iloveangels,
I’m floored by your wealth of information. The Carmelite focus on Mary is quite appealing (the Memorare is my favorite prayer of intercession). Speaking from a practical standpoint, which Carmelite order offers laity greatest access for participation in monastic life? It does me no good to consider orders lacking fraternal chapters in my immediate area regardless of doctrinal appeal. Long distance membership may defeat, or minimally detract from, the very purpose of monastic affiliation. Notably, I live in Northern Virginia just outside Washington, DC, but I’m relocating to the Florida Gulf Coast by mid 2014. This certainly complicates the selection process.
The Franciscan Tertiaries of the Immaculate note that “only in the Immaculate does the Franciscan life come to the height of its perfection and enable one to attain the maximum conformity to Jesus, who is our whole sanctity (cf. Rom. 8:29).” Further, the Order professes that, with respect to tertiaries,"*t is enough that you want to live a more perfect, more Christ-like life, a life totally consecrated to our Lady. The Marian focus combined with Franciscan ideals is very powerful. Sadly, they only have four communities in the New England area.
For me, the Benedictines offer practical physical accessibility to the monastic life. Generally speaking, Marion adoration and fidelity to the Magisterium appear to be significant elements of Benedictine spirituality. That is why I’m focused on exploring the offerings of St. Leo Abbey. And I have yet to fully consider the viability and appeal of the Franciscans and Dominicans.*
Okay, another bit of this third order business:
These religious movements that the third orders come out of happened in a sequence in time–in history. First the hermits, then the monasteries, then the mendicants, then the congregations during the Reformation, then the congregations of teachers and finally now the new forms like Opus Dei and so on.
The Benedictines (big 500AD-1100AD) are monastic, meaning that their focus is around a certain monastery to whom they make their vows (promises in the case of an oblate). Their rule is approved. The monastery is established. The monastery usually belongs to the order via an association between monasteries. Monasteries have a great deal of autonomy. Benedictines are not particularly clerical. The rule of an abbot or an abbess is law within the monastery.
The Franciscans, Dominicans & Carmelites are mendicants (big 1200-1500), even though the Carmelites have some characteristics that are a little bit monastic. The Trinitarians, Servites, Augustinians & Norbertines are generally like very early mendicants and have some of both characteristics. Of these the Franciscans & Carmelites are the least clerical; the Augustinians, Dominicans & Norbertines probably the most clerical. Mendicants have both a rule that is approved and an organization that is approved as an order. The various houses of mendicants are hooked together via a hierarchy with a General Minister (or the like) under obedience to the Holy See. This was done because of developments in society and in the Church. They vow (promise in the case of members) obedience to the rule and the order. Obedience to the papacy is one of the assumptions carried by a promise of obedience to the rule and order.
After the era of the mendicants, the Holy See stopped designating religious movements as “orders,” with all that entails–with really only one exception–the Jesuits because of the emergency of the Reformation (approx 1600-1700AD)
All of the true “third orders” are from these early orders. Anything more modern that’s called a third order is really something else-- an affiliate or association membership to a congregation, institution or similar organization, with varying levels of approval from the bishop or Rome. The later groups fit some people very well and can be great for them, but they can be quite a bit different from the earlier groups.
