Don Bosco: History and Spirit. Vol. 4: Beginnings of the Salesian Society and Its Constitutions (review)

Rules, such as that of St. Benedict, have shaped not only the religious orders for which they were written but also whole streams of spirituality that have flowed from those foundational documents. In this fourth volume of Arthur Lenti's study of Don Bosco, we can begin to understand why the Constitutions of the Salesian Congregation prior to Vatican Council II never really had any comparable impact on the Salesians themselves or the spiritual family founded by Don Bosco. Instead, the Constitutions clearly evidence the conflict between the "institutional Church" and a "charismatic founder."

Lenti first presents an overview of the years 1864–74, which marked the nadir in the fortunes of the Papal States with the fall of Papal Rome to the Italian forces in 1870.At the same time, the papacy witnessed the triumph of Ultramontanism with the definition of the universal jurisdiction and infallibility of the pope by Vatican Council I.

To create a new religious order in Italy during such a high-tension conflict between a traditionalist church and a liberal state strained Don Bosco's strong attachment to the traditionalist worldview. His strange and often apocalyptic-style prophecies (detailed in chap. 2) seem to reflect a person torn between the old political and religious certainties and what was for Don Bosco the new personal imperative of pastoral charity toward poor and abandoned young people. As Lenti shows, Don Bosco was prepared to go to almost any lengths to achieve this goal of ensuring that his work for the young would continue. Based on the advice he received from Urbano Ratazzi, the anticlerical minister, he insisted that the Salesians should be an association of free citizens who retained their civil rights to own property and vote, but who were devoted to charity and avoided all political attachments. Since they did not claim to be a "corporation," but only an "association of free citizens," the civil law then could not confiscate their property. In contrast, the canon lawyers in Rome were unwilling to admit that a free association could be a religious order and insisted that Don Bosco's congregation should have all the juridical elements of a Tridentine congregation: namely, a monastic novitiate, seminary studies, vows that could be dispensed only by the pope, and no right to present his candidates for ordination with his own dimissorial letters. Don Bosco saw these as impositions that would undermine his work for the young. As Lenti points out in his extraordinary exegetical work on the early versions of the Constitutions, Don Bosco repeatedly ignored or sought to avoid the prescriptions he received from Rome. Ultimately he was even prepared to issue an Italian version of the Constitutions that did not correspond to the official Latin version agreed with the cardinals and to claim he had the vivae vocis oraculo permission of the pope (p. 212).

Lenti's work in this volume is outstanding and unique in that he uses his skills as a biblical scholar to present the various versions of the Constitutions and, more important, to interpret them. This is particularly helpful in seeing the development of their various sections: the historical preface, the critical articles on the purpose of the Salesians, the form of the society, the vow of obedience, and the practices of piety. These chapters, in particular, bring out very clearly Don Bosco's original vision and the compromises he was forced to make to gain definitive approval.