneth J.E. The Performance of Conviction: Plainness and Rhetoric in the Early English Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1994.

Janelle, Pierre. Robert Southwell: The Writer. New York: Paul Appel, 1935.

Kerrigan, William. "The Fearful Accommodations of John Donne." English Literary Renaissance 4 (1974): 337-63.

Kristeva, Julia. Black Sun. New York: Columbia UP, 1989.

-. Powers of Horror. An Essay in Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1982.

Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits: A Selection. New York: Norton, 1977.

-. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. Trans. D. Porter. New York: Norton, 1992.
-. The Language of the Self. The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis.
Trans. Anthony Wilden. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1968.

Lee, Jonathan Scott. Jacques Lacan. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1990.

Loyola, Saint Ignatius. The Spiritual Exercises. Trans. E. Tetlow. Boston: UP of America, 1987.

Martz, Louis. The Poetry of Meditation. New Haven: Yale UP, 1962.

Meissner, W.W. Ignatius of Loyola: The Psychology of a Saint, New Haven: Yale UP, 1992. Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed (Compact). New York: Oxford UP, 1989.

Scallon, Joseph D. The Poetry of Robert Southwell. S.J. Salzburg: Institut fur Englische Sprache and Literatur, 1975.

Sells, A. Lytton. The Italian Influence in English Poetry: From Chaucer to Southwell. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1955.

Southwell, Robert. The Poems of Robert Southwell. Ed. J. Mcdonald and N. Brown. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.

Mek, Slavoj. The Metastases of Enjoyment: Six Essays on Woman and Causality. New York: Verso, 1994.

GARY KUCHAR is a doctoral candidate at McMaster University, where he is at work on a dissertation entitled "The Iconic Ego: Praise and the Subjects of Devotion from Southwell to Vaughan." He has published on Shakespeare in Early Modern Literary Studies, Henry James and Heidegger in The Henry James Review, and has an essay on typology in Northrop Frye forthcoming in Canadian Review of Comparative Literature.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.-volver índice-

 

Martin Calkins; Dennis J Moberg. Reflection in business ethics: Insights from St. Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises. -volver índice-

Journal of Business Ethics. Dordrecht, Oct 2001.

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Volume:33, Issue:3, Part:2, Pagination: 257-270, ISSN:01674544

Subject Terms: Studies // Business ethics // Spirituality // Organizational behavior // Meditation

Abstract:

The Spiritual Exercises developed by St. Ignatius Loyola are examined se of informing the structure of reflection as a tool in business ethics.At present, reflection in business is used to clarify moods, expectations, theories of use, and defining moments. The paper suggests that Ignatius' Exercises, which focus on ends, engage the emotions and imagination, use role modeling, and require a response, might be useful as a model for reflection in business.

Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers Group Oct 2001

We examine the Spiritual Exercises developed by St. Ignatius Loyola for the purpose of informing the structure of reflection as a tool in business ethics. At present, reflection in business is used to clarify moods, expectations, theories of use, and defining moments. We suggest here that Ignatius' Exercises, which focus on ends, engage the emotions and imagination, use role modeling, and require a response, might be useful as a model for reflection in business.

The Western philosophical tradition has always held the process of reflection as central to both the discernment of truth and the expression of the good life (e.g., Aristotle). The sage's admonition, "know thyself," and Socrates' contention that "the unexamined life is not worth living" both support the enduring supposition that reflection is an essential vehicle to meaning and wisdom. In business ethics, reflection is largely implied. Ethical reasoning is thought to be a highly cognitive process often requiring deliberation and introspection. To be conscientiously moral, one must develop an account based on rules, relationships, and/or cases that is both exhaustive and rigorous. This cannot help but implicate reflection in some part of the process of developing the evidence, framing the account, or choosing from among possible actions.

Although it is clearly implied, reflection as a process distinct from decision making has received almost no attention in business ethics. One reason is that work organizations are settings notoriously hostile to reflection. "The managerial environment is clearly one of stimulusresponse. It breeds, not reflective planners, but adaptable information manipulators who prefer the live, concrete situation, [persons] who demonstrate a marked action-orientation" (Mintzberg, 1971, p. 100).

Much has been made of the continuous press and fragmentation of administrative work. Administrators describe themselves as "putting out fires" or complain that they "didn't get a thing done" because all they did was "talk on the phone." These are accurate descriptions of people's experience with administrative roles, and, without skill and intellectual artistry, these characteristics can bury the most ardent and well-meaning administrator (Hart, 1990, p.154).

When reflection appears in the business literature, there is a tendency to reserve the beneficial role for reflection exclusively for elite members of the organization. According to McGill and Slocum, "All leaders . . . recognize the importance of reflecting on their experience and the need to periodically retreat from the pace of their office to engage in self-renewal . . ." (1994, p. 213). This idea that reflection is the province only of elites is probably part of a widespread tendency to consider elites as having the only experience worth reflection.

It is our view that reflection is just as worthwhile for a file clerk as it is for a corporate CEO and not just as an escape from the frenetic pace of the business world. Practiced properly, reflection promises anyone perspective, insight, and a way of knowing that may not be possible without it. Unfortunately, the practice of reflection is rarely taught and certainly never within a standard business school curriculum. That being the case, precisely how should one take advantage of those moments when one is alone with oneself?

There are, of course, many answers to this question from various approaches to spirituality and religious practice. Among these are answers that come from an examination of a reflection regimen that is over five hundred years old - the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. Obviously, these were developed for an entirely different purpose and are intended only for use by Christian believers. Yet, the structure of the Spiritual Exercises has features that are central to the contemporary discourse in business ethics -- elements like imagination, role modeling, and the integration of reason with the emotions. Moreover, as their longevity attests, they have enabled countless participants to have productive periods of reflection. In this respect, one might even contend that they have passed a 500-- year-long "market test."

This paper attempts to examine the Spiritual Exercises for the purpose of informing the structure of reflection as a tool in business ethics. First, we survey the social sciences for insights about the nature and value of reflection. Second, we look broadly at what people typically reflect about, again according to the social science research evidence. Third, we introduce and describe the Spiritual Exercises and distill four core features of the process. Finally, we speculate on how reflection structured along the same lines might occupy a more central role in business deliberations.

The nature and value of reflection

The word "reflection" is derived from the Latin word reflectere, meaning to bend back. Thus, reflection denotes a process in which people think about an object of their thinking. Boyd and Fales (1983) define reflection as "the process of internally examining and exploring an issue of concern, triggered by an experience, which creates and clarifies meaning in terms of self, and which [potentially] results in a changed conceptual perspective" (p. 100). Accordingly, reflection implicates both the self and the world and promises to lead to new understandings and appreciations (Boud, Keogh and Walker, 1985; Schlossberg, 1981). The raw material of reflection is an experience (cognition) on which a person engages in the process of cogitating and meditating (metacognition). In other words, reflection involves "bending back" upon oneself to take stock, question, and assess an experience (Barell, 1995). Like other cognitive activities, reflection is often spontaneous and subconscious. In fact, the "sorting through" nature of the reflection process is most efficient while we sleep . . . [Sleep] reduces the level of incoming sensory data and allows for the reorganization and efficient storage of information already in the brain, thus better preparing us to handle the demands of our waking hours. The same sort of spontaneous sorting through of existing information occurs during certain mindless, rhythmic physical activities like jogging, swimming laps, or mowing the lawn; or during habitual routines that no longer need the conscious brain's full attention, such as showering or commuting on the same route each day (Daudelin, 1996, p. 39).

According to David Kolb (1983; 1984), learning through reflection is a four-phase cycle that begins with an experience and moves on to reflection and then to conceptualization and ending in experimentation, which restarts the cycle. While this model suggests that reflection is retrospective, it can be contemporaneous (Schon, 1995) and even anticipatory (Perkins, Jay and Tishman, 1993) as well, i.e., one can reflect on what is happening and what will happen as well as what has happened.1 A key feature of reflection, then, is that one is attempting to interpret an experience rather than merely to have an experience.

In general, reflection has been found to have a positive effect on self-insight (Hixon and Swann, 1993). For one, self-reflection often counters the negative effects of impulsivity (Wilson et al., 1993). Moreover, individuals who reflect about their own characteristics come closer to the descriptions by others than do those who engage in no reflection. These positive effects do not hold up when the individual reflects for a long period of time or when the objects of reflection are the reasons for their characteristics rather than the characteristics themselves (Millar and Tesser, 1986, 1989), but reflection about one's attributes does lead to accurate self-insights. In general, reflection has been called "the essential part of the process that makes it possible to learn from experience" (Osterman, 1990, p. 135). Accordingly, there have been several attempts to incorporate reflection in training and development protocols among teachers (Clift et al., 1990), social workers (Pray, 1991), health care providers (Munson, 1979), and business professionals (Bartunek and Louis, 1995).

For all the promise that reflection holds (Weick, 1995), it is by no means a panacea. It cannot be used to help ". . . the recalcitrant, the malicious, the unmotivated, or those who have given up all hope" (Kottkamp, 1990, p. 199). Moreover, as a largely personal process, the genuine practice of reflection is supremely tender. Ego and professional esteem may be laid bare, and even if insights are kept to oneself, they are not always pretty or confirming.

The subjects of reflection about work

The four most common subjects of reflection about work are mood and attitude, expectations, theories of use, and defining moments (Grimmett et al., 1990). Reflecting upon their moods or attitudes enables employees to cope with these ephemeral states. Anger, depression, and feelings about unfamiliar objects are potentially transformed through reflection. Reflecting upon their expectations enables workers to calibrate their thinking to their experience. Here reflection performs an instrumental role of identifying more effective means of accomplishing desired objectives. Reflecting upon their theories of use enables workers to choose to act and behave with integrity. The function of this type of reflection is to bring into alignment one's purposes and aims with one's practices (Shapiro and Reiff, 1993). Defining moments occasion an entirely different form of reflection. Such events transform and reconstruct one's experience itself. Reflecting upon their defining moments enables individuals to determine who they are as persons of character.

Mood and attitude

Reflection is among the various strategies proposed as a means of regulating negative moods (Thayer et al., 1994). However, a number of studies have shown that distraction is generally a much better method for controlling both anger and depression, that rumination simply makes one's bad mood worse (Rusting and Nolen-Hoeksema, 1998; Baumeister, 1991). Distraction could involve reflection, of course. One might think about pleasant things or concentrate on exercise or music.

Reflections about attitudes often have a rather curious impact. In study after study (e.g., Wilson and Schooler, 1991; Wilson et al., 1995), people show a tendency to change their minds about an object when they reflect on the reasons for their initial positive feelings toward it. This attitudinal shift generally leads to poor decisions and more post-decision regret. This effect is especially pronounced for attitudes about objects that are unfamiliar or about which one's initial feelings are somewhat conflicted, but this has implications that could affect one's life course. For example, it has been shown that when dating couples were asked to reflect on the reasons for their positive feelings for one another, attitudes toward one another cooled (Wilson and Kraft, 1993). Other types of reflection about the relationship did not produce this effect, but reflections about reasons did. It is as though there is truth to the old adage, "I may not know why, but I know what I like" has a grain of truth, and it should come with the corollary, "please don't ask me why."

Expectations

Expectations are perhaps the most common subject of reflection. Prior to an event, people often create expectations regarding the process and outcome of what they will experience. They do so as a result of a reflective process of mental simulation in which the details of their soon-to-- be experience are imagined (Taylor et al., 1998). During the event they have reflectively prepared for, they compare these expectations and decide whether and how to modify their behavior as a result. After the event, their reflection takes the form of evaluating the event according to their expectations (Isabella, 1990; Lawson and Angle, 1998). Such evaluations inform future actions (Miller and Taylor, 1995).

Among the most important expectations in work organizations are those regarding one's work performance (Stajkovic and Luthans, 1998). Expectations of this type govern the refinement of technique and the role of self-efficacy in goal accomplishment (Bandura, 1997). Interestingly, reflection about future performance expectations does not always have a positive effect on performance. Some people, in short, are better off not reflecting about their future performances. Research by Stacie Spence and Julie Norem (1996), for example, has shown that people fall into two distinct categories: defensive pessimists and strategic optimists. Immediately before performing a challenging task, defensive pessimists prefer to cogitate and ruminate on their impending performance, often conjuring up negative fantasies and dire contingencies as a result. In contrast, strategic optimists prefer some sort of psychological escape prior to a challenging task. Rather than reflecting on what is to come, strategic optimists would prefer to engage in some type of distraction or frivolous activity. Such preferences are apparently not merely shallow inclinations: defensive pessimists tend to actually perform better when they reflect while strategic optimists usually perform better when they do not have to reflect.

Theories of use

A third common subject of reflection grows out of each employee's role as an implicit theorist. Most employees crystallize their experience into what Schon (1983) calls "theories of use" that describe the work practices they have personally found to be effective. These include three kinds of conceptions: (1) what approaches work well in particular work contexts, (2) an explanation about why they work well, and (3) contingencies that alter these approaches (Brookfield, 1987). Argyris, Putnam, and Smith (1985, p. 82) describe these theories of use as "cognitive maps by which people design action." They are ". . . the privately developed, proven ways of performing that are contextually specific, idiosyncratic, and unmentioned in textbooks and professional practice" (Brookfield, 1987, p. 152).

In sharp contrast to theories of use are "espoused theories," the agreed upon norms of professional or occupational practice. Such standards comprise the publicly agreed upon rules that people claim to follow. One example of an espoused theory of organizational behavior is that one should systematically reward desired employee behaviors (Kerr, 1975). Another is that managers should provide more direction to new rather than experienced employees (Hersey and Blanchard, 1982). Since espoused theories have face validity, they become the unchallenged conventional wisdom of a profession. Although personal doubts about their efficacy may on occasion be warranted, espoused theories tend to be relatively immune from public criticism. This has the effect of driving theories of use underground, since they frequently contradict the apparently reverent canon.

When conflicts are apparent between espoused theories and theories of use, they are faced with great reluctance. After all, such conflicts throw into question one's competence and professionalism. It is not that people always feel ashamed of their theories of use. It is that conflicts between espoused theories and their theories in use make them feel vulnerable to the possible humiliation involved in admitting that they do not follow the precepts of their occupational group. This makes reflection about theories of use so self-protective that learning is sometimes painful and often anxiety provoking. Argyris, Putnam, and Smith describe what happens to individuals as they try to help reflect on their theories of use:

They approach the learning process afraid to make mistakes for fear of appearing foolish or stupid; they shy away from experimentation and withdraw in the face of reflection; and they resent those who appear to be learning and blame them for their own experience of failure (1985, p. 277).

For all of its risks of personal exposure, reflection about theories of use promises tremendous returns, personal and otherwise. Such reflection enables employees to identify the reasons espoused theories are not working for them and to implement alternative forms of practice. It facilitates the critical examination of espoused theory's assumptions for their "fit" with the realities of occupational practice. When discrepancies persist, theories of use become the basis for hypotheses that may ultimately lead to challenges of the espoused theories themselves. Some hypotheses prove themselves unworthy of persisting even as theories of use. Others fail to move espoused theory forward because the situation or practitioner proves too idiosyncratic or unique. Still others significantly impact the espoused theory, some with the force of a paradigmatic shift (Kuhn, 1962).

Defining moments

While moods and attitudes help employees decide how to cope, expectations help employees decide what to think, and theories of use help them decide how to act, defining moments help them determine who they are (Badaracco, 1997, 1998). Defining moments are not instances where the worker faces a dilemma between right and wrong. Rather, they occur when the decision maker perceives a conflict between doing right by the organization and doing right by some other system of value. Such choices between right and right are "defining" because they generally punctuate the development of a person's most prized possession, his or her character (Jonas et al., 1989).

We form our character in defining moments because we commit to irreversible courses of action that shape our personal and professional identities. We reveal something new about us to ourselves and others because defining moments uncover something that had been hidden or crystallize something that had been only partially known (Badaracco, 1998, p. 116).

Most contemporary thinking about character and virtue conceive them as habits that are cultivated throughout a lifetime. In essence, one becomes virtuous (develops a virtuous character) by practicing virtue repeatedly in different contexts. One becomes courageous, for example, by restraining one's hot-tempered or cowardly inclinations at precise (defining) moments in one's life. Over time, one eventually approaches dilemmas in a habitual and identifiable way. One not only exercises the will in a rightly ordered manner at a single moment in time, one learns to do so consistently. In this way, one develops a character noted for its virtue; that is, one becomes identified as a virtuous person. In the context of business, this can be seen in the secretary who respectfully yet firmly stands up to a boss who makes wrongful requests of her. The secretary not only exercises courage in the single act of refusal, she becomes more courageous each time she does so. Through practice, she develops moral stamina and learns to discern the appropriate course of action for each new dilemma. This facility of discernment becomes especially helpful to her when she is faced with having to decide among conflicting good options. By practicing virtue, the secretary not only learns what it means to act virtuously in a particular instance; she also becomes more virtuous as a person and comes to be known as a morally "excellent" secretary.

Given the pace of organizational life, one does not always have the luxury to take time away from one's normal duties to ponder and reflect during defining moments (Isenberg, 1984; Torbert, 1987). Instead, the self-inquiry necessitated by such events is more often carried out on the run as part of one's daily routine (Schon, 1983; Weick, 1983). In addition, the pragmatic realities of the situation often play a significant role in business deliberations.

As Badaracco (1998) writes:

As the Renaissance philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli and other ethical pragmatists remind us, idealism untempered by realism often does little to improve the world. Hence. . . . [a] critical question becomes, "what combination of shrewdness and expediency, coupled with imagination and boldness, will help me implement my personal understanding of what is right?' That is, of course a different question altogether from "what should I do?" It acknowledges that the business world is a bottom-line, rough-and-tumble arena where introspection alone won't get the job done. The process of looking inward must culminate in concrete action characterized by tenacity, persuasiveness, shrewdness, and self-confidence (p. 118).

The Ignatian Spiritual Exercises as a means to enhance reflection The issues of character and self-inquiry we have been discussing thus far are central to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), founder of the Society of Jesus (aka Jesuits).2

Developed after a conversion experience and a long period of isolated meditation, the Exercises is a multifaceted, contemplative, largely individualistic, religious activity that is typically conducted over a protracted period of time. More properly practiced than studied as a theological exposition, the Ignatian Exercises is a manual for directors and retreatants rather than a moral philosophical or theological treatise.3 Typically, Jesuits employ it in their two thirty-day retreats at the beginning and end of their so-called "formation" and rely on it when directing others in retreats of various lengths and kinds.

While respected within religious contexts, the Exercises have features worth incorporating into secular realms. Four such features - focus on moral ends, engagement of the emotions and imagination, use of role modeling, and the requirement of a social response - will be discussed next.

Focus on moral ends

In general, the Exercises is structured to enable the exercitant, in Ignatius' words, "to conquer oneself and regulate one's life without determining oneself through any tendency that is disordered" (Fleming, 1991, no. 21). The Exercises' chief aim is to help the exercitant attain greater spiritual freedom. They do this by challenging the exercitant to look at his or her final end (telos) and the behaviors, habits, and values that lead him or her toward or away from that final good end.

In practice, the Exercises typically begin with the exercitant removing him or herself ("retreating") from others. The retreatant then usually meditates upon Ignatius' so-called "principle and foundation" - an exercise that has the individual consider the overall purpose of human existence and the individual's relationship with the transcendent and immanent God (or "vital agent").4 At this point, the exercitant begins to look beyond a narrowly self-interested set of desires to the overarching reasons) for his or her being. The exercitant also begins to scrutinize his or her relationship with God and the proper responses to God's creative designs.

From the start, the Spiritual Exercises encourage purposeful reflection on the relationship between one's everyday activities and the end or set of ends associated with those activities. However, the Exercises do not just encourage reflection upon an abstract final end. Rather, they have the person purposefully contemplate the way he or she directs his or her life toward "the good" of the deity. As spiritual exercises, the Exercises encourage individual reflection upon the movements of the soul by the divine spirit and its ungodly opposite - God and the evil spirit.5

Although they are strongly teleological and particularly Christian, the Exercises' focus on ends in this way is helpful to believers and those who hold a more general or even a non-religious understanding of spirituality.6 By their demand for ordered introspection, the Exercises challenge both the believer and the individual who holds a generic spirituality to consider his or her willful acts and dispositions. The Exercises encourage the individual, as Roger Haight suggests, to "reach . . .below the surface of this or that pattern of action to the fundamental option" of his or her being (Haight, 1987, p. 21). In short, they induce the individual to scrutinize his or her existence and to examine the ideas, ideals, and values that shape his or her vision of human life.7

Engagement of the emotions and imagination

As the individual proceeds through the Exercises, guided reflection typically emphasizes what is called "spiritual discernment." In simple terms, spiritual discernment is as an act of discrimination in which the exercitant strives to become more aware of his or her interior spiritual movements. Spiritual discernment is a way to enhance the exercitant's understanding of his or her particular spirituality. Accordingly, spiritual discernment is introduced at the beginning of the Exercises and refined as the individual proceeds through them.

Although much has been written in theological circles about Ignatius' views on the interior movements of the soul, for our non-theological purposes, Ignatian spiritual discernment is helpful for its emphasis on the emotions over purely rational decision-making (O'Sullivan, 1990).

In general, a cognitive approach is suggested in the Exercises when desire-based approaches fail. Cognitive approaches are to be used, as Michael O'Sullivan points out, "when a more 'affective' approach has not succeeded."8 The rationale for this preference for the affect seems to be rooted in Ignatius' greater concern for thoughts misleading the emotions rather than vice versa.9 Consequently, while Ignatian spiritual discernment allows for both affective and cognitive approaches, his notion of spiritual discernment emphasizes the awareness of feelings and emotions over rational cognizance (i.e., understanding through the use of reason). In accounting for affect and cognition in this way, Ignatius effectively encourages the exercitant to probe the netherworld of non-cognizant knowledge.10

The emphasis on the affect in spiritual discernment leads Ignatius to afford a substantial role to the imagination in the Exercises. In certain exercises, Ignatius has the exercitant imaginatively reflect upon both the visible and the invisible worlds. He has the exercitant "apply the senses" to imagined circumstances that are, as Ernest Ferlita (1997) explains, "imageable" or "picturable."11 In exercises involving the incarnation and nativity, for example, the exercitant is directed "to see the persons with the sight of the imagination, meditating and contemplating in particular the details about them and drawing some profit from the sight" (Fleming, 1991, no 122). He or she is "to hear with the hearing what they are, or might be, talking about" (no. 123) and "to smell and to taste with the smell and the taste the infinite fragrance and sweetness of the Divinity, of the soul, and of its virtues" (no. 124). He or she is "to touch with the touch, as for instance, to embrace and kiss the places where such persons put the feet and sit, always seeing to my drawing profit from it" (no. 125). In these and other ways, as Frederick McLeod notes, Ignatius encourages the use of the imagination 14 to put us in touch - at least sometimes - with what is variously termed as the level of our intentionality or, as others describe it, our elan vital, or simply our creative eros drive for personal meaning and fulfillment" (1986, p. 245).

While the imagination is important to Ignatian contemplation, it must be remembered that the imagination is not whimsical, but guided toward the specific ends described earlier. To ensure that this happens, Ignatius suggests a director ("him who is to give") for the exercitant ("him who is to receive them") (Fleming, 1991, no. 1). The director's job, in essence, is to help the exercitant discriminate his or her interior movements. He or she is to help the exercitant understand the motivations that induce him or her to act in certain ways and to help the exercitant direct (or redirect) his or her interior movements appropriately. In this way, the director might help the exercitant "pay attention to God's personal communication to him or her, to respond to this personally communicating God, to grow in intimacy with this God, and to live out the consequences of the relationship" (Barry and Connolly, 1983, p. 8).

Use of role modeling

As we have seen, the Exercises promote individual isolation for the purpose of contemplation, in particular, contemplation on a final end as expressed by and through the example of Jesus Christ. In doing so, the Exercises encourage the exercitant not just to reflect upon him or herself, but also to reflect upon the person of Jesus and Jesus' mission of selflessness and service. In this way, the Christocentric focus of the Exercises mitigates against the self-absorption likely to occur in such an isolated environment as the retreat. Barry and Connolly (1983) claim that such other - centeredness is necessary-that the Exercises cannot even get off the ground if the individual is overly self-focussed. The Exercises, they claim:

[B]egins when a person stops being totally preoccupied with his own concerns and lets another person, event, or object take his attention. When it is a person who is being contemplated, he lets that person with his personality, concerns, and activity take his attention. He lets himself be absorbed, for a moment at least, and at some level, in the other person (p. 48).

Isolation is typically used in the Exercises then, to help the exercitant develop a new attitude toward others more in line with Christ's teachings and example. Isolation and contemplation encourage a personal reordering essential to the Christian life and the individual's growth in social consciousness.

As Boyle (1957) asserts, Ignatius wants his retreatants to become other Christs. Just as Christ was patient, he wants them to be patient; just as Christ was charitable, he wants them to be charitable, just as Christ was social, he wants them to be social ... No one would say that Jesus Christ lacked the social graces. He was socially well balanced and eminently social-- minded. From the beginning of His public life to His death on the cross Christ had a very definite interest in His fellowman.... It follows, therefore, that, since the Spiritual Exercises have as their end the perfect imitation of Christ, they cannot but promote social consciousness (pp. 127-128).

As Boyle concludes, "one can say that every meditation found in the Exercises can be, either explicitly or implicitly, integrated with social life. Consequently the opinion that they foster social isolation is completely unfounded" (1957, p. 131).

Requirement of a (as opposed to one) social response While Boyle's argument is forceful, it stops short of promoting a particular social vision for the Exercises. As William Byron pointed out some sixteen years after Boyle (1973), the Exercises do not foster any particular social vision. Rather, they are essentially individualistic and not social in content. They promote "a self-interested spirituality" that is narrow in scope, not explicitly social, and "given their purpose, decidedly short of the full Christian message of social charity" (p. 1365). If they promote any social vision, Byron maintains, this is due to the personal preferences of those involved in the particular practice of the Exercises, not the Exercises themselves. Consequently, we may say that the Exercises may, "include and maintain a social vision, if the exercitant finds in the director, a man who has himself been formed by the Exercises, an embodiment of social consciousness" (Byron, 1973, p. 1369).

Byron's assertion that the Exercises do not promote a particular social vision nuances the role of the imagination in the Exercises recounted earlier. There, we saw how Ignatius has the exercitant reflect imaginatively upon his or her visible and the invisible worlds. The exercitant is to engage an individualistic activity (the imagination is, after all, not something shared) by drawing upon outside representations that are largely social. In this way, the individual activity has a socially constructed content. As a result, as McLeod (1986) suggests, we can say that the imagination functions within faith on both the individual level and the social level. While the individual is of greater interest to McLeod, he explains that, "on the communal level, a faith community provides the symbols, myths and rituals that express and provoke an individual's faith experience. These are all products of the religious imagination" (p. 243).12

 

Ferlita expands on the topic of the imagination's social dimension within the context of faith by recalling Karl Rahner's notion of dramatization. Ferlita (1997, p. 20) likens the Exercises to "a great dramatic poem" wherein the exercitant shapes and pursues his or her desires. In the context of belief, these desires get played out with reference to the life of Christ. Thus, not unlike Boyle's observation, Ferlita claims that the imaginative drama of the Exercises helps the exercitant become Christ-like (Ferlita, 1997, p. 21).

Dramatization is evident in certain of the exercises wherein Ignatius has the exercitant 11 apply the senses" to imagined biblical situations. In these exercises, the exercitant is to imaginatively construct biblical scenes such as the incarnation or nativity. Then, the exercitant is to feel, hear, and smell the particular scene as if he or she was actually there. While the exercitant largely remains largely a passive observer throughout, he or she observes with feeling imaginary events involving others (Mary, Joseph, Jesus, a maid, and so forth). These are, in effect, imaginary social events. While Ignatius encourages observance, he also encourages an interior change of heart. As evidenced by the exercise involving the exercitant's recommitment to a state of life already chosen (Fleming, 1991, no. 189), imaginative dramatization of biblical events encourages the exercitant to actively engage his or her will for the purpose of making particular changes in his or her life.

The structure of the exercises as features of secular reflection.

Taken as a whole, the Spiritual Exercises are compatible with a number of contributions to contemporary business ethics. The Exercises' emphasis on proper human ends, action, and a rightly ordered will correlates in part with the virtue theories for business proposed by Robert Solomon (1992), Daryl Koehn (1998), and others. The Exercises' consideration of the relationship of emotions and reason has been taken up in general by David Hume (Ferreira, 1994) and, for business, by Adam Smith (Heath, 1995). The Exercises' concern for interpersonal relationships resonates to some extent with the ethic of care for business advanced by contributors to feminist ethics (e.g., Freeman and Liedtka, 1991; Held, 1997). The Exercises' emphasis on imagination mirrors certain aspects of Patricia Werhane's work on the role of moral imagination in business (Werhane, 1994; c.f., Vidaver-- Cohen, 1997). The remaining feature of the Spiritual Exercises, that it requires a response, helps distinguish the process of reflection that occurs in the Exercises from mere meditation.13 Action is, of course, the final stage in the ethical decision-making process14 (Rest, 1986), and reflection informed by the Exercises requires some sort of action.

Consider for a moment how reflection modeled after the Spiritual Exercises might unfold in a business ethics situation. Clearly, reflection of this type requires both opportunity and motivation. First, there must be sufficient time for a person to be alone and uninterrupted. Second, the person must be motivated to expend the effort necessary for this type of reflection. For some businesspeople, reflection may become part of a personal training and development regime that is practiced with the same periodicity as physical exercise or worship. When Charles Percy was CEO of Bell and Howell, for example, he reflected for 45 minutes before bed every night. For others, reflection modeled after the Exercises may be motivated by the need to answer a particular question. Some may have a question about a mood or attitude (e.g., "is the reputation of this vendor good enough for me to trust her to service this expensive purchase?"), an expectation (e.g., "exactly what should I expect from upcoming labor negotiations?"), a conflict between "espoused theories" and "theories of use" (e.g., "can I really consider myself a participative manager if I cannot figure out a way to delegate?"), or a defining moment (e.g., "am I strong enough to be patient when everyone around me is demanding action?").

Whatever motivates a businessperson to use reflection, it is critical that one's involvement in the process remain absolutely voluntary. The Spiritual Exercises were not intended for penance; feeling coerced to undergo reflection undermines the integrity of the process. It should be remembered, too, that the process of contemplation is not easy. Volunteers should be aware that repetitive meditation can draw out emotional responses. Moreover, if reflection is in anticipation of a major decision event, "defensive pessimists" may be more suitable candidates for reflection than "strategic optimists."

Since the Spiritual Exercises use a form of guided reflection, a natural question arises as to whether reflection patterned after them would necessitate someone to be present during reflection to provide direction. Our own experience with the Exercises is that they involve such a highly disciplined process that it is probably not possible to reflect without guidance until one is very experienced with the process. Accordingly, we do not advocate unguided reflection of this sort until one has been specifically groomed to do so.15

If it is to be guided, reflection requires someone to play the same role the director plays in the Spiritual Exercises. This individual should have impeccable credentials in every sense of that term. Guided reflection as conceived in this paper is not intended to be the tool of someone looking for another technique to shoehorn into his or her consulting practice. Too much damage has been done by charlatans to allow this process to fall into the wrong hands. The recent incident of a cult's influence within the FAA attests to the fact that this sort of abuse continues in business and should be avoided (Nightline, 1995).

Before the process begins, the director needs to develop a personal relationship with the exercitant so that the elements of the process can be made to fit the exercitant's situation. Together, the director and exercitant can refine a vision for the moral end to be served. In concert, role models or personal heroes can be identified and evocative situations can be imagined. These heroes and situations might include James Burke and the situation he faced with the Tylenol contamination or Aaron Feurerstein standing there in the middle of the night watching fire spread to Building #2 of the Malden Mills plant.

As each reflection session unfolds, the role of the director becomes that of a coach and facilitator. Some exercitants have difficulty blocking out distractions; others have a tough time staying focused. As in the Spiritual Exercises, timely expressions of empathy and caring by the director may help the process move along.

At the end of the process, the exercitant must be led to formulate a response - ideally a specific commitment he or she is prepared to make as a result of the process. This is a critical part of process, and it may require that the director exert some discipline on the exercitant to follow through with this part of the process. While the director ought to allow exercitants wide latitude in the specific commitments they make, the director ought not to allow fuzzy thinking or platitudinous promises to suffice.

Getting started

With all this in mind, how might one learn more about the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises and the method of ordered reflection described here? At present, the best and easiest way to get started is to go to the Jesuit Resources on the World Wide Web at http://www.jesuit.org/resources /index.html . This site has a full set of links related to Ignatian spirituality and lists most of the Jesuit institutions and spirituality centers around the world.

Although most of the institutions mentioned on the Jesuit Resources pages are not directly concerned with business, many have programs of various sizes and foci that will appeal to those wishing to understand the Exercises and their applicability to everyday situations. Probably the most helpful for our purposes here is the "Retreat Centers" page at http://www.jesuit.org /resources/retreat.html that lists retreat opportunities around the world by geographic area.

Also useful is the page entitled "Faith and Justice Apostolates" at http://www.jesuit.org /resources/justice.html. This page lists institutions concerned with the Jesuit commitment to faith and justice in specific locations around the world, as well as items related to the larger issues of faith and justice.

Finally, the page entitled, "Jesuit Colleges, Universities, Institutes and Residences" (http://www.jesuit.org/resources/highered.html) might be a good resource since many Jesuit colleges and universities have centers, institutes, or focus groups designed to serve the spiritual needs of business people. The Woodstock Theological Center, for example, is a nonprofit, independent research institute located at Georgetown University that addresses topics of social, economic, and political importance from a theological and ethical perspective. It, too, can be located on the aforementioned web pages.

Conclusions

Although most everyone would agree that doing business ethics involves a great deal of deliberation and mental effort, surprisingly little work has been done on the subject of reflection. True, the business world offers few opportunities for isolation and quietude, but one wonders whether businesspeople do not take the time to reflect because they do not appreciate its value or may simply not know how.

It goes without saying that we are not describing some sort of frivolous, New Age approach to ethical decision making. What we have described in this paper is a mode of reflection based on a series of religious exercises five hundred years old. It is also not our intent to masquerade theology as business ethics. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola touch on many of the themes which are central to contemporary work in business ethics - themes like the virtues, role modeling, the engagement of the emotions, care in interpersonal relationships, and the moral imagination.

Reflection patterned after the Spiritual Exercises involves concentration, discipline and hard work. Done well, it offers clear-headedness, meaning, and wisdom. Seems like enough to make an examined life worth living.

Notes

1 Besides Schon (1983), Karl Weick (1983) has argued that too much emphasis has been given to reflection as separate from action. Instead, he contends that reflection and action are inseparably woven, that action is often done "thinkingly."

2 There are many excellent translations of the Ignatian Exercises (e.g., Fleming, 1991). For a webbased rendering, see The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola at http://ccel.wheaton.edu/ignatius /exercises/exercises_ToC.html

3 The Exercises are an abbreviated manual for practical application by "him who is to give and him who is to receive them," i.e. the exercitant and the retreat director (Fleming, 1991, annotation 1).

4 Here, "the transcendent" can be thought of in the theological sense as God (that being prior to and exalted above the universe) or in the philosophical (specifically, Kantian) sense as that which is beyond the limits of all possible experience and knowledge (i.e., that which is a priori and a necessary condition of human experience as determined by the constitution of the mind). Likewise, "the immanent" may refer to either the theological indwelling presence of God in the world and each individual (God among us) or that which operates within the subject (our life force). Finally, "vital agent" may refer to either the Holy Spirit (the divine life-giver) or that which gives the agent his or her conscious functions (the animating source of the independent conscience).

5 Roger Haight (1987, p. 35) points out that Ignatius thought "spirits" to be "invisible but out-there-real."

6 Haight (1987, p. 21) suggests that, "it is reasonable to think that every human being has a spirituality."

7 This is adapted from Haight's (1987) description of spirituality where he claims that, [t]he term spirituality can be understood on at least two distinct levels, the one existential and the other reflective and explicitly conscious. On the first and deepest level of action, spirituality is constituted by the conscious decisions and actions that make the person to be who is or she is; spirituality is the continuous line of action that fashions a person's identity. On the second reflective level, spirituality refers to a theory or theoretical vision of human life in terms of the ideas, ideals, and ultimate values that should shape it. These two levels constantly interact in the thinking person (p. 22).

8 Here, O'Sullivan (1990, p. 4) refers to paragraph number 178 of the Spiritual Exercises wherein Ignatius proposes a six-step rational process of deliberation to be applied in the event of the failure of the "Three Times When A Correct and Good Choice Of A State Or Way Of Life May Be Made."

9 M. Buckley referenced in O'Sullivan, 1990, p. 3.

10 For a fascinating discussion of this "netherworld" from a psychological perspective, see Nisbett and Wilson, 1977. " As part of his treatise on the use of imagination in the Spiritual Exercises, Ernest Ferlita (1997, p. 5) maintains that, "Ignatius was well aware that the imagination was not restricted to the imageable, to the picturable."

12 McLeod (1986) maintains that, "the communal level is really an appeal to one's inner imagination and the formation of one's mind-set" (p. 243). As a result, he concentrates more on the individual aspect of imagination's relationship to faith.

13 This requirement of a response is mirrored by the Jesuits role within the Church as "contemplatives in action."

14 Deciding not to act is counted as an action in this respect.

15Here the metaphor of a personal trainer may be apt. Self-help is always a possibility, but it is not the same thing as having a personal trainer or coach as any Olympic athlete or vocal musician can attest.

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Dennis J. Moberg is Presidential Professor of Ethics and the Common Good at Santa Clara University. He is coeditor of a forthcoming anthology entitled. The Next Phase of Business Ethics that explores the intersection of psychology and business ethics.

Martin Calkins is a member of the Organizational Analysis and Management Department of Santa Clara University. He is a Jesuit and Catholic priest and his academic interests include casuistry, virtue theory, and the use of web-based technologies and cases in management education.

Management Department - St. Joseph Hall Rm. 116, Leavey School of Business & Administration, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053-0390, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected] ; [email protected]

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.-volver índice-

Richard P McBrien. Theologians at risk? Ex corde and Catholic colleges-volver índice-
Academe, Washington, Jan/Feb 2001
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Volume: 87, Issue: 1, Pagination: 13-16, ISSN: 01902946

Subject Terms: Higher education // Catholicism // Guidelines //Educators //Papal documents

Geographic Names: United StatesUS

Abstract:

McBrien discusses the effects of the 1990 papal document "Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church)" on Catholic higher education. In addition to requiring theology professors to secure a mandate to teach, these new guidelines call on Catholic institutions to fill most of the vacancies on their faculties and boards with "faithful Catholics," and they also urge college and university presidents to take an oath of fidelity to the church upon assuming office.
Copyright American Association of University Professors Jan/Feb 2001

Full Text:

Many Catholic colleges and universities have already discovered the middle ground between accepting mandates and defying them.

LAST AUGUST THE CATHOLIC BISHOPS OF the United States formed a committee to develop procedures for applying the 1990 papal document Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church) to Catholic colleges and universities in this country. The formation of the committee followed nearly ten years of often-heated debate over how best to implement the document's vision for Catholic higher education. From the beginning, the sticking point has been the theological mandate prescribed by the church's code of canon law and required by Ex Corde: "It is necessary that those who teach theological disciplines in any institute of higher studies have a mandate from the competent ecclesiastical authority." A mandate is an ecclesiastical license that authorizes a Catholic theologian to teach theology in a Catholic institution of higher learning, in the name of the church. The "competent ecclesiastical authority" is understood in most instances to be the bishop of the diocese in which the college or university is located.

When the pope issued Ex Corde in 1990, he recognized that no single document could prescribe norms relevant to all Catholic colleges and universities worldwide. So he called on bishops to work with leaders of Catholic institutions to develop guidelines for implementing the document in their nation or region. The first plan circulated by the U.S. bishops received widespread criticism on Catholic campuses for failing to take into account the institutional autonomy expected of colleges and universities in this country. Further discussion among bishops and Catholic university leaders led to a revised plan supported by much of the Catholic higher education community. In November 1996 the National Conference of Catholic Bishops approved it by a vote of 224 to 6. It seemed as if a consensus had been reached.

But shortly thereafter, the Holy See returned the plan, saying that it did not have enough teeth: greater attention had to be paid, the Vatican said, to the "juridical obligations" of Catholic colleges and universities. In response, the bishops' conference appointed a subcommittee of canonists who drew up a new set of guidelines responding to the Vatican's wishes. The U.S. bishops approved the guidelines, by a vote of 223 to 31, in November 1999. Implementation procedures are expected to be finished by next spring. The bishops changed their collective mind in 1999 because they were ordered to do so by the Vatican. The overwhelming majority of bishops apparently felt they had no choice; a vote against the guidelines would signify disloyalty to the pope himself.

In addition to requiring theology professors to secure a mandate to teach, the new guidelines call on Catholic institutions to fill most of the vacancies on their faculties and boards of trustees with "faithful Catholics." The guidelines also urge college and university presidents to take an oath of fidelity to the church upon assuming office.

Oversight by Nonacademics

Most presidents of Catholic colleges and universities and most theologians on their faculties believe that the mandate compromises the autonomy of these institutions as well as the academic freedom of their professors. It does so by introducing an external, nonacademic agent into the internal academic governance of the college or university, specifically with regard to the appointment, retention, and promotion of faculty, and, by extension, in the designation of which courses individual faculty members may or may not teach and in which departments.

The fact that the agent is external is not the whole of the problem. As some defenders of the mandate have pointed out, Catholic colleges and universities are subject to regular scrutiny by external accrediting agencies. What the defenders fail to note, however, is that those who render judgment for the accreditors are academically qualified to do so. Bishops have no such academic qualifications. It is therefore the nonacademic, not the external, element that is at the heart of the problem.

Only the academic administration of a university or college and the chair and the faculty of its departments are competent to determine who is qualified to be appointed, reappointed, promoted in rank, or granted tenure. Only these agents can decide which courses the faculty can teach and in which departments. If other, nonacademic agents determine such matters, there is no academic freedom or institutional autonomy, the two hallmarks of an institution of higher learning. (Leading Catholic educators have cited these two principles with approval ever since the celebrated Land O'Lakes Statement of 1967, which called them "essential conditions of life and growth and indeed of survival for Catholic universities and for all universities.") Without academic freedom and institutional autonomy, a Catholic institution would no longer be a college or university in the commonly accepted academic meaning of the word.

As I have said, the U.S. Catholic bishops have formed a committee to develop procedures for implementing Ex Corde in the United States. The chair of the committee, Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk of Cincinnati, has appointed four consultants: two theologians, a canon lawyer, and a university president. Draft procedures are currently being circulated with the intent of adoption of a final document by the bishops in June. No one, however, has figured out how to implement the canonical requirement of a mandate without its being, on the one hand, an empty and therefore meaningless shell, or, on the other, a direct violation of the statutes of Catholic colleges and universities and therefore the potential source of broad and endless litigation.

Free Will or Coercion?

It is difficult, from this vantage point at least, to see how any such procedures can be more than voluntary in character. Indeed, it seems certain that the major Catholic institutions are not going to change their bylaws or statutes to accommodate the requirements for the mandate. A few bishops and their militant, pro-bono legal counsels may be itching to pick fights in courts of civil law to prove that Catholic institutions are beyond the reach of that law, but no prudent bishop, president, or theologian who genuinely cares about pastoral as well as academic priorities would want to see that occur.

Catholic higher education in this country is already suffering enough from all the charges, leveled without persuasive evidence, about the alleged erosion of Catholic character in our Catholic colleges and universities. Catholic higher education does not need a public bloodbath born of mutual recrimination that can only hurt the church and all parties involved, including the students enrolled in those institutions. Anyone who has actually been involved in a lawsuit, on whatever side and in whatever capacity, can only cringe whenever someone blurts, "You ought to sue them!" Or, "Let them sue us!"

If, in fact, the implementation plan that is eventually adopted by the bishops and subsequently approved by the Vatican has no real legal teeth, it will be left to each individual Catholic faculty member in departments of theology or religious studies to decide whether even to request a mandate. Several of the bishops who spoke in favor of the guidelines approved at the November 1999 meeting were quick to assure the presidents and faculty of Catholic institutions that they have no desire, intention, or interest in interfering in the internal academic life of colleges or universities. They said they do not want to become involved in decisions affecting the hiring, firing, or promoting of individual faculty members, much less the approval of faculty for individual courses. If a mandate is denied, withdrawn, or simply not sought, universities can take whatever action they deem appropriate. A few university presidents at the meeting indicated that they would not attempt to take any action against a faculty member who chose not to seek a mandate. In other words, the system would be very much a voluntary one. Surely, the Vatican and its most militant allies in the United States have more than that in mind.

The Curran Case

In 1986, after a prolonged investigation, the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) concluded that Father Charles Curran, currently the Elizabeth Scurlock University Professor of Human Values at Southern Methodist University, was "neither suitable nor eligible" to be a professor of Catholic theology. Since Curran was then a faculty member at the Catholic University of America, the Vatican directed Archbishop James Hickey of Washington, chancellor of CUA, to take appropriate action. The CUA board of trustees subsequently accepted the CDF's declaration as binding on the university, and Curran's canonical mandate was withdrawn. (At that time, the mandate was interpreted to be required only of theologians teaching in a socalled pontifical faculty of theology, that is, one with an ecclesiastical charter from the Vatican and academic degrees approved by the Vatican. CUA has one of the few pontifical faculties in the United States; no other major U.S. Catholic university has one.)

The question before those in Catholic higher education is this: could what happened to Curran at CUA now happen at any other Catholic university or college? The simple answer is no. As I said, among major Catholic universities CUA is unique in its relationship to the Holy See and in the composition of its board of trustees, almost half of whom are cardinals and bishops. By contrast, the boards of the other major Catholic universities are made up mostly of lay people and are ecumenical in composition. To be legally effective, the requirements of the mandate would have to be incorporated into the bylaws of each nonpontifical institution. Independent, lay-dominated boards are not likely to change their bylaws for this purpose, and some bishops have said publicly that they are not asking them to do so.

Without doubt, the academic reputation of CUA has suffered because of the Curran case. The American Association of University Professors censured the university administration for its actions, and leaders of other Catholic institutions do not want a similar cloud over their heads.

Short of terminating the faculty member, what can a Catholic university or college do if one of its theologians chooses not to seek a mandate, is denied a mandate, or has the mandate withdrawn? It might try to move the theologian to another department, as CUA considered at one point with Curran (the department of sociology was the proposed destination). Or it might refuse to allow the theologian to teach particular courses in the theology department. Or, finally, it might deny the theologian the right to teach any courses in any department, while continuing to pay salary and benefits. None of these possibilities is likely to materialize. A department ordinarily does not want to be a dumping ground for academic castoffs from other departments, even if it does not lose a faculty line in the process. And chairs of theology departments already have enough trouble staffing courses. They can ill afford to lose the services of theologians who choose not to seek a mandate. The number of these theologians may, after all, prove to be large. (I have already made clear in an article published last year, and from which much of this article is derived, that I will not seek a mandate if and when it is formally proposed. See "Why I Shall Not Seek a Mandate," in the February 12, 2000, issue of America.)

Other, less central reasons exist for challenging the concept of mandates for professors of theology at Catholic colleges and universities. Since theological issues inevitably arise in other sectors of a Catholic institution, and since preserving the Catholic character of such institutions devolves also upon key administrators and faculty across the university or college community, why are the mandates not to be extended beyond departments of theology? Why are the limited to theologians? Indeed, if there is an erosion of Catholic character in our Catholic universities and colleges today, that erosion is more likely to occur outside of departments of theology, not inside.

Tunnel Vision

In my experience of some thirty years as a faculty member at two major Catholic universities, Notre Dame and Boston College, I have, in fact, seen an occasional lack of seriousness concerning Catholic character in some sectors of these institutions, but not in their theology departments. On the contrary, nowhere is the challenge of defining and maintaining Catholic character taken with greater seriousness and made the object of greater corporate commitment than in these very departments. By focusing only on Catholic theologians and leaving Catholic vice presidents, deans, directors, chemists, economists, biologists, philosophers, mathematicians, engineers, lawyers, and accountants completely off the hook, the Vatican and the bishops may be revealing a vision that is of tunnel quality. If they are really concerned about the Catholic character of Catholic universities and colleges, should they not be worried about the whole faculty and the whole administration, not just the theology department, the president, and the board of trustees? Is it expecting too much to ask that the drive to ensure Catholicity be itself catholic in scope?

The more one teases out the potential consequences of Ex Corde, the messier and the more unwieldy the task of implementation seems to become. One wishes in the end that the Vatican and the bishops had more confidence in the strength and suppleness of the Catholic tradition. I, for one, am appalled by the fact that a few outspoken bishops have swallowed the gratuitous "argument" of certain writers, some of whom are evangelical Protestants, with no experiential understanding of the Catholic sacramental, spiritual, theological, or doctrinal tradition, and some of whom are neoconservative Catholics with perhaps an ax to grind against their own institutions and departments, current or former. They assert that our Catholic institutions are destined to go the way of once-Protestant institutions like Harvard and Princeton unless we introduce a mechanism of oversight and control by external, nonacademic agents (the key adjective here again is nonacademic), namely, the bishops and the Vatican. (Based on the experience of the German universities, where the mandates have been in force for years because of a peculiar church-state situation, it would actually be the Vatican, not the bishops, who would have the last word in the matter of the mandates. Some German bishops have granted the mandate to individual theologians only to have their decisions countermanded by the Vatican.)

Turning the evangelical Protestant-neoconservative Catholic argument inside out reveals that what they are asking us to believe is that Harvard would still be faithful to its Puritan heritage and Princeton to its Presbyterian tradition if only these institutions had allowed members of their clergy to determine who could or could not teach theology. Imagine for a moment that the clergy actually had this power and that these three institutions had fully preserved their religious traditions, just as they existed one, two, or three centuries ago. What sort of institutions might they be today? In fact, these institutions did not even advert to the loss of their religious identity. By contrast, Catholic colleges and universities have been addressing this matter for at least twenty years-even before the issuance of Ex Corde Ecclesiae in 1990-and the discussion continues today in high gear.

Is there not perhaps a middle course between the imposition of, and acquiescence in, mandates, on the one hand, and outright indifference or open defiance by faculty and administration alike, on the other? There is, and it is being followed already in such leading Catholic universities as Notre Dame and Boston College and in so many other Catholic institutions like them. These institutions are serious about their Catholic identity and regard themselves as in full communion with the church, but they are also jealous of their institutional autonomy and of the academic freedom of their faculty, including their Catholic theologians. They recognize the right of the local bishop to express public criticism of the university for whatever reason, including alleged instances of theological unorthodoxy, but that right does not touch on the governance of the institution itself.

Catholic higher education in the United States has not been a failure, and it is not in danger of becoming so. Nor is it in danger of losing its Catholic soul. It has produced the best educated laity in the entire history of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church in the United States is a more spiritually vibrant and faith-full church because of this high level and quality of education.

As I have already mentioned, I do not intend to seek a canonical mandate when those mandates finally become either a requirement or an option for Catholic theologians teaching in Catholic universities and colleges. For me, it is a matter of principle-not of defiance toward the Vatican or the bishops, but of an abiding commitment to the academic integrity of what are among the Catholic Church's most precious and valuable assets: Catholic colleges and universities. I fully expect that many, perhaps most, other Catholic theologians will follow the same course.

Richard McBrien is Crowley-O'Brien-Walter Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame and former chair of the theology department and Faculty Senate. He is a priest of the Archdiocese of Hartford, Connecticut, and the author of several books, including Catholicism, the revised edition of which HarperCollins published in 1994.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.-volver índice-

Lawrence S Cunningham. Theological table talk: On reading spiritual texts. -volver índice-
Theology Today, Princeton, Apr 1999
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Volume: 56, Issue: 1, Pagination: 98-104, ISSN: 00405736

Subject Terms: Christianity // Spirituality //Literature

Abstract:
Although there is an increasing interest in Christian spirituality, the classic literature remains in the hands of an interested clergy and an educated laity.
Copyright Theology Today Apr 1999

Full Text:
There is an increasing interest in Christian spirituality and a mountainous literature flowing from that interest. When one reads contemporary studies in the area of spirituality whether written by Evangelical, Lutheran, Anglican, or Roman Catholic authors, they all have a common interest in the classic spiritual and mystical texts of the Christian tradition drawing on the classics of both the West and the East.1 Most of these classic texts are now easily accessible thanks to a generation of publications that has provided us with reliable translations of the works of spiritual masters and mistresses. The hugely successful "Classics of Western Spirituality" which the Paulist Press launched in 1978 is, perhaps, the best known of these publishing ventures, but both large trade houses, smaller denominational publishers, and the publication efforts of religious orders (such as Cistercian, Carmelite, and Franciscan) add to the wealth of materials available.

Increasingly, this classic literature is in the hands of an interested clergy and an educated laity. Courses on the spiritual classics are now a commonplace in the curricula of seminaries, colleges, and universities as well as the subject of continuing education conferences and less formally structured study groups and retreat meetings. Not infrequently, alas, some of these classic works have been put to tendentious uses. Meister Eckhart becomes a proof text source for "creation spirituality," or Hildegard of Bingen is read as a protofeminist, or The Cloud of Unknowing transmutes itself into a self-realization manual.

Both the intense interest in, and occasional misuse of these texts does raise an interesting question: How does a searching Christian read a text from the Christian past, not out of curiosity or antiquarian interest, but as a conversation partner with that "cloud of witnesses" who have gone before us? The remarks that follow will attempt a first answer to that question. One way to learn how to read a spiritual text correctly is to ask if those texts themselves give us any clues as to how they are to be read. In fact, they rarely do. We do possess, however, a few excellent texts that are useful.

In 1584, Saint John of the Cross sent some reflections on a series of stanzas (canciones) written in 1582 to Mother Ana de Jesus, who was the prior of the Carmel of Saint Joseph in Granada. This commentary to what is called "The Spiritual Canticle" has a prologue, written in four brief chapters, that is one of the few texts we possess that explains how this mystical text came to be written and, more importantly, how it is to be read. We might well begin then with this prologue as a first attempt at learning how to read spiritual texts.2

It becomes very clear from reading this prologue that John distinguishes a series of stages that preceded the composition of the commentary (a commentary he would again redact at the end of the decade). Those steps can be summarized schematically:

(1) John, in a period of intense prayer, had an overwhelming experience of a "burning love for God";

(2) He attempted to give expression to this experience in the canciones;

(3) He later wrote that the canciones never quite captured the prayer experience or the desires that accompanied that experience;

(4) Therefore he utilized "figures" and "similes" in order to pour out "secrets" and "mysteries" rather than rational explanations (raziones).

In those four steps, of course, he is not speaking of his prose commentary but of the poems themselves. The hermeneutical key he offers is taken from the way(s) one interpreted Scripture. John goes on to say, that the Holy Spirit was unable to explain the "fulness of meaning" "in ordinary words" in the Scriptures themselves so that the inspired authors used "strange figures and likenesses" to utter mysteries. John points here explicitly to The Song of Songs, which is, of course, the mystical text par excellence. John, following a tradition that goes back at least to Saint Augustine, notes that no person can exhaustively plumb the depths of these mysteries since explanations of these mysteries contain less than what the sacred texts themselves contain.

If, by analogy, the words of his poetry are so ineffable, then how can one justify a commentary that seems to step back from expressing that "love flowing from mystical understanding"? John's answer to that question is that his only desire is to gloss these intimate matters in the "broadest sense" so that their many meanings may be appropriated according to the intellectual and spiritual capacity of each person. He will pursue his subject in some depth because he recognizes that his recipient (Mother Ana de Jesus) is past the stage of the beginner in the spiritual life and can be called a "proficient."3 He further intends to add some pages of explanation in the mode of scholastic theology even though, as a woman, she was not university trained. Without a doubt, John added these scholastic refinements both to attract a larger audience and to forestall objections coming from, for example, the inquisitors of his day. Mother Ana is however conversant with "mystical theology" that is known "through love."4

We can summarize John's explanation of how to read his text in these words: Behind the text of this poetry is a profound experience of God realized in prayer and given as a grace from God. The poetry is an attempt to express that experience in words but the words are only approximate and never fully adequate to the task. The commentary, then, is, at best, a second order reflection and a subsequent systematization of the experience mediated through the poetry. The conclusion, of course, is obvious: Read the poetry in the first instance and read it, further, as a reaction to experience; then, for further instruction, read the commentary.

What is striking about John's prologue to "The Spiritual Canticle" is that when one understands John's basic point (while making allowances for his own theological vocabulary as well as his theological context) his observations about how to approach a spiritual text are not all that dissimilar to what a contemporary theologian, the late Walter Principe, has written on the same topic.5 Whereas John speaks of a specific text, Principe makes similar observations from a much broader perspective.

Principe notes that in the history of Christianity certain individuals or communities have real and lasting existential religious experiences that have about them the aura of lived experience. Such a person's lived experiences and/or their writings serve as a pattern for others in such a way that a kind of "doctrine" develops or forms of devotion or praxis spring up. Finally, at a third stage, scholars study, systematize, and expand levels one and two in such a way that not infrequently we can single out as "schools" of spirituality.

Speaking more broadly than Saint John of the Cross, then, Principe detects three stages in the development of a spirituality: People have experiences; these experiences get concretized into texts, practices, forms of life, and so on. Finally, later generations enter into conversation with these texts and practices both to understand them and to find nourishment in them. The salient point is that texts derive from experience so that a correct approach to the text demands that we try to uncover the experience that motivates the text. Obviously, the word "text" must be understood expansively. One might view, for example, the life of a saint (Francis of Assisi) as a text or, in David Tracy's term, a "classic overflowing with meaning."6

This tripartite development of experience-doctrine-interpretation has also been employed in a somewhat different language by the Latin American liberation theologian, Gustavo Gutierrez.7 He says that people learn certain ways of being faithful to the Way of the Gospel; these Ways become codified (or as Gutierrez says, theology follows after experience); and, finally, these Ways (or "schools") are offered as a gift to the church.

By a "school" of spirituality we do not mean anything too rigidly institutional. We are thinking of something like a tendency or a manner of exercising Christian praxis that has some salient characteristics. A recent works mentions five conspicuous characteristics of a school of spirituality:

(1) A given number of emphases or constants about one or another aspect of the Christian life;

(2) A certain way of praying and a quite specific sense of mission;

(3) Some form of a more or less systematic pedagogy to teach "their way";

(4) Privileged biblical texts, that is, a kind of canon within the canon;

(5) The school derives from and seeks intense spiritual experience and not iust a system of ideas.9

If we assume these large descriptive generalizations of the traditions of spirituality, we can deduce from them some rules for reading texts from these traditions which can be of nourishment for us. These "rules" can be set out in a series of queries that can be brought to the texts themselves. We also can add the cautionary note that it is much better to wrestle with even the most difficult of these texts (like those of John of the Cross) than to read the libraries of commentaries written about them since that brings us closer to the spirit of the experiences being described.

What is the genre of this work? This is an absolutely fundamental beginning point. If, for example, we know that the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola is a handbook for someone who guides a person through the exercises leading to an "election" of a way of life, we are unlikely to be put off by its extremely schematic character. By contrast, John Calvin's Institutes (which he himself called a summa pietatis) was meant to be read as a kind of systematic summary of how one should be a Christian. One reads the Institutes but one should make the Exercises.

What are the fundamental metaphors for God? This question, broadly conceived, tells us if we are working with a text that is christological or pneumatological in its orientation. It helps us to see if this is a work focused on the cross or if it is more broadly aware of the total paschal mystery.

What are the fundamental scriptural loci of this text? Every spiritual text uses a particular scriptural lens and, ordinarily, the inherited exegetical tradition behind that text sheds much light on what the author is attempting to say. Thus, for example, John of the Cross's poetry is unintelligible except when seen against the tradition of commentary on the biblical Song of Songs-a tradition that begins with Origen and reaches John through the sermons of Bernard of Clairvaux and the monastic tradition generally. To attend seriously to these scriptural loci affords us the opportunity, in Raymond Deville's words, to read sacred scripture "over the shoulder" of a classic author.10

What style of life does the text presuppose? Many classic texts of the Christian spiritual tradition have their origin in monastic or ascetic circles. What is proper for the monk may not be proper for the busy pastor or the lay person living in the ordinary world. Thus, it becomes centrally important to distinguish the presuppositions of the text from its central message. Most of us are not called to live in the desert and make baskets for a living but all of us can strive for what the early Sayings of the Desert Fathers call "purity of heart."

What are the deficiencies of a given text? One cannot and should not read texts from the past without some sense that the texts themselves may reflect the limitations and cultural biases of a past age.11 One can profit from a reading of The Imitation of Christ without being complacent about its strain of anti-intellectualism just as one must not read Quaker texts uncritically as if liturgy and/or sacramentality are beside the point in the Christian life. Furthermore, it would hardly be helpful if our reading of these texts were to lead us to quietism or excessive individualism. We should keep in mind Meister Eckhart's observation that even if one were rapt in contemplation to the third heaven and a brother were ill it would be the more perfect thing to leave off prayer and get our sick friend a bowl of Soup.

Finally: Do these texts enrich our lives in the Christian community? Everyone who is serious about the Christian life needs to test his or her experience not only for personal spiritual growth but as a way of building up the body of Christ. Does what we learn bring us closer to Christ and impel us to extend that closeness in our dealings with others? It is well to remember that the "dark night" is an experience of a faithful Christian who must learn, first of all, not to seek God in order to experience a frisson of emotion in prayer or to seek certitude about what we believe; the first dark night is that of the senses (we are not happy or delighted in prayer but we pray anyway). In the second, God seems absent from us but we cling to God in pure naked faith.

It is also useful to remind ourselves that most of these classical spiritual texts presuppose living in a Christian community with all of its attendant obligations and responsibilities. Saint John of the Cross rarely speaks of quotidian life but it would be a great mistake to think that he spent his whole life in solitary prayer. John went to the ordinary liturgy, he did his share of manual work, he saw people, he counseled, he gave alms, he traveled on church business. It is well to remember that it was only in the early modern period that the notion of a pure Christian mysticism became sought for its own sake detached from the ordinary life of worship and Christian piety.12

These questions, and others like them, keep us from allowing a text to become a tyrant; such questions help us see to what degree the particular angle of a given writer is wholesome and evangelical. Such questions are not meant to be definitive but ancillary. They are a strategy to help us to see God's will and to make more explicit God's grace in our lives. To read spiritually and contemplatively is to read critically not for the sake of erudition alone but in order to help us in our Christian life.

Finally, we should also acknowledge that not every text is valuable simply because it is old. There are texts that belong to a certain age that do not wear well. Again, the criteria suggested by these questions can serve as a filter. Such criteria do not mean that we can accept only texts that appear relevant to us but it does very much mean that we need some filters of discrimination ranging from the theological adequacy of a text to its power to help us as members of the Christian community.

As we approach the texts of our common Christian past (and, more especially, when we approach them in tandem with our reading of the Scriptures) we might well come with the advice of a great mystical writer of the thirteenth century who introduced the following sentiments in the prologue to one of the now acknowledged spiritual classics of the Christian West:

I ask you, then, to weigh the writer's attention rather than his work; the meaning of his words rather than his uncultivated style Truth rather than beauty, the exercise of affection rather than the erudition of his intellect, To do this You should not run rapidly Over the development of there considerations But should mull them over slowly With the greatest care.13

1. tIn Lawrence S. Cunningham and Keith Egan's Christian Spirituality: Themes From the Tradition (New York: Paulist, 1996), 22-28; we provide over thirty definitions or descriptions of Christian spirituality taken from a spectrum of denominational authors.

2All citations will be from The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross, eds. K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez (Washington, DC: ICS, 1979), 408-10. I will cite the chapter number in the text. My thanks to Keith Egan for first pointing out the importance of this text.

3John here relies on a tradition that goes back to Origen in the third century: People pass through "stages" in the life of prayer.

4"Mystical Theology" means the knowledge that God gives to a person in contemplation as a grace. In the Ascent of Mount Carmel II, 17.2 John describes it as the "secret wisdom of God given by God" while in the Dark Night of the Soul II.5.1 he calls it "infused contemplation." The term is rooted in the treatise on mystical theology written by the Pseudo-Dionysius in the late fifth century.

5Walter Principe. "Towards Defining Spirituality," Sciences Religieuses/Studies in Religion 12 (1983), 127-41; esp. 135-7.

6Tracy's notion of the classic is set out magisterially in his The Analogical Imagination (New York: Crossroad,1979).

7In We Drink From Our Own Wells (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1983), 52-3. 8Raymond Deville, The French School of Spirituality: An Introduction and a Reader (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1994), 153-4.

91t is easy to see how this all might fit Jesuit or Carmelite or Franciscan spirituality but under a certain aspect it might also describe Anglican or Lutheran or Reformed spirituality.

l0. The French School of Spirituality, 245.

11 "See Walter Principe's "Pluralism In Christian Spirituality," The Way 32 (1992), 54-61; esp. 56ff. On criteria for "authentic spirituality."

12This is the burden of the argument of Michel de Certeau's The Mystic Fable (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

13Saint Bonaventure's "Soul's Journey Into God," in Bonaventure, ed. Ewert Cousins (New York: Paulist, 1978), 5S7.

Lawrence S. Cunningham is professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.-volver índice-

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