III. "STARTING AFRESH FROM CHRIST WITH MARY": A PROGRAMME WHICH REQUIRES SUPREME FIDELITY TO CHRIST AND FUNDAMENTAL FIDELITY TO MARY

1. Clarifications concerning the "four great fidelities" of the religious

         On August 12, 1980 the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes published a document Religious and Human Promotion, result of the work of the Plenary of the 25-28 April 1978.  The document presents an introduction in three parts: 1) Four principal problems (nn. 1-12):  2) General criteria for discernment  (nn. 13-31); 3)  Formative Requirements (nn. 32-35). As a guide or general criteria  for discernment "four great fidelities" are proposed: "fidelity to man and to our time", fidelity to Christ  and to the Gospel, fidelity to the Church and to its mission in the world, fidelity to religious life and to the charism of one's own institute" (n. 13)

         The document bears the sign of its historical content and therefore, in some point it was successively reviewed and improved. Concretely, the frame of the "four great fidelities" was later reordered and clarified.

         In his message  of  July 11, 1986, John Paul II wished to call attention to the major Superiors - men and women - of Brazil, meeting for their XIV General Assembly, "on some fundamental points regarding formation" (n.2). There the Pope underlines some determinant points: the identity of religious life has to be clearly centered on the life of Christ; consecration and mission have to be explained as a peculiar form of participation in the consecration and the mission of Christ; the criteria of being and acting of religious have to express clearly the supremacy of the evangelical person of Christ.

         The Pope knew that some religious had had recourse to the criterion of "fidelity to man and to our time", a criterion placed physically in the first place in the list of the "four great fidelities", seeking to justify their theory and their practice of questionable anthropological, social and political commitment, which did not do justice to the importance of the other criteria of fidelity of the religious. It was necessary, then to insist on the fact that the key of the harmony of life and of the just apostolic programming was found in conformation and fidelity to Christ. The frame, then, was reordered in the following way: "dynamic fidelity to Christ and to the Church, to the charism of the founder and to man of our time" (n. 4).

         The Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life on February 2, 1990, published the Instruction Potissimum institutioni,  also known as Directives on formation in religious institutes.  According to this document, the most decisive factor of formation, the most important point of spiritual dimension, the center of harmony and unity of life, the focal point of identity, has to be sought and found "in Christ".

In harmony with this statement and with the orientation of the message of the Pope in 1986, the Instruction presents the frame of the "four great fidelities" placing clearly "fidelity to Christ" in the first place. (PI 18).

The positive elements of the aspects of fidelity examined before are also found in the exhortation Vita consecrata  of 1996:  "Be always ready, faithful to Christ, the Church, to your Institute and to the men and women of our time" (VC 110).