Was “going back to their roots” supposed to mean that years (in some cases centuries) of organic development within those communities was to be all of a sudden discarded and community life and mission upended? It seems to me the answer is no.
The problem that you may be missing here, through no fault of your own, because you may not be aware of it, is that many founders explicitly mapped out how their communities were to develop and those maps were sealed with Papal Bulls that were never retracted. Therefore, the religious were found, under obedience, to follow those maps. Any development outside of those maps may have been organic, but was out of compliance.
The Church through Vatican II, through the direct letters of Paul VI to many religious communities and his personal intervention in rewriting their constitutions (he actually rewrote some constitutions), the intervention of Pope John Paul II in some general chapters of some orders, his demand to see every constitution and approve it himself, letters and documents that he sent to religious superiors and talks that he gave to councils of major superiors, and finally Vita Consacrata mandated that whatever was not in the map created by the founder and approved by the Church had to go.
I can speak best about my own Franciscan tradition and somewhat about the Carmelites, because I’m a Franciscan and I majored in Carmelite-Franciscan Theology. Clericalization was a deviation from the rule. Ordaining men and placing them in parishes without a community life, living as if they were diocesan priests was contrary to the rule. Prohibiting the non-ordained friars from governing was contrary to the rule. Limiting pastoral ministry to the ordained was contrary to the rule. The possession of property by some friars (cars, bank accounts, electronic devices) was contrary to the rule. Excusing oneself from community functions (prayer, recreation, meals, meetings, retreats, silence, study periods) because you had to attend a parish function or celebrate a parish mass, is contrary to the rule. Running ministries (parishes, schools and other institutions) for the benefit of the middle class and higher, is contrary to the rule. Creating a two class system of friars is contrary to the rule.
The rule allows for constitutions to be written that will fill-in the blanks. They should address what is not addressed in the rule. The constitutions cannot overrule the rule. Commitments to the bishops and the laity have to be within what is allowed by the rule and constitutions. Any exceptions must be approved by the Holy See. Exceptions were made all over the place, some were approved and others were not. The issue with exceptions is that exceptions are usually made for specific circumstances, not for the entire religious community or in perpetuity. Then they are no longer exceptions. They become the norm.
Experiences such as what had happened to the Franciscan family also happened to other religious families. To answer your question, yes returning to the vision and vision of the founder means that some things have to be dismantled. Does everything have to be dismantled? No, only that which is in conflict with the mandates of the founder.
The major orders of men are much more fortunate than the congregations. The major orders of men have rules that they follow. To go back, one simply has to look at the original rule and the founder’s comments on the rule. Then one has to look at the way the rule is lived and tweak here and there. Congregations do not have rules. That’s why they are congregations and not religious orders. They have statutes that they can change democratically. It was really up to the Holy See to approve the changes in those statutes. The requirement was that those statutes be changed to conform to the original statutes given by the founder. For example, if the founder did not have a habit in the original statute, the current statutes were not required to include one, even though the community may have adopted one at some point. If the original statutes said that the religious were to teach the poor and now they found themselves teaching the middle class, they were bound to teach the poor. However, here is the difficulty. Because these are statutes, not a rule, the religious community can democratically include the education of the middle class in their revised statutes, provided that it does not ignore the education of the poor. For some communities this was impossible. They did not have the means to stretch themselves across to socio-economic groups.
Like these examples, there are many other examples of rules and statutes that had to be addressed. Some things had to be dismantled and other things simply had to be modified. It all depended on the intent of the founder and the approval of the Holy See.
It is important to see that these changes that came after Vatican II were a response to deviations that took place long before Vatican II and needed to be corrected. A simple statement from one of our Ministers General is helpful in understanding how many religious communities addressed the situation that they had created for themselves prior to Vatican II. “We can no longer call ourselves Franciscan if all we do is produce parish priests. The mass production of parish priests is the proper role and duty of clerical institutes and diocesan seminaries. The proper role of the Franciscan is to live as brothers among the poor and the sinful, be it in a parish or under a bridge. We have deviated and must return to the vision of our Holy Father Francis.”
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
