(Rivista Internazionale - December 1994: Work of the Commission for the Reform of the Constitutional Charter and Code - 2/3)

H.M.E.H. convened a special seminar for this purpose, called the Seminar for the Order's Strategies, which was held in Malta on 10 and 11 December 1993. The Secretary of the Strategies Commission, Count Winfried Henckel von Donnersmarck, will be able to report on the Seminar in greater detail, as he has the authority to speak on the matter to the Chapter, in accordance with Article 200 of the Code.

The Sovereign Council then examined all the documents in its possession, including the decisions of the Malta Seminar. After lengthy discussion it resolved, in its session of 4 February 1994, that the matter had to be submitted to the present Chapter General for it to demonstrate its specific will and enable the constitutional procedures to be put in motion for the definitive compilation of the new Constitutional Charter and Code.

This is a brief outline of the course followed in up-dating the Order's Statutes, a necessary course if we are to face the future with a legal system capable of supporting the actions of the Order world-wide.

Rome. Magistral Palace. The cover and folders of the Constitutional Charter and Code, on which the amendments proposed for their reform have been made, examined and drafted by the commission presided over by the Receiver of the Common Treasure, Count Carlo Marullo di Condojanni.

But let us come to the essential. The Order's Statutes, that is, the Constitutional Charter and Code, are already out of date. This is proved by the many interpretative difficulties encountered not only in the institutions' daily life, but especially in the last State Complete Council and last Chapters, during which doubts and uncertainties on the electoral mechanisms meant an increasingly frequent recourse to the opinions of the State Legal Advisory Office and the Consultative Juridical Council.

This created a kind of «material Constitution», thus creating further perplexities, at a time when the Order is being affected by the recent, great transformations. On one side, the increasing diplomatic recognition of the Order's status in the sphere of international law and, on the other, the entry into force of the new Codex iuris canonici in the sphere of Canon Law.

A certain inadequacy of the Statutes in regulating the internal life of the Order must also be admitted.

We have to realise that the Constitutional Charter and Code are thirty years old. Albeit this is not an advanced age in terms of codification, it must be remembered that the judicial and constitutional assumptions on which the codification was based can now be considered out-of-date and, in any case, requiring revision.

The approval of the present Constitutional Charter and Code on one side concluded a period of difficult relations between the Order and the Sacred Congregation of the religious, but on the other inevitably froze the position of the Order with regards to the Holy See, as set down in the Cardinal's Judgement of 1953 and referred to in Article 4 (1) of the same Constitutional Charter.

The first function of the Order's Statutes is therefore precisely to specify and place these relations within the framework of the Order's International-Law status, bearing in mind its religious characteristics.

It would be advisable to reconsider the problem by writing new regulations, in line with the changed times, yet allowing a surer identification of its International-Law status, without prejudice to its dependence on the Holy See for matters pertaining to the religious sphere.

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