Post-Conciliar Vacuum

filled by charismatic movement and then left vacant again.

From A Touch of God Eight Monastic Journeys Edited by Dame Maria Boulding. This extract in from the chapter describing her own travel.

At about the time the Second Vatican Council ended, I was appointed novice mistress and held the job for nine years. It was a complex experience. In some ways it was joy: there was all the dynamism of the Council;

I had a feeling of being fully used, of being in a job where I could give all I had to give; there was the work with people and some lasting friendships were established. But there was also, especially in the later years, a sharp sense of personal inadequacy for the work. I helped a few people, but others not at all, and I ended up with a general sense of failure.

I am heartily glad that I was taken off the job, although at the time it was a wrench, a little death.

During these years the charismatic renewal became very influential in the community. It highlighted much that needed to be re-emphasized and rediscovered, and brought a more explicit sense of community and mutual support. For me, however, this sense was as yet very imperfect and tended to be confined to the like-minded, those on the same wavelength. I was still pretty solitary inside, shy and afraid. I made the astonishing discovery that my shyness and fear were sometimes mistaken for self-sufficiency. Nevertheless the renewal led us to expect the healing power of the Lord in persons and situations and to understand healing as a community task. I came to see that nearly everybody carries inner wounds from his or her past experience;

One of her other books has the rather worrying title "Marked for Life", hardly an encouragement for the religious vocation.