Credo in unum Deum! I remember, when I was 10 years old, looking forward to high Mass at 10:00 am on Sunday at Old St. Mary’s Church in San Francisco, when I could sing the Credo along with the choir. I belted it out from the balcony on the side of the nave, and I sang it all from memory though of course I didn’t know any Latin at the time. Even 10 years later, when I did know some Latin, it never occurred to me that the “in” in the phrase “credo in unum Deum” had any special meaning. After all, I knew the Apostles’ Creed in English, and, as in Latin, in reciting it, I proclaimed that I do indeed “believe in God, the Father, and in Jesus Christ…and in the Holy Spirit.” It was only some 20 years later, after reading Henri de Lubac’s book, “The Christian Faith,” that I learned the importance of that little word “in.” In fact, when I read“The Christian Faith,” I learned why we say that we believe in God, the Father, in Jesus, the Son and in the Holy Spirit, but we do not believe “in” the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting.
De Lubac’s book, “The Christian Faith,” is a study of the Apostles’ Creed, which he shows to be a baptismal profession of faith in the Trinity. To “believe in” proclaims the reality of a relationship with each Person of the Trinity. It is a public acceptance of the grace of a living faith that unites the believer with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and establishes him in a vibrant communion. Belief “in” is an action that can only be given to a person, not to any other object of belief. De Lubac shows that one cannot have the same relationship with the Persons of the Trinity as with, for example, everlasting life. One can have everlasting life, but one cannot be united with it as one person. Even one’s relationship with the Church can never be so intimate a union as we receive by sanctifying grace with the three divine Persons. Our union with the Church is the effect of our belief in the Trinity; it is not a parallel to it. De Lubac shows that the distinction made by the presence or absence of the word “in” means that we profess our union with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and that we proclaim our belief in the effects of the action of the Trinity, which are the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting.
This distinction came to my mind recently as I was pondering an exchange that I had about charismatic leadership. My correspondent explained what the phrase “charismatic leadership” would mean in a secular context, and the example given was the president of a university. The “charism” of a university, or of any other organization founded with a specific inspiration and goal in mind, is expressed in its mission statement, or vision statement or some similar document. The expression in writing establishes concretely the foundational inspiration. If someone alters the statement, that in effect shows that the inspiration that began the whole enterprise has changed. We can understand this if we think of what would happen if someone rewrote the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the United States. This would in effect proclaim that we have altered the original intent and understanding of the Founding Fathers of our country and we now have a different vision and goal for our country.
We may use the word “charism” in speaking of the original inspiration of a secular organization, or even of a Catholic organization like Word on Fire or EWTN. But there is another way to use the word “charism,” and these two ways are quite different.
As an example, let us take the Guardian Angels, that admirable non-profit organization of protection. Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, originally started the group “to combat widespread violence and crime on the New York City Subway system. The organization originally trained members to make citizen’s arrests for violent crimes. They patrolled streets and neighborhoods without involving police or any outside authority and provided educational programs for schools and businesses.”[i] Since then, this original intention has developed, and “the group’s focus will shift to include conducting wellness checks on homeless individuals, as well as those who seem emotionally distressed.”[ii] A further development is the Cyber Angels, an internet safety program, as well as various programs for youth, disaster response and a community outreach program.
Curtis Sliwa is a leader who inspired others to join him and to make his inspiration a reality. His organization has grown and developed in a way that corresponds to the original inspiration. However, a problem would arise if a member of the Guardian Angels proposed that they make their primary goal to protect property rather than people, for example, preventing vandalism. Such a goal is praiseworthy, but it does not correspond to the original mission. If such a proposal has the majority of the members supporting it, then it would most probably change the whole thrust of the organization. If it has only the support of a minority, then the minority can leave the Guardian Angels and form another independent organization.
The point here is that the vision that inspired Curtis Sliwa has no reality outside the minds of the members. Someone who is moved by that vision and applies to join the Guardian Angels must correspond to their requirements and “have no recent or serious criminal record and are not members of a gang or racial-hate group.”[iii] They are “trained in first aid, CPR, law, conflict resolution, communication, and basic martial arts,”[iv] and they promise to abide by the Guardian Angels Member Pledge. They are drawn by the intent of the organization and they adopt as their own the vision of the founder and seek to make it a reality.
One could say that Curtis Sliwa has a charism that is shared by the members of his organization. In the Catholic Church also we speak of the charism of founders but in the case of the Church, a “charism” is something quite different from what inspired Curtis Sliwa. For example, if a man or a woman wants to join the Carmelites, it is not enough to want to share the existing vision of the Order, as is the case with the Guardian Angels and other secular organizations. A man or woman who applies to become a Carmelite (or a member of any other religious institute in the Catholic Church) does so because he or she believes that they have received from God the grace of a vocation to live the charism bestowed by God on the Founder or Foundress of the institute. The duty of the Community and of the applicant is to determine if the applicant does in fact possess the grace of such a vocation. In other words, it is God who decides who is called to what charism, and it is the duty of the institute to recognize that call and confirm it, or to determine that the desire on the part of the applicant to join the Order does not come from God.
The phrase “charismatic leadership” exists in the secular world[v], but in the Church, it has a different and a very specific meaning. There is a vast difference between every form of leadership outside of the Catholic Church, and charismatic leadership within the Church. Charismatic leadership exists to make a charism a reality in the lives of people, and this is similar to the leadership of a secular founder like Curtis Sliwa, but a charism in the Church has a reality that no vision or inspiration outside of it possesses, because a charism in the Church is a specific grace of the Holy Spirit. As we have seen with applicants to the religious life, it is the grace of the charism that moves the applicant to apply to the institute. This is far more than any desire of someone to join an organization.
Charismatic leadership in the Church applies to the persons entrusted with recognizing and confirming the existence of the Founder’s charism in the members. The outstanding example of this, of course, is the Pope, who receives the charism of St. Peter for guiding and “strengthening his brothers”[vi] in the Church. Because all charismatic leadership in the Church is the work of the Holy Spirit, a work flowing from the original charismatic grace and one that the recipient can correspond with to a greater or lesser degree, distortions of the charism are handled quite differently within the Church from what happens in organizations that are not born of any founding charism. It is enlightening to study what happened with the Redemptorists. The original charism was revealed to a Visitandine, Sr. Maria Celeste Crostarosa. She communicated this to Alphonsus Liguori, who came to believe in the authenticity of the revelation, and founded the Redemptorists in 1732. Their Rule was approved by Benedict XIV in 1749, but toward the end of St. Alphonsus’s life, a split occurred because of the secular power and a different “Rule” came into existence. This Regolamento was not approved as a valid Rule for the Redemptorists, and it was only in 1793 that the division in the Order was resolved. Thus we see that the original charism was preserved by the Holy See. It was the Pope’s approval that confirmed the charism, and it was the Pope’s rejection of the Regolamento that preserved it.
Something similar happened with the Carmelites after the death of St. Teresa, and indeed such incidents are not uncommon in Catholic institutes. Legitimate development of a charism exists and is common, as we see with the Franciscans who have three independent religious orders for men. Such development is valid, and we know that it is valid when it is approved by the Holy See. Distortions of a charism are another matter. Without the approval of the Holy See, no interpretation of a charism is valid.
What is notable about a charism is that it is given to a person. It is not established in a document, though the confirmation of the charism by the Holy See is made known by written approval. Moreover, in the case of charisms of institutes, the charism is handed down from the Founder or Foundress to the members of that institute. This is basic in the Church. Jesus established His Church, not by writing a document with which various people agreed, but by giving His Holy Spirit. This continues to be the foundation of the Church. Just as we have seen that it must be confirmed that applicants to a religious order have the charism of the order, so, also at Baptism, the priest must receive an act of faith on the part of the one asking for Baptism. This act of faith is made by the person themself in the case of an adult, and it is made by the parents or godparents in the case of an infant being baptized. Faith is the charism on which the whole Church rests, and, as we have seen at the beginning of this article, it is faith in a person: in the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
In a secular organization, agreement with the mission statement of the organization is foundational for membership. In the Church, it is not a mission statement that establishes membership; it is relationship, the relationship in faith with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I believe in the Father, in the Son and in the Holy Spirit, and because of that “belief in” I believe that Church and her actions exist and are to be trusted. One could say that the Creed is the mission statement of the Church, but faith is more than agreement with the Creed. Because faith is a relationship, it is a relationship with the Trinity in Their whole action. The Son was sent to save the world and that salvation is wrought through the Church. He said to the disciples whom he sent out, “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”[vii] This goes far beyond any disagreement in any other organization. Rejection of legitimate authority in the Church is rejection of the Church’s Head and of the Father who sent Him. The Pope has received the charism of infallibility, a charism that is carefully presented in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.[viii] This charism is shared in various ways, but because charisms are given to persons and, unlike secular organizations, do not flow from documents, to base one’s belief on a document, whether it is the Catechism of the Catholic Church or a papal Bull or a Rule or any other documents, is to fall away from adherence to the Head of the Church. It is to proclaim belief “in” a document, a belief that can only be given to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We accept the documents and what they express because we believe in the One who conferred His authority on their authors. Our faith and obedience flow from our belief in the Father, in the Son and in the Holy Spirit. Credo in unum Deum.
Notes
[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_Angels
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid
[v] https://www.wgu.edu/blog/charismatic-leadership2103.html
[vi] Cf. Lk. 22, 32
[vii] Lk. 10, 16
[viii] CCC #869, #889, #891, #892
Image: Icon depicting Constantine the Great, accompanied by the bishops of the First Council of Nicaea (325), holding the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381. First line of main text in Greek: Πιστεύω εἰς ἕνα Θ[εό]ν, πατέρα παντοκράτορα, ποιητὴν οὐρανοῦ κ[αὶ] γῆς,. Translation: “I believe in one God, the Father the Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” Public domain.
Sr. Gabriela of the Incarnation, O.C.D. (Sr. Gabriela Hicks) was born in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in the Gold Rush country of California, which she remembers as heaven on earth for a child! She lived a number of years in Europe, and then entered the Discalced Carmelite Monastery in Flemington, New Jersey, where she has been a member for forty years. www.flemingtoncarmel.org.
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