The following interview with Fr. Thomas Cassidy, SCJ, provincial superior of the U.S. Province of the Priests of the Sacred Heart, appeared in the National Catholic Reporter’s February 18, 2011, Religious Life Section and is posted here with NCR’s permission.

“Every culture enriches the church, enriches religious life”

Fr. Thomas Cassidy, provincial superior of the U.S. Province of the Priests of the Sacred Heart, is the current president of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, which represents some 19,000 vowed priests and brothers in the U.S.  In a January interview with NCR, Cassidy spoke about the challenges of shrinking congregations, and how new vocations from Asia and Africa give him a “better window into the God we all try to serve.”  Following is that interview, edited for length.

By Joshua J. McElwee

NCR: What’s on your plate right now?

CASSIDY: I’m in my second year as president, so my term will be coming to an end this coming August.  We do have a president-elect who will take over when I’m done.  One of the big things that is coming up will be our annual board meeting, which takes place in February in the Tampa Bay [Fla.] area.  That’s also at the same time that [the Leadership Conference of Women Religious] meets.  We meet separately and then have a couple of meetings together as well.  We also have a meeting coming up in March with the heads of the Canadian religious conference and the head of the group which represents all of the religious conferences of Latin America.

NCR: Your predecessor as president of the conference spoke several times about how male religious congregations aren’t quite the same size as they used to be –– notably much smaller.  How has that been shaping up?  What does that mean for individual orders?

CASSIDY: I think the biggest thing that’s taking place right now is that a number of orders who have more than one province in the U.S. are joining provinces.  Even though they’re of the same community, there are different cultures that have grown up in different parts of the country.  It’s not as simple as one might think to join provinces together.  Various communities are going through that process.  I know the Conventual Franciscans are in the process –– probably a three-to-four year process. They’re not alone.  The Jesuits are going through that process as well.

NCR: As provinces merge, how are communities continuing their respective charisms and traditions?

CASSIDY: What a lot of communities are doing too is looking at their institutions and asking –– particularly as their numbers grow smaller –– how do we continue to inculcate our charism?  How do we ensure it continues at this institution?

There are different ways communities have approached that topic and different ways that they’re trying to implement that.  I would particularly say probably religious orders of women have been ahead of the curve on this.  They’ve maybe faced this issue earlier and have certainly made significant efforts in trying to ensure that the charisms of their communities continue, as institutions are not able to staff like they once were.

NCR: What kind of trends do you see for lay involvement in religious communities?

CASSIDY: Certainly a number of communities now have, I wouldn’t want to call it lay branches, but people who follow the charisms of the community –– people who may work with the community in one of their ministries, people who hold important roles in their communities.  In my own case, for example, we do what we call mission awareness about every other year in our major endeavors as a way of trying to inculcate our own spirit among the people who work with us.  That’s a common experience for many communities of getting people to experience the charism of the community and, in a sense, to carry that on in many and varied ways.

NCR: As the numbers of people joining religious communities slow, how are older brothers and priests dealing with the workload?

CASSIDY: Well, it’s as you said.  With smaller numbers, many of these men are older –– they’re not young men anymore –– and there are more responsibilities that have been thrown their way.  People seem to soldier on as best they can.  A lot of religious communities have instituted sabbatical programs that are available to members –– for three months, six months, some even grant a year.  That can be helpful in renewing a person.

NCR: On the other side of things, I know that many of the new vocations for religious life are coming from the Southern Hemisphere –– particularly Africa and Asia.  How is that changing the dynamic of religious life?

CASSIDY: For most of the existence of my own congregation, the vast majority of people have been from Europe and the Western world.  Probably starting in the ‘70s and ‘80s, the shift really began to take place.  We just had a general chapter last year and you really could see the shift to Africa and Asia.

The church is becoming a Third World church in many ways.  I don’t mean it in a pejorative sense.  The church has new roots –– African roots, Asian roots.  I spent 12 years on the general council and the real advantage to me was living outside my own culture, seeing the world from a different perspective.  I think this has certainly helped enrich my religious life, my congregation and the church.

NCR: What kind of challenges does this new dynamic bring to men’s congregations?

CASSIDY: It certainly does bring a challenge.  I would say many communities in the U.S. have members that come from other parts of the world, whether it be Latin America or Africa or Asia.  And that’s a new reality.

In my own community, we have a number of Vietnamese.  And I have learned to enjoy and celebrate Lunar New Year.  Which is not something we would have done before –– it just wasn’t part of our experience.  You know they bring that part of their tradition and we have learned to embrace it.  It does create challenges of dealing with different cultures, different world views, different traditions.  You become a melting pot.

NCR: What do you think these challenges say to the larger church?

CASSIDY: I’m not sure where I heard this, but the beauty of the church is that it’s probably the one institution that really can talk about being literally around the entire world and dealing with the world from so many different perspectives, points of view and cultural realities.  And the church is able to do it.  That’s the neat thing about it.

I’ll give you a story that I heard years ago.  This is probably the best way of describing at least part of what I’m trying to say.

I worked in South Dakota for a number of years.  I always would ask people who came to live there: “Why did you move to South Dakota?”  I asked a Jesuit that once, who came from New Orleans.  He described it this way:  “There are only about 45,000 Sioux Indians in the world.  And if they die out, then part of our image of God dies out.  I believe every culture teaches us something about God that’s unique.”

That always struck me.  I think there’s some truth to that.  A culture views God through the prism of its reality.  And it’s different than my reality.  I can learn something about God by trying to step into their shoes and by viewing their image of God from their own experience.  That way, I think, every culture enriches the church, enriches religious life.  It gives us a better window into the God we all try to serve.

NCR: What are the key things that represent religious life in American that are different or unique?

CASSIDY: Well, I am not quite sure if it’s unique, but we’re Americans.  We’ll start right there.  One of our virtues is our independence, but in religious life that’s also going to be your curse.  American society prizes its freedom and its independence.

In some ways, in religious life you do give up part of your freedom –– that’s part of the reality of religious life.  But you’re still an American and you wrestle with that reality.  I certainly think the position that women religious hold in the United States –– the many institutions they run –– that it’s not quite the same experience, at least from my limited point of view, in a number of other countries in the world.

Joshua J. McElwee is an NCR staff writer.  His email:  jmcelwee@ncronline.org