New Wineskins: reimagining Australia's Marists

Abstract

This article considers the ways through which the Marists in Australia are enhancing their charismic vitality and the structural viability as a movement of Christian educators within the Church. A theoretical context is described, focusing on the nature of the concepts of charism, communio, discipleship, the spiritual families of the Church and Missio Dei. The strategic initiatives that have been taken in formation and organisation over the past two decades are discussed and the priorities for the immediate future are identified.

Keywords:

• Catholic education
• charism
• Missio Dei
• spiritual families

Notes on contributor

Dr Michael Green FMS, a Marist Brother, is National Director of Marist Schools Australia and Executive Director of Ministries for the Marist Brothers’ Province of Australia. He has been involved in Catholic education for 40 years as a teacher, principal, administrator and scholar. He has also served his religious institute locally and internationally in a number of capacities. He has a particular interest in fresh ways in which the spiritual families of the Church can imagine themselves as inclusive schools of spirituality, community and mission.

Notes

1. Suenens (1964).

2. The term is the one used by the Congregation for Catholic Education (2007). See ‘Educating Together in Catholic Schools, A Shared Mission between Consecrated Persons and the Lay Faithful, #28–30’.

3. The Marists comprise an extended family of religious institutes and lay groups that each traces its source to the Society of Mary founded in Lyon, France, in the early part of the nineteenth century. Among the founding group were Venerable Jean-Claude Colin and Saint Marcellin Champagnat, both Marist priests. For the purposes of this article, discussion will be restricted to those who are associated with the branch of Marists connected with Saint Marcellin. This was originally the Marist Brothers (or ‘Little Brothers of Mary’), a religious institute of teaching brothers devoted to the Christian education and care of youth. In more recent times it has included various groups of lay faithful who are connected, both formally and informally, to Marist communities and Marist institutions.

4. Lydon (2009).

5. Brother Charles Howard (1991).

6. For a more extensive consideration of this, see Green (2011).

7. Colossians 3:12.

8. 1 Peter 2:9.

9. For example, Matthew 4:18–22; 10:34–36; 19:21; 22:12–13; Mark 1:16–20; Luke 9:22–26; John 15:6. This idea is developed well by Donna Orsuto, Director of the Lay Center at Foyer Unitas (Rome), and lecturer in the Institute of Spirituality at the Gregorian University. See Orsuto (1997).

10. Pope John Paul II's encyclicals Christifideles laici (1988) and Vita consecrata (1996), along with Educating Together in Catholic Schools, A Shared Mission between Consecrated Persons and the Lay Faithful, provide some sharp discussion on the complementary roles of consecrated and lay life in the spiritual, communitarian and missionary life of the Church.

11. Or, to give it its full title: A Synod on the Vocation and the Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church and in the World.

12. Congregation for Catholic Education, (2007).

13. Ratzinger commented most clearly on this point in 1992 when he wrote an editorial piece for the twentieth anniversary of the theological journal Communio, of which he was one of the co-founders. See Ratzinger (1992).

14. See, for example, Bevans (2004); Bevans and Schoeder (2004) and Bevans (2011).

15. See the opening three paragraphs of Benedict XVI's (2005) Encyclical Deus Caritas Est for a sense of this Christ-encounter.

16. Constitutions of the Marist Brothers, #2 (Marist Brothers 1986).

17. Water from the Rock. Marist Spirituality flowing in the tradition of Marcellin Champagnat, #11 Institute of the Marist Brothers (2007). See also #26.

18. A circular of the present Marist Superior General, Brother Emili Turú (2011), explores this theme: He Gave Us The Name of Mary.

19. Water from the Rock, Chapter 1, summarises these six features of Marist spirituality.

20. See Luke 1:39–56.

21. From the description of Marist spirituality in Marist Schools Australia, An Introduction. Marist Brothers: Province of Australia.

22. The term was used by the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education (1977) in its signature document The Catholic School #41, and was subsequently picked up by the Marist Brothers’ Constitutions (Marist Brothers 1986), #87.

23. See, example, the treatment of ‘inculturation’ by Bevans (2012) and Sivalon (2012).

24. Sivalon (2012).

25. Lydon, (2009). See also Grace (2010).

26. See also John McMahon who, in his doctoral study on Marist education, drew extensively on theories of Max Weber (McMahon 1993).

27. Some translators prefer ‘charismatic gifts’ to ‘charisms’; others stay with the Latin word charismata.

28. Lumen Gentium #12.

29. See Pope Paul VI (1971) #2, #11.

30. Christifideles Laici #24.

31. Pope Francis (2013) has expressed similar sentiments in Evangelii Gaudium, #130–31.

32. The Pauline understanding of spiritual gifts is developed through a number of Paul's letters and those of the Pauline school: see Romans 14; 1 and 2 Corinthians; 1 Timothy 4:14; 2 Timothy 1:6; 1 Peter 4:10.

33. The phrase is Claude Maréchal's (2000), the then Assumptionist Superior General, who delivered a paper on this topic at the 56th Conference of Superiors General, in Rome, in 1999: Toward an effective partnership between religious and laity in fulfilment of charism and responsibility for mission.

34. Father Bruno Secondin, then Carmelite Superior General, claims that the Church is going through a developmental phase with regard to lay involvement. Like any founding time, it is ‘exploratory, adventurous and contradictory’.

35. See the Pastoral Letter of the Bishops of NSW and the ACT (2007), Catholic Schools at a Crossroads, for a discussion of important issues around the identity and mission of the Australian Catholic schools.

36. Congregation for Catholic Education op. cit.

37. See Peter Nicholson (2009). Conference paper available from Government and Management bookstore: www.goverance.com.au.

38. See his General Audience, 25 September 2013. The Pope points out that a mark of any genuine Christian community is its inclusivity rather than exclusivity – that a Christian may feel ‘at home’ within it.

39. Lumen Gentium #12 challenges the Church to accept this multifaceted giftedness of the Spirit ‘with gratitude’ because it is God's way of upbuilding the Church.

40. This is a concept of Canon Law. For a person or group to be given the right to act in the name of the Church and/or to hold title to goods or property in the name of the Church, it is necessary for that person or group to have an approved existence in Canon Law, in much the same way that a company or other corporate entity exists in Civil Law. So, for example, a parish or a religious institute is a ‘Public Juridic Person’ (PJP) in Canon Law. With the new ecclesial movements and other organisations in the Church that are now seeking to exercise ministry in the name of the Church (including organisations that have been ceded the apostolic works formerly conducted by religious institutes) there has been a move to have new PJPs approved by the Holy See, national Episcopal Conferences or local Ordinaries. The more common approach that is being taken by religious institutes is for a PJP to be a small group of people formally entrusted with canonical stewardship of the works that were formerly conducted by these institutes. That is, the number of formal members of the PJP is quite restricted. Examples in Australia are Edmund Rice Education Australia (for educational works formerly conducted by the Irish Christian Brothers), Mary Aikenhead Ministries (for health and educational works of the Sisters of Charity), Mercy Partners (from the Sisters of Mercy), Good Samaritan Education (from the Good Samaritan Sisters) and Kildare Ministries (from the Brigidine and the Presentation Sisters).

41. In following this path, the Marists are doing something that is atypical of most religious institutes, and aligns more closely with the paths followed by the new ecclesial movements. Although their initiative has some resemblance to the tertiary of ‘third order’ arrangements of the older religious orders such as the Dominicans or Franciscans, it differs in one critical respect: the new Marist Association includes both professed members of the Institute and lay people, priests and other religious, all as equal members.