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A
Reconnaissance Flight
.
To survey why things that used
to run so well are now in a such
a mess
.
by Carlos Mantica
This is intended to be an inspirational
presentation. To some it may inspire pity, to
others laughter, but I know it will inspire
something in everyone. I am going to present some
issues which anyone can regularly encounter in a
variety of Christian groups and church settings
today..
I have accumulated many years of "flight
experience" in the things of the Lord, and I have
come across many different Christian groups,
associations, and movements in various parts of
the world. And sometimes, in some places, I have
found that things are not in a very good shape.
Sometimes, somewhere, I have even found that
things are in a frankly bad shape. Not usually,
though. What I have usually found is that, even
where things are in a better shape, a series of
phenomena take place which seem to recur
everywhere, and which are the reason why things
which have been running well end up in a
mess.
I will be talking about things that we will almost
surely find in places where things are running
better, but which are the reason for things to be
in such a bad shape. And if you did not understand
what I just said, maybe you’re part of the
problem.
In war, when a nation is planning to bombard an
objective, it will usually carry out first what is
known as a reconnoitering flight. Somebody takes a
plane, and from the sky he observes and surveys
the territory they are going to attack. If he can,
he takes a picture of the targets, but without
attacking any of them for the time being. Even
though we are in no war with anyone, this talk is
a kind of reconnoitering flight. We are offering
no solutions to the problems we have found. We
only intend to take a look at the field we will be
working in. And with this preface I will land onto
my topic.
Peter’s Principle
There were a set of books that became fashionable
for some time in the United States, which tried to
explain why it is that things come out wrong. The
most famous was possibly Peter’s Principle. And
the explanation Mr. Peter gives why things always
come out wrong is stated like this:
In every hierarchy every person is
promoted to his level of incompetence.
Therefore, in time, every position tends to be
occupied by someone who is incompetent.
In a company, for example, this guy is such a good
salesman that, sooner or later, someone comes up
with the bright idea that it is only logical to
appoint him as the sales manager. This poor
salesman, who has sold nothing since the day he
was promoted, somehow manages to hide what he does
not know, and surely, some time later, he is
nominated as general manager. By then the company
is going downhill because all the good salesmen it
used to have are now occupying some kind of
managing position, and they know nothing about
management. But if the company happens to survive,
because our manager works until midnight and has
even taken a Dale Carnegie course, he will
unavoidably be promoted to the position of
president of the company.
We also find similar situations in the Christian
sphere. This parish pastor was such a good
administrator of his parish, that someone thought
the least that could be done was to appoint him as
bishop. One day they catch the Holy Spirit asleep,
and… wham! .
Something similar could happen in our communities.
So-and-so was such a good men’s group leader and
the talks he gave were so beautiful, that the
regional coordinator decided to promote him to
district head. The last time I saw him he was
doing much better, and they had already taken him
out of the straight-jacket at the nut house.
We are constantly being promoted to our level of
incompetence. I, for instance, used to be an
average community coordinator, and as you see, I
have been promoted into an international
superstar. The only good thing is that, as a
superstar, I have had to visit a lot of countries,
and then I have been able to note how certain
phenomena recurred almost everywhere as a law. So
I began to name those phenomena, just as Mr. Peter
did.
I am fully aware that nothing of what I am going
to mention takes place in the contexts you work
in, where, I am sure, everything is okay. But
since nothing is fully well as long as it could be
better, here it goes.
Murphy’s Law
The first law is not mine, but it is quite true.
It says: “If something can go wrong, it will
certainly go wrong.”
This is what is known as Murphy’s Law, whose fifth
corollary completes the idea as follows: “Things,
when left to themselves, tend to go from bad to
worse.”
Sometimes I go to a given place and they tell me
that Murphy’s Law does not work there. And not
because things are well, but because they are so
bad that they can’t go from bad to worse any
longer.
But, in fact, many things came to their present
condition due to neglect. They were left to
themselves. No one took responsibility to make
sure they went better. Most of the times this was
so because those who knew, or thought they knew,
or said they knew how to solve things, found it
easier to devote themselves to criticizing them
than to get involved into fixing them. So they
turned criticism into a genuine ministry.
In other places, what happened is similar to an
old story whose four characters are Everybody,
Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an
important task to do, and Everybody was asked to
do it. Everybody was sure that Somebody would do
it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.
Somebody got very angry, because it was
Everybody’s task. Everybody thought that Anybody
could do it. But Nobody realized that Everybody
was not going to do it. At the end of the story,
Everybody blamed Somebody, because Nobody did what
Anybody could have done.
The moral: one of the ways to leave things to
themselves is to ask Everybody to do what Somebody
should have done and Nobody did. And that is why
things go from bad to worse.
On other occasions Anybody comes up, with more
enthusiasm, commitment and spirit of charity than
the others, and cries out, “Something must be
done! It is urgent to do something!” And Everybody
starts to do something.
The Activist’s Principle
But this reminds me precisely of what I call “the
activist’s principle”, which goes like this:
“Something must be done… no matter what, but
something must be done.”
Unfortunately, we soon discover that doing
something is not enough. I once had a very
interesting experience that confirms this, and I
would like to share it with you.
A few years ago, a very nice priest appeared at my
office and, after the required greetings, said:
“Don Carlos, I am here because I would like to
invite you to be a member of the Board of
Directors of a new institution, a very big and
good one, a real blessing from the Lord.” For
years I have avoided Boards of Directors, but for
some reason that caught my interest. The priest
then said: “A very wealthy and generous lady has
donated several million pesos for the construction
of a peasant training institute. The purpose is to
teach peasants all the skills of their trade. The
pavilions are now ready, and we hope to launch the
Institute very soon.”
The priest went on, full of enthusiasm about the
project. At a given point I asked, “Tell me one
thing, Father – have you ever wondered how the
wife and children of this peasant are going to
make their living for the three or six months this
course takes?” The priest stared at the wall
behind me. It looked as if he had fallen into a
shock, or into a state of mystical ecstasy. After
some time he grabbed his documents, turned around,
and left. I never saw him again.
All these good people had thought it was necessary
to do something for our peasants, but the problem
is that wanting to do something is not always
enough as a solution. Those facilities are there,
accommodating the minor seminary of the
Archdiocese of Managua. The lady who donated the
money is now in heaven, and so is the priest,
because he died the following week. They are no
doubt thinking together that something must be
done for their poor Nicaragua. Maybe that’s why we
are in the situation we are in.
The Cowboy’s Principle
There are two or three more principles in this
line of improvisation. The next one is the one I
call “the cowboy’s principle,” which is stated
with a phrase that is very common among our
peasants cowboys: “The saddlebags will be arranged
on the road.”
Maybe yes, maybe not. But I also have several
experiences concerning this. Any resemblance to
individuals living or dead, anywhere in the world,
is mere coincidence.
One day the telephone rings at my
house.
“Hello, is that Chale?”
“Yes, who is this?”
“This is Father So-and-so.”
“Hello, Father, how are you?”
“Listen, could you give a talk the day after
tomorrow?”
Since the priest cannot see me, I smile on
my side of the telephone and think, “Not again!”
“It’s a retreat for the youth,” he says.
“I see. And what do you want me to talk to them
about?”
“Just whatever you want, my friend. You know how
that is.”
“Well, but I would like to get some orientation.
What is the intent of the retreat?”
“I want you to make them tremble! Shake them
well!”
“Well, I’m not too good at that, but
I’ve got a friend who is known as ‘The Electric
Chair’ who could do a good job… But tell me
something, do you have any follow-up plans after
the retreat? …. Hello?”
A long silence follows, and communication seems to
have been interrupted.
This Christian leader belongs to the Cowboys’
Party – the saddlebags will be arranged along the
way.
The Dog-Behind-the-Car Syndrome
This kind of improvising is responsible for what I
call “the dog-behind-the-car syndrome.”
I’m sure all of you have had this experience. You
enter one of those small neighborhoods or towns in
any of our countries where there seem to be more
dogs than people, and as soon as you enter the
town, a dog starts running after your car, barking
like mad, and he follows you for half a mile until
he gets bored and just turns around. Well, that
may happen to other drivers, but not to me,
because I take my time to study what it is that
the dog does. So when the dog starts following me
I first reduce my speed, I let him catch up, and
then I stop the car. Something quite funny happens
at that point. There are two kinds of dogs. The
first of them seems to lift up his chest (you can
almost see the smile of satisfaction on his foamy
mouth), turns around and goes away trotting, full
of pride at his deed. The second one bows down his
head, sticks the tail between his hinds, and goes
back full of shame and depressed. Neither of the
two does anything with the car.
And this is the dog-behind-the-car syndrome: When
they catch up with the car, they don’t know what
to do with it.
I am very amused whenever this happens, because it
reminds me of many Christians who run after a
candidate for Christ for several months, and when
they finally succeed in taking him to a retreat
they just don’t know what to do with him. They
just turn around and go away. Some of them are
just extremely proud of their achievement and move
away. Others are puzzled, not knowing what to do
now.
One thing is common to all these problems –
improvisation, the lack of vision, of a clear
purpose, of priorities, of planning.
If you belong to one of those groups where, week
after week, year after year, at every meeting,
they wonder what they are going to do for next
Friday’s talk, then you already know what
improvisation is.
If you belong to a team of leaders who devote all
their meetings to put out the fires of that week,
with an agenda dictated by the problems that come
up, without planning for anything that would
detect and fight the causes of so many problems,
you are surely going to end up on a psychiatrist’s
couch.
Once you have your plan ready, you go to the group
that has requested your services, and you begin to
get to know the local leaders. And what you
usually find is… an absolutely obscure, confused
situation! So you kneel down in thanksgiving –
God’s hand is no doubt among them! In fact, that
is the only explanation why they have not killed
each other or have not yet done away with the
little that remains.
Philip’s Principle
The explanation for so many problems that we find
at the leadership level is what I call “Philip the
Apostle’s principle.” I have no time to explain to
you why I gave it this name, but if you read the
Gospel attentively (or our chapter “The Men the
Lord Chose”) you will discover that our friend
Philip never did anything exactly well. Philip’s
Principle goes like this: Every Christian is a
human being, and what fails is usually the human
being and not the Christian.
It is usually the human being that fails, and when
the human inside us fails, everything comes out
wrong. Unfortunately, people’s human maturity is
often not sufficiently valued in Christian
environments. Some time, somewhere, we have found
problems that happened because someone failed in
his Christian life. There was a big scandal – the
spiritual advisor of a movement ran away with a
movie star, or twenty corpses were found buried in
the basement of the house of the community’s
senior leader, or things like that. However,
things are not normally like that.
Most of the times things are not going very well,
not because people are bad, but because people are
immature. Half the problems we come across are due
to childishness on some leader’s part. One of them
causes trouble because he has a superstar complex.
The other has the complex of a banana republic
dictator. The next one is resentful and does not
talk to I don’t know whom, for I don’t know what
reason, since who knows when. The other because he
lacks good judgment. The following one because his
intelligence is like gold – scarce. And still
another because he’s outright irresponsible.
In my country, and in other places, we have paid
high prices for the mistake of placing exotic
people in visible leadership positions. The
witness of their lives was beyond doubt. Some of
them had a heroic conversion. Some were
super-charismatic, able to raise a dead man and
then bury him again, but they were people no one
was willing to imitate or follow. They were
problem people, people you could not trust or
people you could not rely on. They were genuinely
crazy, sometimes feminized, moody, unstable, or
simply odd.
In my opinion, the main criterion in choosing our
leaders should be their character. A mature man
can be christianized. A crazy man can also be
christianized, but most usually he will continue
to be a crazy saint, because grace builds on
nature.
In too many places, it is believed that the best
candidate for a government position is the one who
knows the most and who speaks the best—that is,
the best informed individual. I would rather have
a complete fool, with the simplest kind of faith,
if he is a calm, composed man, patient,
serviceable and without envy, who does not take
airs, who believes all things, who bears all
things, who hopes all things in the Lord.
In our personal lives and in our communities, we
are often trying to solve problems, which is like
spending your time popping zits, when the solution
is to remove the infection that produces them. And
the infection is always inside ourselves. This
takes us to “Freud’s Principle.”
Freud’s Principle
One of the reasons why there are so many people
like that is what I call “Freud’s Principle”
(Freud, of course, is the father of modern
psychiatry). The principle is: “If there were no
problems, there would be no psychiatrists.”
In the modern world, everything is oriented
towards problem-solving. A married couple has
problems because the lady was spoiled as a young
girl, and she was the daughter of spoiled girls
for five generations; and the husband is Daddy’s
little boy, to say the least, whose daily
breakfast is scorpion soup. So the two of them go
to the psychiatrist, to have him solve their
problem. “Doctor, I have brought my wife for you
to fix her.”
And the psychiatrist, to be sure, cannot solve the
problem, except perhaps by prescribing some poison
for the two of them, because the only problem is
them. What we have here is a problem of character
formation (or deformation).
In traditional families, every father knew that
the child had to be formed, with the rod if
necessary. Modern psychology tells parents that
every form of discipline is bad for whatever
reason, and that therefore the option for parents
who do not form their children is to send them to
a reformatory… or discard them. Which is exactly
what is done with appliances that break down, or
with poorly formed wives who no longer work or who
deteriorate.
We think that the important thing is not to solve
problems, but to form people, so that they will
cease to be a problem themselves and stop causing
problems to others, and learn to solve their own
problems instead.
Every once in a while we come across problems that
do need to be solved. But most of the times, what
we find is problems of deformation in people.
Deformation in their character, their values,
their relationships. And in church movements and
lay organizations nothing is done towards their
formation as persons. These groups will usually
settle for informing them with teaching, which is
not the same. And this leads to the next
principle.
Solomon’s Principle
This is what I call “Wise Solomon’s Principle,”
which I would state like this: “He who knows,
knows… and he knows… and he knows… and he knows…”
What I want to illustrate with this principle is
the attitude of many people who want to know more
everyday, as long as nothing else is asked of them
but knowing. I know hundreds of people who
militate in Christian movements, who have listened
to so many talks that their ears have become
antennae. They have full notebooks, where they
keep the perfectly well-ordered notes they have
taken in the last eighty-seven courses or retreats
they have attended… but their lives are exactly
the same as before. They are people who know
everything you need to know about prayer, except
they don’t pray. They know everything you need to
know about evangelization, but they give no
service in that ministry. Or they take a course in
public relations, but they do not speak to their
sister-in-law. They know the Bible by heart, but
they do not let the Word of God confront them.
Blessed are those who listen to God’s word… and
put it into practice, says the Lord.
One of the greatest problems of the Church is that
it has at its disposal many means for people to
know more doctrine, but very few to show them a
practical way to live it out. What we need is a
scriptural teaching that is at once simple,
practical and relevant.
Lack of experience in forming new leaders has
resulted in several phenomena in church movements,
which are often repeated in other contexts as
well.
Some
Phenomena
The most frequent phenomenon is that
of cliques or apostolic mules, who are the ones
that bear the burden, and who are the best sign
that no new leaders have been formed or promoted.
That is, they have not multiplied the mules.
All of this generates what I call gerontocracy in
the Lord’s vineyard. This is a government by the
same old leaders. There are sectors in the Church
that are only renewed via the decease of their
leaders.
Gerontocracy, cliques, sacred cows and old
Israelites would become history if we knew how to
apply two principles:
Pythagoras’ Principle
The first of them I have called “Pythagoras’
Principle”, for the great mathematician of ancient
Greece. Not after my friend Pete Agoras. It
goes like this: “If you want to conquer, divide;
if you want to succeed, multiply.”
There are leaders who only know how to divide.
Many of them, through God’s grace, have learned to
add. They know how to involve people into the
work. But very few of them are concerned about
multiplying.
The Shepherd’s Principle
This I can explain better with the second
principle, which we could call “The Shepherd’s
Principle”. It is actually a very simple principle
of genetics, that says: “Sheep beget sheep,
shepherds beget shepherds.”
I have never seen a shepherd woman give birth to a
lamb, or a cow that gives birth to an engineer.
Every individual generates what he is. Shepherds
are supposed to generate shepherds, and leaders
generate leaders, as the Argentinean preacher Juan
Carlos Ortiz has rightly reminded us. In many
groups, however, shepherds engender sheep, and
sheep engender problems.
A different way to say the same is that many of
our leaders generate admirers, converts, fans,
partisans, followers, and many other things, but
they do not generate new leaders. And a leader is
supposed to generate new leaders instead of lambs.
The prevalent gerontocracy in many environments of
the Church is an alarm that warns that many good
ministries can disappear when their old leaders
die, if we are not careful enough to apply this
simple law of genetics.
The Principle of
Uncle Sam
Many leadership problems and many of the Philips
we find in the parishes where we serve, as well as
in many a group, are rooted in what I call “Uncle
Sam's Principle.” It says: “Volunteers needed.”
Someone comes up with a very serious, very good,
and very large project, and then the leader of the
charismatic prayer meeting or the pastor in the
parish announce from the pulpit, “Volunteers are
needed. Those who want to help, please raise your
hands.” And you feel like crying, “Heelp!.”
I have a great admiration for enthusiastic people
who are willing to serve, such as volunteers often
are. But Christ’s lesson is that he does not hire
the first who shows up. Christ never worked with
volunteers. When a fellow came by and said, “Lord,
I will follow you wherever you go,” what he
responded was, in so many words: “Yeah, but who
has called you?”
Christ calls his disciples one at a time and will
spend the whole night in prayer before choosing
them. He chooses them because he knows the kind of
persons he needs for the job. And if, despite
having chosen them and formed them patiently, we
know that one of them was a failure, just imagine
what would have happened if he had called for
volunteers. “If anyone would be my disciple, let
him raise his finger and follow me.”
Ecclesiastic
Principles
Up to this point we have dealt with more or less
personal faults of people who are more or less
ignorant. What follows is much more serious
because it does not have to do with defects among
the laity, but among priests and even at the level
of the whole church. I will mention only the most
evident.
Nathanael’s Principle
You come to a place thinking that, with the
scarcity of workers in the vineyard, and with the
fruits you can show as credentials, you will be
welcome in that other plot of land of the
vineyard, but the first thing you find is what I
call “Nathanael’s Principle,” because it was
Nathanael who said, “Can anything good come out of
Nazareth?”
A second statement of this could be, “Every
initiative from a layperson is bad or suspicious,
unless proven otherwise.”
Prudence continues to be a virtue, and priests
need to be prudent. They are supposed to care for
us and to watch over us so we won’t go astray or
get into trouble. But Scripture says that, when a
sheep was stuck among the bushes, Christ took it
on his shoulders and carried it home. So this is
what we ask of them: that they take us on their
shoulders, that they orient us and correct us, but
that they will not reject us or quench our hearts’
infinite thirst to serve the Lord, because what
they regard with mistrust is, in the end, nothing
but the fruit of that infinite thirst to serve the
Lord and an enthusiasm that, to be honest, not
even their rejection will be able to stop.
Some brothers and sisters think that I am
anticlerical. That’s not true. I simply agree with
that definition that says that a pessimist is an
experienced optimist.
Out of love, I am sharing the things that
experience has taught me, not in order to
criticize but in order to offer solutions, as far
as we are able, to the problems we find.
One of the most serious problems we find is the
general dislike, in most parts of the world, for
the things of God. This is a real tragedy, and it
is worth wondering about the reason for that
dislike.
Bonnin’s Principle
And, possibly, the first reason for this dislike
is what I call “the Principle of Eduardo Bonnin”
(who was the founder of the Cursillo Movement).
What Bonnin’s Principle tells us is that
“everything in the Church seems to be organized to
satisfy a thirst that does not exist, and nothing
is organized to provoke that thirst.”
The Church is full of institutions, associations,
movements, entities, schools, works of all kinds,
where good people can express and quench their
thirst for service. But very few things exist in
the Church that are destined to awake that thirst.
One day the Lord had mercy on his Church, and gave
to it the Cursillo Movement. I think this movement
was the first (at least in this century) to
consciously seek to awake that thirst in human
beings, with the disinterested purpose to have
each person then satisfy that thirst according to
his call and in the place where God has planted
him.
There are now many more people who are concerned
for awaking the thirst for God, but usually with
the purpose to sell their particular product –
their association, their movement, their work. We
need to have a deep respect for each individual’s
personal call and vocation, and to regard with joy
the fact that the Lord often calls them to places
or missions which are different from ours.
Our work as leaders also includes continuing to
awake that thirst. What we find in many places is
dislike, lack of thirst. People are content. Some
are satiated. Others are frankly fed up of the
things of God. This is especially true in the case
of young people. Perhaps we thought that it was
enough to awake the thirst, and we neglected to
continue awaking it. Perhaps that is why the Lord
is repeatedly calling us back to the first love,
to our early thirst.
The consequence of so many years when everything
in those contexts was oriented towards channeling
or satisfying the thirst which once, for some
reason, was awakened, has been that, in too many
places in Latin America, what we find today are
not Christians, but baptized pagans. I have noted
sometimes that in the past the Church used to
baptize converts, but our problem today is to
convert the baptized.
And this also explains why things are in a bad
shape. Ninety percent of the problems we come
across everyday in our communities and in the
Church is simply due to the fact that our best
leaders are not converted enough.
We often find brothers who one day ceased to be
bad guys and became good guys, and we rejoice at
the fact that they have not gone back to their old
life. That’s what we call perseverance. But we
also realize that very few of them are today more
converted than the day their first retreat ended.
The Kelvinator Principle
A second cause for this phenomenon is a principle
I have termed the “Kelvinator Principle,” that is,
the principle of the refrigerator. As we know,
refrigerators are used to prevent foods from
decomposing. The principle of the refrigerator is
stated thus: “Everything in the Church seems to be
organized to prevent the good ones from
decomposing.”
The reasonable thing would be to work for the bad
ones to become good and for the good ones to be
better each day. But almost no one works for that.
They work to prevent the good ones from becoming
bad. There seems to be no place for the bad in
Church organizations, and yet the Lord came to
save what had perished, and told us that it is the
sick and not the healthy who need a doctor.
Caution! I’m not saying that there is no room for
the bad in the Church. Of course there is… but on
the condition that they become instantly good.
Even our communities are in danger of becoming a
“Club of Saints,” instead of being a group of
human beings, with all the problems that being
human involves, who want to be holier each day and
are very sorry that we are not yet holy enough,
but who are still far from being what God wants us
to be. When communities become clubs of saints,
their small groups tend to become contests of
verbal holiness, and the smallest fault is
regarded with horror. I often remind my brothers
that our community is not a club of saints, but a
meeting place for those who would like to be
saints.
In some Church contexts, this absence of a place
for the bad in the Church results in what I call
“the syndrome of the refrigerator salesman in the
North Pole” – nobody wants them.
Since everything in the Church seems to be
organized for the greater comfort of the good, the
bad have no interest in the things of the Church
or of the Lord. And this is quite serious. They
think that the Church has nothing to offer them,
when, on the contrary, it is the only group that
has what they need. And this may be due to the
fact that the Church has entered the business of
selling refrigerators, when the Lord came to
kindle a fire in the world, and what he wants is
for it to burn.
Paper Pastoral Projects
Perhaps the most notable result of this reality is
what I call paper pastoral projects. Our bishops,
pastors and even lay leaders develop beautiful
plans. Recently they have incorporated all the
techniques of modern sociology. They print them in
a beautiful pamphlet which they distribute among
those concerned; but that pastoral project, so
beautiful, so wonderful on paper, just stays there
printed, because there is no thirst, no hunger;
because in the North Pole no one is interested in
buying that pastoral refrigerator, or that
refrigerated pastoral project; because in the
lukewarmness or glacial cold of their hearts there
is no place or no use for that pastoral
refrigerator which then becomes a paper pastoral
project.
DuPlessis’ Principle
I think this lack of interest for the things of
God is especially true in the case of our youth.
Then another principle emerges. Maybe this is the
wisest principle I have heard, and I call it
“DuPlessis’ Principle.” David DuPlessis, also
known as Mr. Pentecost, whom Pope Paul VI once
decorated for his ecumenical efforts, once heard a
voice that said, “God has no grandchildren.”
For many days he wondered what that sentence
meant, until he finally understood. John’s Gospel,
in fact, says, “to all who received him… he gave
power to become children of God” (John 1:12).
Through conversion and baptism we become children
of God, but God has no grandchildren. Our children
will not in turn become children of God in the
full scriptural sense, unless they are in turn
evangelized and converted. They will continue to
be baptized pagans, as most of us once were. And
this is also something very serious we should
meditate on.
Our communities will not always be what they once
were, unless every new generation in our
communities has a living experience of the living
God, and sincerely chooses to follow him to the
end.
But someday, someone, somewhere, ever more for
God’s grace, begins to establish the priorities of
Jesus Christ, to take seriously the Christian’s
mission to proclaim the good news of salvation,
and begins, as we did, to evangelize like mad. He
begins to awake hunger for God and to seek out the
bad ones. Men begin to get converted, churches are
packed full, the parish bursts out. There is a
revival. Our hearts are full of joy, and our
mouths are full of praises and thanksgiving. But
then something begins to happen. It is the first
few symptoms of what I call “the revolving door
syndrome”.
The Revolving Door Syndrome
The revolving door syndrome means that, quite
soon, the number of those who enter is equal to
the number of those who leave. Years go by, a
hundred retreats are given, a hundred short
courses, a hundred seminars, and the number of
those who remain evangelized is the same. Those
who remain, in Bonnin’s words, are usually the
holiest, who are always few; the most stupid, who
are always more… and those who attended the latest
retreat.
We need to ask ourselves why this is so. Maybe one
of the viruses that produce this syndrome of the
revolving door is what we could term the perpetual
childhood of God’s children.
“To all who received him he gave power to become
children of God,” but for some reason the children
of God continued to be children. (This is what St.
Paul accused the Corinthians of.) There was no one
there seeking their progressive and integral
conversion. Maybe the leaders themselves were
immature as Christians, and they generated
disciples in their own image and likeness.
I often insist that it is us, with our own lives,
who set the standard of Christian life in our
communities. And this is where another principle
comes into action – the one I call “Sinbad’s
Principle.”
Sinbad’s Principle
This principle says: “Don’t make waves!”
I know places where people’s growth stops,
stagnates, not because there is no life, but
because it tends to level at what I call “a
Christian standard of life”, which is usually
determined by the leaders. And this is a big
responsibility.
In the movements I once militated in, a man would
come out of a retreat with his soul full of
dreams, of commitment and of a spirit of charity.
He then sought for ways to channel those things.
In the experiences of other people he would seek a
model to express his own Christian life. If what
he encounters is institutionalized mediocrity,
impoverished dreams, conditioned commitment or
minimized love, he will accept that standard of
Christian life as his ultimate goal, as his
measure of perfection.
But, all of a sudden, an uncomfortable being comes
around. It is someone whom love is leading to new
levels of commitment. At his small group meeting
he shares this with humility and naturalness, but
his commitment is far too jeopardizing for us. So
Sinbad cries out: “Don’t make waves! Don’t rock
the boat”! Don’t wake me up from my sweet sleep.
Don’t make things complicated for me. You don’t
need to be a fanatic! No extremes, please!” Saints
are always uncomfortable for others, and a group
leader comes around who feels in the obligation to
help them come back to earth.
Peace returns to our hearts once again. It is the
peace of a graveyard. The boat is safe. There’s
nothing to shake it, nothing to horrify it,
nothing to disturb it. Even the saint will learn
the lesson that there is no need to exaggerate,
and so he takes on his leader’s standard of
living, or the standard of living of his retreat
rector, who ten years ago was also willing to give
up his life for the Lord, but who has now become
older and more prudent, and has learned the lesson
that there is no need to exaggerate.
What I do thank the Lord for is for having placed
along my way several true saints and at least a
couple of martyrs, who many a time caused me shame
because of my mediocrity, but who always increased
in me the desire to be like them – holy uneducated
people.
But there are places where the highest ideal seems
to be focused in preventing the boat from sinking,
even if it never moves forward or gets anywhere,
even if people are not taken to the point where
God wants them to be. We then settle for being
well-behaved citizens, without even suspecting
that there exists a whole new world and an
extraordinary, new life, where love has no limits,
where commitment involves laying down your own
life, and where our dream would be to have more
lives so we can also lay them down for Christ and
for the brethren. We settle for polishing the
boat’s deck, but we keep it anchored at port so
that everyone can come aboard easily.
Another application of Sinbad’s Principle has to
do with the necessary evolution of our
communities. When there are changes, there always
comes up a Sinbad who cries: “Don’t make waves!
Don’t move my boat!” But I have never seen a boat
that doesn’t rock when it is moving forward. If it
doesn’t rock, it’s because it’s anchored.
What I am intending to illustrate is the situation
of those places where everything is going so well,
really so very well, that nothing should happen,
lest things change. Everything must be done
according to the most rigid orthodoxy, which is
almost always mixed with the way we have been
doing things for the last 20 years.
I would not want to say whether this is right or
wrong. However, common sense tells me that
something that does not move cannot get anywhere,
and certainly will not get very far. It can only
mean that we have already arrived. Or that we have
not even lifted the anchors.
Since the world and the Church continue to move
ahead, this can mean at a given moment that we
have been left behind. I am not in favor of change
for change’s sake, but I do understand that things
that are alive have movement, and things that do
not move end up in atrophy.
In our community we became aware that, without
doing anything to achieve it, we are today a
radically different community than we were 18
years ago; that the world around us is also
different; that we ourselves are not any longer
the same; and that, therefore, we cannot continue
to function as if nothing had happened.
Change always brings problems, and many an
individual will feel tempted to cry out, “Don’t
make waves!” Let us ask the Lord for wisdom so we
can discern things that must be permanent and
unchanging in us, and things that need to be
continually adapted to our new realities.
But we must now return to the problem of the
revolving door and its causes, and thus we move to
Palau’s Principle.
Palau’s Principle
I have given it that name because of something I
experienced many years ago. Luis Palau is a
Protestant preacher who once visited Nicaragua.
And since, as I said before, I have a lot of
leisure time, and I have a very good friend who
has a lot of leisure time and invited me, the two
of us went to the stadium where Palau was
preaching, just to see what tips we could catch.
Palau began to preach and, to be honest, I have
heard better things. But when he was about to
finish, something took place that shook me very
strongly, and which I had never seen or heard
before. What happened was simply that, as he
finished preaching, he invited all those present
to make a decision for Jesus Christ and to step
forward. I was frozen! I had studied with the
Jesuits for 18 years, I had attended a Cursillo
retreat, I had given and received countless
seminars and retreats, and no one had ever told
me: “Make a decision!”
So this is Palau’s Principle: Make a decision.
It is embarrassing, but I think that only
Catholics have received permission to spend their
whole lives without ever being called to make a
decision, to choose for Christ. The Lord had said:
“If any man would come after me, let him… take up
his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). No one ever
invited me to take that step. The involvement of
our intelligence is encouraged, but not the
involvement of our will. No one ever invites us to
turn our deep convictions into firm decisions… so
the door continues to revolve.
I will end this talk with the last principle. It
is the most tremendous of all, the most
devastating, although, thank God, it is the one
that occurs least frequently. But in any case it
is the most dangerous and most subtle one, the one
that can disguise itself as an angel of light, the
one that can by itself frustrate God’s plan for
you.
Ralph Martin’s Principle
In a talk he gave at a Latin American Charismatic
Conference, Ralph Martin said that we often take
this attitude – we see that God is raising
something around us, and then we say, “Here is the
charismatic renewal, what a wonderful thing! What
are we going to do with it?” Or, “Here is the
Neo-catechumenate, what an extraordinary thing!
What can we use it for?” Or, “Here is the
multitude, how can we make use of it?” Almost
imperceptibly we move one step forward and we say,
“Here is Christianity, how can we use it?” And
finally, “Here is God, what an interesting,
beautiful and great thing! How can we make use of
him?”
Quite unfortunately, this is no exaggeration. We
live in a country where everyone wants to utilize
God and make Jesus Christ a tool for their own
ends. Christ then becomes a banner, a symbol, a
cause, an appealing figure that can therefore be
exploited, manipulated, turned into an instrument
to carry water to my own mill, to attract people
to my group, to second my purposes, to bless my
plans, to give prestige to my projects or ideas.
But these are just the most obvious issues. The
Lord is continuously raising things in his Church.
We are living at a privileged time in history,
when the Lord has raised and continues to raise
wonderful works in his Church. And the Lord has a
plan and an aim for all he does. The Lord has a
purpose, and it must be our role to be faithful to
God’s purpose. The Lord has placed us as leaders
of a concrete work of his for us to be at his
service, with a view to a concrete mission, and
not for us to serve in it according to our
preferences.
Let us make sure, in our work, that we are helping
communities so they will never become an end in
themselves. Let us make sure we are respecting
those communities whose concrete call is different
from ours, helping them if we can, but without
ever attempting to impose our own call on them.
And of course, let us invite all those whom the
Lord has called, to work arm in arm with us in
this common mission.
This
article is adapted from the book, From
Egghead to Birdhood (hatch or rot as a
Christian), (c) copyright 2001 Carlos
Mantica.
Carlos
Mantica is a founder of The City of God
community (La Cuidad de Dios) in Managua,
Nicaragua, and a founding leader of the Sword
of the Spirit. He served as
president of the Sword of the Spirit
between 1991 and 1995.
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photo credit: aerial view of a group of
people (c) by Madrabothair at Bigstock.com
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