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Pope Francis just took another step forward to de-clericalize the Roman Catholic Church. And what most people probably don’t realize is that he did so by taking a step backward and rewinding the clock some four centuries!
The 85-year-old pope has just decreed that so-called “lay brothers” can be heads of their religious orders, even if these communities include priests.
In other words, a non-ordained member of a religious community can be the superior (or “boss”) of those who are ordained presbyters.
The change, and it’s a pretty big one, was announced May 18 by the Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (referred to hereafter as CICLSAL or the “congregation for religious”).
The congregation said the pope issued a “rescript” (an official edict) to formalize this novelty.
Well, it’s only a novelty of sorts. While the Code of Canon Law (cf. Can. 129) makes it clear that the non-ordained cannot have “power of governance” or “jurisdiction” over those who “have received sacred orders”, this has not always been the case in the long history of the Roman Church.
And in the so-called “mixed institutes” — male religious communities that include both non-ordained and ordained members (colloquially, brothers and priests) –, only the priests have been permitted to be the major superiors.
The 1994 Synod and two Capuchins from Canada
Most reports credit the heads of the four major men’s branches of the Franciscan Family — Friars Minor, Conventuals (Greyfriars), Capuchins and TORs (Third Order Regulars) — with bringing about this change, having brought the case before pope during a 2017 meeting.
But efforts to allow non-ordained brothers to head mixed institutes go back much farther than that. And they broke out into the open in 1994 during the Synod of Bishops’ assembly on “The Consecrated Life and its Role in the Church and in the World”.
Two Capuchin Franciscans from Canada were the ones who brought this issue before Pope John Paul II and bishops from all over the world who were at that month-long gathering in the Vatican.
Fewer than a dozen reporters were allowed inside the Synod Hall in those days and they were all from L’Osservatore Romano and Vatican Radio. It was the third of about eight Synod assemblies that I attended during my time at the Radio.
And I remember being struck by the intervention that John Corriveau, the priest who was the General Minister of the Capuchins at the time, gave at that gathering. He made a plea to allow non-ordained members to become superiors in mixed institutes like his own.
The first lay brother to be major superior in more than 400 years
But there was a member from his home Capuchin province in central Canada who was also present at that Synod assembly. And this man was Exhibit A to bolster Corriveau’s address.
He was a non-ordained brother named Ignatius Feaver. And what was so unique about him was that he had been elected Provincial Superior — head of the central Canadian Capuchins — in 1983, supposedly the first time a lay brother had been put in charge of the whole kit and caboodle as a major superior in more than 400 years!
Feaver’s election even received the required approval from the Vatican. But it seems that it happened through a sort of linguistic mix-up.
One story goes that when the Canadian Caps sent CICLSAL the name of their newly elected Provincial they listed him as FR IGNATIUS FEAVER. In Latin — the most common language used for official matters in the Roman Curia, at least at that time –“FR” is an abbreviation for frater or brother (“P” is used for pater or father).
Added to the confusion was the fact that the Capuchins and many other mixed institutes — like the Dominicans, for example — call all their members “brothers”, even those who are ordained priests.
It seems the official at CICLSAL who gave the congregation’s approval to Feaver’s election was standing in for a higher-ranking confrere who was away on summer vacation. And the poor fellow evidently thought that since the newly-elected Capuchin was from an English-speaking country, the FR before his name was for “Father”.
If memory serves, Brother Ignatius served out his term, but Rome insisted that he have a priest as his special assistant to handle any delicate matters of “jurisdiction” concerning the ordained member of the province.
John Paul II sets up a “special committee” on mixed institutes
The interventions of John Corriveau and Ignatius Feaver at that October 1994 gathering of the Synod of Bishops were courageous. They were like seed scattered on mostly infertile and rocky ground. They would take many years to finally sprout and grow.
Corriveau had only been elected Minister General of the worldwide Capuchin order just only a few months earlier. And in February of that same year the congregation for religious
had issued an extremely long document called “Fraternal Life in Community” that never even mentioned the issue of governance in mixed institutes
That text was obviously timed to influence the Synod assembly. But it did not deter the two Canadian Capuchins, Corriveau and Feaver.
Their cause was taken up by many others who were at that assembly and those Synod participants voted overwhelmingly on a proposal to set up a Vatican study commission on the issue of governance in mixed institutes.
Pope John Paul II acknowledged this in his post-synodal exhortation Vita consecrata(March 25, 1996).
Some religious institutes, which in the founder’s original design were envisaged as a brotherhood in which all the members, priests and those who were not priests, were considered equal among themselves, have acquired a different form with the passing of time.
It is necessary that these Institutes, known as “mixed”, evaluate on the basis of a deeper understanding of their founding charism whether it is appropriate and possible to return to their original inspiration.
The Synod Fathers expressed the hope that in these institutes all the religious would be recognized as having equal rights and obligations, with the exception of those which stem from Holy Orders.
A special commission has been established to examine and resolve the problems connected with this issue; it is necessary to await this commission’s conclusions before coming to suitable decisions in accordance with what will be authoritatively determined. (VC, 61)
“A model of collaboration between clergy and laity”
A year after the apostolic exhortation was published, Corriveau was at the Synod of Bishops’ special assembly for America where he again addressed the issue.
But this time he went even further and argued that mixed institutes could be used as a model for the life and decision-making, ministry and service for the entire Church. And he cleverly attributed the insight to the pope, using the following words:
Vita consecrata (n. 61) offers a model of collaboration between clergy and laity in its renewed recognition of mixed institutes. Reflective of a theology of communion, the specific character of these “fraternities” resides in the fact that cleric members and lay members enjoy equal rights and obligations, with the exception of those which stem from Holy Orders.
These institutes incarnate not only a unique mode of living the holy gospel, but a mutually respectful and collaborative mode for cleric and lay members to proclaim the gospel in the world. This form of life, lived for many centuries within the Church, offers the best guarantee that such charisms can be lived without confusion of cleric and lay ministerial roles.
With the full implementation of Vita consacrata, 61, mixed institutes will be challenged to bring that same vitality to the new evangelization of the Americas as was released by them in the first proclamation of the gospel.
As for the “special commission” that John Paul supposedly set up in the Vatican to look into mixed institutes, it never issued a report — at least not one that was ever published to my knowledge.
But that did not stop the Capuchins from continuing to push the envelope. The province in Milwaukee elected a lay brother as its head in 2008. CICLSAL firmly rejected him, of course, and forced the American friars to go back and select a priest as their provincial superior.
Then no one dared trying any similar stunt again until 2019 when the Denver-based Capuchins elected Brother Mark Shenk as their Provincial Minister. Once again, the Vatican blocked an attempt to put a non-ordained friar in charge.
But Pope Francis stepped in and allowed Shenk to take up the position, which he still holds today.
Now the pope has moved to make the election of non-ordained brothers to even the highest positions of governance in their orders as something quite normal.
Canon 129 has not been changed, the Jesuit pope knows — as many in the Vatican and elsewhere seem to have forgotten long ago — that Church law reflects the theology, praxis and lived reality of the Christian community and not the other way around.
- Robert Mickens is LCI Editor in Chief.
- First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.
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