How canon law can reconcile ‘founding charisms’ and problem founders

What is spiritual abuse, how do we recognize it, and how do we prevent it?

These are questions of increasingly pressing importance to the contemporary Church, and in particular to her religious communities – places where, as successive investigations and media reports have made clear, the misuse of authority and manipulation of conscience under spiritual pretexts has undeniably happened.

It’s not easy or pleasant to acknowledge that such abuse can be found in the very heart of the Church. But perhaps the tools for diagnosis and cure can be found in that very same place.

In a previous column for The Pillar, I argued that religious communities need to take full ownership of the call for ecclesial reforms to combat spiritual abuse. We need to see this call not first and foremost as an imposition put on us from those on the ‘outside,’ but instead as a continuation of the call to ongoing reform and renewal which we have received from the Church herself.

In that column, I pointed to the proper law of the institute as an area where reform and renewal can minimize the likelihood of spiritual abuse and help religious to identify it when it does happen. But there is another, related aspect of religious life where reform and renewal can have the same effect — one which, like proper law, is discussed in great detail in the post-conciliar documents relating to religious life: the community’s founding charism and its relationship to its founder.

What exactly is a founding charism? Even if we are familiar with the word”‘charism” as it is applied to individual Catholics - perhaps we or someone we know has discerned a charism such as administration, teaching, or encouragement, for instance - we might not necessarily be familiar with the idea of charisms as applied to entire communities.

But if you have ever said, “Better watch what I’m saying – there’s a Dominican in the room!” in the presence of a member of the Order of Preachers, asked an enclosed contemplative to pray for a particularly urgent intention, or felt bad about eating a lavish meal in front of a Franciscan, then you have witnessed to the existence of founding charisms: a particular call to service given by the Holy Spirit to a community, held and exercised by them for the good of the Church, which makes that community distinct and recognizable within the Body of Christ.

Read more