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Metamorphosis
The following address was given at a Chaplains Conference in October 2002. The author not only emphasizes the importance of change within the provision of chaplaincy services, but also outlines a number of significant changes that have taken place over the years.
After a long day of crawling and eating leaves, Wilber, the caterpillar found himself doing some reflection. Soon the reflection turned to prayer and Wilber heard himself thanking God for his life. “ God, thank you for the world you have provided for me. I have everything I need. Life just doesn’t get any better. You don’t have to change a thing.” God replied. “ I know that you are happy with your life but the world is created to change and you must change with it. Soon you will fall into a deep sleep and when you awaken you will have changed and your relationship to the world will have changed. You will fly above the plants you have been eating. You will feed on the nectar of the flowers. You no longer will be a caterpillar. You will be a butterfly.”
Wilbur said. “ That sounds exciting but I really don’t want to change. God replied. “ You must.”
You have asked me to begin our Conference this afternoon by speaking on the theme of Metamorphosis and what this theme of change has to say about Chaplaincy and the place of Faith in the public arena. As I set about to do this, I discovered that this is not an easy task. Our enterprise of public ministry is as complex as it is diverse. To determine the nature of the changes which have taken place it is really dependent on whom you ask. Since you asked me, I will speak to you from the perspective of a chaplain who received the bulk of his formal training 30 years ago and as a person who has held several positions with Chaplaincy Services Ontario ( CSO) including the position of Acting Provincial Coordinator. I come with my own values and specifically those of a professionally trained chaplain.
After I retired more than 2 years ago, I have been doing a great deal of reflecting on I how I feel about the state of chaplaincy and the role of faith in the public service. While I was attempting to build some distance between my former professional life and myself, I often found myself drawn into a type of evaluation of what I was leaving behind. There is much to celebrate. There is also much to be concerned about. I believe strongly that public ministry is not where we want it to be. I also believe that the government who has been described as our partner, has too often determined the extent and the shape of chaplaincy more than we have ourselves. This is regrettable for both the Faith groups and for Chaplaincy.
I also want to share with you, at this point, that because of the many positions of leadership, which I have held over more than 20 years with CSO, I am prepared to take my share of both blame and praise for where we are today.
The word Metamorphosis speaks of change in a very profound way. It is much more than a superficial change. It is a change that is the result of a developmental process. As a result, everything changes or is affected by the change. The very essence or soul becomes transformed.
Because we are speaking of a process, we are able to learn ways of dealing with the changes that take place. Of course the goal is to integrate the changes so that we are able to accept the new as a part of our own reality. But before we can do that, we must grieve what we are leaving behind. We must say goodbye before I can embrace the new.
While there are many changes that take place in a natural way such as aging and caterpillars becoming butterflies, there are changes that are also driven by us and by others. These changes often lead to new challenges and improved outcomes. However, we must be very careful here. We must decide who is driving the change and how the outcomes will affect us and what is important to us. There are some important questions that we need to ask whenever we are approached with a phrase like, “Are we going to do business in different way? What will be my role in this change process? Do those driving the changes respect all the stakeholders? Are we taking part in a process that is authentic or is it a pseudo process which actually allows me to only think that I will have a significant role in the determination of outcomes?” Perhaps the most important question is “What do we need to do in order to safeguard the core values which we are not willing to sacrifice in any change process?”
How we resolve these questions will largely influence our grieving. If we feel that we have had an active and a meaningful role in the real agenda of change and we can live with the results, we will be in a much better position to say goodbye to the old and embrace the new. The process, if it is inclusive and has integrity, will empower the stakeholders. On the other hand, if the process is not inclusive or we have been manipulated into thinking that our opinions really counted when such was not the case, we will be angry and resistant to the changes. When this happens, we discover that we have given away our power.
We all know that there have been many changes for Chaplaincy, Chaplaincy Services Ontario and the Ontario Multifaith Council on Spiritual and Religious Care (OMC) over the last 30 years. Each time we have had new political bosses, there was always a massive amount of change. This quite normal and is to be expected. In fact, often the changes sounded good and I often found myself reacting in a completely uncritical way. Yes, I can be seduced.
After many years of this, I found myself feeling resistant to all these new ideas and changes. I experienced many of the changes to be driven more by ideology than by concern for real issues and real people. Sometimes the change felt like a weapon directed against a so called special interest group. I have wondered why such petty thinking is allowed to be a serious part of any government agenda.
More about these changes later.
I want to also affirm that many of the changes that have made ourselves have been healthy and have contributed to our strong public witness in Ontario. I like these changes because they are a part of the development and maturing that we must go through. We are still going through such change.
For example, I like the development of the local responsibility, which has been so characteristic of the Regional Multifaith Committees, (RMC) and the dedication of such a host of wonderful volunteers. I like the development of the Community Chaplaincy. Once this new chaplaincy found its way, a different kind of chaplaincy emerged. I like this emerging diversity in the profession that I have known and loved for so many years. I am also proud that the CSO and OMC took the leadership in this richly diverse Province and insisted time and time again that all the faiths have a place in the great enterprise of chaplaincy.
Ten years ago, I was involved in the first Operational Review. That was a great process and it led to some significant results. The Review was established by CSO and the OPIFCC (now OMC) in order to respond to a fast changing social and political environment. It was proactive, inclusive and I believe genuine. The results brought positive change for chaplains and faith group alike. I understand that you have just finished another Review. I hope that it will be as significant for these times as the first one was.
One of the good results of that first Review was the creation of a Memorandum of Agreement, which was greatly celebrated by both government and the faith groups. Two successive governments and the faith groups have signed this document. Such documents need to be interpreted by the parties involved. Unfortunately, the present government has always taken a very broad interpretation of its responsibilities as a partner in the change process and has tended to act unilaterally.
The new and revitalized OMC has much to be proud of. This development came out of the Review. Under the OMC, the faith groups have become revitalized and many positive changes have taken place. For example, as well as developing the Community Chaplaincy, the council has also taken Stu Shroeder’s library and has developed this into a highly sophisticated and unique resource for all sectors of society and government.
When change is spread out over many years as is the case with Ontario Provincial Chaplaincy, we need to try to find the threads of development so that we can better understand our history. As we look for the significant threads, we may also be able to find what I call pivotal decisions. These decisions changed things so profoundly that Chaplaincy indeed went through a true metamorphosis. Our history shows a mixed bag of favourable and not so favourable outcomes.
The fist time this really happened was in 1971. At that time each Ministry hired its own chaplains. There was no central coordination nor was there any place for the Faith groups who supplied the chaplains.
Corrections decided to cut the number of chaplains. The chaplains resisted the change. They did so by going to their Faith Groups and asking for their intervention. The Government responded by setting up Chaplaincy Services Ontario and a committee of the faith groups called the Ontario Provincial Interfaith Committee on Chaplaincy.
Out of an act of dissent, public ministry was created in a formal manner. Chaplains now had a Provincial Coordinator and the Faith Groups had a clearly defined supportive role to set standards, to screen and to assess. The dissent of a group of chaplains was a pivotal act in an important part of our story. We see here the beginning of a clear metamorphosis and a period of empowerment.
The second pivotal act took place in 1986. Until this point, chaplaincy reported directly to a manager in the Civil Service Commission. The new Liberal Government of the day made a decision to reduce the size and influence of the Civil Service Commission. The OPIFFC received administrative support through CSO and the Commission.
As a result of the reduction in the Commission, Chaplaincy was placed in Community and Social Services, one of the Ministries which chaplaincy served. At first the impact was not significant but as time went on Chaplaincy and its uniqueness within the Public Service became more and more absorbed by the culture of its host. The need for Chaplaincy and the Faith groups to have some autonomy in order to provide a public ministry with integrity is an important value for those engaged in public ministry. The uniqueness of bringing faith matters into the public arena is important to preserve. Over the years since 1986, it has become more and more difficult for both Chaplaincy and the Faith groups to maintain, with integrity, a true public ministry.
The real danger in all of this, is that either by coercion or seduction, it is so easy for Chaplaincy to be pulled into serving the Government Agenda. For example, the current Government tends to see the Faith groups as providing support those who fall between the cracks. The Government, in cutting payments from the public purse to those on Welfare, assumed that community groups such as the Faith groups would pick up the slack. In fact, the Government seemed confused when some of Faith groups spoke out against the Government’s systemic changes to the treatment of those living in poverty.
There needs to be a healthy tension between the realm spiritual and the realm temporal. History has many examples. This tension was vividly dramatized in T.S. Elliot’s play Murder in the Cathedral. Here we see this classic conflict in the form of the struggle between a King and one of his chief Ministers. King Henry of England had placed his friend Thomas Beckett in the position of Lord of the Exchequer and at the same time influenced his appointment as Primate of England and Archbishop of Canterbury. Beckett began to find his conscience and took his role as Archbishop very seriously. As a result, he began to oppose the King’s attempt to reduce the influence of the Church within the government agenda. On one occasion, Henry getting tired of Beckett, wished out loud, “Will someone not rid me of the troublesome priest?” Some Knights overheard the King and decided to carry out his wishes. Thomas Beckett was assassinated at the foot of his altar in Canterbury Cathedral.
Well, how far are you willing to go in preserving the prophetic role of the realm spiritual? Hopefully we do not have to go as far as Thomas did. Systemically, we were better situated in a neutral body such as the Commission to be an effective conscience to the government. But once we became part of the culture of one of the Ministries that we served, our ability to be critical was compromised. This time the change did not lead to our empowerment but instead drew us in closer and closer to our host Ministry and its agenda.
I remember one day when I came into direct conflict with the Ministry and the expectations of my superior. I called with some concerns that some faith groups had over a group home. There were political implications to these concerns and quite appropriate for the groups to express. I was told that I as a Civil Servant had no right to bring this to the attention of the Ministry or was it appropriate for me to have taken a position, which was deemed contrary to government policy. I was told that it was none of my business. Before I hung up the phone, I reminded my superior that it most certainly was my business and then I hung up. I was a bad Civil Servant that day. However, looking at my whole ministry in CSO, there are times when I really struggle with the question. “’ Did I retire a better Civil Servant than a good Chaplain.?’’ I think not, but I suppose that it could always be open to debate.
Being part of a line Ministry and losing our uniqueness, led to our integration into the Ministry of Community and Social Services. This meant that when cuts came and there were many of those during the 1990s, we had no rationale to advance for exclusion from those cuts. Yes money was downloaded to the OMC. But this downloading has led to much confusion for the chaplains. They find it difficult to understand how cutting CSO could possibly be of benefit to their issues which are usually professional in nature. Many chaplains are concerned and confused when they see volunteers doing the functions once performed by professional CSO staff. Some of you may agree with these changes. What I urge you to do is to reflect on what has taken place and ask the question “Has the rightful place of professionalism in chaplaincy and its critical presence been compromised?”
A couple of years ago, the Minister of Health, complaining to the media about the growing cost of seniors’ health care said, “ It is unfortunate that we have an aging population.” Perhaps we can add to this King Henry’s wish about his troublesome priest.
The third pivotal decision that has led to a metamorphosis is the cancelling of the chaplaincy training programs by CSO. I was one of the decision-makers here and I worked with several groups to design a new program that would maintain our professional edge and at the same time respond to the multifaith and the multicultural requirements of a changing Ontario. I believe that this goal is still largely elusive.
New awareness and new realities demand changes in our structures and our models of ministry. I have no doubt about that. But we must carry out those changes in ways that reflect our core values. As we wrestle with what kind of chaplain we need in the 21st century, we must also decide what we need to hold onto as well.
Today, I experience a drift in chaplaincy as we struggle to redefine it. In doing this do we want to leave behind a chaplaincy based on the CAPPE model which has been developing during that last 40 years in Canada? Or do we want to something totally different? These are important questions. We must be the ones that largely determine the shape of chaplaincy for now and into the future. It is ours to preserve. While we still speak of partnership with the Ontario Government, we must not give them power to do that shaping. If we do, we no longer have chaplaincy as many of us in this profession have come to understand the term. We must safeguard chaplaincy’s professionalism and its prophetic edge.
Like a living, breathing organism, our shared enterprise of public ministry must be allowed to grow, change and mature. Our past history is full of successes as well as bold imaginative changes. There are also some troubling trends. I have spoken of our gradual and sometimes not so gradual tendency to allow our employer too much say in the extent and shape of our ministry to those in the care of the government.
As long as spiritual and religious rights are guaranteed in the Constitution, we have clear role to be the “ troublesome priest.” If changes which are yet to come compromise that role again, it might be good for us to once again take up the cause as a group of chaplains did over 30 years ago. We must say NO! In doing so we will be saying YES to our rich heritage.
Wilbur the caterpillar discovered that change was a given. So it is for us. We must decide on our values and where we want to go. Otherwise, we will become part of another’s agenda and the changes will continue to compromise the heart and soul of Chaplaincy and public ministry.
Some Questions
1. Assuming that change will continue, what do we take with us and what can be leave behind?
2. What have we learned about change from our own personal pasts?
3. Where is God in the process?
by David Clark
Posted by editor on September 30, 2003 10:56 AM