Letter and Spirit, Chapter 18

8/9/2019 Letter and Spirit, Chapter 18

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VISITATOR, CHAPLAIN AND

CARDINAL PROTECTOR

The Office of the Visitator

The Chaplain and his Duties

The Cardinal Protector

Submission to the Roman See

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CHAPTER XII, 1-14 1Let our Visitator always be taken from the Order of

the Friars Minor according to the will and command of

our Cardinal. 2Let him be the kind of person who is well

known for his integrity and good manner of living. 3His

duty shall be to correct any excesses against the form of

our profession, whether these be in head or in the

members. 4Taking his stand in a public place, that he can

be seen by others, let him speak with several and with

each one concerning the matters that pertain to the duty

of the visitation as he sees best.5We ask as a favor of the same Order a chaplain and a

clerical companion of good reputation, 6of prudent

discernment and two lay brothers, lovers of a holy and

upright way of life, in support of our poverty, 7as we have

always mercifully had from the aforesaid Order of FriarsMinor, in light of the love of God and our Blessed

Francis.

8 Let the chaplain not be permitted to enter the

monastery without a companion. 9When they enter, let

them remain in an open place, in such a way that they

can always see each other and be seen by others. 10They

may enter the enclosure for the confession of the sickwho cannot go to the parlor, for their Communion, for

the Last Anointing and the Prayers of the Dying.11 Suitable and sufficient outsiders may enter,

moreover, according to the prudence of the abbess, for

funeral services and on the solemnity of Masses for the

Dead, for digging or opening a grave, or also for making

arrangements for it. 12Let the sisters be strictly bound to always have the

Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, who has been

delegated by the Lord Pope for the Friars Minor, as

Governor, Protector, and Corrector, 13that always

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submissive and subject to the feet of that holy Church and

steadfast in the Catholic faith, 14 we may always observe

the poverty and humility or our Lord Jesus Christ and ofHis most holy Mother and the holy Gospel we have firmly

promised. Amen.

The Office of the VisitatorThe visit has always been in the life of the Church a

most suitable means to maintain in the Christian

communities the fidelity to their commitment of faith. The

apostles practiced it and the bishops, their successors, have

continued doing so. From of old, it has also been a

common practice, one way or another, in religious life. St.

Francis gave utmost importance to this pastoral duty of

visiting their brothers by the ministers and servants in

order to console, animate and correct them, if needed.

Clare imposes on the abbess the duty of visiting her

sisters (chapter X), i.e., attending to the welfare of each one

through personal dialogue, since the Mother is to be a

spiritual guide of all. She likewise knows that the

community as such, the superior included, needs to bevisited too. In an institute organized in the way of a

centralized government, even with feminine institutes too,

the local communities are visited by the Provincial

Superior, the provinces by the General Superior or his

delegate. But an autonomous monastery cannot just be

visited by an outsider.

Francis had committed himself from the beginningbefore Clare and her companions to have for them loving

care and special solicitude personally and through his

brothers. That care was to be both material and spiritual,

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and of fraternal, not juridical, reciprocity. Clare

nevertheless felt herself bonded to Francis by the

obedience she had promised him as Father and Founder.We understand the reaction of the Saint, motivated

without doubt by Clares alarm, when, during his trip to the

Orient, a permanent Visitator was appointed. It was

equivalent to imposing on the poor ladies an external

superior, with the double danger of inhibiting the

communitys inner freedom and of cooling down the unity

with the Friars Minor. Clare had obtained for her

community, from Honorius III, that the task would fall

upon Philip Longgo. What displeased Francis most was the

faculty granted to the Visitator of excommunicating those

coming to disturb the San Damiano community; that is why

he had the appointment annulled.

Meanwhile, Hugolinus, who had already given the

poor ladies a Rule, was taking care of the several

communities that were budding, imitating that of SanDamiano, through a permanent Visitator, the Cistercian Fr.

Ambrose. Later on, he would entrust this task to a member

of the First Order. Once elected Pope, he would fully set

the poor ladies under the care of the Friars Minor. The

Rule of Hugolinus distinguished between the General

Visitator, permanent, and the Special Visitator, sent in

transitory to a monastery.The Rule of Innocent IV, on setting the Damianites

under the obedience, government and magisterium of the

General and Provincial Ministers of the Order of Friars

Minor, altered the system: the major Superiors of the First

Order exercised the office of Visitators, be it personally or

by naming other visitators. The Holy See would maintain

for long that dependence.Clare wishes to put on record in the Rule her will that

the Visitator be ever of the first Order, as a guarantee of

faithfulness to the common Gospel life.

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The mission of the Visitator is to correct any abuses

against the form of our profession, whether in the head or

in the members, i.e., whether the one responsible for theexcess is the abbess or the sisters. The expression so in

the head as in the members was a common one in the

canonical terminology of the epoch. It was also a canonical

norm that the Visitator should be at an open public location

when talking with each of the sisters.

Canon Law does not set a fixed period of time for the

canonical visit of the bishop or regular Superior; the

previous norm was to make it every five years. The

General Constitutions mark now an ordinary frequency of

three years, before each elective chapter. The Capuchin

Constitutions confine themselves to ordering the abbess to

remind the respective prelate, at least every five years,

about his duty of lending the community his help. (Gen

CC, art. 254-256; Cap CC, 217-220). It would be

something to be desired, as St. Clare wanted, that theVisitator would always be a religious of the First Order,

even at monasteries depending on the Diocesan Bishop; but

the most the Poor Clares can do is to express that just desire

to the bishop.

The Chaplain and His Duties

The First Order was to answer too for the ministerial

assistance through the chaplains. That is how Innocent IV

had it disposed. This meant to the Friars Minor a

subjection that would very soon become excessive, since,

as St. Clare says in her Rule, there was to be near each PoorClares Monastery a true community of well chosen

brothers: two priests of good reputation and prudent

discernment, and two lay brothers, lovers of a holy and

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upright way of life. These got the task of procuring the

nuns the material means, the Rule adds, in support of our

poverty.Such had ever been Clares great desire: to ensure the

benefit of the spiritual and material assistance of the

Brothers of the First Order, more of the first than the latter.

On 1230, Gregory IX determined, in accordance with St.

Francis Rule, that no brother should go to the Poor Ladies

monasteries without the special permission of the Holy See.

The biographer tells that Clare, sorrowing that her sisters

would more rarely have the food of sacred teaching, sighed:

Let him now take away from us all the brothers since he

has taken away those who provide us with the food that is

vital. And at once, she sent back to the minister all the

brothers, not wanting to have the questors who acquired

corporal bread when they could not have the questors for

spiritual bread. When Pope Gregory heard this, he

immediately mitigated that prohibition in the hands of theGeneral Minister. 1

On the decades following St. Clares death, there was a

certain struggle between the Major superiors of the first

Order and the Poor Sisters. The Brothers were trying to

release themselves from being in assistance of the Poor

Clares while the [sisters] persisted to demand it as a family

right. On 1263, Urban IV had to intervene in favor of thenuns with the occasion of the General Chapter of the Order.

The Brothers the Pope reasoned out must assist them,

because they are members of the one and the same body.

The General Minister, St. Bonaventure, yielded to the

Popes wishes, setting as condition that the Sisters would

officially recognize that the Brothers were doing such

service not in virtue of an obligation, but only out of freegood will.

It is as plain as can be that the First Order has not

always been able in the course of centuries to please St.

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Clare with this fraternal service that she asks for as a grace

out of the love of God and our Blessed Francis.

The Rule has envisaged the various occasions when thechaplain will be needed at the interior of the monastery:

hearing the confession of the ill who are unable to go to the

parlor (the site for Confessions at that time), bringing them

Holy communion, administering Holy Anointing and the

recommendation of the soul. Likewise, for the funeral rites

and burial, the chaplain may enter and as many as

necessary. The Saint departs hereto from the previous Rule

of Innocent IV which limited the entrance of the Chaplain

to the event of an ill one of extreme seriousness, having

to enter and exit wearing the alb, stole, and mantle; and

ordained that he was to preside the funeral rites from

outside the cloister. St. Clares Rule presupposes that the

solemn funeral mass is solemnized inside the cloister as a

final sign of communion with the deceased sister. Let us

recall that the Rule foresees still another motive for thechaplain entering inside the convent: celebrating the Mass

on the seven solemnities wherein the sound and sick sisters

receive communion (chapter III).

In all these cases, the chaplain will have to go with a

companion and will always be at the sisters sight.

The Constitutions do not demand from the Brothers of

the First Order this fraternal service for each monastery asClare obtained for San Damiano. The Constitutions affirm

though, the close union with the Friars Minor and the

mutual support; recognizing in the Minister General the

office of high spiritual moderator that he exercises by

means of fraternal visit to monasteries and federations be it

personal or through his delegate. It also expresses their

preference for said brothers as chaplains, spiritual directors,confessors, and formation collaborators (Gen CC, art. 120-

121; Cap CC, 8, 155, 197, 199).

With all the more reason, this union is affirmed among

all St. Clares daughters and the rest of cloistered

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Franciscans, who are admitted even inside the cloister

when they are out of their monasteries; and, in general,

with all the institutes of the Franciscan family and with theLay Franciscan Order (Gen CC, art. 122-124; Cap CC, 104,

155).

The Cardinal Protector Submission to the Roman See

The institution of the Cardinal Protector, that came to be

normal for the majority of the religious Institutes up to

1964, when Paul VI issued the decree of suppression, was

of Franciscan origin, and it was due to the growing interest

that Cardinal Hugolinus was getting for the movementstirred up by St. Francis. His interest settled down mainly

in the attention to the Poor Ladies. In his Rule, the figure

of the Cardinal Protector appears already as something

stable.

You should take solicitous care that, when a Cardinal

or a Bishop of the Roman Church, who has been specially

designated for you, has passed from this life, you always

ask from the Lord Pope another from his brother-bishops,

to whom you ought to have special recourse when

necessity arises (Hugolinus Rule, 10).

Upon being constituted in 1220, at the request of St.

Francis, protector of the Friars Minor, i.e. representative

of the Holy See to guide the Order in its difficulties, the

responsibilities of Hugolinus stretch out to the whole

Franciscan family. Chosen Pope in 1227 under theassumed name of Gregory IX, he appointed Cardinal

Rainaldo dei Conti as the new protector with authority over

the 24 monasteries that the Order of San Damiano had at

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that time. The power of the Cardinal Protector would make

itself greatly felt on the first three centuries, but became

practically annulled when the college of Cardinals took upthe representation of the papal authority for matters related

to the religious, and even more so when the Sacred

Congregation of Religious was created in 1908. The office

of Cardinal Protector was already purely nominal.

So then, the letter of St. Clares Rule, reproducing the

very same prescription of Francis in his own, has perhaps

lost relevance today, but its spirit is still in full force. If

Francis and Clare impose upon the Order the strict

obligation of always asking from the Roman Pontiff a

Cardinal as governor, protector and corrector of the

fraternity, it is to assure her the unconditional

submissiveness and subjection with the holy Roman

Church, i.e. the Pope and the whole hierarchical church, a

submission that guarantees the constant fidelity to the

Catholic faith and even to its own evangelical calling:that always submissive and subject to the

feet of the holy Church and steadfast in theCatholic faith we may always observe the povertyand humility of our Lord Jesus Christ and his holyMother and the Holy Gospel we have firmlypromised (R, XII, 13).

And how well St. Clare knew how to maintain that

humble and trusting submission to the Apostolic See

without giving up nonetheless the form of life she got from

St. Francis! The first biographer describes the rejoicing of

the Saint on the day when at her deathbed received the visit

of Innocent IV:

The most grateful woman accepted his handand asked that she might also kiss the feet of the Apostolic Authority with the greatest reverence.The Pope agreed courteously placing his feet on awooden stool and she reverently inclined her face

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toward it, kissing it above and below. Then with an

angelic expression, she asked the forgiveness of all

her sins from the Supreme Pontiff . Wheneveryone had left, since she had received earlierthat day the sacred host from the hands of the provincial minister, she raised her eyes toheaven, joined her hands toward God, and, with

tears said to her sisters: Praise the Lord, mychildren, because today Christ has condescended togive me such a blessing that heaven and earth arenot enough to compensate for it. Today, she said, Ihave received the Most High and have been worthyto see His Vicar. (L Cl, 41ff.).

But her rejoicing was surely even greater when she

finally received the so long awaited bull through which the

same Innocent IV was approving on August 9, 1253, her

Form of Life of the Order of the Poor Sisters founded bySt. Francis. Clare pressed it close to her with her hands

and kissed it over and over again. Now she could die at

peace. Two days later, she expired happily with the

parchment on her hands.

Footnote to Chapter 18:

1. Gregory IX, Bull Ino elongati at Bullarium Franc. I, 70; LCL, 37)

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Letter and Spirit, Chapter 18