From a Catholic News Service article as published on the website of my diocese (Springfield, MA), Pope orders new rules on relations between bishops, religious orders :
Pope Francis said he has ordered a revision of what he called outdated Vatican norms on the relations between religious orders and local bishops, in order to promote greater appreciation of the orders’ distinctive missions.
Further on, the article tells us:
“I also know that the bishops are not always acquainted with the charisms and works of religious,” he said. “We bishops need to understand that consecrated persons are not functionaries but gifts that enrich dioceses.
In passing, I’ll note that part of the reason for the Pope wishing to take away control from local leaders, bishops, is the claim that some `foreign’ religious orders are conducting a “novice trade” in countries such as the Philippines. This implies that there will be greater controls of specific sorts at the level of the Vatican; I’ll ignore this complications to make my main point, one not explicitly made by Pope Francis, yet implied by his general position: centralized controls, at all levels of a complex institution such as the Catholic Church, must be relaxed if we are to encourage the sort of explorations and thinking processes which will lead to solutions of the current deep problems of Church, the separated Christian churches, nations, Christian civilization, and the entirety of the human race.
In optimistic terms, our current deep problems are related to changes being forced upon us by new knowledge of Creation and the closely related development of extraordinarily complex human relationships; truly are these problems also opportunities though the current generations aren’t likely to see the emergence of benefits from taking advantage of those opportunities.
Well-ordered freedom is necessary for the individuals and communities of the human race to move forward in a way compatible with `progress’, a movement I interpret as being the formation and maturing of the Body of Christ.
We need order, so there have been times when the bishops have needed to gain a greater control over institutions including religious orders ideally left to move with a great deal of freedom.
We need freedom, so those bishops including the Pope, should be wise enough to relax controls when appropriate and to the extent which is appropriate.
We should think through and generalize from this situation. This movement between establishing control and relaxing control relies upon the sort of judgment not always found in the leaders of centralized institutions, especially when those leaders are from countries or classes climbing out of barbarism or sinking into it or when they—take notice, my fellow Americans—are from a political class which has been corrupt and incompetent for generations.