This article comes in the wake of numerous comments from concerned people, both inside and outside the Institute of the Incarnate Word, who seek to understand what may happen if the Vatican decides to dissolve it.
What does a canonical dissolution mean?
The dissolution of an institute of consecrated life is an extreme measure that is taken only when it is considered that the aims of the institute have been irreversibly distorted or that it has become harmful to its members or to the Church itself. According to the Code of Canon Law (canon 584), it is for the Holy See alone to dissolve an institute of pontifical right. It should be noted that the IVE, so far, has not been erected as an institute of pontifical right, so its eventual formal dissolution would follow a different procedure, although equally supervised by the Holy See. In some cases, reform has been chosen (as happened with the Legionaries of Christ); in others, suppression has been inevitable.
Impossible reform: irreformable identity
In the case of the IVE, many wonder if it is possible to reform it without touching its core. The internal culture of the institute, strongly marked by authoritarianism, the cult of personality of its founder and a distorted spirituality and praxis, together with sectarian behaviors, seems to have generated an irreformable structure. If the charism is tainted from its source, reform can be as factual as trying to straighten a crooked spiral from its base.
An institute founded and structured by a severely disordered person will inevitably bring that disorder to the heart of its organization. And that disorder is transmitted to its members, to its spirituality, to its praxis.
In such a context, dissolution should not be seen as a punishment, but as an act of mercy. More than a sanction, it can be a rescue.
Possible paths for members
It should be clarified that this reality applies only to the priests of the IVE.
The case of the Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matará is profoundly different. Their role has been from the beginning subjugated to the male structure, with no autonomous theological or spiritual development, and with very little identity of its own. Many have experienced their consecration as a subordinate extension of the desires, ideas and decisions of the IVE, almost like “the women of Daesh”. That is why, when they leave, they find themselves completely disoriented, without resources or references, “in the pampas and the road,” as they say colloquially. We see this reflected in the hundreds of Servants who have left the institute: many of them are left adrift, with deep wounds, without structure or community to sustain them. This situation demands a very specific and attentive pastoral accompaniment on the part of the Church.
In the face of the dissolution of an institute, the Church offers several options to its members:
- Join another religious institute: Many charisms are compatible and could welcome those who seek to live their consecration authentically.
- Founding a new institute: With ecclesial supervision and rigorous discernment, something new could emerge, healed of previous vices.
- To live with another community without formally belonging to it, as collaborators or in discernment.
- To become diocesan hermits, with the approval of the bishop.
- Request dispensation from vows and return to lay life (a difficult option for priests who are already in their fifties, sixties or more, for practical, affective and social integration issues).
- To liquidate the assets of the institute, redistributing them among the new paths taken by its members or returning them to the Church.
These possibilities, far from being punishments, are different ways of continuing a journey of faith, freed from the bonds of a structure that could have been more harmful than sanctifying.
The fate of the linked laity
Thousands of lay people have been touched by the spirituality of the IVE and the SSVM. For many, it was their first experience of serious Christian living. What will happen to them? The Church will also have to accompany their discernment: help them to preserve what is good and to leave behind what was founded on error or fanaticism.
Conclusion: The pruning that prepares the fruits
Jesus said: “Every branch that bears fruit he prunes so that it may bear more fruit” (Jn 15:2).
The dissolution of the IVE should not be seen as the end of a work of God, but as the purification of something that could have gone deeply astray. The history of the Church is full of new beginnings after painful crises.
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