I. Charism - La Salle.org

IV. DISCOVERING, LIVING, SHARING THE GIFT OF GOD 143
The majority of the local “Superiors” named following the circular
letter of Brother to various Houses (Blain was chosen for Rouen),
worked to leave things as they were and contributed to avoiding the
fragmentation of the Institute. Nevertheless the risk remained,
since persons can be changed, death can intervene and this could
modify the fragile equilibrium. Certain Brothers also no longer
knew who they were and got beyond themselves. Some of them had
to be expelled from the Society by an assembly of “principle
Brothers”:
The principal Brothers resolved to make an example of them, so that
the scandal might go no any further. They had a meeting, therefore,
and dismissed those proud religious, who later on might have spread
to others the mortal poison of their independent spirit and thus occasioned
even greater disorders. 130
But things had gone much farther than this account in Chapter 12
allows us to see. An assembly of Brothers had started a revision of
the Rule which took into account the changes mentioned above.
The Grand-Vicaire of Paris was asked to study the dossier and after
studying it for seven or eight months, he sent the text back on April
4 th 1714, asking the Brothers (and the ecclesiastic Superior) to
change nothing:
He kept the documents for seven or eight months, it was during this
time that the troubles arose in Paris over the constitution Unigenitus
and the refusal of Cardinal de Noailles to agree to it. As time went on,
Vivant sent the documents to Abbé de Brou with a letter dated 4 April
1714, in which he stated “His Eminence does not think that anything
should be decided about the matter or signed in his name with regard
to the regulations themselves or to the changes which it has been proposed
to make in them. He has full confidence in your wisdom for the
good government of the schools which you have charge of, and he
130
Blain, op. cit., Book Three, p. 646. (CL 8, p.111).