I. Charism - La Salle.org

IV. DISCOVERING, LIVING, SHARING THE GIFT OF GOD 173
The Bull
Even if the discussions and the report on the petition by the
Brothers eliminated at a certain moment any mention of the vow
to teach gratuitously (the report of Cardinal Corsini), the vow reappears
in the drafting of the Bull. Blain imagines a whole ‘production’
around these discussions in “the courts of Rome”, but the reality,
as far as we know, was much more simple: the request of the
Brothers was introduced to the Congregation of the Council and
not to that in charge of Religious; among the Cardinals who ratified
it, only two or three perhaps (the official recorder and the
defender of the petition), knew exactly what it was all about. The
rest were content to read over the summary and listen to the advice
of their colleagues. Furthermore, the petition arrived at the session
at the same time as many others.
The Brothers believed they had got the right to pronounce the
“vows of religion”, thus becoming “Religious”. An illusion, Brother
Maurice-Auguste tells us: the Brothers had the right to make “simple
vows”, which did not have anything like the ecclesial or juridical
scope of the “vows of religion”. And they did not become a
“Religious Order”, but an “Institute” which had a much weaker
canonical status. Neither should we imagine that the Cardinals had
thought, in approving the abridged form of the Rules 149 of this
“Institute”, that they had created a new form of religious life in the
Church! For them it was a simple Institute of lay persons, of catechists,
like lots of others which existed after the Council of Trent.
Furthermore, what was approved was not a new “Religious Order”,
nor even a Rule, but the eighteen articles. The Bull does, however,
make reference to “association”:
Sixthly That they always be associated to keep schools, and that
149
Which is the first meaning of the word “Institute”.