Pope Francis meets with the Order of Malta’s Fra’ Marco Luzzago on June 25, 2021. / Vatican Media
Rome Newsroom, Mar 31, 2022 / 04:42 am (CNA).
Pope Francis received two drafts of a new constitution for the Order of Malta at an audience with members of the 1,000-year-old institution on March 19. He reserved the right to read them calmly and then make his final decisions.
To understand what’s at stake, it’s essential to know how the order is structured. The organization’s members belong to three classes.
The First Class consists of the Knights of Justice, or professed knights, and Professed Conventual Chaplains, who take the religious vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. They are defined as religious but not required to live in a community.
The Second Class is composed of Knights and Dames in Obedience, who promise to strive for Christian perfection in the spirit of the order.
The Third Class comprises lay members who neither take vows nor make promises but are committed to living a fully Catholic life according to the order’s principles.
Only First Class knights who descend from a family of four quarters of nobility are eligible to be elected as the Grand Master, the order’s religious superior and sovereign. This provision means that fewer than 40 people in the order can be considered for the position.
The Grand Master oversees the order with the help of a body called the Sovereign Council, whose members are elected for five-year terms by the order’s General Chapter.
Members of the Sovereign Council include the influential figure of the Grand Chancellor, who oversees the order’s 133 diplomatic missions, and the Grand Hospitaller, responsible for the order’s extensive humanitarian initiatives.
The order has three different types of national institutions spread around the world: six grand priories, six sub-priories, and 48 local associations.
The participants in the meeting with the pope on March 19 represented two sides in a years-long debate over reforms to the order’s constitution.
Some of those present were members of the group entrusted with drafting the new constitution, led by the papal delegate Cardinal Silvano Maria Tomasi. Also attending were representatives of the professed knights, the government of the order, the procurators of the priories, and the presidents of the associations, as well as the order’s current leader, Fra’ Marco Luzzago, who is known as the Lieutenant of the Grand Master.
The gathering enabled Pope Francis to hear the advocates of two contrasting visions for the order. First, that of the working group led by Tomasi, which stressed the need for the Order of Malta to be led above all by the professed. And second, that of the group set up by the Grand Chancellor Albrecht von Boeslager and entrusted to the leadership of Marwan Sehanaoui, president of the order’s Lebanese association, which called for a more collegial style of government.
The private papal audience lasted for two and a half hours instead of the expected hour and a half. According to participants who spoke with CNA, the pope said that he wanted to retain everything that makes the Order of Malta such an effective provider of humanitarian aid and he would review material provided by both sides before making a decision.
The two colliding visions have shaped the debate ever since Pope Francis launched the reform process in 2017 after he accepted the resignation of Grand Master Fra’ Matthew Festing in the middle of an internal governance crisis.
The debate over the new constitution became even more problematic following the death of Festing’s successor, Giacomo dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguineto, in 2020.
Luzzago was then chosen to lead the order, not as Grand Master but as Lieutenant of the Grand Master, who typically serves a one-year term. But this term was extended by the pope himself, to an unlimited extent, amid the push to conclude the constitutional reform.
Pope Francis believes that the reform must, first of all, strengthen the Order of Malta as a religious institution and, secondly, reinforce its service to the poor. The draft presented by Tomasi’s working group should be read in this light.
The Tomasi-led group is composed of the canon law expert Father Gianfranco Ghirlanda, S.J., Msgr. Brian Ferme, the secretary of the Vatican’s Council for the Economy, and Maurizio Tagliaferri, Federico Marti, and Gualtiero Ventura.
Ghirlanda is understood to have spent about an hour explaining his position that the professed should lead the organization because it is at heart a lay religious order.
In practice, Ghirlanda derives authority from religious consecration. This, however, is only valid if the Order of Malta is considered primarily as a spiritual body. The situation is different if its governing bodies are considered “governing bodies” in the strict sense.
Ghirlanda was among the speakers at a recent press conference after the launch of Praedicate evangelium, the new Vatican constitution reforming the Roman Curia. At the press conference, he commented on the change allowing any baptized person, not only a bishop, to lead certain Vatican dicasteries. He said that this was possible because it was not ordination but receiving a canonical mission that gave dicastery heads their authority.
Ghirlanda said that this decision resolved the question posed by Canon 129 of the Code of Canon Law, according to which authority derives from priestly ordination. Ghirlanda noted that the decision had resulted from extensive debate.
But if the possibility for the laity to participate in government applies to the Roman Curia, why doesn’t it apply to the government of a body such as the Sovereign Order of Malta?
This is a much-debated topic that is at the heart of the reform proposals. Although the order’s sovereignty derives from a concession from the Holy See, it is constituted as a state without territory. With this international personality, it maintains diplomatic relations with other states and it is its sovereignty that allows it to continue working with the poor.
Many in the Order of Malta have stressed that a reform highlighting only the religious character, mainly submission to the Holy See, would dilute its sovereignty forever.
The importance of the order’s sovereignty was also raised by Luzzago in a speech to the diplomatic corps accredited to the order on Jan. 11 (although the text of the address can no longer be found on the order’s website.)
The pope’s affirmation that he wants to keep everything that allows the order to continue its work for the poor stems from this debate.
The vision of the group led by Sehnaoui, according to a source inside the order, is markedly different. It proposes that the General Chapter, the body bringing together representatives of all classes, would have 15 representatives of the professed knights. The associations would be represented not by assessing the number of works carried out but rather based on the budget allocated to these works. If the budget was less than $20 million, an association would be entitled to one delegate. If it exceeded $20 million, there would be a right to another representative, up to a total of four.
In this way, associations would see some of their concerns represented. Marc Odendall, a member of the first commission established by the pope to clarify the order’s internal problems in 2016, summed up this reasoning when he told CNA that “$2 billion turnovers, 45,000 employees, 100,000 volunteers in the world cannot be managed by 19 professed who are under 70 and have no professional qualifications.”
Sehnaoui’s draft reflects this concern, trying to find a balance between the need to maintain the order’s religious character and having a government more independent from the Holy See that also considers the professional work of many associations.
It remains to be seen which of the two world views will prevail. Now, everything is firmly in the pope’s hands. At the same time, the role of the papal delegate, Cardinal Tomasi, seems to be increasingly marginal.
[…]
A lot of people, including the pro-aborts and LGBTQXYZ crowd, were denied the Eucharist starting about March 20, 2020 for quite some time as I recall…
I consider America magazine a protestant voice. The Jesuits are held in disrepute by many orthodox Catholics. It’s why they’re getting no vocations.
Would you take a moment to express why a “protestant voice” might not be considered? Either from scripture or church tradition if you’d prefer?
I respect your voice and would value your opinion, if you have time.
God bless you.
Regis Martin, an admirable theologian in Withholding the Eucharist couches his repudiation of America Mag’s open communion recommendation [which already exists in Malta] in a universal understanding of a non discretionary premise.
If I may, the issue goes back to Amoris Laetitia and the idea of the Eucharist as Remedy [whether it’s the ghost writer La Plata Archbishop Tucho Fernandez’ theology it’s embraced by His Holiness] for the sinner. Elsewhere, as I believe Fr A Spadaro SJ Francis’ theological consiglieri put it, “they deny them what they really need”.
It centers on what defines Remedy in context of the penitent. Does he come to the Eucharist absent of either recognition of his sin, and intent to rectify his sinful situation [the Eucharist then received with the assumption that conversion from sin doesn’t require a freely willed desire to reform and works as a form of magic]. Or, does the sinner approach the Eucharist aware, repentant of his sin prepared to receive the Eucharist as a strengthening remedy in combating the evil that afflicts him? The latter is what pontiffs and saints prior to Francis have taught.
The Sacred Heart is a sacred symbol of God’s love revealed in the gift of his real presence in the Eucharist, a love that is neither promiscuous, nor encourages promiscuity or accommodation of evil, evil that is absolutely polar to goodness. A love that requires love freely given rather than not.
You mention that the “open communion recommendation” already exists in Malta. From Malta, Cardinal Grech just happens to be the Secretary General for the ongoing diocesan and national and continental synods, and then the (“aggregated and compiled”–the Vademecum) Synod on Synodality in 2023, or 2024, or whenever.
What the cardinal portrays as a deepening discernment of intact doctrine is just as easily seen as a grey-area nuance too far–a derailment, and in Malta already a fait accompli. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/250544/cardinal-grech-2023-synod-on-synodality-is-not-sociological-analysis-of-the-church
Vraiment Pierre. Tout suite un fait accompli.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the Jesuit publication America both refrain from mentioning the view St. Paul expressed in 1 Corinthians 11:27-29.
I do not know biblical citations by chapter and verse from memory, so I used a search engine, searching for “Paul worthy reception”. This remarkable essay was in the first few hits, and has a useful quotation from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.
On the Worthy Reception of Holy Communion – Part One
By Msgr. Charles Pope
June 7, 2015
Excerpt:
But many today have reduced Holy Communion to a mere sign of hospitality, such that if the Church does not extend Holy Communion to all, we are considered unkind. There is often a mistaken notion about the nature of the Last Supper (and the Eucharist that proceeds from it) that lurks behind this misconception. Many years ago, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger articulated the misunderstanding well. I summarize the description here from his Collected Works, Vol 11, Ignatius Press pp 273-274:
Nowadays [some] New Testament scholars … say that the Eucharist … is the continuation of the meals with sinners that Jesus had held … a notion with far-reaching consequences. It would mean that the Eucharist is the sinners’ banquet, where Jesus sits at the table; [that] the Eucharist is the public gesture by which we invite everyone without exception. The logic of this is expressed in a far-reaching criticism of the Church’s Eucharist, since it implies that the Eucharist cannot be conditional on anything, not depending on denomination or even on baptism. It is necessarily an open table to which all may come to encounter the universal God …
However tempting the idea may be, it contradicts what we find in the Bible. Jesus’ Last Supper was not one of those meals he held with “publicans and sinners”. He made it subject to the basic form of the Passover, which implies that the meal was held in a family setting. Thus he kept it with his new family, with the Twelve; with those whose feet he washed, whom he had prepared by his Word and by this cleansing of absolution (John 13:10) to receive a blood relationship with him, to become one body with him.
The Eucharist is not itself the sacrament of reconciliation, but in fact it presupposes that sacrament. It is the sacrament of the reconciled, to which the Lord invites all those who have become one with him; who certainly still remain weak sinners, but yet have given their hand to him and have become part of his family.
That is why, from the beginning, the Eucharist has been preceded by a discernment … (I Corinthians 11:27 ff). The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles [the Didache] is one of the oldest writings outside the New Testament, from the beginning of the Second Century, it takes up this apostolic tradition and has the priest, just before distributing the sacrament saying:”Whoever is holy, let him approach, whoever is not, let him do penance” (Didache 10).
Last sentence from Buzz Lightyear article: “If Disney continues down this anti-family path, it can expect to see its place in the American household fizzle as inauspiciously as this last installation of the “Toy Story’ franchise.” I’d love to see Disney fade, but ay caramba. Can’t the Federalist afford some editors who help young writers temper their prose.
I subscribe to First Things, and I’ll get around to reading the article, but what really irritates me is why no one seems to be bold enough to tackle, head on, the secularization of the Church itself. Much is written about theological corruption in individual cases, but not enough is written about the pervasive evilness by willful, self-conscious clerics intent on its deconstruction. A collapsing ecclesial culture gets left to “rad-trads” who are seemingly subject to universal insult and dismissal.
In an article on feeding the hunger in our souls, CNA, brought to our attention Pope Francis’ beautiful reflection on the meaning of communion.
“We can evaluate our Eucharistic Adoration when we take care of our neighbor like Jesus does,” the pope said Sunday before the recitation of the Angelus at St. Peter’s Square in Rome.
“There is hunger for food around us, but also for companionship; there is hunger for consolation, friendship, good humor; there is hunger for attention, there is hunger to be evangelized. We find this in the Eucharistic Bread — the attention of Christ to our needs and the invitation to do the same toward those who are beside us. We need to eat and feed others.”
Yes, communion is about receiving our Lord and then sharing him, his message and love with others. This would include lost souls. Otherwise, the ritual of receiving communion would be a meaningless one.