Prelate: religious communities are not a ‘Church within the Church’
March 31, 2015
The vice president of the Council of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe (CCEE) said in an address to the Union of the European Conferences of Major Superiors that “it is not permissible to think of the consecrated life as an alternative model of Church” or “a sort of Church within the Church.”
Instead, religious communities “are that part of the Church which, with a prophetic spirit, moves the whole ecclesial body to the perfect following of the Master in the changed situations of the times,” said Archbishop Angelo Massafra of Shkodrë, Albania.
The prelate, a Franciscan, compared bishops to parents and cautioned bishops not to be domineering:
We are conscious of how disastrous the parent/children relationship can be when children are forced to become what the parents want them to be; when, rather than encouraging and directing the resources of each, parents force children into behavior and choices which, instead, destroy the gift God gave them-- a gift which, instead, should be unearthed, recognized, accepted and encouraged in its development: the personal vocation.
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