Structures at the service of life
by :
Proemium : This paper was written at the request of the Regional
Conference of Central and Northern Europe (CNE) at its meeting in 2006, in
view of the meeting to be held in 2007. The
request was formulated in the following votes:
We feel the need to further clarify the pastoral role
of the mixed commissions and its mode of exercise (vote 1.1). We wish to study
this question more in depth at the next regional conference, within the general
context of the structures of the Order. (vote 1.2)
We wish to continue our reflection on the structures
of the Order and more particularly the recent ones (Commissions of Aid for the Future,
mixed commissions,
regions) and on their relation with the traditional structures (filiation,
Father Immediate, Abbot General). (vote 4)
I was designated to write the working documents requested by votes 1.2
and 4. I have found fit to deal with both topics together in a single paper.
-- AV
* * *
Our post-Vatican II Constitutions, which reversed the
pyramidal vision characteristic of the ecclesiology of the previous centuries,
which was quite obvious in our 1924-1926 Constitutions, take as their starting
point, rather than administrative structures, the call of God and the response
of the monk or nun through his or her monastic consecration. Indeed, the local
community is at the heart of the Order, the monk or nun is at the heart of
the local community and Christ is at the heart of the monk or nun. Nothing
in our life has meaning unless it fosters an intense communion between the
monk or nun and God, and, in God and through God, with his or her brothers
or sisters, with the Church and with society, as well as with the cosmos.
This call to a life of
communion with God is inscribed in human nature. It is not proper to Christians
and even less so to monks or nuns. A Christian is called to it and missioned
to that effect through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Once he or she has received
that revelation, he or she cannot return to God except by following Christ.
In so doing, a monk adopts as a permanent state of life some of the
radical calls made by Jesus to some persons in the Gospel: the call to celibacy,
to poverty and to radical renunciation of one’s self-will. Most important
of all, the monk adopts a rule of life which becomes a discipline for him
and whose use by many others before him has shown its ability to foster the
gift of self. Finally, if he is a cenobite like the disciples of Benedict,
he lives this calling in a community of brethren who have made their commitment
under a rule and an abbot.
For the Cistercian today,
the spiritual vision which guides him in his life of communion with God and
his following of Christ is found in the Gospel. He finds in all of the great
monastic tradition, but more especially in the Rule of saint Benedict, a practical
interpretation of that Gospel. The particular vision according to which he
lives the Gospel is expressed in the Cistercian tradition as it was succinctly
expressed in our time by the Declaration
on Cistercian life adopted by the General Chapter of 1969[1] and later in the Constitutions of the Order and all
the Statutes subsequently passed by the Order.
In this paper, we will
first review the various structures of the Order and provide a brief description
of their reason for being and role; then, in the second part, we will analyse
their interaction. A third part, in
the form of an Excursus, will study the pastoral role
of the Mixed commissions of the MGM (Mixed General Meeting).
I – THE VARIOUS STRUCTURES OF THE ORDER
A)The
autonomy of the local community
Cistercian monks are essentially
cenobites. The most fundamental structure
of Cistercian life is therefore the « local community »[2]. The term « local community »
must be understood to mean not only the group of brother or sisters who concretely
make up each local community, but the rule of life around which that community
is gathered together and which it has given itself or has accepted, as well
as the internal structures which govern the life of that community. This is
what our Constitutions often refer to as the Cistercian conversatio.
Cistercian monks live
according to the Rule of saint Benedict. It
is obvious that that Rule was written for an autonomous community. Although
Benedict of Nursia may have founded a certain number of communities, if we
are to believe the second book of the treatise of biblical exegesis by saint
Gregory, known as his « Dialogues », and even though Benedict no
doubt foresaw that his Rule might be used by other communities, he did not
provide for any relation of subordination or other relation between those
communities. The autonomy of each local
community is an essential value for him, one that is self-evident. As a part
of the broader community of the Church, that community was obviously subject,
in Benedict’s time, to the diocesan bishop, although the latter’s intervention
does not appear relevant, except in order to confer orders on monks or supply
the priests needed for the liturgical life of the community. The bishop may still intervene, together with
the faithful in the area, if a community should choose an unworthy abbot with
the aim of leading a reprehensible community life.
In the course of Benedictine
history, the great Cluniac reform, splendid as it was, soon found itself in
an impasse precisely because, for the purpose of endowing many communities
with the civil and ecclesiastical freedom (libertas) won by
The autonomy of the local
community was one of the most essential elements of the Cistercian reform,
and the rapid and incredible rise of the Order was very largely due to the
most delicate balance which the Cistercians were the first to discover between
the autonomy of the local community and a large body of monasteries united
among themselves by the bonds of charity and conceived of as a community of
communities[3].
The centuries of decadence were, generally speaking, those during which that
autonomy was no longer respected, just as, conversely, the great reforms always
started from a concrete community which
first reformed itself in a fully autonomous manner before bringing other communities
to commune freely in its spiritual experience. One of the finest examples
is that of La Trappe and its reform under Armand-Jean Le Bouthillier de Rancé.
In our present Constitutions,
the local community has all it needs in order to manage itself without need
for any outside intervention in its internal life. Each monk or nun finds
his or her spiritual orientation in the Word of God, which is the subject
of daily meditation, in the Rule of saint Benedict, as well as in the life
and teaching of the Church. All this is recalled and commented upon by the
abbot in his chapters. Add to this the common regulations which that community
has given itself, just like all the other Communities of the Order (we will
see further on how), and it has all it needs in order to function.
The abbot’s primary mission
is to see to the quality of the spiritual life of each of his brethren and
of the community they form. He does
so, according to the manner of the prophets of the Old Testament, by reminding
them that the search for God comes first, as well as by recalling to them
the means they have freely chosen to that end and, if need be, by reminding
them of their faults and by resorting to punishment in some cases. Whenever
the community finds itself without a superior, either due to the latter’s
death or resignation or simply because he has come to the end of his term
of office if he was elected for a definite time, the community, then acting
as a college and with full autonomy, chooses an abbot for itself. Because the community belongs to an Order, this
exercise of autonomy will be presided by a member of the Order (normally the
Father Immediate), which does not by any means belong to the electoral college,
and who has no right whatsoever to influence the latter’s decision, but who
guarantees that the procedure followed was proper. The election will be confirmed,
in the name of the Order, by the Abbot General, who shall not intervene either
in the community’s autonomous choice of a superior[4]. If, for various
reasons, the community is unable to elect an abbot for itself, then, as a
very exceptional measure, a superior, known as a superior ad nutum, is appointed for it. Once appointed,
he has the same responsibility as an elected superior, and the community has
lost nothing of its autonomy[5].
By electing an abbot,
the community entrusts him with the care of guiding it and thus of taking
all the decisions required for its proper running, both spiritual and material.
Forms of government of a more collegial – some would say more democratic –
nature are possible, even inside monastic life. But that is not our conversatio. According to the Cistercian conversatio which we freely choose by making
profession in a community of our Order, the abbot must assume the ultimate
responsibility for all the decisions taken within the community during
his term of office. The conventual chapter has no power of « decision »
at all, except when it acts collegially in order to elect the abbot. This
does not mean that the abbot must or may act as a despot. Quite the contrary,
he is invited by the Rule and by the Constitutions as well as by common sense
to take advice as often as possible. As the experience accumulated over the
centuries has revealed the possibilities of going astray and in order to protect
communities against possible abuses or mistakes on the part of superiors,
the Constitutions (in the wake of the universal law of the Church) provide
that there is a series of decisions which the local abbot may not make without
the agreement of either the conventual chapter or of a more limited council
(which he must have), to be given sometimes by an absolute majority and sometimes
by a majority of two thirds. There are a certain number of other decisions
which he may not take validly without having at least consulted either the
conventual chapter or the council. However, even though there are decisions
which he cannot make without having
first received the consent of the conventual chapter or of his council, or,
in other cases, without consulting them, no other authority outside the community
may make those decisions in his place.
In more recent, juridically
centralized religious institutes, the master or mistress of novices or the
bursar may be appointed by the provincial authority and not be subject in
the exercise of their duties to the authority of the superior in whose community
they live. Such a thing is inconceivable in our tradition. Even though it is appropriate that the abbot
give the novice master and cellarer, as well as the infirmarian, etc., a great
deal of freedom of action and trust them very broadly, it is always he who,
in the final analysis, will have to bear the burden of all the most important
decisions.
As we said earlier, Cistercian
communities are gathered together in an Order. By being part of this great community of communities
called the Order, the local communities do not give up their own autonomy,
but commit themselves to exercising it according to common norms which they
give themselves at meetings of the General Chapter, or which they receive
from the Church either in the Constitutions (which have been «given» to us
by the Holy See, even though we have written them) or in laws or Regulations of a more universal nature[6].
The only authority above the local community, within the Order, is the General Chapter.
The Chapter may, of course, sometimes act through individual persons
to whom it entrusts various assignments. These
persons then act not by virtue of any personal authority, but of the authority
delegated to them.
While our Constitutions
give the members of the Order a right of recourse (to the Father Immediate,
to the Abbot General, to the General Chapter), that right of recourse is by
no means a right of appeal. The physical
or legal person to whom recourse has been made must intervene pastorally,
listen to the various parties and steer them towards the proper decisions,
but may not substitute either for the local community or for the local abbot.
Moreover, on account of
the nature of the Order as just described, the superiors of all the communities
of the Order have a collegial responsibility toward the entire Order and toward
each community. They exercise it through
various structures, both ancient and recent which can be truly effective only to the extent
that they respect and promote the autonomy of the local community.
It is thus important to
clarify the relationship between the General Chapter and the local communities
before studying more in detail the role of all the other intermediate or ancillary
structures, whether permanent or temporary, and especially their interactions.
B) The authority of the General Chapter – its extent and limits
Our Constitutions state
that the General Chapter is the « supreme
» authority within the Order (C. 77,1). This means that inside the Order there is no
authority above the General Chapter. More
than that, as the General Chapter is a « college » in the strict
sense (see CIC 115,2), no capitulant has any authority properly so called
over the other Capitulants within the college. The president of a college is a primus inter pares responsible for convening
the meeting and for its proper running. Moreover, the Chapter endows itself
with Regulations in order to ensure its proper running and can, therefore,
give various persons some authority in relation to the running of the Chapter,
but never as regards the content of the decisions, which must always remain
collegial.
A notion that is rather
widespread, even though it is rarely expressed explicitly, is that since the
power of the General Chapter is « supreme »
it is also « absolute ». This is of course a serious mistake. The
General Chapter cannot validly take any decision, except in matters in which either
the Constitutions of the Order or the universal law of the Church gives it
explicit authority. Any decision in an
area not provided for by law or which goes beyond the scope provided by law
may or must even be deemed to be invalid.
The authority or competence
of the General Chapter is described in C. 79. The General Chapter has no power beyond that
conferred upon it in that Constitution and its statutes, except for that which
may be granted to it by the universal law of the Church.
C) Filiation
and the service of the Father Immediate
As soon as Cîteaux’s first
daughter houses began making foundations of their own in the 12th
century, a system of filiation was
set up in the Order. This, together with the General Chapter, is the oldest
and most basic structure of the Order. Each house is linked to another house
of the Order – normally its founding house, if it still exists – which is
its mother house, and whose superior is known as the Father Immediate.
Here the situation of
the nuns differs somewhat from that of the monks. The history of the acceptance
of nuns into the Order is a complex one and there is no need to retrace it
or even summarize it here. Let it suffice to say that for several centuries
the nuns' bond with the Order was established through the affiliation of each
monastery of women with a monastery of men whose superior became the Father
Immediate of the nuns. Today, the role of the Father Immediate of a monastery
of nuns is the same, legally speaking, as that of the Father Immediate of
a monastery of monks, even though in practice the lived reality is often quite
different. In fact, even inside male fililations that relationship is also
lived in various ways.
On several occasions the
idea of establishing a system of filiation within the feminine branch, parallel
to that of the masculine branch, has been discussed in the Order. The question
was explicitly raised during the writing of the Constitutions, and again,
more recently, in the context of the possibility of a single General Chapter
for monks and nuns. This proposal has
not awakened any enthusiasm thus far, whether among the nuns or among the
monks.
When a monastery of nuns
acquires its autonomy, it ceases to have any legal bond whatsoever with its
founding house. This does not mean, however, that all bonds are broken between
the daughter house and the house that gave life to it. In general, a common
spirit is maintained between mother and daughter (except in some cases where
the second was founded more or less in reaction against the former), and that
spirit is nourished by frequent contacts and by services of all kinds, especially
when a monastery has several foundations.
Bonds of filiation are
essentially bonds between houses.
(That is why it would make no sense for a community to change mother houses
simply because at a given time the relationship with the Father Immediate
is difficult.) This leads to a consequence concerning the very nature of the
rôle of the Father Immediate, which renders any delegation of that role very
problematic from a legal point of view. In
fact, there is no « office » (officium) of Father Immediate capable of being delegated. An abbot’s
role as Father Immediate toward the daughter houses of his community is a
dimension of his office as abbot. Even when he delegates the pastoral care
of one of his daughter houses to someone else, he remains, strictly speaking,
its « Father Immediate », since that is an essential dimension of
his office as superior of his own community.
The expression « delegated Father Immediate » is therefore
a very broad way of speaking, which is devoid of any legal value properly
so called. And since delegated authority may be sub-delegated ad actum only, one can certainly not speak of a « sub-delegated
Father Immediate ». It may be said
at the very most that a superior performs this or that act (such as making
a Visitation or presiding an election) as a delegate « for that act » of the « delegated
Father Immediate ».
There are no vicar superiors
in our Order. The possibility was considered
at the General Chapter of 2002 (as a substitute for the superior ad nutum), but the idea was dropped. For
someone to be appointed a vicar, we would first have to introduce the office of vicar into our law, as it does
not exist there. Then someone could be appointed to such an office. In the
present state of our law, those who are called « vicars » are not
vicars in strictly legal terms, but rather persons to whom some form of authority
has been delegated.
As stated at the beginning
of this paper, the only « authority », strictly speaking, above
the local community in Cistercian law is the General Chapter. The Father Immediate is not, therefore, the
« superior » of his daughter
houses. He may not, therefore, either give orders or grant permissions either
to the members of his daughter houses or to their superiors. This does not
mean that his role, whose nature is entirely pastoral, is not of paramount
importance. He exercises this pastoral care in the name of the entire Order,
and that is an exercise of the collegial responsibility which all the superiors
of the Order, both monks and nuns, have toward all the monasteries of the
Order.
His role, which consists
essentially in « vigilance » (in the most positive sense of the
term), is very aptly expressed in Constitution 74.1:
The Father Immediate
is to watch over the progress of his daughter houses. While respecting the
autonomy of the daughter house he is to help and support the abbot in the
exercise of his pastoral charge and to foster concord in the community. If
he notices there a violation of a precept of the Rule or of the Order, he
is to try with humility and charity and having consulted the local abbot,
to remedy the situation.
While the last phrase
of this text implicitly grants the Father Immediate the power of remedying « violations of a precept
of the Rule or of the Order », this Constitution does not give him any
authority to intervene otherwise ex
auctoritate in the internal life of the community. Moreover, that same Constitution opens up for
him a very broad scope of pastoral care, which must be exercised constantly
and not only on the occasion of the Regular Visitation.
D) The
Regular Visitation
The Regular Visitation
is mentioned by C. 71.4, together with filiation, as one of the institutions
by means of which the collegial pastoral care of all the superiors toward
all the monasteries of the Order is exercised.
According to the tradition
of the Order, the Regular Visitation is a dimension of the exercise of the
pastoral care of a superior toward the daughter houses of his community. In
monasteries of monks, the Regular Visitation is normally made by the Father
Immediate, although he may sometimes delegate it. He is never under any obligation
to do so. In the case of the nuns, the situation is different. Due to the fact that for a long time the nuns
were removed from the authority of the General Chapter and placed under that
of the bishops, their Visitor, for a long time thereafter, was the Abbot General.
The Abbot General, of course, almost always delegated another abbot
for the Visitation, usually after consulting the abbess of the monastery to
be visited. A few years ago, the responsibility of making
the Visitation was given back to the Father Immediate; but the nuns wrote
in their Constitutions (C. 75.1) that the Father Immediate must delegate someone
else once every six years (which is not necessarily synonymous with « one
out of every three Visitations », because, while Visitations must be
made at least every two years, they may take place more often, and we may
consider that, under special circumstances, four or five Visitations -- rather
than only three -- may take place within a period of six years).
The Constitutions also
give the Abbot General the power to make Visitations both in monasteries of
monks and of nuns, even if a Visitation has just been made by the Father Immediate
-- which does not, at least theoretically, deprive the Father Immediate of
his right to make his own Visitation at the same time! Even though this might, in theory, lead to some
« competition » between the Abbot General and a Father Immediate,
this does not seem ever to have happened, as everyone has the good of the
communities in mind.
Just like the Father Immediate,
the Visitor, in his capacity as Visitor, is not the canonical « superior »
of the house visited. The local superior retains all his authority as a superior
during the Visitation[7], and he is of course called upon to act in close cooperation with the
Visitor for the good of his community[8]. As we have seen earlier in the
case of the Father Immediate, the Visitor may correct situations that call
for correction, but he may not intervene
ex auctoritate in the running of
the community[9]. The scope of his vigilance and
of his pastoral care, as described in Constitution 75.2 and in much more detail
in the Statute on the Regular Visitation, is nonetheless immense. As stated
in C. 75.2:
The
purpose of the regular visitation is to strengthen and supplement the pastoral
action of the local abbot, to correct it where necessary, and to motivate
the brothers to lead the Cistercian life with a renewed spiritual fervor.
This requires the active co-operation of the community. The visitor is faithfully
to observe the precepts of law, the spirit of the Charter of Charity and the
norms of the General Chapter.
E) The Abbot General[10]
Throughout the history of Cîteaux, before the Order broke
up into Observances, the role of the abbot of Cîteaux was very important as
a moral authority, much more than as a juridical one. He presided the General
Chapters, but had no power to intervene in the communities
of the Order, aside from his role as Visitor in his daughter houses.
At the General Chapter
held in 1892 for the union of the Congregations originating from La Trappe,
our Order chose to give itself an Abbot General.
The latter’s role, in both our present and former Constitutions, is
essentially to work towards maintaining and developing communion between the
communities and also between the two branches of the Order, especially since
we have explicitly become a single Order with two distinct General Chapters. This same role will of course remain just as
important when we will have a common General Chapter.
The moral authority of
the Abbot General is very great and manifests itself differently according
to the personality of each Abbot General.
The breadth of scope of his pastoral care is aptly described in C.
82.1:
Because the Abbot
General is a bond of unity within the Order he fosters good relations among
the communities of both monks and nuns and is the watchful guardian of the
Order's patrimony, ensuring its growth. Above all he is to be a pastor who
promotes the spirit of renewal in communities. He visits the monasteries sufficiently
often, as he judges best, to be aware of the state of the whole Order, and
be able to provide valuable help to individual superiors and communities.
As Dom Gabriel Sortais
told the General Chapter of 1951, which elected him, that pastoral care can
be exercised all the better because the juridical authority of the Abbot General
is very limited[11]. It has nothing in common at that
level with that of the superiors general of centralized religious congregations.
The Abbot General cannot intervene in the internal administration of
the autonomous communities, and he is not a person whom monks and nuns can
approach to secure permissions denied them by their own superior. During his
regular Visitations, his authority is the same as that of any other Visitor,
as described in the Constitutions and in the Statute on the Regular Visitation.
Moreover, the figure of
the Abbot General as defined in our present law includes quite a few other
pastoral responsibilities. As canon
law does not devote a separate section to monastic Orders, the latter must
fit as best they can into the structures provided in a general way for centralised
Congregations. And even though our
Order carefully avoided describing itself as a « clerical order »
in its Constitutions, a brief clause was added to C. 82,3 primarily in order
to avoid subordination to the bishops. This clause states that « The
Abbot General is understood in law
(iure intellegitur) as Supreme Moderator of a clerical institute of pontifical right, according to the norm of the Constitutions.»[12] This means that he does not necessarily
have all the powers and rights that universal law may grant to « Superiors
General », but rather those referred to in our Constitutions.
Thus, to give only one example, he may grant an indult of exclaustration.
Since the General Chapters
are no longer held yearly and since life must go on nevertheless, the Constitutions
provided that the Abbot General, either after obtaining the consent of his
Council or after consulting it, may grant quite a number of authorizations,
even though, on account of their nature, these pertain to the General Chapter.
They are listed in ST 84.1C and 1D.
It is the Abbot General
who convenes and presides the General Chapter, while taking into account the
fact that the Chapter is a college and thus operates collegially. The General Chapter may entrust him with assignments
which he will then carry out as a delegate of the Chapter. As the General Chapter is the sole legislative
authority within the Order, the Abbot General cannot issue any laws,
that is, he could not enact any rules affecting all the monasteries or all
the members of the Order. He has no authority over the persons and property
of the communities; however, if measures in their regard prove necessary,
he may take temporary measures (and therefore measures that are not irreversible),
which the next Chapter may or may not ratify.
At the Chapter of 1892,
the Holy See insisted that the Abbot General must have a Council, as it does
not want any authority in the Church to act in a totally autonomous fashion
without being assisted by advisors. The
Council is not truly a structure of
the Order, but simply what its name implies: the Abbot General’s Council. The Council in itself has no authority whatsoever.
Its role consists in assisting the Abbot General. The latter must not only
request the consent or advice of his Councillors (of both genders) regarding
the matters provided by the Constitutions, but may also resort to their assistance
for the exercise of all the aspects of his pastoral office. He may, for instance, delegate them to make
regular Visitations in his name.
At the Chapter of 1993,
the idea of having a limited number of « permanent » councillors
in Rome and, simultaneously, a larger number of councillors who would normally
reside in their respective communities, but could be called to Rome a few
times a year, was put forward. This proposal was not accepted by the General
Chapter. It did, however, accept another
proposal, allowing the Abbot General to appoint « special councillors
» under specific circumstances[13]. This possibility has been used
on various occasions over the last few years.
F) The
Central Commission[14]
The Central Commission has had a complex and very interesting
history. After creating it for the purpose of preparing the General Chapter,
the Order converted it for some time into a council of the Abbot General,
referring to it as the « principal council »; the term « permanent
council » was then invented to refer to the councillors residing in Rome,
who up until then had been called « definitors ». That experiment
proved far from conclusive. There was
also in the Order, at the time that its structures were being revised in view
of our new Constitutions, a current aiming at making that Central Commission
(then known as the Consilium generale)
into a kind of mini-chapter, between the plenary Chapters, with real powers.
That idea never awakened a great deal of interest.
Our present Constitutions therefore reverted to simply giving the Central
Commission the role of preparing the next General Chapter. Fearing a sort
of « takeover » of the Central Commission
by the Regions, the Chapter has always – up to this day – reserved the right
to elect the members of the Central Commissions and their substitutes, even
though it does so upon presentation of names by the regions. Although the
representation of all the regions is important, the Central Commission truly
remains a commission elected by the General Chapter for
the purpose of preparing the next General Chapter. That is why, if a region
presents its president to the Chapter as a candidate for the Central Commission
and that person is elected by the Chapter, he will remain the representative
of the region on the Central Commission, even if in the meantime he has been
replaced as president.
The Central Commissions,
when convened, may also act as the « Plenary Council » of the Abbot
General. This role of the Central Commission, set forth in a Statute (ST 80.J),
is quite secondary compared with its reason for being as described in Constitution
80, which is primarily to prepare the General Chapter.
We will come back to this in the second part of this paper.
G) The
Regions[15]
The Regions have become an important structure of the
Order, even though for a long time, while their existence was accepted, it
was stressed that they were not a « structure » of the Order. They
began as free, informal and spontaneous meetings of superiors of both genders
in various parts of the Order, first tolerated and then increasingly encouraged.
For a long time, no superior
was under the obligation of taking part in a regional conference. At the time
of the final writing of the Constitutions at the first MGM, held in
The communities
of the Order are grouped in Regions approved by the General Chapter. These
regional conferences foster communion and fraternal co-operation within each
geographical area and in the Order as a whole.
A distinction must now
be made between « regions » and « regional conferences ».
Starting from meetings of superiors, we witnessed the birth of « regions »
made up not of superiors but of communities.
These regions are permanent realities. At the rate of once a year or
every three years, according to their geographical situation, they hold meetings
known as « regional conferences », which are usually meetings of
the superiors of the region with the participation of community delegates
who are not superiors, in numerical proportions that vary from one region
to the next. As the Order has never ruled on the functioning of the regions,
they were able to develop freely and very differently from one region to the
next.
The regional conferences
are, first and foremost, places of pastoral sharing and mutual support within
the region. It was soon noticed that
they are also, especially through their reports sent to all the houses of
the Order, a channel of dialogue and communion between monks and nuns of all
countries and all cultures (see ST 81.C).
The regions came into
being shortly before the Central Commission; but since the membership of that
Central Commission was connected from the very start to the regional representation
of the members, there has always been a close connection between the existence
of those two structures. Some – myself included – believe that the time has
come to rethink this representative structure.[16]
The birth of the regions
also coincided with the period during which we were working intensely on various
drafts of the new Constitutions. The
regions thus played a very important part in the writing of those Constitutions
and thereby in the development within the Order of a certain common vision
of our charism. Today the Central Commission continues to prepare the next
General Chapter on the basis of the work done by the Regions.
Finally, let us mention
– but without developing the point, since they are not structures of the Order
– the existence of sub-regions and of other
informal meetings of superiors (which sometimes include Carmelites
and Benedictines).
H) Various commissions
We are not dealing here with Commissions of the General
Chapter, whose existence is coextensive with the Chapter, and which cease
to exist as Commissions as soon as the Chapter comes to an end. Rather, this discussion concerns Commissions
which exist permanently at the service of the other structures and persons
of the Order.
a) We might mention the
Law Commission, whose Statute was
revised by the General Chapter of 1993 and whose mandate, as described in
its statute, is to « to assist the Government of the Order, the local superiors and the other
members of the Order in all matters concerning law. »
It may be important to
point out that at each General Chapter there is, according to the established
procedure, a Law Commission of the
Chapter. It consists of the members
of the Law Commission of the Order who are present at the Chapter, to whom
other persons may be added as needed. It
may not be sufficiently noted that, even though this Law Commission of the Chapter consists of the same members
as the Law Commission of the Order, it is a distinct entity.
b) There is also in the
Order a Finance Commission whose
assignment is to manage the Order’s (relatively limited) funds and to use
them to help the communities who may need assistance.[17] It is appointed by the Abbot General.
In parallel with this
Finance Commission, the General Chapter of 2002 set up a Commission which
is responsible for analysing the needs and requests of the communities of
the Order.[18] As that same MGM decided to create
a mutual assistance fund within the Order, the management of that fund and
the distribution of aid from that fund were entrusted to the same commission.[19]
c) For a long time the
Order had a Liturgy Commission. It was very
active while the post-conciliar liturgical reform was getting under
way. Its members were elected by the General Chapter, to which it gave an
account of its activities. The General
Chapter of 1977 judged that the work of reform was advanced enough at the
level of the Order and that, since most of the regions had their own Liturgy
Commission, a Central Secretary for the liturgy would henceforth suffice.[20] The role of that
Secretary was defined rather vaguely[21] and his term of office was not specified. Since the person who was elected (Dom Marie-Gérard
Dubois) and who has held that office from 1977 to this day has always done
so to everyone’s great satisfaction, we may only congratulate ourselves on
that decision. It remains that when
a successor will have to be appointed we will have to define the office and
set the duration of the term.
d) The Order has a General Secretary for formation. His or her
role is defined as follows in the Statute
on Formation : « The Central
Secretary's function is to facilitate communication between the Regions and
to ensure the dissemination of relevant information about all aspects of monastic
formation.[22] ». He or she is elected for a term of three years by the two Central Commissions
of abbots and abbesses.
e) For a long time, the
Order had an Architectural commission. Its mandate consisted in reviewing all building
or restoration projects. When foundations
began to multiply in different countries and cultures outside
I) Commissions of Aid for the
Future :
A new phenomenon is emerging in the Order, that is, the
multiplication of « Commissions of Aid for the Future ». These are small groups of persons, usually superiors but also other monks or nuns, including
persons from outside the Order, whose purpose is either to assist a superior
in the exercise of his or her pastoral office, or to help a community as a
whole to deal either with a situation of great frailty or with a special problem
of another nature.
Since no legislation concerning
them has been enacted by the Order, we cannot speak of a new « structure ».
Nevertheless, their role in relation to some communities is very useful
and their increase in number is a significant phenomenon.
The first of them were created about ten years ago, but they have multiplied
especially since the last General Chapter.
Some of them were created
by the Abbot General, others by the Father Immediate, others still at the
request of one of the Mixed commissions of the last MGM. Their modes of operation
also differ widely. This great variety
is certainly positive. In principle, these Commissions have no juridical authority
and no mandate allowing them to intervene in the running of the communities.
Moreover, the areas in which they may provide assistance are many and
varied.
A question that seems
to have come up more than once in relation to them is the nature of their
interaction with the responsibility of the local superior, with that of the
Father Immediate (who is usually a member) and with the other existing structures
of the Order, such as the Regional conference, the General Chapter, the Abbot
General, etc.
It is thus important to
go on now to the second part of this study, which concerns the (hopefully !)
harmonious interaction between all the structures and other organes of service
mentioned thus far.
II – Interaction
BETWEEN THE VARIOUS structures of the Order
We have reviewed all the
structures of the Order. All of these
structures are at the service of life, that is, of the concrete life of each
monk or nun within their local community.
They have no other reason for being.
We must now examine the interaction of these structures, the ways in
which they can all contribute to spiritual growth.
We cannot, however, avoid considering their possible dysfunction, in
view of the complexity of the whole and of the recent evolution of several
of these structures. We will see that
the time has perhaps come to revise the nature and operation of some of them.
I will use two « parables »
to show the various ways in which this interaction can take place.
1) An ideal situation
Let us first imagine an
ideal situation. Let us think of the
way in which all these structures intervene in the life of Brother Paphnutius,
who is an ideal monk in the community of Our Lady of Perfection, the best
community in our Order, without any doubt, which is part of the Region of
High Places.
After coming regularly
to the guest house for a number of years and following several stays inside
the community, Onesiphorus finally entered as a postulant. He became a novice under the name of brother
Paphnutius and made his solemn profession a good ten years ago. He is a fulfilled man, happy in his vocation,
who has a good relationship with his abbot and all his brethren. He is very assiduous at manual work, lectio and the Divine Office.
Brother Paphnutius receives
all of his spiritual orientation (his « spiritual direction », to
speak in Ignatian, non-monastic terms) from his community and from the balance
between the various elements of monastic life which he finds there.
The abbot’s chapters, his homilies and those of the other priests of
the community provide light for his spiritual seeking. From time to time he
consults a senior. He does not see his abbot very often, not in
any case with any mathematical frequency, but he is very open with him and
knows that he can go to see him to speak either of his spiritual life or of
his community relations whenever he feels the need to do so. He joyfully carries out various tasks in the
community.
The quick occasional visits
of the Father Immediate and the Regular Visitations make him aware of belonging
to a reality which is broader than his local community, that is, to a community
of communities called an Order. He
appreciates the way in which the Father Immediate, and occasionally another
Visitor (of either gender) help his community not to fall asleep on its laurels,
or again to identify problems in time as they begin to surface and to find
solutions for them before they become more serious. The experience of other communities, shared
by these Visitors, helps him and his brethren to periodically re-evaluate
their own way of living the monastic experience.
Twice since he entered,
the Abbot General visited his community. On
each of these occasions it was a joy and an encouragement for him to hear
him speak of the Order, with its graces
and problems. He also remembers that
during one of these visits his community was going through a difficult period
which it had trouble dealing with, and that the advice that the Abbot General
was able to give them thanks to his experience and knowledge of the Order
had been very enlightening.
For Paphnutius, the General
Chapter is a faraway reality, but he perceives its importance. He is aware of having contributed somewhat to
the preparation of the last General Chapters through the community dialogues
held prior to the meetings of the Regional Conference. Moreover, a meeting
of the Central Commission which took place in his monastery allowed him to
grasp the magnitude of the efforts made at the level of all the regions of
the Order for the preparation of a Chapter.
Finally, he remembers that the problem mentioned above, for which the
Abbot General provided good advice, was also mentioned in the report of the
Community to the last General Chapter and that, when his abbot returned from
the General Chapter, he explained to the community how the attentive and sympathetic
study of that situation in the Mixed Commission that studied their report
helped him to get a clearer view of the various options facing the community.
This brief example, perfectly
imaginary though it is, shows quite well how all the structures of the Order
can intervene actively and positively in order to foster the life of a monk
and of his community, without it ever being necessary for anyone to call on
its « authority » to intervene through its decisions in the life
of the community or of its monks. It
is always a matter of searching for light, in a context of dialogue.
In real life, situations
are never as idyllic. Both the life of a monk or nun and that of his or her
community come up sooner or later against situations that are problematic,
and that may be so in varying
degrees. Let us now look at another, also fictitious example, which will show
us how these various structures can intervene in either a positive or a negative
way.
2) A not at all
ideal situation
The community of Our Lady
of Distress has experienced considerable difficulties over the past few years.
The community went through quite a long period without any vocations and then
once more received a goodly number of them a few years ago. As a result, it presently consists of a block
of seniors and of a block of relatively young monks. There are tensions between these two blocks.
In fact, within each group opinions often differ each time something
« new » is put before the community.
The abbot, who for a long time had been able to maintain unity and
harmony in the community, no longer knows how to handle
the present situation. In addition
to this, rather strong tensions have developed between him and some of his
main assistants, particularly the prior and especially the novice master,
who is attempting to form « his » novices according to a conception
of monastic life which is not that of the abbot.
Some monks then call on
the Father Immediate to come and correct the situation. They are doubtless right to call on him, since
the situation would not have deteriorated to such a point if he had intervened
earlier. The Father Immediate now realizes
that when he perceived that a serious problem was developing he chose to stay
out of it and not to get involved. That was a serious mistake on his part. The situation had in fact been mentioned to
him at the last Regular Visitation, but he had preferred not to refer to it
in the Visitation Card to avoid discouraging the community. He had touched a word of it to the abbot, but
as the latter was rather defensive he had not insisted in order to avoid harming
their relationship. Afterwards everything
had grown worse.
He is thus coming to make
a further Regular Visitation, even though he made one the previous year, and
he explains to the community, which is rather surprised at this fresh Visitation,
that there is nothing abnormal about this, since the Constitutions require
that there be a Regular Visitation at
least once every two years, which implies that the frequency can be greater.
During the Visitation he is asked to make many changes himself in the
running of the community. He is forced to explain that he is the Visitor
and not the superior of the community and that his role is not to solve the
problems, but to help the community to do so together with its abbot. It is suggested to him that he change the prior
and the novice master. He answers that
he has no authority to do so. At the
very most, he could remove this or that officer, if there was a serious reason
for doing so, but it would not be up to him to appoint their replacements.
He knows that it is preferable to convince the abbot to make these
changes immediately after the Visitation, if it has not succeeded in bringing
the two persons concerned to modify their attitude.
During the Visitation, it is suggested that he convene the Council
of the community. He answers that he is willing to conduct dialogues
with the « members of the council », but that as the council is
the « abbot’s council » the latter alone may convene it. Once this clarification has been made, a few
meetings with the abbot and his council
help to clarify quite a few things and to see ways to the solution of various
problems.
Tired of this rather burdensome
community situation, a monk, doubtless a true man of God, had suddenly discovered
that he had an eremitical vocation and had asked the abbot for permission
to go off and live as a hermit in a very isolated spot far from the monastery.
The father abbot, after hearing his request and discussing the matter
with his council, had denied him permission, judging that he was dealing with
a temptation of escape. The monk therefore wrote to the Father Immediate
to ask him for the permission denied by his abbot. The Father Immediate answered that he did not
have the necessary authority to grant him such permission and that he would
have to resolve the matter with his abbot.
Our aspiring hermit, convinced
of his vocation, then wrote the Abbot General asking for his permission to
live as a hermit, taking care to specify that he was doing so on the basis
of ST 77.2.B which allowed him to « have recourse » to the Abbot
General. In his answer, the latter first explained the difference between
« appeal » and « recourse » (an appeal being a request
to a higher court to reverse the judgment given by a court of first instance). Our Constitutions do not refer to a right of
appeal, but to a right of recourse. The use of this right confers on the person
to whom recourse is made an obligation of taking care of the matter and, if
necessary, after making all the necessary inquiries, of asking the person
who made the decision to be so good as to revise it. In this case, the fact that the monk called
on the Abbot General conferred on the latter the duty of examining the situation
and, if he judged that the decision made was not justified, of asking the
abbot to reconsider his decision. It did not entitle him to intervene in the
abbot’s place by giving the permission that the latter had refused.
Some time later the Regional
conference took place, and the abbot took advantage of it to explain to the
other superiors, in the course of a pastoral exchange, the situation that
he and his community were experiencing. Their advice and reactions were a
great help to him personally, and indeed the interventions of the Father Immediate
– which had unfortunately been belated -- had helped pacify the situation,
but the basic problem remained unchanged. A few monks then decided to have recourse to
the Abbot General in order to have him come to make a special Visitation. The Abbot General contacted the Father Immediate
to make sure that the latter had done all he could do. He even recommended that the Father Immediate
make a further Visitation and gave him all sorts of advice as to the way of
proceeding. He would be able to make
a Visitation himself later if needed.
In the meantime, the time
for the General Chapter arrived. The
community, in its house report, had given an honest description of its situation.
In the Mixed Commission that studied that report, the Father Immediate
was asked to come in order to give his opinion, and other abbots and abbesses
who knew the community well were also consulted.
A few younger and more fiery members of the Commission, conscious as
they were of their responsibility of acting on behalf of the entire General
Chapter, were inclined to force the abbot to resign, since the situation seemed
to be increasingly beyond him. A member
of the Commission, who was a good canonist, explained to them that one can
never force someone to resign. A resignation
is, by its very nature, a free act (even though it may not necessarily be
spontaneous). Even the General Chapter does not have the authority
to force someone to resign. In very
serious cases it could depose someone,
but that is a very rare thing which can happen only when there is scandal
or very serious causes. If it is judged
that a resignation would be indicated for the good of the community, there
are many ways of pastorally bringing someone to make that decision serenely
at the right time.
In the situation we are
discussing, the abbot realized that the time seemed to have come to pass on
the pastoral office to a successor, but he did not want to do so abruptly. He asked for time. The Mixed Commission recommended the creation
of a Commission of Aid to assist both the Father Immediate and the abbot in
managing that delicate transition.
A Commission of Aid was
in fact set up. It assigned itself
the task of being a kind of external « council » with a threefold
assignment : a) making the entire community
aware of the responsibility of each person and of its collective responsibility
in searching for a way to evolve; b) helping the abbot to continue to exercise
his pastoral office fully while preparing his resignation; c) helping the
Father Immediate to manifest his pastoral care more actively than he had done
in the past, both toward the abbot and toward the community. Everything developed in the direction of greater
serenity. Six months later the abbot
handed in his resignation, which was experienced without any trauma, whether
on his part or on that of the community. A
very capable successor, who had had nothing to do with the tensions of the
past few years, was easily elected. Aware
as he was that by accepting his election he was assuming the pastoral care
of all the members of his community, including his predecessor, he asked the
latter to remain in the monastery after taking a brief time of rest. He did so. The
community recovered its full serenity and was the stronger for having gone
through a difficult period with the respectful, coordinated help of all the
pastoral instances of the Order, each of which carefully avoided going beyond
its powers and short-circuiting the others.
3) Lessons to be derived from these two examples
The first principle I
have attempted to express in these two parables is that of respect for subsidiarity.
Pastoral care is expressed through constant and respectful attention
and through a daily readiness to encourage, support, advise and sometimes
warn and criticise if need be. This pastoral care is always required at all
levels, even when things are or seem to be for the best in a community, without
any problems,.
When problems or difficult
situations do come up, a healthy community is normally able to deal with them
and to overcome them on its own, especially if it benefits from the pastoral
care of its Father Immediate. If it
cannot, or if, more serious still, it is blind to the problem, the Father
Immediate is the first person who should do everything possible to improve
the situation. If he does not succeed
in doing so, he may ask the Abbot General to contribute his charism and skills;
but he must resist the temptation of being too quick to ask the Abbot General
to assume a responsibility which belongs first and foremost to the Father
Immediate. Such a reaction on his part
may be due either to laziness or to lack of self-confidence, unless it is
due to ignorance as to his responsibilities. Likewise, the members of the
community, who believe that the situation is beyond their Abbot’s ability
to deal with it, must call first of all on the Father Immediate before having
recourse to the Abbot General.
When the Central Commissions,
meeting in Latrun in 1998, decided to suggest to the General Chapters that
the Pastoral Commission be abolished, the idea was that to the extent that
the Fathers Immediate would do their job and that the Regions, not being as
busy as before analysing legal texts, would be able to devote more time and
energy to mutual help of a pastoral nature, far fewer problematic situations
would come as far as the General Chapter.
Perhaps we were too optimistic at the time, or perhaps the Mixed Commissions
singled out too many situations as requiring special treatment.
Of all the entities involved,
it is doubtless the Commission of Aid whose role presently requires special
attention. Some of them have shown themselves to be very useful. But as they
came into being in very different ways and also operate very differently from
one another, their relationship with the other pastoral organisms of the Order
is not always clear. Some clarifications are no doubt called for in this respect,
although it is not yet advisable to write a « Statute » for them. The important
point is that, whether the creation or the operation of these Commissions
is involved, all must be aware that they are called upon to support, encourage
and sometimes enlighten the pastoral efforts of the abbot and of the Father
Immediate, and not to substitute for either of them. It must also be quite
clear that we are dealing with a service which is offered and that no one,
not even the General Chapter (and even less a mere Commission of the CG) can
impose it.
d) Preparation and running of the General Chapters
It is doubtless in connection with the preparation of
the General Chapters that the largest number of new structures of the Order
come into play, besides the older structures, and that greater attention is
needed in order to ensure their coordination.
The idea underlying all
the reforms of the central structures of the Order during the last forty years
was that the General Chapter is essentially an organ of communion rather than
control[24]. The entire mechanism set up consists
in promoting feedback from the local communities to the General Chapter as
regards the life of those communities.
The local communities
are all invited to prepare a house report in view of the next Chapter. Often they are also invited by the General Chapter
to reflect on this or that point to be dealt with at the next Chapter.
The regional conferences gather echoes of the lived experience of the
communities and make a certain number of proposals which will then be studied
by the Central Commissions. Even though there may not be any legislation
concerning the matter, for a long time now the custom has been that the Central
Commissions place on the agenda of the General Chapter any suggestion made even by a single region, if
it has been passed by a majority vote.
The mandate of the Central
Commissions is to prepare the agenda of the General Chapter on the basis of
the work done by the regions. The contribution
of all the regions is already guaranteed by the very fact that the agenda
is prepared on the basis of their work. The continued insistence on having
all the regions represented within the Central Commission is really not justified.
This insistence leads to the Central Commissions’ being too large a
body to do a really efficient job in only a few days. (The number will be
smaller if we have a single Chapter, but it will still be too large.) Indeed, the Central Commissions are a study
group, whose assignment is to finalize an agenda, and not a decisional body.
A limited group of persons, chosen for their skills and representing various
parts of the Order, could do the job more quickly and especially more efficiently
than a group of forty people. This is connected with the question raised earlier
concerning the relationship between the Central Commissions and the Regional
Conferences[25].
It is true that the Central
Commissions, when they are in session, can act as the plenary Council of the
Abbot General. But that is a secondary
role, which is by no means necessary, since experience has shown that they
deal in that capacity only with a few matters which the Abbot General usually
handles with his Council.
But it is especially regarding
what we experience during the General Chapter that some very important and
urgent thinking would be needed in order to ensure better coordination between
the General Chapter and the other pastoral instances of the Order. An important
point to be taken into consideration is that none of the instances we have
discussed exists as such within the Chapter. In order
to make myself clear, let me relate a very illuminating explanation given
to me by Father Jesús Torres, then under-secretary of the Congregation for
Institutes of Consecrated Life, when I asked him a question on a point of
detail connected with the running of the Chapter.
« At the General Chapter », he said, « there are only
Capitulants – a
In that light, we may
make the following remarks. Understandably
enough, at certain times during the Chapter the « members belonging to
the various regional conferences »
may be asked for their opinion; but entrusting a job « to the regional conferences » as
such does not make any sense, legally speaking, since the Regional conferences
do not exist within the Chapter. Likewise, we may understand that at certain
times the Capitulants who are members of the Council of the Abbot General
may be believed to be just the right people to deal with this or that matter
thanks to their knowledge of the Order, and that they be invited to do so. But to entrust a role within the Chapter to
the « Abbot General’s Council » makes no legal sense, since that Council
is not a structure of the capitular college.
The work of the General
Chapter is now well-oiled. A procedure
set up in 1971 and constantly revised since according to new circumstances,
Chapter after Chapter, guides its work. Several
Commissions exist, in addition to the many ad hoc commissions created in view of specific needs. They are all commissions of the Chapter, which no longer exist as such once the Chapter is
ended. Especially, there is the Coordinating
Commission and the 15 Mixed Commissions, to which the Pastoral Commission
used to be added. We may also mention
the Law Commission of the Chapter, whose membership was explained above.
Until the last Chapter, no decision was considered to be a decision
of the Chapter unless passed by a vote of the plenary Assembly, even if the
entire study prior to that decision had been carried out by a Commission or
an ad hoc group.
At the last Chapter, we departed from this centuries-old wisdom.
I will explain below the problems this raises.
A delicate question that
cannot be evaded is the fact that some Capitulants call very frequently on
the Abbot General, during the Chapter, to
have him solve problems either in their communities or between them
and their Father Immediate or another abbot.
It is of course perfectly normal and legitimate for superiors who are
not usually able to meet with the Abbot General outside of the General Chapter
to wish to do so at that time. It is
doubtless just as normal for the Abbot General to call on a few Capitulants
and even to create a small commission to find a solution to a complex situation.
But if decisions are then arrived at, and especially if those decisions
are not communicated to the plenary Assembly, we may wonder whether we are
not dealing with decisions that should be considered extra-capitular
even though they were taken during the Chapter, while rejoicing in their results.
The Chapter is doubtless
also the occasion for quite a number of extra-capitular activities – not to
mention those deep pastoral dialogues at the corner bar. The important point is to distinguish carefully
between activities of the Chapter,
for which the latter assumes full responsibility, and activities – which may
be necessary and very useful – carried out during
the Chapter.
However, a point which
requires an even more attentive study is the activity of the Mixed Commissions
(and of the many sub-commissions and special commissions created by them)
and the coordination of their work with the various structures of the Order. There is the matter of coordination during the
Chapter; but, more important still, if they make decisions that affect the
life of the communities after the Chapter, there is the question of coordination
with the responsibility of the Father Immediate and possibly with the pastoral
attention which a region may have brought to a situation for a number of years.
Excursus : The Power of deci
According to the Charter
of Charity, the abbots of the daughter houses of Cîteaux met to speak of the
salvation of their souls and occasionally also to assist one another with
their temporal needs. The main concern
was essentially pastoral in nature. As
soon as the Order began to spread and each of the filiations developed its
own spirit, concern for the unity of the Order manifested itself more strongly.
Since uniformity of observance was long considered to be the best way
of maintaining the unity of the Order, the General Chapters were soon called
upon to legislate in matters of observance.
As a result, their Acta gave the impression of an increasingly
juridical orientation. However, we
may believe that pastoral concern for the spiritual and material good of the
communities remained very much alive for a long time, even though it was not
the subject of « decisions » destined to appear in the Acta.
a) a brief historical overview of
the pastoral dimension of the Chapter
Up to the time of the post-conciliar (post-Vatican II) reform, the
essential part of each General Chapter was the reading of the Visitation Cards written by the Fathers Immediate. Beginning in 1977,
that reading was replaced by that of the «House reports » drawn up by the
Communities themselves (with some intervention on the part of the Father Immediate).
In both cases, the concern was a pastoral one.
As early as the end of the 1960s, when the General Chapters were reflecting
on the identity of the General Chapter, there
was a widespread desire to go from a notion
of the General Chapter viewed as an « organ of control » (that is
how the reading of the Visitation Cards was sometimes understood) to a notion
of the Chapter viewed as an « organ of communion » (this is the
purpose that the house reports aimed at serving).
Beginning in 1969, the
Order was increasingly involved, both at the level of the General Chapter
and at that of the regions (only just born) in the revision of the Order’s
Constitutions and juridical structures. In
particular, all the length and breadth of the thorny questions of « collegiality »
and of the relationship between the two « branches » of the Order
had to be dealt with at the Chapter. At a certain number of Chapters, in fact, only
a limited number of Visitation Cards were read. Some complained that the Chapters had become
too « juridical » and no longer « pastoral » enough, even
though others answered – rightly so, to my mind, since I was one of them...
-- that putting together good legislation is also a highly pastoral job.
Be that as it may, once
the work on the Constitutions came to an end at the (first) Mixed General
Meeting in 1987 and they were published by the Holy See at Pentecost of 1990,
the occasion of reviewing the dynamics of the General Chapters arose. From then on, even though a few important « Statutes »
remained to be finalized (Formation, 1990; Law Commission, 1993; Regular Visitation,
1996; Temporal Administration, 1999) the General Chapters’ legislative activity
properly so called became more limited and they could go back to reading all
of the House Reports. This was decided by the MGM of 1990 (vote 48). All believed that, in
any case, this would give the Chapter a more « pastoral » atmosphere
(even though it is probable that everyone did not give that word the same
meaning).
Several regions hesitated,
however, at the idea of having to listen to over 150 reports in plenary session.
As a result, the Central Commissions, meeting at Gethsemani in 1992,
suggested a new procedure which was accepted by the MGM of 1993 and which
has remained our practice ever since: all the reports are read at the MGM...
but they are distributed between the Mixed Commissions instead of being read
in plenary session.
The MGM of 1993 not only
accepted that proposal, but by its vote nº 97 it decided that the same procedure
would be used at the following meeting. As a result, the Central Commissions of 1995,
meeting at Orval, developed a detailed procedure for dealing with the house
reports, under the title « Pastoral treatment of the house reports ». That procedure, with some
slight adaptations decided by the CC meeting at Latrun in 1998, by the meeting
at La Trappe in 2001 and the one at Scourmont in 2004, is still in effect.
As there had been some
dissatisfaction with the functioning of the two joint Pastoral Commissions
at the 1996 MGM, at the CC meeting held at Latrun in 1998 it was suggested
that those two Pastoral Commissions be done away with and that the Mixed Commissions
be allowed to deal with all the questions, even those which, on account of
their confidential or complex nature, had until then been entrusted to the Pastoral Commission of each of the two General
Chapters. A special Mixed Commission,
i.e. Commission 15 (made up of the members elected to the Pastoral Commissions at the previous MGM), to
which the most difficult cases would be entrusted, was, however, maintained.
After the 1999 MGM, the
Pastoral Commissions (temporarily renamed « Commission 15 ») ceased
to exist. The CC meeting at La Trappe
in 2003 once more adapted the procedure for the « Pastoral treatment of the house reports », clarifying in particular
the way in which the most difficult situations requiring a decision by the
General Chapters would go back up to the Plenary Assembly.
Until then, the members of the various Mixed Commissions
were quite convinced that they were exercising a highly pastoral role. Each Commission could dwell
more at length on the situation of each of those communities, learning from
the experience lived by each of them, bringing in the superior and in some
cases also the Father Immediate in order to hear them so as to get a better
grasp of the situation of each house. When difficulties or problems existed,
the Commission’s pastoral activity could usually be limited to advice and
recommendations. Provision was made
for cases in which certain measures which might seem important or essential
to the Mixed Commission would not be accepted by the local superior or by
the Father Immediate. In such cases,
the matter had to be referred for decision to the General Assembly, in accordance
with this or that procedure. It was
taken for granted until then that a « decision »
in the strict sense of the term could be taken only by the General Chapter
(either of abbots or abbesses, as the case might be). That is how the « Pastoral
Commission » had operated. The
cases in which a « decision » had to be taken by the General Assembly
remained, as always in the past, relatively rare.
And then, between the
General Chapter of 2003 and that of 2005, some regions expressed the wish
to give the Mixed Commissions the power to make decisions concerning the communities « in the name of the General
Chapter », without having to refer the matter to the Plenary Assembly
of the MGM or of the Chapters involved – a power which the Pastoral Commission,
whose job they had henceforth taken over, had not had.
Before going further,
let us briefly consider the operation of the Pastoral Commission -- whose
history, however, we will not retrace here – in order to see what portion
of its legacy was passed on to the Mixed Commissions.
b) The Pastoral Commission
The Pastoral Commission (which had previously gone by
various other names reflecting the mentality of each period) was a special
commission of each of the two General Chapters, to which was entrusted the
study of situations which were either especially difficult or required greater
confidentiality. Its members were elected
at the end of each General Chapter for the next Chapter (the method of election
was slightly different in the case of the nuns), with a certain representation
of the regions. The commission, made up of persons elected on account of their
experience and knowledge of the Order, often worked late into the night during
most of the Chapter. Some of the presidents
of the Commission left their mark on it (Dom Alexandre of Désert and later
Dom John Eudes of
At a certain Chapter,
the Commission felt that it was not morally authorised to disclose all the
details of certain situations, whereas some Capitulants felt that they had
to be acquainted with those details in order to take an enlightened decision. It was then decided that if such cases were
to occur again, the Commission, instead of asking the Capitulants to vote
on a situation whereas they were not acquainted with essential elements of
it, would be able to make the decision in the name of the General Chapter
by delegation from the latter. It does
not seem that this was ever done.
Moreover, the Statute
of that Commission was in hand for several years. It seemed essential to the president of the
time that the Commission be able to begin its work before the Chapter (in
order to gather the necessary information) and pursue it after the General
Chapter. But the General Chapter always
rejected that request. The capitulants
held that the Commission must remain a commission « of the Chapter »,
with no existence either before the Chapter was in session or after it was
closed.
At the last General Chapter,
it was decided that the Mixed Commissions – which had taken over the work
of the former Pastoral Commissions -- would not simply be empowered to study
situations and to dialogue with the superior and the other persons concerned,
but would even be entitled to make decisions « in the name of the Chapter »
without a vote of the full Chapter being required. It seems that a majority of the Capitulants
appreciated this situation. I personally continue to believe that it was a
mistake, and for several reasons.
First of all, when some
superiors rejoiced at being able to finally exercise a « pastoral role »
at the General Chapter, the impression given was that, in their view, « being
pastoral » consisted in « making decisions » about other people.
In fact, having participated personally in all the General Chapters
during which the evolution I have just described took place and having taken
part in all the Central Commissions at which this new « legislation »
was prepared[26], I remain convinced that our General Chapters have not
become more « pastoral » for it.
Quite the contrary, it seems to me that the frenzy with which one special
commission after another was created by the Mixed Commissions in order to
seek solutions to complex situations of which the members of those commissions
had hardly any knowledge, and which they did not have time to study, created
an activist atmosphere which was definitely less « pastoral » than
at the previous Chapters, where the Mixed Commissions made a pastoral study
of all those same situations without having to worry about making decisions
themselves, as a group of six or seven people and in the name of the entire
Order -- decisions destined to have serious consequences for the lives of
communities and persons.
A more detailed analysis
of the work of those Commissions at the last General Chapter is required,
but this is not the place for it. A
certain number of mistakes were made on account of the pastoral frenzy of
some commissions, and these may be termed youthful indiscretions which can
be readily corrected. But there are
some fundamental problems involved.
Upon re-reading Vote 8
of the meeting of the Central Commissions held in 2004 at Scourmont, which
was confirmed by the MGM of 2005 and implemented by it, I am struck by its
inconsistency. Here is the text of Vote 8: « We
wish that the Mixed Commissions have, by delegation, the authority of the
General Chapters, when they study the House Reports, in order to suggest or
decide what should be done pastorally, and to require the putting into effect
of their decisions, except when there is question of rights reserved to the
General Chapters (cf. C. 79). » First of all, it is strange to speak of « rights
reserved to the General Chapters », for C. 79 does not refer to rights at all, but rather defines the legal
competence of the General Chapters.
They have no powers besides those explicitly mentioned in that Constitution
79. Now, that Vote 8 of the Central Commission meeting
at Scourmont (ratified by the MGM of 2005) says that the General Chapters
delegate all their powers except those mentioned in that Constitution to the
Mixed Commissions! Since the General Chapters have no powers other than those
mentioned in C. 79, they are thus delegating powers they do not have to the Mixed Commissions. This amounts to squaring the circle.
A second fundamental problem,
at least for the General Chapters of 2005 (but which might very well surface
again if the winds from Rome do not bring better tidings), is that Commissions
made up of Capitulants from both Chapters took decisions pertaining solely
either to the Chapter of abbesses or to the Chapter of abbots, as the case
may be. Are those decisions valid?
A third fundamental problem
is that, at the last General Chapters, decisions were made in the name of
all the Capitulants without their receiving a written report describing the
number, nature and scope of the decisions taken in their name. All the Capitulants
were certainly strictly entitled to such communication. Any person who has received delegated powers
is under an obligation of giving an account of his stewardship to the person (whether an individual
or entity) who gave the delegation.
A certain number of problems
that came up in practice at the last MGM could, I agree, be readily corrected.
However, a few of them should at least be mentioned.
a) Vote 9 of the CC of Scourmont provides a possibility
of recourse: « If not in agreement
with the decision of a Mixed Commission, those concerned may have recourse
to the Plenary Assembly, which will decide the procedure to be followed.».
Now, the fact is that some superiors were informed of decisions concerning
them after the Chapter was closed.
b) A number of decisions
(v.g. the choice of the special Visitor to be sent to this or that community)
were taken during the days following the closing of the MGM. Are those decisions
valid? In fact, the Mixed Commissions
cease to exist once the Chapter is closed.
c) Many superiors were
mandated as « special visitors », but their mandate was not always clearly
specified. Failing a very explicit
decision of the General Chapter (by delegation!), no Visitor, however special,
has any authority besides that conferred on all Visitors by the Statute on
Foundations. Can a Visitor, even though
delegated by the General Chapter, assume in practice the role of the Father
Immediate?
d) When the reading of
the house reports by the Mixed Commissions was introduced, it was considered
normal to have the superior of the house concerned come to the commission
when the report was read, and also, if need be, the Father Immediate. It was realised that this would disturb the
working of the Commissions somewhat, since someone would always be absent
or in the hallways on his or her way from one commission to the next. But that seemed acceptable, and in fact things worked quite well at several Chapters
At the last Chapter, the need experienced by some Commissions to arrive
at a « decision » concerning situations that no member of the Commission
was really acquainted with led them to create sub-commissions and later special
commissions calling on people from other commissions.
This occasioned a rather disturbing back-and-forth movement.
e) Finally, the whole
problem of follow-up remains. The mandate
given to the special Visitor should at least specify who he should report
to and who is to intervene if his Visitation does not yield any results.
And here is another question, which is not without importance: who
pays for all the travel involved?
One thing is certain:
if at the next General Chapters (or at the next General Chapter, Vaticano volente) the same power is conferred
once more upon the Mixed Commissions, many clarifications will have to be
made as regards the exercise of that power.
Conclusion
Just as each community of our Order is constituted by
the bonds of charity uniting the brothers or sisters, likewise our Order is
constituted by a vast network of structures and services whose purpose is
to maintain communion between the communities and to allow each monk and each
nun to live a deep relationship with God.
Within his community,
the monk can count on the support and example of community life, as well as
on the pastoral attention of his abbot, who will take care to cause himself
to be assisted by various officers, both in the spiritual and in the material
areas.
When they accept their office, all the superiors of the
Order assume a collegial pastoral responsibility for the entire Order. They exercise it mainly through their participation
in the General Chapter, through the relationship of filiation between the
communities and the role of the Father Immediate, as well as through the Regular
Visitations and the meetings of superiors within the framework of the regional
conferences. Both at those regional
conferences and at the General Chapter, they cause themselves to be assisted
by a few delegates from their communities in the exercise of their pastoral
responsibility.
In an ideal situation,
this pastoral attention can be exercised without the exercise of the powers
attached to certain responsibilities. When,
under special or difficult circumstances, the exercise of canonical authority
is required, it is of the utmost importance, in order to maintain charity
and bear spiritual fruit, that each person involved be aware of the scope
of his or her responsibilities and of the limits of his or her authority and
exercise the latter with full respect for the authority of all the other persons
or entities intervening. It is that
scope and those limits which we have attempted to specify throughout the above
pages.
Both the autonomy of the
local community and the supreme power of the General Chapter must be scrupulously
respected. Any pastoral intervention
between those two poles must respect the principle of subsidiarity.
Higher authority must help the authority over which it has a duty of
vigilance to exercise its own pastoral responsibility properly rather than
substituting for it.
Whoever holds pastoral
responsibility within the Order, at whatever level, must take care to acquire
a clear notion of the scope of his or her responsibility and of the limits of his or her authority. He or she must also be well acquainted with
all the canonical rules governing the exercise of that authority, which are,
generally speaking, the fruit of centuries of experience and wisdom. Experience shows that whenever, in the name
of broad-mindedness or of alleged personal pastoral wisdom, some of those
rules are neglected or not implemented, the rights of other persons are violated.
The precarious situation
of certain persons within the local community or of certain communities
within the Order requires not that others arrogate themselves the responsibility
of making the decisions that concern them in their place, but rather that
they be helped, with a great deal of attention and very tactfully, to take
their own decisions.
From this point of view,
some recent structures, born of life but not yet well broken in, will require
special attention during the coming years. We will have to see to it that the Commission
of Aid always work in harmony with the Father Immediate and the local superior,
with full respect for the responsibilities of the conventual Chapter and even
of the legitimate « susceptibility » of the members of the community.
As for the Mixed Commissions of the General Chapter, if we persist
in conferring on them the delegated power to act in the name of the entire
Chapter, they will also have to restrain their pastoral frenzy and be more
aware than in the past that the quality and success of a pastoral intervention
are usually evidenced by the fact that, in order to bear fruit, it does not
require any exercise of power, nor even – in most cases -- any decision-making.
Scourmont, Feast of the Immaculate Conception, 2006
[1] The
text of the Declaration may be found on the Internet : http://users.skynet.be/scourmont/cg1969/decl-v-cist-69-eng.htm.
[2] “Gathered
by the call of God, the brothers constitute a monastic church or community
that is the fundamental unit of the Order.” (C.5).
[3] See what a good historian of religious
life, Eutimio SASTRE SANTOS, has to say about this : “Quando nel
1119 Stefano Harding riceve da Callisto II la conferma dei primi statuti,
ci sono cinque monasteri in più, situati in diocesi diverse... Stefano Harding
– oppure Alberico come vuole l’Exordium parvum – deve affrontare e risolvere
il problema giuridico che bloccava il vecchio monachesimo: come conservare l’autonomia dei monasteri e
assicurare l’unione delle osservanze nel momento di uno strepitoso successo.
La soluzione
escogitata mantiene il principio del diritto antico di conservare l’autonomia
di ogni monastero; perciò ad agni
abate et alla sua badia viene riconosciuta un’autonomia amministrativa e
financiaria. Però lo stesso abate
e la stessa badia devono sottostare alla suprema autorità legislativa e
giudiziale, che non è di tipo fisico, ma giuridico: il capitolo generale. Tale capitolo, radunato ogni anno a Cîteaux,
il 14 settembre, sotto la presidenza dell’abate della stessa badia, corregge
gli abusi, punisce i colpevoli, modifica le leggi. A vegliare sull’osservanza dei monasteri provvedono
le visite che devono allacciare i legami spirituali tra i monasteri autonomi...
Vige così tra i monasteri autonomi il sistema di filiazione...
La Carta
Caritatis cioè la constitutio del novum monasterium ... ha gettato le basi
per risolvere la questione giuridica di come collegare tra loro i monasteri...
Una diversa
institutio distingue il vecchio dal nuovo monachesimo. A Cîteaux,
a differenza dell’unico abate di Cluny,
si mette in piedi un capitolo generale: la suprema autorità non è
una persona fisica, ma una persona giuridica: un collegium. Gli instituta
dei capitoli e la vigilanza attuata con le visite, suddivise tra quattro
abati, permettono di mantenere l’osservanza... Tuttavia, le “novità” del
capitolo e delle visite non sopprimono la vecchia autonomia dei monasteri.
In realtà l’ordo Cistercii
è costituito da una federazione di monasteri uguali e autonomi sotto la
suprema autorità di una persona giuridica: il capitolo. Però, la suprema
autorità personale di Cluny, del vecchio monachesimo, è stata spodestata”
-- Eutimio SASTRE SANTOS, La vita religiosa nella storia della Chiesa e
della società, Ancora, Milano, 1997 pp. 319-320.
[4] It should
be noted that it is the election
that is confirmed, not the person
elected (electio confirmatur). (See C. 39,6).
[5] For a long time, the superior ad nutum, in our Order, was considered
to be a mere delegate of the Father
Immediate, which was an anomaly, since, according to universal law, all
superiors of autonomous houses are major superiors endowed with ordinary
powers. This anomaly was corrected at the General Chapters held in 2002 (vote 34).
[6] Father
Jesús Torres, the former under-secretary of the Congregation for Institutes
of Consecrated Life, who is an excellent canonist, explained to me one day,
in his clear and vivid language, that the authority of our General Chapter
is made up of the parcels of authority delegated to it by the autonomous
communities which make up our Order.
[7] “ Even if the Visitation is done by
the Father Immediate, the superior
keeps his ordinary power in the monastery during the Visitation.” (Statute of the
Regular Visitation, nº 18.
[8] Ibidem.
[9] According
to the Statute on the Regular Visitation,
nº 22, he may, in exceptional cases and after consulting the superior, remove
a person in charge or an officer. He is not, however, authorised to appoint
his or her replacement.
[10] I wrote
a rather detailed paper on the history of the Abbot General’s role in our
Order for the 2006 meeting of the CNE (Central and
[11] See the Minutes, 1951, pp. 36-39.
[12]
Abbas
Generalis iure intellegitur supremus Moderator instituti clericalis iuris
pontificii, ad normam Constitutionum.
[13] See votes 44, 45 and 60 of that General
Chapter. The possibility of special Councillors was added to our
Constitutions as Statute 84,1,J.
[14] I have
made a rather detailed study of the origin and development of the Central
Commission. See
“Histoire de la Commission Centrale”, dans Un bonheur partagé – Mélanges offerts à Dom Marie-Gérard Dubois. (Cahiers
Scourmontois – 5), Scourmont 2005, pages 213-236. The same text may be found on the Internet at the following
address: http://users.skynet.be/bs775533/Armand/wri/comm-centrale.htm.
[15] I wrote
a paper on the origins and evolution of the Regions for the CNE Regional
conference held in June 2003. The
text may be found in the Minutes of the meeting, as well as on the Internet
at the following address: http://users.skynet.be/bs775533/Armand/wri/regions.htm
[16] I have
explained my position more fully in my article on the Central Commission
referred to in note 9.
[17] “The
Abbot General appoints a monk of the Order to be responsible for the ordinary
administration of the Order. He also
appoints a finance commission to administer the capital of the Order. This commission will provide the General Chapter
with its annual reports.” (Statute
on Temporal Administration, nº 33,b)
[18] Minutes,
Votes 23, 24 and 26.
[19] Minutes,
vote 28 to 31. We may add that communities sometimes entrust the Abbot General
with sums of money which he may use to assist monasteries which present
requests to him.
[20] Minutes, page 265.
[21] “Le General Chapter nommera un Secrétaire
central qui prendra soin des questions de liturgie qui se présenteront at
the level of the Order” (Ibidem)
[22] Document
on Formation, nº 70.
[23] The General
Chapter of 1967 passed a new statute for this commission. See Annex VI of the Minutes, p. 169-170.
I do not know at what date it ceased to exist. A cursory
consultation of the minutes of the General Chapters did not allow me to
discover whether it was abolished or died a natural death.
[24] I wrote a working document in this respect
in preparation for the General Chapter of 1971, under the title “For a prophetic General Chapter”. The text
may be found on the Internet: http://www.citeaux.net/wri-av/gen-chap-char_fra.htm.
[25] I dealt with this matter in my article
on the Central Commission referred to above.
[26] I was
a member of each of the “ad hoc” Commissions which, during the successive
Central Commission meetings, prepared and revised the document entitled
“Pastoral treatment of the house reports”
– with Dom Eduardo of Azul and Mother Anne of Ubexy at Orval in 1995; with
Dom Yvon of Oka and Mother Benedict of Berkel in Latrun in 1998; with Mother
Benedict of Berkel and Dom Damian of Spencer at La Trappe in 2001.