Religious orders face continued pressures to “secularize” and this
threatens their identities and their mission in the world, according to
the retiring leader of the Vatican’s office on religious life.
In
a Feb. 16 interview with Vatican Radio, Cardinal Franc Rode warned that
secularization that “has penetrated many communities and consciences.”
“Secularization,”
he said, “is expressed in prayer (that is) often formal and without
meditation and it damages the concept of obedience, introducing a
certain “democratic” mentality that excludes the role of legitimate
authority.”
Cardinal Rode, a Slovenian, is stepping down as
prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for religious, a position he has
held since 2004.
He will be replaced by a Brazilian, Archbishop Joao
Braz de Aviz, who was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI on Jan. 4.
Cardinal
Rode told Vatican Radio that religious communities have been “hotbeds
of spiritual liveliness and missionary dynamism” throughout the Church’s
history.
The “great reforms” within the Catholic Church have been
pushed by religious, he noted.
Religious have historically been the
most persecuted, but also “the most canonized,” he added.
In
travels to Latin America, Africa and Asia in recent years, Cardinal Rode
said he continues to see an “admirable devotion” among the many
varieties of religious men and women of the world, which number around
1.1 million.
The situation in the religious communities of the
world is not all roses, however. “Religious life is in difficulty today
and this must be recognized,” said the cardinal.
It also
threatens to turn works of charity into pure social service, which he
said causes harm to the proclamation of the Gospel.
In such an atmosphere, “a society of well-being” is pursued over questions of eternity, explained Cardinal Rode.
He warned that there are signs of secularization all over the globe, but that they are most prominent in the West.
Cardinal
Rode said that since his appointment he has been working on “seeking to
overcome this mentality of secularization and reasserting the
fundamental values of consecrated life - making of religious men and
women ... a force of renewal of the Church.”
He has turned both to
the “healthy strengths” of traditional communities and the “new
spiritual currents” of the more recently founded communities in the
process.
The cardinal expressed his confidence in the new
religious communities cropping up in places such as France, Spain,
Italy, Brazil, Peru and the U.S. which are “surging against the spirit
of secularism.”
“These communities give great importance to prayer
and to the fraternal life lived in community; they insist on poverty
and obedience: all take the religious habit, a visible sign of their
consecration,” he explained.
“(They) call man to his transcendent destiny and constitute a force of renewal, of which the Church has a great need.”