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On Sabbatical in Dublin

by Fr Finbar Kealy OSB, Abbot Emeritus

MY time in Dublin, from September 1998 to September 2000, provided me with two of the happiest, and, at the same time, most challenging, years of my life. I was happy to be off the leash after so many years of administration; happy to be relieved of the burdens of office; happy to have only the responsibilities of a student; happy to be out of role; happy to apply myself to something completely different. Additionally, for the first time, I was able to stand back and reflect on all that had happened to me in the past, to accept and integrate it into my life, and to prepare myself to move on into the future.

To experience all this in my native city was an added bonus. Here I could renew my contacts with family and culture, avail of everything a throbbing capital city has to offer, enjoy Dublin's unique surrounds of sea and mountains and, at the same time, get a taste of a wide variety of social problems, from which up to now I had been more or less sheltered.

Finally, most important of all, my two years in Dublin provided me with a number of new and valued friends. Without them my time in Dublin would have been very different, and I look forward to enjoying their friendship in the years ahead.

Some people might think I was exceptionally fortunate to have had two years out. Possibly I was, and certainly as Abbot I would have had difficulty accepting that a member of the community needed a two-year sabbatical. Yet I believe I could not have returned to work any earlier. This became much clearer to me as I neared the end of my first year, because I felt then that I was only beginning to recover my physical, mental and emotional energies. In asking for an extra year I was interested and reassured to note that while such lengthy sabbaticals were still very much the exception I was not the only one taking them.

If personal restoration was the main focus of my efforts, the framework was two separate, demanding courses of pastoral studies at All Hallows' College, near the centre of Dublin. In my first year I studied for a diploma, in the second a master's. The diploma was an excellent stimulus in that it raised a wide range of issues with regard to care of self and others in a pastoral situation, all with a view to making people better ministers. The master's, with similar purpose, explored a number of these areas in greater depth.

What I found extremely valuable was the holistic nature of the courses. In other words, they were not simply imparted at an intellectual level but also engaged the students physically, emotionally and spiritually. Since in practice pastoral situations of whatever kind engage everyone involved on all these levels, it made a great deal of sense to try and understand better the processes involved. Personally I was conscious of not having given due weight in the past to the physical and emotional aspects, and was largely unaware of the extent to which this had hindered my work. I was therefore quite anxious to know more about them.

Also valuable was the emphasis on the role of personal experience, one's own and that of others, in interpreting scripture and church teaching. I can now see how necessary it is, if one's ministry is going to be relevant, to use life's experience in interpreting these sources of truth, as well as the customary use of the latter to interpret life's experience. A further important aspect of the two courses was the stress placed on the building up of one's own corpus of theology, in the sense of a body of doctrine one was personally convinced of, and could explain in one's own words, rather than simply being the mouthpiece of the Church and transmitting its teaching without any significant degree of personal reflection or commitment.

It is worth noting particular aspects of the courses. Every week, on both the diploma and master's courses, each student had to do some fieldwork. This was reflected on later, both individually and in groups. The group reflection provided a most effective form of pastoral supervision and a wonderful opportunity to learn from each other's experience. The range of places worked in and the people among whom one ministered were diverse and included prisons, hospitals, hospices and Aids centres, the homeless, travellers and refugees.

My own fieldwork (diploma) was to act as facilitator to a group of lay people preparing for parish ministry, while for the master's it was acting as a spiritual director to two religious sisters. Spiritual direction, the theory and practice, was a large part of the master's course for everyone, as were the theory and practice of groups, and the theories of family ministry, adult education and bereavement. In the case of bereavement a lot of time and effort was put into ensuring one had dealt with one's own grief, lest in dealing with the grief of others one's own unresolved issues might intervene. Scripture and particularly Theology were and integral part of the courses. Finally, in the master's a dissertation was a major part.

It would take more than this short description to do justice to either course. In addition to content and approach, other aspects of the courses that I found attractive included: more or less equal numbers of men and women, lay and religious; the wide variety of background and experience among the students (they came from all parts of the world); the respect given both to that experience and the students themselves by the college staff; the presence of other courses and students on the campus; and, finally, the ease in mixing between the different bodies of students, as well as between staff and students.

During my two years I availed myself of numerous extra-curricular activities: theatre, film and concerts; courses in art and tin-whistle; and working with the Simon community on a soup-run for the homeless. As far as accommodation was concerned I was very fortunate: I lived on the campus of a teacher training college run by the Christian Brothers as part of a distinct group of fourteen people on sabbatical in various parts of the city. It was a real delight to be part of that group, to have some contact with the training college and its students and, not least, to be part, at least for a short time, of the Christian Brother family. The Brothers could not have been more welcoming and friendly, with a most impressive spirit, and imparted a special atmosphere to the whole place.

My stay in Dublin was a time of tremendous richness, for which I feel truly grateful. 

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Une annee sabbatique

by Fr Oliver Holt OSB.

FOR some years bioethics (or medical ethics) have been of great interest to me. I attended summer schools in Cambridge and Dublin in 1997 and 1998 and during the academic year 1999/2000 I spent one day each week at Oxford, attending lectures and using the libraries.

Twenty-two years of teaching English, was perhaps not the best preparation for grappling with the medical, biological and technological issues which are involved in this vital subject. It does seem to be fascinating to almost everyone and the issues are rarely out of the papers.

Given the difficulties of the subject, it might seem surprising for a non-scientist to ask to spend a sabbatical year studying Bioethics in Paris, i.e. in French. Those familiar with the history of the community will know that we spent nearly 300 years of our history in France, firstly in Paris from 1615 and then at Douai, near Lille, from 1815 until 1903. The Fondation Catholique Anglais draws some of its funds from our former properties and now gives scholarships to English priests wishing to study in Paris. I have ended up living with a community of Redemptorist priests about 400 metres from our former building in the rue Saint Jacques and about ten minutes' walk from L'Institut Catholique and from the Jesuit faculty of Centre Sevres where most of my bioethics course takes place.

Paris is an extraordinary city and anyone who has the opportunity to live there for a year is very fortunate. Anyone could list the many features which make it such a fascinating city. However in addition it is a wonderful crossroads and meeting place as far as the Church is concerned. I have met people from so many countries in the world and have become far more aware of the international character of the Church. The intensive language course in September, for example, included a Polish religious sister who had worked in an orphanage in Rwanda, a Jesuit anthropologist from Peru who has worked in the Amazon jungle and a priest who has been working in the highly repressed country of Burma.

At the end of the year I hope to write an article on the subject matter of my course. The only problem will be choosing from the wide range of different topics included under the umbrella of bioethics. 

Index

Editorial

Bishop Austin O'Neill OSB 1841 - 1911 by Abbot Geoffrey Scott OSB

Community Notes

An English Monk in India by Fr Edmund Power OSB

Music at Douai by Fr Romuald Simpson OSB

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revised 24/07/01 by WS