The major news story of the last month has to have been the 40th anniversary of man’s landing on the moon.
Newspapers, TV interviews etc have been full of stories along the lines of “I remember I was doing this or that when we landed on the moon.”
And without doubt it was a hugely significant event and one of those that does stick in the mind.
My memory of it all is a little different because I can remember what I was not doing when Neil Armstrong uttered his famous words. Unlike the rest of the world I was not listening to it on the radio.
Not because I didn’t want to – but because I had School Certificate at the end of that year.
The link, I appreciate, may not be immediately obvious.
However, put it into the context of one teacher (a Marist) leaving our class his radio so we could listen and another teacher (also a Marist) refusing to stop class to let us hear history being made “because you’ve got School Cert to prepare for” (at that stage still four months away but let’s not be too technical).
The only thing that really saved the afternoon from being a complete disaster was that the first teacher, as well as leaving us his radio, had also left a generous amount of snuff (as was his custom) and so we were at least able to distract ourselves from what the rest of the world was doing.
Times have indeed changed – in more ways than one. But we still look back occasionally and so we should for the past has much to tell us as well as often showing us the way forward.
And as I’ve been preparing for the General Chapter, I have of necessity been “looking back”.
One of the tasks of each Major Superior for the Chapter has been to prepare three brief reports on their region: one on the social/cultural economic/Church context in which the unit is located; one highlighting what has developed and grown in the unit over the past eight years and what has diminished; and the third a power-point presentation completing and unifying the first two.
If you want to look at the reports, you’ll find Numbers One and Two on the Chapter website (www.smchap2009.org) but its Number Three that has been occupying my thoughts in recent times and also providing some interesting statistics along the way.
For example, if we compare a few basic figures about the Province from 2001 (the time of the last General Chapter) to 2009 we find the following:
2001
Number of Marists in the Province: 187
- Number of priests 159
- Number of brothers 25
Numbers (Professed) in Formation: 3
2009
Number of Marists in the Province: 140
- Number of priests 121
- Number of brothers 18
Numbers (Professed) in Formation: 1.
Median age in 2009: 69.
Deaths since 2001: 39.
Ordinations since 2001: 0
Taken in isolation, those figures perhaps don’t give cause for huge optimism as we head into the next eight years. But I’d suggest that they do serve a purpose in helping us move forward.
One of the key themes in the Province in recent years has been “Our Iceberg is Melting”, based on the book by John Kolter and Holger Rathberger.
It was a theme that many didn’t like; others accepted the concept intellectually but not emotionally; some wouldn’t even consider it and others felt that the iceberg had already melted and quite some time ago, too.
But others could see the point and also the urgency of the situation.
And one of the most interesting things – at least to me – in the past 12 months has been the sense I’ve picked up that there has been a major mind-shift within the Province to a positive acceptance that there is a need for action and that things can’t stay as they have been.
I could, of course, be deluding myself and wishing into reality what I want to exist – but I don’t think so.
The mood of the Provincial Chapter last year, and the openness, generosity and availability I’ve found during Visitation this year do suggest very strongly to me that, as a group, we have embraced (or at least are positively embracing) the vision that “It is no longer possible to carry on doing things the way we have – but there is still an opportunity to do things if we have the courage to change”.
I don’t in any way want to minimise the challenges still in front of us nor to suggest that all 140 of us are fully on-board with what’s happening and where we’re going, but nor do I think we should minimise the great faith and commitment that is still as much a part of the Province as it ever was – and that is today being translated by individuals into a willingness to have the courage to change in order that we might continue to do things.
As I set out for the Chapter shortly, my own personal hope is that as a Society we will be willing and able to positively embrace that vision, too, so that as a group we will have the courage to make the changes necessary in order to create new opportunities for the future.
Whatever the outcomes of the Chapter, I’m sure we won’t hear them on the radio or on TV and nor, in all likelihood, will we remember in 40 years time where we were and what we were doing when the outcomes were announced. But there will still be Marists – some eccentric, some totally focussed on the task at hand, others “normal” (whatever that means!) – and hopefully they will be thankful that in 2009 we had the courage to read the signs from the past in order to move into the future.