Chaplaincy Services

National Chaplains' Conference,
June 2001

Director General's Speech

Introduction

We have come to the end of a wonderful week. I have been asked to attempt to set a vision. Much of that will come from reflection on our time together here at Laval University. Here is my contribution.

Opening

Artisans of Justice
We serve in a justice system - not a health care system, though many of those with whom we minister have a variety of health issues. Those who follow the spiritual path constantly face the challenge to be crafters of justice.

Conflict and issues of justice are at the core of the human and the spiritual journey.

• In the first Genesis account of creation, chaos is shaped into order - no easy task. There is another account in Genesis in which creation is the outcome of a struggle between good and evil.
• There is the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the fall from paradise, the conflict between the brothers Cain and Abel, the conflicts relating to the settlement in Cana, the escape to Egypt and the escape from Egypt, the deportation to Babylon.
• There are the trial and execution of Jesus, conflict in the early Church and conflict in the history of all our traditions.

In our Canadian society we deal with conflict non-stop. We are trying to recover from the enormous abuse of our aboriginal people; we are always balancing the linguistic and cultural uniqueness of the French and English communities, and increasingly of the large communities of other ethnic origins.

Questions of conflict and its just resolution form the core of sacred history.

It is never easy to look at this darker side of human life. What is even darker, is that thinkers like René Girard convincingly demonstrate that the resolution of conflict by a first murder or by sacrifice of a chosen victim is not just part of human community; it is the foundation of human community. Using biblical language, Girard describes this as one of those things kept hidden since the foundation of the world. (Mt. 13:35) It is almost too dark to expose with light. Revealing this dependence on violence can threaten the foundations of community life, which is very threatening indeed. Jesus was put to death because his way of life threatened the tacit complicity that allowed this foundation of society to go unchallenged. However, only as a result of such challenges can the foundation be reconstructed.

Vision

Artisans of Justice
However, without darkness we cannot see the light. In my tradition evening prayer features songs of light. To be an artisan of justice is to find creative ways to address this violence. It is to bring light to our life together. When light comes to our darkness, the most appropriate response is unbelievable awe, to sing together. That is why I feel so privileged to call you brothers and sisters: In this common task of bringing light into the darkness, we become like family, sharing and staying together in our common mission, in our common evening prayer of the celebration of light.

Where is the source of inspiration for the artisan? It must be in the spiritual tradition in which we know the Creator, in which divine Providence is encountered and celebrated. I can only speak of the tradition in which I have been raised, in which the will of God is revealed in the little one.

One of my favourite speeches at the IPCA conference last summer was by Rt. Rev. Peter Sarpong, Bishop of Kumasi. Perhaps I enjoyed it because he had been robbed in the airport. I wasn't glad that he was robbed, but to be fresh from an experience like that, and then to smile and to talk of justice the way he did… well, it had an authentic ring to it. Another lovely contradiction about the man is that he was no "little" person - he was huge, enormous and very clearly a prelate. I was surprised to learn from him, of all people, about the importance of the small person in revealing divine creative justice.

He reminded us of how little David slew the Philistine giant, Goliath. He reminded us of how Gideon had to reduce the size of his army until it was so small Gideon could never say he won a battle on his own merits.

Jesus told many parables about the important role of the lost in revealing the nature of God's covenant:

• the joy over finding the lost sheep or the lost coin -even though the majority were not lost, they did not provide much joy;
• the joy of the father over the return of the son who had run away and wasted his inheritance;
• the banquet full of street people when the guests were too busy to come to the wedding reception;
• the importance of caring for the sick, visiting the prisoner, clothing the naked, and so on.

So, in this tradition justice is revealed by how we address the needs of the little ones: the needy, the sick, and the poor. They are at the centre of the creative work of the artisan of justice. Sometimes we get annoyed at those who take up so much of our time with a minority opinion. Be careful! We may lose our ability to be artisans.

Several years ago, I sat in a chesterfield in Neil MacLean's office in the Mustard Seed Street Church in Edmonton. Let me set the scene. The building began life as a churchl later it was sold and became a nightclub. Then it was purchased to be developed for its present use - a church of an unusual kind. It is full of street people and people providing services to those in need - food banks, clothing stores, cafeteria, street-style worship. It is not hard to imagine it reverting to a nightclub; the decore is closer to that style than to an Anglican cathedral.

I first met the chairman of the Mustard Seed Board, Mr. Thomas Millman, in Neil's office, where I sat down on the chesterfield for guests… "down" being the operative word. There was no spring left in the springs; I think my derrière was a foot or so below floor level. It was a very 'basic' office. I later attended a meeting at Mr. Millman's law office, situated nearby in the Penthouse of Edmonton's finest skyscraper. It filled two floors, had oak panelling, the whole works. Looking out his window towards the Mustard Seed he asked, "Do you know why I serve there? Because it will save the suburbs." He knew that the work with the poor and the needy was the guarantee of justice for the whole community.

Community

Being an artisan of justice involves us in building safer communities. Prisons have often seen their role as removing persons from community and thus fulfilling one of the basic goals of punishment: neutralisation. However, prisons in the larger perspective are one of the programs society gives itself to address issues of criminal conflict, and thus to prepare all people to live in a law-abiding manner. Some time ago the title of case management officer was changed to parole office in order to reflect a change of their role - from managing cases of those in prison to preparing prisoners for release into the community.

Prison Chaplains and Community

The community dimension of prison chaplaincy is crucial.

• Chaplains working in CSC institutions represent the biggest investment in the chaplaincy budget line. But while may be in the institution, you are not of the institution. This is a familiar phrase in other faith settings, too: 'in' but not 'of'. You represent your faith group, and in that sense all faith groups, in your ministry. You are a member of a community, able to welcome people into that community.
• You represent the importance of community within a prison in your counselling, in your preaching. Everything a prison chaplain does should include this perspective. Your intervention should be one of normalisation in a world that is so abnormal.

Volunteers

You acknowledge the importance of the community through the integration of volunteers in the programs you offer. 2001 is the international year of the volunteer. While the English word "volunteer" recalls the free choice involved in this work, the French word "bénévole" captures the sense of goodness as well. Volunteers are a key component of our work. Many prison chapel volunteers act from a sense of call, because they feel their God calls them to it. God's wish is their command; their response is unavoidable. We hope to introduce training for volunteer co-ordinators of volunteers this year - training that should give some structure for chaplains to offer leadership in this important area.

Community Chaplaincy

The development of correctional chaplaincy in the community for ex-offenders is historic and groundbreaking. Chaplaincy managers have now made 3 trips to England to help prison chaplains there get a community ministry going (John Tonks twice, Rod Carter once). The role of the new Special Advisor on Community Ministry, filled by the Rev. David Molzahn, will have a long-lasting effect on our work. Working in close partnership with those providing direct service, he is developing a formidable set of resources. At this week's conference he released a comprehensive report on Circles of Support and Accountability. A training manual for those interested in working with circles is in the final editing and translation phases. He facilitated the production of an exceptional training video, and is presently doing a comprehensive review of community ministry. Not bad for 8 months on the job!

Community chaplaincy is not just directed toward ex-offenders; it is also ministry offered to the community. It enables the community to assume its peace-making function, to be a more welcoming, safe and inclusive place. Edith Shore of the Interfaith Committee, who has had a long commitment to justice issues, has recently published a lovely work published, entitled Lying with Lions, to enable faith communities to work with women when released from prison. As the Commissioner said in her opening remarks, an investment by the government in work in the community chaplaincy results in a 10-fold increase in resources available to the community.

Circles of Support and Accountability

Circles of Support and Accountability are not the same as community chaplaincy, but they overlap its mandate and work in many ways. Circles are a fairly tightly defined program to address primarily the reintegration issues of high risk, high need offenders who are released at expiry of their warrant. They manifest in a particular way the principles of justice I discussed a moment ago. As the circle journeys, a new community is created around the core member (the ex-offender), sometimes becoming the first significant experience of community in that person's life. The work of Circles of Support and Accountability has also received international attention and recognition: Hugh Kirkegaard, Evan Heise, Andrew McWhinnie, Robin Wilson have been outside the country to speak about the results and application of Circles of Support and Accountability. David Molzahn left this conference early to present on circles at the Congress of the CCJA in Halifax.

Families

You attest to the importance of community in the support you offer the families of prisoners: by assisting them in the traditional times of birth, marriage and death, as well as by assisting couples to maintain their relationship, and by helping prisoners retain their dignity as parents and as children. Families are the part of society most involved in all reintegration plans, and they are the place where we all learn the nature of a social covenant, a learning that is the basis of life in society.

If you gather correctional workers to discuss the experience and role of "family" in the criminal justice process, all kinds of energy is mobilised. Our traditional western approach is to isolate, analyse, and intervene. Increasingly we are aware - in so many fields - of the importance of a systems approach. The basic system in the life of any human being, be it good or bad, is the family. The description of work for institutional chaplains explicitly includes families, and many of the community chaplaincies intentionally work with families.

We have had an ongoing association with the Canadian Families and Corrections Network (CFCN). Its new program co-ordinator is a former prison chaplain, Lloyd Withers. CFCN has leaped ahead under his leadership, producing a training program for correctional workers on the needs of family receiving a contribution, which should enable them to live on more than bread and water for the next year. Thanks to the incisive work and sensitive analysis of Christina Guest, CFCN is being considered for further grant within a government-wide program to facilitate the development of policy advice by the voluntary sector.

Victims

God is always on the side of the victim - and we should not forget that the prisoner is often victim as well.

Your ministry includes addressing the pain experienced by the victims within your passion. Crime is so much more than breaking the law. There is always, in every case, a victim. When I began prison ministry, I was advised to not to think too much about the victims because it would impact on the pastoral relationships with the offender. How times have changed! I learned from personal experience that the advice I received needed improvement. The victims movement and Restorative Justice thinking have made it unavoidable.

This year victims will play a larger role at NPB hearings. Training is being given in every region about interacting with victims and meeting their needs. Many chaplains should to take this training, and then reflect with their colleagues about the pastoral concerns that are important.

Aboriginals

The aboriginal people refer to the arrival of the Europeans as "the point of contact", an event that was historic and mostly destructive. Recent court cases, following upon abuses committed during the residential schools era, have also constituted "contact" for Europeans with Aboriginals. In the eyes of many, this contact will also be historic and destructive. I happen to think it has the potential to be historic and creative because I deeply believe that the truth will set us free, and financial wealth will not. Our prisons are full of Aboriginals and their spiritual needs are addressed by Elders. However, because many, perhaps most, first nations people affirm membership in the Church, addressing their needs creatively has everything to do with prison ministry. We in Chaplaincy must ask how we can be part of the healing work of Canada's faith communities. It means opening our hearts to pain - because we are both in touch with the victims of the bad relationships and representatives of some of the communities responsible for them. It means building partnerships. It requires a high level of creative work and an openness to lament.

Partnerships/Citizen Engagement/Community

All this discussion about prison ministry involves us in partnerships. When we work well we are part of a large and privileged web of relationships, a web with links far and wide and deep. Sometimes at NHQ, we portray these relationships in a bubble chart, depicting which strings link us to which balloons. It is a good exercise - although there are obvious limits in representing pastoral relationships as bubbles. But our networks more than establishing links; they involve engaging our partnerships in this important work.

Let me identify five of the important bubbles for me:

1. The Interfaith Committee on Chaplaincy (IFC) represents the faith communities to the government. Its members have analysed the IFC's relationships with CSC, chaplains, and faith communities and discovered them to be complicated and diverse. In the words of the MoU they are collaborators in selection and evaluation, supportive to chaplains, and facilitative in liaison with faith groups. We need them!
2. International Prison Chaplains Association (IPCA): Canada has been deeply involved in two worldwide conferences of the International Prison Chaplains' Association. Pierre Allard, formerly Director General of Chaplaincy and now Assistant Commissioner - Community Engagement, is the president of the IPCA and his wife, Judith, is its executive director. Last summer the Canadian contingent amounted to 33 chaplains. Their participation was partially subsidised by CSC, as well as by a myriad of other partners.
3. International Commission of Catholic Prison Pastoral Care (ICCPPC): Bernard Pinet, omi, a former president of the IFC and co-ordinator of the Catholic delegates to the IFC, is the vice-president of this association. Several of our Catholic chaplains were able to attend a meeting in Mexico over a year ago.
4. International: John Tonks, Rod Carter, and Hugh Kirkegaard have gone overseas recently to speak of some of the correctional ministry being accomplished in Canadian communities. Dwight Cuff, David Molzahn and I will be in the U.S. to tell Chaplaincy's story to the International Community Corrections Association (ICCA) this September.
5. Universities: Because finding peace and meaning in the midst of conflict is so much at the centre of religious life, there is increasing interest in correctional ministry on the part of many universities and faculties of theology. In particular the restorative justice (RJ) analysis is gaining ground around the world. Here are some prominent Canadian examples:
   • Our conference this week has been co-hosted by the Faculty of Theology of Laval University
   • Rod Carter has been seconded to Queen's Theological School for 3 years to develop a program in RJ.
   • Queen's and Simon Fraser Universities are interested in establishing chairs of RJ.
   • Dwight Cuff has offered courses at the Salvation Army College in Winnipeg.
   • John Tonks has done the same at St. Stephen's University in New Brunswick aas has Charlie Taylor at Acadia University.
   • Pierre Allard, Hugh Kirkegaard and Rick Burk at the Alliance Seminary in Regina…and on it goes.

Religious Accommodation

We have been increasingly challenged to face the implications of our legal responsibility to provide an interfaith chaplaincy within CSC institutions. CSC has recently lost several rulings on religious discrimination brought before the CHRC. This reality brings Chaplaincy into dialogue with a whole range of people in CSC: food services, finances, human rights, policy, technical and legal services, the women offenders unit, aboriginal issues, health services, and security - to name the principle ones. In addition we will have to address these issues in close consultation with a range of different faith groups.

Chaplains can play an important role at the institutional level by bringing people together to solve what can be solved closest to the action. In general we should accommodate religious needs unless there is policy against it. Not the inverse.

Pastoral Care

There is a wonderful project evolving in the Atlantic Region, source of so much creativity in prison ministry. St. Luke's Renewal Centre is a retreat house within Springhill Institution, built largely with dollars from the voluntary sector. It will provide a variety of opportunities for renewal outside the prison environment but within the walls. Sr. Agnes Leger, a former chaplain, is St. Lukes program director.

Prison demography is not escaping trends in the community - there is more grey hair. (I actually have less grey hair - it's falling out!) The ageing of the prison population raises a wide variety of health care issues of a wide variety. Two in particular have drawn our attention and, I suspect, yours as well.

Palliative Care: Christina Guest, Daryl Bell, and Gerry Ayotte have been representing chaplaincy in the development of guidelines for the provision of palliative care in the prisons. There will be an increasing need for holistic pastoral care in a palliative setting.

Hep C, HIV/AIDS: Approaching these illnesses from a harm reduction analysis, rather than from a moral analysis of the behaviour that led to them, results in entirely different attitudes. In many ways the work of prison chaplaincy is like that of St. Damian who went to live among the lepers.

Research

I am excited about our upcoming work in partnership with Performance Assurance. It is important that we tell our story and communicate not just what we do, but also the impacts of what we do. In a recent review of a chaplain's ministry, the warden insisted on being the institutional representative. He said that though he was not a particularly religious man, when things were not going well, the chaplain always dropped by his office to ask how things were going. He deeply appreciated it. How many thousands of times are such small gestures repeated? How do we measure their impact in saved work hours, in healthy staff relationships, etc.? Welcome to Dwight Cuff!

When we prepare the annual report, it is our attempt to tell our story, or part of it. It is important. It is crucial. Let's do it well.

You and Me

One of the big changes in the MoU this year was the dropping of the clause stating that contracts would not normally be renewed once the chaplain reaches the age of 65. This was dropped because of the government's own human rights legislation and not at the request of the IFC. The need to keep our presence renewed is ever present. We will continue to make decisions about contract renewal on the basis of the quality of service delivered. We will likely to the reviews more often than the present five-year cycle once the chaplain reaches age 65. Those of us with some memory of the crisis at the end of the 1970's (several years before I entered CSC) know that many of the chaplains were institutionalised, static and ineffective. I am happy with our new policy, and glad that once again the law enables us to be more consistent with our values.

On Monday evening I mentioned the names of some chaplains who were ending their work in correctional ministry. I would like to continue to express appreciation for two other fine persons who will withdraw from institutional ministry in the near future: Sr. Carol Peloquin at Stony Mountain and Sr. Thelma Pitre at Port Cartier.

hank you for your work. In chaplaincy quality of presence is the most important part of our work. It is in our way of being, more than any specific program, that the Spirit of God may be manifested to a system that can be so busy, under so much pressure and functioning in a context of fear. Take care of yourself. Seek out accompaniment. Take time to rest in God. Have friends and outside interests. Get physical exercise. Pay attention to your devotional life. Get intellectual stimulation.

In the near future, I will turn 64. Retirement is part of my vocabulary. I cannot give you a date at this time. However, when I make my decision, I will do so with appropriate notice so that there will be sufficient time for the transition to take place smoothly.

May God bless you.