The Symposium of the Theological Institute of the Religious Life (ITVR), celebrated in Madrid from the 10th to the 12th of December, had the participation of Bishop Joseph W. Tobin, Secretary of the Congregation for the Institutes of the Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (CIVCSVA); the Augustinian recollect Eusebio Hernandez, member of this Vatican congregation; and the general superiors of the Order of Saint John of God, the Marist Brothers and the Brothers of La Salle. The director of the ITVR directed and coordinated this symposium, in which more than two hundred people participated.
The number of religious brothers has significant decline these last decades. The members of institutes of religious brothers (exclusively religious, no religious priests) declined from 32,026 in 1984 to 19,841 in 2010. The religious brothers in the clerical institutes (with priests) only total 20,394 at present. According to Fr. Eusebio, “ignorance and lack of appreciation of the vocation to religious brotherhood among the faithful continue to be notorious.”
During the III Symposium organized by the Theological Institute of Religious Life (TIRL) and entitled, Being religious brother today, the Augustinian Recollect said: “His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, in line with his predecessors, has expressed his concern and above all his appreciation of the religious life. Aware of the present special difficulties and challenges being faced by the religious, particularly by the brothers, the Pope proposed to develop initiatives that will extol, promote, and sustain consecrated life. For this purpose he asked the help of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (CICLSAL)”.
Document
It is hoped that the document on the religious brothers will be published within the first months of 2011. Both women and men religious, but especially the religious brothers, have much to expect from the Church in said document, by which Pope Benedict intends to shed light on the identity of the religious brother and the extraordinary value of this vocation for the Church and the world of today.
The document will focus on the ecclesiology of communion as proposed by the Second Vatican Council, and which has been continually developed by the Church ever since. This ecclesiology underscores, in the first place, our being God’s people, who are equal in dignity and then, that we all drink from the common treasure of the Gospel and are called to live it fully, each according to the vocation received. The identity of the religious brother results from his calling to live with special emphasis some aspects of this common treasure.