4. Difficulties that flow from the Changed Relationship between Members of Missionary Institutes and Diocesan Bishops

Above I mentioned that with the establishment of local hierarchies in the mission Territories, the relationship between the local diocesan Bishop and the members of missionary Institutes has changed. The diocesan Bishop is concerned with the care of the various activities of his diocese, while the members of the missionary Institutes are concerned with fidelity to their charisma, primary evangelisation and the implantation of the mystery of the Church among groups and settings where the Gospel and the Church are either absent or insufficient. These two concerns often give rise to tensions.

As a help to overcome this misunderstanding various suggestions have been made in different documents of the Church. The "Redemptoris Missio" speaks of the need for missionary Institutes "ad vitam" to recover the sense of their "special divine vocation" manifested in a total commitment to evangelisation which involves the missionary's whole person and life and demands a self-giving without limits of energy or time (RM, 65). These Institutes undertake the duty of evangelisation which is the responsibility of the whole Church as their special task (AG, 23). They exist for the Church and must enrich her with their distinctive characteristics, according to a particular spirit and a specific mission. And the guardians of this fidelity to the founding spirit are the Bishops themselves, (RM, 66); Mutuae Relationes, 14b, 29).

These Institutes are still "absolutely necessary" to the life of the Church (AG, 27). They have a "permanent validity", since the Church's missionary mandate is still only beginning (RM, 1). They remain models of the Church's missionary commitment, which always stands in need of radical and total self-giving, of new and bold endeavors. Instead of being daunted by doubts, misunderstandings, rejections or persecution they should revive the grace and enthusiasm of their charisma (RM, 66). This is the first urgent need of these Institutes today.

The second help which all missionary Institutes need today in facing this tension between themselves and the local diocesan Bishops is what the Code says in cases where a diocesan Bishop entrusts a work to a religious, an agreement is to be made between the Bishop and the competent Superior of the Institute. This agreement must expressly and accurately define, among other things, the work to be done, the members to be assigned to it and the financial arrangements (CIC 681, §2).

This Canon is the fruit of long experience. In 1969, the Missionary Dicastery held a Plenary Congregation of its members, dedicated precisely to this question of the changed relationship existing between diocesan Bishops and religious missionary Institutes. Following upon the results of that Plenary, the Congregation also published a kind of "Suggested Format" of contracts between a diocesan Ordinary and a Missionary Institute. At that time these contracts were divided into two types, 1) the simple contract between an Institute and the local Ordinary, such as is provided for in CIC, Canon 681 §2, and 2) the "mandate contract", "a charge that was given to an Institute by the supreme authority of the Church (in this case, the CEP) upon the request of the Bishop, and the acceptance of this form by the Institute concerned, to collaborate with and under the same Bishop in a missionary diocese in accordance with the terms of the contract" (cf. "New Instructions" given by the Sacred Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, Rome, 1969, pp. 4-5, Extract from the "Bibliografia Missionaria, XXXII (1968), Enchiridion Vaticanum, vol 3, pp. 474-487).

This "mandate" form of contract is now for all practical purposes extinct, since experience has proved that it was not a viable system, given the crisis in vocations experienced by the Missionary Institutes. Whence the simple contract between the competent authority of an Institute in the diocese and the local diocesan Bishop is the system that was found workable and now forms part of the Church Law, (Canon 681 §2).

The "Suggested Format" of the simple contract of 1969, however, is now more or less out of date, and should you wish to find one that is up-to-date, I would suggest the form that was published by the CISM (cf. Notiziario CISM luglio-agosto 1986, n. 25).