Day 652 – ‘… economy of the Holy Ghost’

The contribution which stands out, however, as one reads the debate a century later, came from Charles Grafton, Bishop of Fond du Lac in the USA, the only bishop present who had been a member of a community. He made three important points. First, he believed Religious Life was a vocation and should be treated as such. Second, it did not belong, as priesthood did, to the corporate life of the Church, but instead belonged ‘to the economy of the Holy Ghost’. Obedience to a Religious superior was a voluntary action of love, not the result of the legislative action of the Church. Unlike ‘the fixity of ministerial orders’ then, he believed the work of the Holy Ghost in the call of Religious Life manifested itself in a variety of different forms. Bishops had to trust this call to have a corrective power in itself. Third, he reminded the Conference that in Religious, bishops were dealing with ‘special devotional temperaments’ that could be ‘personally emotional’ about small matters of worship. A high-handed approach would not therefore be advisable. He went on to echo the arguments put forward in Father Puller’s paper, and concluded by suggesting bishops should regulate communities only in relation to property, financial donations and insisting on communities’ having sound government.

Petà Dunstan, Bishops and Religious 1897-1914