Synodality: the Legion of Mary as a model?

I am not sure I completely understand the UK's system of public honours, but each time a list of awards is published (typically, the New Years Honours and the Queen's Birthday Honours) I am reminded of the practice of the Legion of Mary, which is that no honours or presents are to be given to members. Instead, when there is some occasion that calls for recognition, a spiritual bouquet (ie a promise of prayers) is offered instead (cf p.303 of my edition of the Legion Handbook). 

In this, as in other things, Frank Duff seems to have been very much ahead of his time. Which prompted me to wonder whether he was also ahead of his time as far as "synodality" was concerned... 

The Legion Handbook (pp.11-12 in my edition) states the object of the Legion as follows - I have added the italics to draw attention to the aspect of "walking together" that is contained in this statement. The dimensions of ecclesial communion, participation and mission are also very apparent.

The object of the Legion of Mary is the glory of God through the holiness of its members developed by prayer and active co-operation, under ecclesiastical guidance, in Mary’s and the Church’s work of crushing the head of the serpent and advancing the reign of Christ. Subject to the approval of the Concilium, and to the restrictions specified in the official handbook of the Legion, the Legion of Mary is at the disposal of the bishop of the diocese and the parish priest for any and every form of social service and Catholic action which these authorities may deem suitable to the legionaries and useful for the welfare of the Church. Legionaries will never engage in any of these services whatsoever in a parish without the sanction of the parish priest or of the Ordinary.

The aspect of "walking together" is most clearly lived out when the (parish) priest spiritual director takes an active interest in the work of a praesidium, attending the weekly meetings and indicating work that might be undertaken. The structure of Legion councils also indicates the dimension of ecclesial communion - the praesidium is part of a Curia; Curiae are part of a Comitium; a Comitium comes under a Regia; and, finally, there is the international governing body of the Concilium. But at each level the role  a spiritual director indicates the "walking together" of the lay legionaries and the ordained ministry.

Participation and mission are reflected in the duty of legionaries to attend a weekly meeting and complete a weekly obligation of a substantive apostolic work (cf pp.191-194 of the Handbook). A key theme, both in the Legion Handbook and in the writings of Frank Duff is that of the necessity of a laity imbued with a vivid apostolic spirit, who work in collaboration with their clergy for the good of Church's mission. 

Is this perhaps the key to Pope Francis' encouragement that we should "walk together" on the synodal pathway?

Thoughts on "Philomena" [UPDATED]

Philomena has gone on general release in Britain this weekend, after premiering in the UK during the London Film Festival. It is a film that is recommended. A screen caption indicates that the film has been "inspired by true events", so one should perhaps see it as representing the story rather than following it exactly in every respect.  Martin Sixsmith's book is probably where one needs to go to find the story in an exact form: The Lost Child of Philomena Lee. [UPDATE: This piece by the real Philomena at the MailOnline gives some indication of where the film varies from the exact story, and gives a perhaps more realistic picture of Philomena's character. A Google search will throw up a number of media reviews. The MailOnline are also now reporting the response of the religious order involved in Philomena's story to the film: Hit film makes us look like villains, say nuns: Judi Dench movie Philomena 'twisted the truth'. The MailOnline report is based on this report at The Tablet.]Nothing in watching the film suggests that it is misleading in any way, though I make that observation as someone who has no immediate experience of Catholic life in Ireland or of the environment of "cover up" that has characterised the Catholic Church's response to historical abuse.

The World Catholic Association for Communications (SIGNIS) jury at this year's Venice Film Festival gave its award to Philomena:

The SIGNIS Award went to the film Philomena, of Stephen Frears (United Kingdom), a film about an elderly woman who has fought during all her life to find her son, taken from her and given in adoption by the nuns of the convent where she was abandoned by her family after becoming pregnant. In its citation, the jury explains that the Award was given to the film “for its vibrant and touching portrait of a woman whose faith sets her free. In her search for the truth, she is further liberated from the burden of the injustice done to her, when she overcomes it with forgiveness”.  

Philomena was widely greeted by critics and audiences, and went on to receive the award of the official jury of the Festival to the best screenplay, as well as the award of the Interfilm jury. It is particularly interesting that, apart from obtaining the Catholic and Protestant awards, it received the award of the Italian Association of Atheists and Agnostics, in a striking demonstration that cinema is indeed polysemous.

The Catholic Church does not come out of the film without some criticism. One of the representative aspects of the film is the dialogue between Judi Dench (as Philomena) and Steve Coogan (as Martin Sixsmith). At times it is Sixsmith who appears to lead by bringing to light a naivety on the part of Philomena in terms of her relationship to the Church and to the sisters in whose care she had lived as a young girl as they respond to her situation. To me this appeared most clearly in the discussions around sexuality - Sixsmith arguing that surely if God has given us a sexual faculty we should enjoy it, while Philomena, recognising that she enjoyed her one night stand, still seemed to retain some sense of discretion (by which I mean shame in its most healthy sense) about it. At other times, it is Philomena who seems to take the lead - as in the closing scenes where she insists on forgiveness over and against Sixsmith who determinedly refuses to forgive, Philomena asserting that she does not want to hate people like he does.

What remains utterly incomprehensible, though, is the somewhat condescending attitude of the sisters towards Philomena as she visits them trying to gain information about the son they had sent for adoption. Whilst sister appears very gentle and caring in the reception room, she nevertheless blocks as strongly as she possibly can any possibility for Philomena to gain the information she wants. When, at the end of the film, it emerges that Anthony is in fact buried in the grounds of the very convent in which this blocking action takes place, one cannot help but recognise a deeply rooted dishonesty on the part of these religious. As portrayed in the film, this dishonesty is not only a dishonesty on the part of individual sisters, but a dishonesty at the level of the institution of the religious community itself.

In the final scenes, an elderly sister defends the treatment given to Philomena (and, by implication, the other girls in the care of the convent) as being a punishment for their immorality, something they brought on themselves, and contrasts it with the virtue of her own life of self-denial. Some of that treatment has earlier in the film been described as "evil" (though Philomena herself is shown as not sharing the use of that term), and I suspect that it is the behaviour of the elderly sister portrayed in these last scenes that prompts one newspaper review I have seen to refer to the behaviour of the sisters as "pure evil".  What is most striking in this scene is that, while Philomena is shown as forgiving the said sister and Martin Sixsmith as refusing it, the elderly sister herself does not even seem to appreciate that a question of forgiveness exists at all.

The Catholic Church in Ireland does have a very striking counter-example to the practice with regard to unmarried mothers reflected in the film Philomena. It lies in the work of the Regina Coeli hostel operated in Dublin by the Legion of Mary. This opened in 1930, and part of its work was intended to provide an environment in which unmarried mothers could keep the care of their children - with no other such arrangement existing anywhere in Ireland at the time. The fullest account that I can quickly find of the work of this hostel is on pp.91-98 of Finola Kennedy's Frank Duff: A Life Story. The arrangements in the hostel, operated by volunteers from the Legion, seemed deliberately to go against that of the provision in convents at the time:

Every woman would pay a small contribution towards her keep, and a "task system" of laundry or domestic work would be avoided at all costs.... The object was to create a "home-life feeling about the place". Duff stressed that the surrounding should be as beautiful as possible because "the silent influence of beautiful and artistic surroundings is incalculable"...

In the first week fifteen women were admitted to the hostel. Soon after the opening, a pregnant woman sought admission. Her entry to the hostel and keeping her child led to the inauguration of the Mater Dei aspect of the hostel, a type of hostel within a hostel specifically organized on the basis of units for mothers and children. One of the mothers in each unit elected to stay at home and care for the children, while the others took jobs to pay for household costs. Thus began a revolutionary system for assisting lone mothers to keep their children.

The depth of Frank Duff's feelings in favour of enabling single mothers to successfully keep the care of their children is revealed in a letter written in 1970, forty years after the opening of the hostel, a letter which has earlier recognised the opposition to its work. The following observation from that letter, cited by Finola Kennedy on p.98 of her book, is indeed extremely hard hitting in the context of the events portrayed in Philomena and the recent legalisation of abortion in Ireland:

I find it a little difficult in my own mind to make a broad differentiation between the determined separating of the unmarried mother from her child and the relieving of the unmarried mother from her unwanted child by way of abortion. Deep down it seems to me that those two processes have an identical root. This root would be the denial of the fact that a spiritual relationship of the supremest order exists between a mother and her child, inclusive of the unborn child.

UPDATE: Among the reviews now appearing on Google is one at the Guardian. This is not particularly sympathetic to the Catholic Church - though its description of the process of adoption experienced by Philomena/Anthony as 

.... stealing babies from vulnerable teenagers, selling them overseas and then preventing them tracing their parents by burning records of the transactions...

is pretty much what the film portrays though, for the record, it is not clear from the real Philomena's account in the MailOnline  whether or not any money was paid to the sisters at the time of adoption. It is the final paragraph of the review, though, that prompts my linking to it (with my italics added):

At the end of the film, it's Martin who's bitter and confounded. Philomena, for all that she's been through, is both cheery and serene. Such is the priceless reward that only her faith can yield. How she managed to cling to it while it slipped from Martin's grasp remains beyond his understanding. Yet her ingenuousness turns out to have been more productive than his scepticism. The Catholic church survives its scandals, Philomena's story shows us, because it delivers the goods.

SECOND UPDATE:  The MailOnline are also now reporting the response to the film of the religious order involved in Philomena's story: Hit film makes us look like villains, say nuns: Judi Dench movie Philomena 'twisted the truth'. The MailOnline report is based on this report at The Tablet. Perhaps the most significant points made in the response are that the elderly sister portrayed in the film's final scene,  a scene added in the film and not occurring in Martin Sixsmith's book, had in fact been instrumental in reuniting many mothers with their children.  The sister speaking for the order also denies that any records were destroyed and said they never received any payment in relation to adoption. What I have written in my original post will indicate that I believe the film represents a dialogue - in the film this occurs between Philomena and Martin Sixsmith - exploring the Catholic Church's participation in and response to the abuse involved, rather than any anti-Catholic diatribe. In this, I agree with the observation reported of the film makers at the end of this MailOnline report, and can understand the representive/dramatic character of the addition of the final scene.

UPDATE AT 2nd MARCH 2014: Oscar Night

This is the text of a comment I posted at another blog, responding to a critical stance towards the film.

1. In evaluating the film Philomena, I do think it is useful to be aware of where the film differs from the actual events that, to quote the film’s credits, “inspired” the film. The statement from the Sisters reported in the Tablet is useful in this. There are other significant differences too. In real life, for example, Philomena Lee did not accompany Martin Sixsmith to the United States, something that is quite central to the narrative of the film. If I understand correctly, too, Philomena was for many years not a practising Catholic, where the film suggests that she is.
2. I do not believe the film to be an anti-Catholic film. One feature of the film is a kind of dialogue between (sceptical) Martin Sixsmith/Steve Coogan and the (believing) Philomena/Judi Dench around their respective responses to the situation of Philomena’s search for her son and the difficulties to this search presented by the sisters. This gives the film a representative rather than a literal/documentary character – and it is in this context that I think the final scenes (which show Sr Hildegard in a less than positive light) need to be understood. While it may be legitimate for the sisters to point out that Sr Hildegard as portrayed in the film, is not the real Sr Hildegard, nevertheless the significance of what her character represents in the film is something that needs to be recognised.
3. I believe the film usefully represents different responses to the experience of women such as Philomena, and represents those responses in a genuine dialogue with each other rather than as conflicting ideologies.
4. The obstructive attitude of the sisters to Philomena’s efforts to find her son, as portrayed in the film, is utterly incomprehensible – and it was that which struck me rather more in watching the film than Sr Hildegard’s unfeeling attitude portrayed in the final scenes. So far as I have been able to determine, the representative character of the film in this regard is accurate to the real events. (I would be happy to be corrected if this is wrong …) The unfortunate aspect of the sisters statement, as reported, is that it does not appear to address this aspect of the film, and nor does it appear to address the practice of involuntary adoption.
4. I recommend seeing the film. As the SIGNIS jury indicated when they gave Philomena their award at the Venice Film Festival: the Award was given to the film “for its vibrant and touching portrait of a woman whose faith sets her free. In her search for the truth, she is further liberated from the burden of the injustice done to her, when she overcomes it with forgiveness”. By all means be aware of where the film differs from reality … but that does not undermine the film’s real and quite genuine value.
[And for the journalists ... there is a sub-theme involving the ethics of journalistic practice ...I missed it watching the film, and only recognised it after reading reviews.]

"Re-connecting" the priest and the people

If one were to suggest that many priests today are isolated - from the world in general, and from their Catholic people - this might cause some surprise. After all, the aggiornomento of the Second Vatican Council has opened the Church to the world as never before. But, if you reflect on the position of the priest in your own parish, you might find that he is now rather less familiar to his people than in the past. The simple test is to ask yourself about the extent of your contact with the priest. Do you meet him only at Church on Sunday? Or do you still meet the priest in the school, at the youth group, at the SVP meeting, etc. I suspect that most people no longer have what might be called a "day-to-day" type of contact with the priest; he is isolated. The experience of participation in a Youth 2000 prayer festival or a FAITH Summer Session, to choose two examples among others, provides the counter example. In both of these situations the presence of priests (and religious) is very visible, present in a very "day-to-day" sort of way.

A section of Frank Duff’s article The Priest must have Members is entitled “When the Priest is Isolated”, and it opens in this way:

Moreover, in certain circumstances, in fact in very many places today, the priest is isolated. It is a very easy thing to elbow the priest out and to keep him out, and that is the first step in all these schemes of de-Catholicising places - to get the priest away from the people. There are whole populations where a priest can only enter by deputy.

Frank Duff goes on to comment on this being the case in the then-Communist regimes of the Iron Curtain countries and in China, where priests were persecuted. He continues:

That danger to religion is latent everywhere. Its symptom will always be that pushing aside of the priest. A consecrated class must guard itself against becoming a separated class. In many places the clergy have virtually become a separated class.[1]

I think we can see Frank Duff’s analysis extending here from those areas where the Church is explicitly persecuted to those areas where it is secularisation in society that is marginalising the priest. His remarks are therefore pertinent to the situation of the Church today.

There are three ways in which the priest can “re-connect” with the people. The first of these is through priests acting as chaplains in different professional contexts. Examples of such contexts are school chaplaincy, hospital chaplaincy, prison chaplaincy, chaplaincy at seaports and airports and commercial or industrial chaplaincy[2]. Each of these shares common features:

1) the priest must achieve a formation in and knowledge of the professional context in which he is engaged, and therefore a status among those engaged in that profession

2) in his chaplaincy work the priest is brought into close contact with people, who may or may not be Catholics

3) often the work of the chaplaincy will involve collaboration with lay people who support the work of the priest in the chaplaincy, so that the priest is part of a team and works closely with lay people.

The temptation, however, is to say that the priest has no part to play in this sort of chaplaincy work, and to reserve it only to the lay faithful. Sometimes the shortage of priests is the reason cited for this position. This, though it may be well intentioned, only contributes to the isolation of the clergy of which Frank Duff speaks and, in a contemporary terminology, constitutes a kind of “internal secularisation” within the activity of the Church.

The second way in which priests can “re-connect” with lay people is through membership or collaboration with what Canon Law terms an “association of Christ’s faithful”:

In the Church there are associations distinct from institutes of consecrated life and societies of apostolic life; in these associations the Christian faithful, whether clerics, lay persons, or clerics and lay persons together, strive in a common endeavor to foster a more perfect life, to promote public worship or Christian doctrine, or to exercise other works of the apostolate such as initiatives of evangelization, works of piety or charity, and those which animate the temporal order with a Christian spirit.[3]

The characteristic features of this type of collaboration of priests with the lay faithful are:

1) the ministry and activity of the priest takes part in the charism and apostolate of the association; the priest is inserted into the activity undertaken by the lay faithful who are members of the institute and closely connected to them in that activity

2) the priest gains a formation from the association, in accord with its charism and the contribution that the priest might make to living that charism; that formation might be provided by the lay officers of the association

3) the priest might live a life that is close in style to that of the lay faithful who are also members of the association; there might also be a degree of common life between the priest and the lay faithful in the association, the priest thereby being in close contact with lay members of the association.

The third way is similar in type to the first, and consists in priests acting as “ecclesiastical assistants” (ie as spiritual directors or chaplains) to associations of the lay faithful[4]. Features of this type of collaboration are:

1) the priest has a responsibility for the formation and encouragement of the spiritual life of the members of the association

2) whilst the priest will act in accord with the particular charism and rule of the association, and have a sympathy with that charism and rule, he will not generally have received a formation from the association

3) the priest has a degree of responsibility for directing the work of the members of the association, thought the extent of this varies from association to association.

All three of these models have the effect of bringing the priest into a closer contact with - and collaboration with - lay people in carrying out the mission of the Church.

[1] Frank Duff The Priest must have Members.
[2] cf. Code of Canon Law (1983) cc.564-572. Some of these professional areas have ecclesial associations that have the type of chaplaincy as their mission. Port Chaplaincy, for example, is provided by the Apostleship of the Sea.
[3] Code of Canon Law (1983) c.298.
[4] cf Code of Canon Law (1983) cc.317 (with regard to public associations of the faithful) and 324 (with regard to private associations of the faithful). In the former case, the ecclesiastical assistant is appointed by the relevant ecclesiastical authority; in the latter, the association may choose an ecclesiastical assistant who is then subject to confirmation by the ordinary.

Frank Duff commenting on television?

This is a little section from a pamphlet Can we be Saints? that Frank Duff, the founder of the Legion of Mary, wrote in 1916.

The Question of the Newspaper
We are inclined to think it necessary to read the daily papers in order to keep in touch with what is going on in the world. Let us beware lest they place us in the world's grip. The modern newspaper is so well written, so attractive to the eye, that it tends to become an absorbing taste. It is a tendency of the day to wallow in the daily papers. Endless discussion, a prejudiced outlook, a little scrappy knowledge, a distaste for serious or good literature, loss of power of concentration, faulty memory -- such are the products of those wasted hours during which God's Kingdom could have been so powerfully advanced.

I do not often get to see television. In particular, I do not often get to see television advertising. I get the occasional glimpse of what it is like when I go to the cinema, usually being rather shocked by how "in your face" the advertising before the film is. The other week I got to see an episode of Britains got Talent, and was again surprised by how "episodic" it was - an editing together of short clips to show some of the worst and best, but not by any means a sustained, complete telling of a story. Ah, but that would need some concentration and proper thought on the part of the viewer ...

"... endless discussion, a prejudiced outlook, a little scrappy knowledge ..."? Isn't that television today?

"...loss of power of concentration, faulty memory ..." Aren't these the results of television for many of our young people in school today?

Frank Duff and an apostolate to homosexuals

There is a news item in this week's Tablet which reports the Archbishop of Dublin as saying that "for many youn gpeople the Church remains an alien place". He is reported as identifying the Church's uncompromising attitude towards homosexuality as of most concern to young people (wording taken from the Tablet report). I have not been able to track down the original message of Archbishop Martin to which the report refers, but it occurs to me that it might well mention a range of other factors "of concern to young people" in terms of their relationship with the Church.

"There is a dramatic and growing rift between the Church and our younger generations and the blame does not lie principally with young people", Dr Martin said. "Our young people are generous and idealistic but such generosity and idealism does not seem to find a home in the Church".

We also have the account of the Soho Masses group for LGBT Catholics, which can be read here. Just to respond, in passing, to their claim that the Catholic Church only began to "detail" its teaching in 1976, their subtle use of the language of "acceptance" (applied to the person) conflated with meaning "acceptance" (applied to their view that homosexual practice is morally permissible), and their portrayal of a division between the official, Vatican teaching and what ordinary Catholics are allowed to believe (justified on a "hierarchy of truths" position, which effectively makes questions of sexual ethics a matter for individual judgement). Whenever the Church has taught about marriage, about the complementarity of the sexes, indeed, even about the Church as the "bride of Christ", she has been implicitly making statements about same sex relations. The question is one of sexual and marital ethics - but it is also one that has a reference to ecclesiology and Christology. I think it is clear from their account that the Soho Masses group seek a change in the teaching of the Catholic Church on homosexuality, and one can ask whether their work does really meet an ecclesial norm properly so understood. This is not to say that there isn't a need for the Church to have an apostolate towards people of differing sexual attractions - it is just to say that this is perhaps not the right one.

Interestingly, I came across an account recently of Frank Duff's engagement with an apostolate towards homosexuals. The source is an article in a journal Studies, an quarterly review of Irish life and culture published by the Jesuits. The article was written by Finola Kennedy, and is entitled "Frank Duff's Search for the Neglected and Rejected". The text of the full article can be read by following the link. This is the paragraph from the article that refers to an apostolate towards homosexuals. In the notes at the end of the article, Finola Kennedy includes Joe Quinsey among the people thanked for help in preparing the article. The sources for the paragraph appear to be Finola Kennedy's own experience of the Legion, and a conversation with Joe Quinsey, one of the Legionaries involved in this early work of the Legion. The date of this work is unclear from the article, though the placing of this paragraph in the article as a whole suggests some time during the 1940s.

At a time when the expression of homosexual relations was a crime and homosexuals were open to arrest, a praesidium to befriend homosexuals was started. Legion member, Joe Quinsey, recalls that, at one of their discussions about the work, Mr. Duff stressed that genuine friendship should be sought and contacts should be invited to a restaurant for a cup of tea or coffee as a part of general sociability. A discussion group for homosexuals as well as a number of talks were organised. Not all the ideas came from Frank Duff, but if someone saw a problem he was always keen to pursue a solution. He encouraged others to take initiatives and was extremely supportive.

There is clearly a story to be told here, and I suspect that the approach adopted by Frank Duff and the early Legionaries might well provide a very useful model for present day ministry in this field.

Frank Duff and ecumenism

I have had reason over the last few days to be reading about the life of Frank Duff, founder of the Legion of Mary (though one of his biographers, Leon O Broin, observes that he saw disagreement written all over Frank Duff's face whenever this was said in his hearing - the most Frank Duff would himself admit to was being a co-founder, along with the others who attended the "first meeting").

In passing, I have come across two accounts of Frank Duff's approach to ecumenism. Frank started a movement of prayer for Christian unity, composing a prayer that could be used by Christians of different denominations. Another of Frank's endeavours was the Mercier Society, founded in 1942, and aimed at bringing together Christians of different denominations in the interest of promoting mutual understanding. This ceased to operate as it was considered to be a breach of the provisions of then Canon Law - and this was, of course, decades before Vatican II.
But Frank Duff apparently often managed to find a way of asking non-Catholic friends if they would want to become Catholics - he was passionately concerned that they did not have the fullness of Catholic faith.

A good account of Frank Duff's approach to ecumenism can be found in an Allocutio (a kind of pep talk) given at Concilium (the highest governing committee of the Legion) in January 2008: go here.

According to Leon O Broin, Frank Duff was not an ecumenist in the sense that would have been held by many after Vatican II:

He was essentially a believer in the direct method approach to conversions, and would have read the accounts of the Malines Conversations as holding out a hope that the Anglicans would come over en bloc. If he personally ever got half a chance he would ask the non-Catholic party - with, of course, a courtesy that eliminated any danger of giving offence - whether he had considered the Catholic claims or would like to do so, and he would stress how important it was that he should.