Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan told nuns attending a workshop on renewal of community life that a good community must have unity and diversity.

“Both characteristics must exist together, and both must be held in balance,” the archbishop said in his address at St. Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Ind., last week.

“That balance is a delicate one,” he said, “and to maintain it is one of the great problems for all communities and, particularly, for those who lead such communities. Circumstances and needs will often cause both the members and those who exercise authority to emphasize one characteristic or the other. When this happens the delicate balanced is threatened, and even put in danger of being destroyed, with great harm to the community both in its existence and in its activities.”

Archbishop Donnellan said the Church, as the community of the whole People of God, must manifest unity and diversity. “The Church manifests to the world a most remarkable unity... at the same time, it also manifests a most remarkable diversity. It embraces different peoples of the earth as was shown to the apostles at Pentecost. That diversity, in fact, is the aspect of the Church’s life to which special attention has been given in our time.”

The archbishop said the whole concept of community in its inner nature and as the source of the work of the apostolate is being closely examined.

“Through experimentation, the Church has given to religious the responsibility of working toward renewal in a mature manner. Some are frightened by this responsibility and are unwilling to follow the mandate of the Council for renewal and adaptation.”

“Others take the responsibility so lightly that they seem to think the lessons of Christian tradition have no use for the present day. For the most part, however, religious communities are striving to renew in the proper spirit.”

The archbishop said unity was greatly emphasized in the past -- externals, in uniform spiritual training. “Not rarely they were urged to seek a unity of thought and action which came close at times to asking them to abandon all thought and judgment and decision of their own.” “If this training was not consciously designed to eliminate diversity, it nonetheless, had that effect. It was not, of course, all bad, for it was the exaggerated development of a very good and a very necessary thing, but by not making a proper place for diversity it carried the seeds of trouble.”

“Now we are redressing the balance. And, as was to be expected, new conditions and circumstances in human life have had a great deal to do with effecting the change.”

“The place and role of the individual is being brought into prominence in every area of human life, and the same thing is taking place in religious life.”

“Now we are stressing the differences and distinguishing marks which set off one religious from another and we are creating a new type of religious life that gives greater place to the individual.”

Archbishop Donnellan said the movement toward a wider diversity has placed a great strain on unity in religious life. “In fact, questions are being raised about the continuance of the communities we have known and the common life they have lived. Inevitably, the stress on diversity is threatening to set up a new form of imbalance.

“As unity was too heavily stressed in the past, diversity can be overstressed in the present.”

The archbishop said some of the elements which were part of the unity of the past are gone forever. “They were probably necessary in their own time. Some religious look back wistfully, even sadly, at their disappearance from religious life.”

“We can, however, while seeing them disappear, be grateful both for their existence and their disappearance. And we can hope that these religious who regret their departure will see a better unity succeeding the unity they loved -- a unity that is dictated by the circumstances of our time and which will be just as fruitful in its own way as was the unity to which they were accustomed.”

“Some fear the diversity that has come into religious life. But we can be grateful for it and welcome it warmly when it is a diversity in unity. Unity is never so striking and never so human as when it gathers together people who are so different in many ways and keeps them living and working together for the same goals despite their differences.”