Districts and district superiors within the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

Abstract

The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a Catholic missionary institute, founded in France in 1826 by Saint Charles Joseph Eugene de Mazenod, has always placed a very strong emphasis on the importance of high quality, fraternal, community living. Prior to the Second Vatican Council, district communities were usually established in current or former mission territories and in rural areas. Since the Council, that concept has been expanded beyond mission and rural areas to cover urban areas within the Oblates, especially in provinces where numbers are decreasing, institutions are disappearing, and individual apostolates are more common. Contemporary districts, where over 25 percent of the congregation now live, have met with varied levels of success, depending on the manner in which each province has applied the concept. After the 1992 General Chapter, which reaffirmed their existence and importance for the Oblates, the Holy See expressed a specific interest in the theory and praxis of districts and district superiors. The preliminary questions posed in this work are interconnected. What lies at the root of the establishment of districts, and district superiors, within the Oblates? How did the practice spread? How was it viewed by the general chapters of the institute and by the common law of the Church over the century and a half since its beginning? How was it renewed in the light of the call of the Second Vatican Council? What is its current status and future prospects in Canada and the United States? Are the changes to the administrative structures, proposed in 1996 for the 1998 General Chapter, a help or a hindrance to the enhancement of this type of local community? The answers to those preliminary ones build up to the two major questions asked in this thesis: (1) Is there sufficient basis in the common law, the themes of the renewal of religious life as found in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, and in the historic lived reality within the Oblate Congregation, for this concept of districts, with superiors, as local units of apostolic community and government, to be put forward as a clear and practical model for other institutes? (2) Is it possible to propose a canonically-based definition of a district, such that it could be applicable within any apostolic religious institute, male or female, clerical or lay? The first four chapters analyse the history and legal basis of districts; the fifth analyses a lengthy questionnaire on the present status and future prospects of districts, answered by a large proportion of the general administration, North American provincials, and district superiors; the sixth critiques the proposed changes to the Constitutions and Rules on the subject. The conclusion outlines the historical and canonical basis of districts and presents both the comprehensive concept and the definition of a district in such a way that it can be utilized by any apostolic institute having local superiors, be it male or female, clerical or lay. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)