I. Charism - La Salle.org

172
IV. DISCOVERING, LIVING, SHARING THE GIFT OF GOD
Without doubt, the Brothers, deliberately, do not want to alert the public
authorities to the existence of an “association” which does not yet
belong to any juridical framework.
The petition to Rome (1722).
While the Brothers were advancing in their steps to obtain recognition by
the Holy See, they drew up a “petition”, which claimed to sum up the
essentials of their Rules in 18 articles. Furthermore it was this text which
would be the basis of the “Abridged Rule”, which would be approved by
the Bull. With regard to the vows, the official request of the Brothers
indicated:
The vows of the Brothers are of chastity, poverty, obedience and stability
in the said Institute, and to teach the poor gratuitously… 148
The “vow of association” as such, had disappeared and one spoke of
the “vow” of teaching gratuitously. The request introduced, as
Brother Maurice-Auguste remarked in Cahier Lasallien 11, the
three classical vows: poverty, chastity, obedience (which the
Brothers did not take, since their vow of obedience was not the vow
of ascetic religion that we know, but a vow linked to the accomplishment
of the Mission to teach). The petition took up again the
vow of stability, aimed towards the “Institute”, and transformed the
vow of association to keep gratuitous schools, into a vow “to teach
the poor gratuitously”. It certainly seems that the Brothers (or their
councillors) were polarised by the three vows known as ‘religious’,
which would make them, they thought, “Religious”; and that they
expressed clearly in the wording of their 5 th vow the real understanding
they had arrived at for their vow of association: to keep
schools gratuitously. It is this latter aspect which carried the day,
and it had in addition the advantage of being easy to characterise,
in terms of permitted/forbidden.
148
See CL 11, p. 219, 359; and CL 2, p. 110.