Good spiritual leadership is essential to the life of the Church. Jesus appointed Peter to be the leader of his brother apostles and to strengthen them in the faith. The need for spiritual leadership is evident in the office of the diocesan bishop as well so that he can be a suitable shepherd for the people of God entrusted to his care. In his 2011 dissertation entitled The Canonical Understanding of Spiritual Leadership in Religious Life, which was published by Angelicum University Press, Luke Beckett, OSB considers the role of the spiritual leader in the life of a religious institute.
Taking an historical approach to the topic, Beckett divides into six chapters this work that traces the development of the concept of spiritual leadership in a religious institute from the norms of the 1917 Code of Canon Law to the revised code promulgated in 1983. Chapter one (16–74) of the dissertation focuses on the juridical and spiritual role of the superior of a religious institute according to the norms embodied in the 1917 Code of Canon Law. Chapter two (75–123) considers the events that occurred with regard to the regulation of religious life after the promulgation of the 1917 Code of Canon Law up to the beginning of the Second Vatican Council in 1962. Chapter three (126–175) offers an interesting discussion of the abbot as spiritual leader according to the norms embodied in the Rule of Saint Benedict. Chapter four (178–219) reviews the documents of the Second Vatican Council that pertain to religious life, and, in particular, to those documents that address leadership in religious life. Chapter five (222–297) examines the documents that were issued after the close of Vatican II and leading up to the 1983 promulgation of the revised code. Chapter six (300–372) considers the work of the commission to revise the 1917 Code of Canon Law. A general conclusion (373–378) endeavors to synthesize the major points of the dissertation and to at least note the 2008 instruction “The Service of Authority and Obedience” from the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (373).
Beckett is to be commended for the depth of his research on the historical development of the topic as well as the extensive review of the various documents that he selected. Of particular use to the reader would be his well-developed consideration of the documents issued post-Vatican II and prior to the promulgation of the revised code, e.g., the helpful discussion of Mutuae Relationes dealing with the relationship between the diocesan bishop and religious communities within his diocese (289–297). As Beckett points out, Mutuae Relationes, which was jointly issued in 1978 by the Sacred Congregation for Religious and for Secular Institutes and the Sacred Congregation for Bishops, reminds the religious superior of his or her grave duty to keep the religious institute faithful to the charism of the founder and to foster renewal within the institute (290).
While this volume is rather extensive in length, 408 pages including the bibliography, this reader was left asking questions about the application of the concept of spiritual leadership as it has developed after the work done leading up to the promulgation of the revised Code of Canon Law. This would entail more than 25 years of lived experience with canons of the revised code that address the topic that are not extensively considered in the dissertation. Moreover, while the dissertation references in the general conclusion the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life’s 2008 instruction “The Service of Authority and Obedience” (373), it does not review in detail the instruction and how it pertains to the topic of spiritual leadership. Perhaps the dissertation was purposefully limited in scope so as not to address these types of issues, but it seems that for the dissertation to be more germane to a wider audience today, such topics should have been considered.
