Answer
What is a Major Superior ?
A Congregation
is an organism which draws together Religious men or women, which
is given structures:
Communities or fraternities are basic cells bringing together
Religious men or women in a town or village at the service of a
particular population
according to their competence and spiritual gift or the form that
the Congregation has taken, or for the unique service of God. The
first are apostolic or active, the second contemplative, prayer
being their main objective.
The person who is in charge of a community is a local superior
at the service of the persons in her charge: the former is named
or elected, the length of the mandate varies according to the
Congregation. He or she takes up her responsibility with the
consent of a superior called the Provincial. Provincial means that
he or she has under her charge a country or several countries, a
Province, according to, in the organisation of the Congregation, the
number of communities. This person is perhaps elected or named by a
superior General from whom he or she receives the mandate.
The
Provincial is called a Major Superior responsible for the life of a
Province before a General Superior who is responsible for all the
Provincials.
The
Church has been given a judicial system called Canon Law*, the
application of which is guaranteed by the Roman Curia.
The Congregations have to enforce the measures of Code of Canon Law.
*"Code
of Canon Law is the sum of all the laws and regulations adopted or
accepted by the Catholic authorities for the government of the
Church and the faithful
Canon Law was drawn up in a progressive manner, borrowing firstly
from the Roman judicial body. From the
IVth
century,
the Popes created new norms by means of letters…The canonists of the
Middle Ages by means of a gigantic work of compilation if the
sources (edicts from the Councils, decrees of the Popes etc.)
managed progressively to unify it. At the present moment, the Code
which gives authority in the Latin Church is that of 1983; The
Eastern Churches were subject to the Corpus Canonum Ecclesiarum
Orientalium."
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_canonique
CODE
OF CANON LAW
Chapters I, 573 to 8, 709: SECTION I THE
INSTITUTES OF CONSECRATED LIFE
Can.620 – Those who
govern an entire institute, a province of an institute or part
equivalent to a province, or an autonomous house, as well as their
vicars, are major superiors. Comparable to these are an abbot
primate and a superior of a monastic congregation, who nonetheless
do not have all the power which universal law grants to major
superiors.
Chapter 8: THE CONFERENCES OF MAJOR SUPERIORS
Can.708 – Major
superiors can be associated usefully in conferences or councils
so that by common efforts they work to achieve more fully the
purpose of the individual institutes, always without prejudice to
their autonomy, character, and proper spirit, or to transact common
affairs, or to establish appropriate coordination and cooperation
with the conferences of bishops and also with individual bishops.
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/_INDEX.HTM
23/03/2005 Sister Annick Bimbenet dw Assistant
General Secretary UCESM
