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The Emmanuel Community is erected as an International Public Association of the Faithful
The Emmanuel Community was erected as an International Public Association of the Faithful, by a decision of the Pontifical Council of the Laity, on 20 June 2009. The Community was until then a Private Association of the Faithful of pontifical right (by a decree of the Pontifical Council for the Laity of 8 December 1998).
This modification witnesses to greater recognition and ecclesial confidence. By this public statute, the Holy See recognizes that the Emmanuel Community acts in the name of the Catholic Church, participating in this way in the renewal of missionary conscience among all the baptized.
In order to understand more clearly the concepts of "public" and "private" applied to juridical "persons" in the Church, one should not take as an analogy the secular law of the state (e.g. of France) but consider the theological nature of the Church.
A juridical person (association) needs to be considered as public when the ecclesiastical authority recognizes that it acts in the name of the Church in view of the good of the Church (as in the public good, or common good) for ends that are those of the Church herself (cf. canons 116 and 301). A juridical person (association) will be considered as private if its mission is more directly orientated towards the faithful of Christ who are its members. Of course, this good of the faithful is also a good of the Church, which is in no way contradictory.
The Emmanuel Community is a community of the faithful of Christ, who are brought together for the purpose of a contemplative and apostolic life, and whose mission corresponds to the general apostolic aim of the Church (expressis verbis in its statutes). Besides, the foundational charism of our community certainly adheres to the profound communion between the common priesthood (of the faithful) and the ministerial (ordained) priesthood, in the same spiritual life, marked by adoration, from which is born compassion, itself the source of the desire to evangelize.
The missions assumed by the Emmanuel Community and entrusted to it by the Church imply the teaching of Christian doctrine in the name of the Church, the promotion of public worship, the exercise of the ordained ministry and the fostering of a new form of consecrated life. By nature, all these missions are public, they are not done for the particular good of the members of the association but for the common good of the Church.
In conclusion, it is necessary to underline that it is not up to the faithful of the Church of Christ to decide if their community is public or private, but only the government of the Church, meaning the Holy See, is able to authenticate the public or private character of an ecclesial reality and to decide whether such an association ought to be erected as a public association of the faithful.
Jean-Marc Bahans, canon lawyer
Member of the Emmanuel Community
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