This and my previous message is important because - If I were a politician, it certainly would confuse me. Catholic or non-Catholic alike.
No religious community would ever mention the CCC, the pope or any Church document on their website, unless it is part of the vision of the founder. By Church law, religious communities must project themselves according to the vision of their founders, not the vision of the popes. That’s not allowed in the Catholic Churches or the Orthodox Churches. The founder is always the highest authority, unless the founder writes the pope or some other authoritative source into the statutes.
For example, in the Rule of St. Francis the wording is rather interesting. The Brothers (we) are bound to obey Francis, even beyond his death, under pain of hell. Francis and his successors are bound to obey the pope. Francis did not bind the brothers to obey the pope. He bound them to himself. He bound himself to the pope. But the Franciscan Rule is the only rule in the Catholic Church that mentions obedience to the pope.
St. Ignatius mentioned obedience to the pope in his statutes for the Jesuits; but he was very careful to explain how this worked. The Society was to go where ever the pope sent them. That was the limit of the obedience. Other than that, they were to vote on policies and procedures for themselves and they are bound to those policies. Ignatius did not bind them to obey him either. He founded the Jesuits using a military format. The existing commander is the highest ranking authority. In the case of the Jesuits, that would be the Superior General, not Ignatius or the pope.
Under canon law, superiors general must obey the pope, whether it’s mentioned in the statutes or not.
As far as the CCC is concerned, you do not include that in your description of your community, because that’s a document for the entire Church. It is for religious, clergy and laity alike. Therefore, it does not describe who you are or what your religious institute is about. Your description is always about the charism and mission of your religious institute.
This is one of the differences between orders and congregations. Congregations are free to change their vison and mission. As long as the pope approves the vision and mission, they are good to go. As long as what the Sisters of Mercy have on their site is approved by Rome, they are good to go.
Religious orders cannot change our vision and mission. We have rules. Congregations do not. The Rule describes our vision and mission. The only thing that we can do is to add whatever is not mentioned in the rule. As time passes and new situations arise, there are issues and circumstances that the founder never imagined and did not write into the rule. The community is then free to write policies and procedures for those new events.
For example, we as Franciscans cannot state that we have a bond of fidelity to the CCC, even though we do. But we cannot say that this is one of our trademarks, because it did not exist when the rule was written; therefore, it is not mentioned in the rule. We can only describe ourselves as the rule describes us. In our case the rule describes us as men bound to obedience, to a live of prayer and to brotherhood. The rule also says that we give up ownership of all material things in order to be free to obey and to become totally dependent on Providence. The rule also says that we are a community of brothers to each other and that our primary ministry is to each other. All other ministries that we perform are through the graces that we receive from living as brothers and they are ministries approved by our brothers. Even those brothers who are ordained, remain brothers, because it is the wish of the brothers. Only those whom the brothers say have a vocation to the priesthood can be ordained. All the rest are not ordained. Therefore, if you go to any site of any Franciscan order, you will find that they mention priests in passing. But they do not focus on the priesthood or present the order as an order of priests. We cannot do that, no matter how important the priesthood is to the Church. We cannot do that because it was not allowed by Francis. We must speak about prayer, penance, poverty, brotherhood and service. We include the priesthood as one of many ministries, not as the most outstanding ministry. Francis would not allow this to be done. We are bound to obey him.
You see the way this works? A community can only say about itself whatever the founder allowed it to say. Those communities that have a rule written by the founder are very limited to that. Those that do not have a rule can be more flexible, because they can change their vision and charism according to the mind of the founder. In other words, they can change, because their founder allowed for it. The Church’s policy is never overrule a founder of a religious community. The Church has always maintained a hands-off policy regarding religious communities, be they orders, congregations, societies, secular institutes or secular orders.
This is not the same for secular priests (ie: diocesan, Marynoll, Vincentians, Missionhurst, FSSP, SSPX, Opus Dei, Secular Franciscan priests, and other groups of secular priests). The Church has total control over them.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
