Open or latent conflicts, marginalisation, "murderer sentences" to defame others: here is the baggage, at time even too much concrete, of the group life, even when the groups have particular characteristics, like the religious communities. A field research and several activities in seminars, realised in the area of psychology and humanistic character, applied to religious life, have examined these concrete dimensions of the life of groups. From such exam it emerges how even in the religious communities it is being clearly realised that formation demands a recourse to psychology to avoid the dispersal  of the available "human resources". Psychology and community, in other words, can form a new type of interlacing. It is to be noted that the communities themselves turn always more to "experts", psychologists, sociologists, theologians with a special pastoral formation, to bring to focus the most difficult and urgent problematic concerning the running of community life, in a passing historical age in which -  to say it with a joke of a superior - "it is no longer the time of authoritarism, but of authoritativeness". Even if, she added during a formation course, "there has never been so far any formation course on it, and everyone has to manage alone".

How to tackle the problem

This explains the "success" of different courses for superiors. which were held in different places and at different levels during the past two years. They had the merit of answering a felt exigency and of opening a debate enlarged also to the voices of religious who carry on special charges. Their opinion is precious because it consents to verify the statements and the problematic brought by the superiors of communities, thus to enlighten both sides of the problem.

Among the various types of interventions in different areas, academic, meetings, seminars and formation courses, we evidenced that, just in formulating the interventions to be made, first of all a "grid" had been realised that would consent in an immediate way the enucleation of common problematic elements, through a phase  of group work with a successive verification in the assembly. .Moreover  It was a matter of bringing to emergency the daily lived experiences, the eventual relational difficulties and the way in which the group-community faced or ignored them, according to the participants.

The research was also an example of the more general tendency present in the Italian Church. In fact, a new mentality is growing, a new "formative attention" that is concretised in different initiatives of reflection and study, with meetings which are organised every year.

Two problematic knots were taken into consideration. The first one regarded the community of belonging. The second had as theme "the murderer sentences", with the objective of analysing the expressions commonly used in the communities and in the groups "to demolish the work of others". Both the experiences were addressed to sisters who are in a formation and re-qualifying journey.

The metaphor of the community

The theme was analysed during seven week-ends, each dedicated to a different group of religious, involving by the end a total of 250 sisters, mainly in Rome and Central North Italy. It was, more or less, about superiors of communities, but not only this. Every meeting followed the same methodology scheme, to allow for a final verification among the emerged data. Each participant was given a sheet of work divided into an introduction and two parts: the first for the personal work and the second for the group laboratory. The introduction explained that "the observation of the daily life in our community brings to emergency a series of mentally stabilised   re-presentations of a certain force and tending to remain and to re-propose themselves in different situations. It is, therefore, useful to know a community, to explore the idea each member has about it, an idea that becomes explicit in actions; then to go on to verify how this idea interacts with other viewpoints.

In the first part, at individual level, each one was supposed to think of a metaphor/image. In the second phase, at group level, there was the reading of various metaphors, the grid discussion of the interpretations and of the criteria utilised by different persons to finish with the choice of the image, In the third phase, then, the group had to choose only one metaphor,  considered to be the most efficacious and representative. The grid interpretation of the metaphor was based on a series of questions to verify the connection between the metaphor and the concrete situation of the community of the person who had given the idea. Thus, in the case of a static or mobile image, the corresponding question was whether the community was static or in movement: Other questions followed, like: if in movement, where does the push come from? If it is static, on what does it stand? Does the image imply relations? How are the relations in my community? Does the image face one direction or several ones? What are the directions of my community? Finally: how do the things or the persons present in the image survive? How do the other people present in the community survive?

The objective of the work  was that of formulating a confrontation on the way, or ways, in which the relation with others was configured, by verifying the images and their resonance within each single person.

Obviously the answers were quite different: the group work was also complex:  it was not easy to reach the common agreement about the metaphor to be chosen. Here is a brief synthesis of the most meaningful answers.

The community was described in very different ways. A group gave various definitions, all quite interesting: a multi-gymnasium, a beehive, an open door, a petrol distributor, a bicycle, a nettle plant. Finally, with great difficulty, this group reached a decision that represent all the others: the majority of participants chose the gymnasium, meant not as a building, but as a place inhabited by persons who use it, underling its dynamic characteristic, therefore, the movement. They said tha, in a religious community,  the energy is supplied by persons whose objective is that of empowering their physical capacity. This is an image that implies a modest type of interpersonal relationships, all together rather formal and superficial. In fact, the concrete persons present in this image survive according to their possibilities, namely personal physical resources. The community dimension, therefore, is absent or, in the best of cases, somehow problematic.

In another situation a group elaborated different images, like a small wood, a transatlantic, a sea-gull , a dauphin, a flower-bed, a wheel, a bench, a prism, an embarking. The group identified itself with the embarkation, understood as a big transatlantic which has to enter the harbour with a not too much secure steersman and some tugs that guide it. Undoubtedly it is an image that strongly evidences a movement, understood as the desire to reach the harbour. It is an image that implies relations, since everybody's strength converges and, though sometimes they are of obstacle to the movement, they, anyhow, do not stop it. It is an image that indicates the direction -the harbour- towards which the group moves. The persons survive by facing together the many difficulties and dangers of the sea.

Though diversified in their expression and in the group imagination, these experiences highlighted the need of an efficacious leadership in the group, a leadership willing to shoulder and to manage the problems, in order to lead the group towards a common end. Before the new complexity and the new exigencies  of the community and ecclesial life, a new mentality is born that leads to discover a very Anglo-Saxon or business theme of the leadership, but fundamental for any group that is formed with an objective to be reached.

The practice with "murderer phrases"

The passage from the "multi-gymnasium" to the "embarking"  is not so distant, after all, in the sense that it has been the matter of another exercise to let the community relations emerge, with the objective of helping the persons to grow in its awareness. Here also, the experience was accomplished during several residential week-ends, held with the communities of the sisters who had called and requested the opinion of psychologists , but also as seminary practical experiences for the 2002-2003 Academic Year, both in the Salesian Pontifical Athenaeum, (in the faculty of psychology), and in the Claretianum" , (the University Institute of formation for religious), that works in the area of the Lateran Pontifical University.

The practice of the "murderer phrases" involved about 200 religious of different communities in central-north Italy and, always during the past Academic Year, an equal number of religious and students.

The participants were given a sheet with a list of "murderer phrases", and were asked to read them attentively, to evidence the phrases mostly repeated in their communities and, eventually, to add more phrases not present in the list, but present in the community report.

The emerged dynamics and their richness lived by the group were symptomatic, as activated in the context of the religious groups through the technique of the "murderer phrases". Its is, anyhow, to be noted that the analysis of the choices operated by the participants in the different meetings, centred particularly on a group of expressions, considered to be more common within the communities,  as phrases which are repeated more frequently by those who are, or feel to be, in a situation of "power".

The phrase "all chatters" has been found at the first place in the special classification, and it is a phrase that is often repeated at the end of a meeting; soon followed by "A heap of useless meetings", as criticism of the older members of the community towards the request of more group dynamics, involvement, dialogue,  lived experiences, considered as wastage of time, compared to the desire of not questioning oneself about the sense of community life. Another frequently utilised phrase is: "It is better to wait for a more favourable time",  to postpone a decision that could affect consolidated habits of life and of work, which they are not ready to change. Or, even here, the expression "a wastage of time, as usual" acts as a rival project.

The attitude of self-sufficiency and of mistrust of the other is synthesised in "do it yourself if you are able to", in which any observation that might minimally sound as criticism or discussion about one's own work, is felt as an invading interference.

These are, therefore, the most frequent sentences, which circulate transversally in every type of community made of young or less young religious. There is, then, a group of other phrases whose characteristic is to remain completely  "shut up" to the newness. It is started with a sharp: "it has always been done like this", to go on with a sounded: "it is we who really worked!". One of the most used phrases is "I mind my own business", a phrase repeated by those who, on the contrary, know the business of others more than anybody else. Obviously, the analysis of the contents and understood messages highlighted the latent conflicts of community life, the difficulty to communicate, the scarce capacity of the person who has the responsibility of the community,  and of exercising a truly efficacious leadership, with the ability of bringing to the surface the latent problems, thus consenting to verbalise and to analyse them.

It is still to be noted that, during the week-end cycles, but also during short seminars, there was never  any attitude of refusal. On the contrary, the exercise was lived as a liberating ritual and a game at the same time. In fact it allowed the participants to share and to "untie" problematic knots which, if lived in solitude may endanger self-esteem and the motivation to go on with the community experience. The sharing of experiences and connected emotions led to liberating dynamics and to a collective awareness.

A leadership that may help a well-being

During the Academic Years 2002-2004 and 2003-2004, a specific course of formation flowed out of these experiences which, starting from the next Academic Year, will become a Master in interpersonal and communitarian dynamics, within the formation Institute "Claretianum", in Rome. The felt and shared exigency, in fact, is that of utilising the specific contribution of psychology (in this case the resources and the approach of the humanistic psychology), in the formation of persons whose role is that of leading the community. The formation of the leader is a priority, particularly where people work through groups. In our case capable leaders are required to reach the objective of evangelisation. The importance of a patient and authoritative leadership arises from the ever more actual  "crisis of authority", which invests not only the world of convents and of groups, but also that of  general group systems (family, school, areas of work). In a time of chronic crisis of all different forms of authority, the re-discovery of a meaningful leadership, in the various areas in which the Church expresses herself, becomes a very actual challenge for an evangelisation that allows to pass from words to deeds. This is also why reflections and meetings go on being multiplied: they propose an extremely actual theme.

In one of such meetings, held in Palermo, March 2003, a new way of formulating the theme on formation was examined, facing it from the viewpoint of the parish responsibility towards its own priests. On that occasion, Prof. Amedeo Cencini, Canossian, psychologist and formation master, explained with extreme clarity  how "some not too much exalting methods" of the priestly formative journey, are probably due to the a lack of involvement on behalf of the whole community of believers, or to its mere external  and insignificant involvement".

The theme of the community, therefore, comes ever more frequently to the centre of attention.

If the community can now be described with the metaphor of a "boat", which is probably the most adequate even because of the evangelical meanings the image evokes, we must say that, to allow the boat to sail, and not only to float, several  pre-requisites are required. They are the same as the requisites which allow the community not only to float, but also to reach the objectives for which it exists. We need, therefore, an attentive management of the human resources , but even before this we need to recognise and to highlight these resources , to manage them in the best way, to go on towards a common goal.

Why does a "boat" advance and overcome, unharmed, a difficulties and even sea-storms? First of all because it is well-built and, therefore, can stand the sea, then because it has a good steersman to guide it; because there is a good climate of collaboration between the one who takes the helm and those who row, moving all together towards the same direction, in a climate of respect towards one another and the whole group,  otherwise it would be difficult to move forward. The crew is supposed to be competent and, in the difficulties, must be able to recognise the resources of the single components. But in the difficulties the time of taking decisions arrives. It is here that the effective capacity of the leadership is revealed. This is how we are guided by the exercise of metaphor or "murderer phrases" to the discovery of the many meanings that each member attributes to the living together. The sufferings themselves caused by living together and the wounds inflicted because of the human limits, can promote the growth of the community, if well managed and steered towards the objective to be achieved. Who has the duty to foresee, to set up a strategy of growth? Each one has a role: the superior belonging to the community itself, in a balance between the organising ability and the areas of her competence. Does this mean that there will never be conflicts? Not at all. It means, however, that the conflicts will be faced and managed in a correct way, as we propose to describe in the following article, by describing a series of concrete "styles" of approach to leadership.

* A journalist and expert in the problems of consecrated life.