Yeah, I’ll remember that the next time I see women in pantsuits passing out the Most Sacred Body of Our Lord like coat check tokens. That will make it all better.
We shouldn’t confuse two different issues here. The one that you mention above has nothing to do with preserving religious life as it should be. The situation that you mention can be corrected without getting rid of the Ordinary Form. But if we eliminate the ordinary form, we deeply affect the religious life. There is a way that we can have both the reverence that you seek and cotinue to ordain more religious men, rather than less.
One thing that is not always made known to most people is that many religious orders suffered a great deal prior to the Ordinary Form.
We had many men who felt called to the priesthood and to the mendicant or monastic life. Once ordained, there was not much for them to do in friaries and monasteries. Many of these men were assigned to parishes in the hope that they could fulfill both callings.
While there they did good work for the parish, but they lost their religious identity, because they were away from their religious communities. When they were recalled to their religious houses they no longer fit into the rythm of life. They had become very accustomed to being independent, to having material things, to coming and going without having to ask for permission, to praying on their own schedule, to spending time with the laity, to having their own cars, money and independence. You get to see your brothers and your superiors a few times a year.
When they returned to their religious houses the idea of washing clothes rather than serve in a parish was difficult for them. Having to ask for permission to leave the house or purchase toothpaste was foreign to them again. They found routines like a community schedule, community recreation, community chapter, silence, solitude, Liturgy of the Hours round the clock difficult to follow. Things that are part of religious life such as not having a cell phone, their own computer, their own car or asking for permission to use a car were foreign to these men. They had become diocesan priests with a religious title.
Many of these men left their religious orders, because they were miserable. Those who stayed were unhappy and lost. Those who left religious life did not remain in the priesthood, because their original call had been to religious life.
When the Ordinary Form came into existence the need to send religious men out to parishes was no longer there. Religous orders could pull out of parishes. They could become priests and remain in their religious communities serving as cooks, houseboys, administrators. Others work in soup kitchens, walk the streets, counsel women in pregnancy centers. And others work with youth on the streets around their religious houses. Many spend their days and nights in homeless shelters, under bridges with the homeless or with drug addicts and prostitutes. But most importantly, they remain within the confines of their priories, friaries and monasteries living according to the vision and mission of their founders.
It is easier to be both a priest and a religious. They can celebrate the Eucharist as a community of brothers in the morning and spend their day living as beggers, contemplatives and manual laborers, which is what enriches the religious life of the Church. They can travel around the country giving lectures, preaching retreats or teaching.
These men love living the conventual life of a contemplative religious while begging, teaching, preaching, doing dishes, digging ditches, or whatever other work they are ordered to do. Is this not worth preserving to you?
There is no reason why you cannot have a reverent Ordinary Form mass and have the conventual life alive and well in the Church, as well as have the Extraordinary Form. Look at the friars on EWTN. They say one mass and spend the rest of their day doing manual labor, alone before the Blessed Sacrament, putting together programs for EWTN, guiding tours at the Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament, and serving their brothers in their community.
Have you ever been to a mass at a friary of the Franciscans of the Renewal? It’s a beautiful mass with all the brothers celebrating around the altar, cleric and non-cleric. From there they leave to spend the day on the streets.
Have you ever seen or met the Franciscans of the Primitive Observance? They never set foot in a parish nor do any of the functions of a parish priest. They do not run schools, hospitals, dispensaries or other institutions. But they have a beautiful OF mass and spend their day begging for their food, talking to people on the streets, running errands for their neighbors, cleaning people’s homes, taking care of a sick neighbor or even walking from Boston to Costa Rica. They can do this because it’s easy to throw a mass kit into a back-pack with one ordained friar and several other non-clerical friars, then hitch-hike to Costa Rica to live like the poor among the poor as their father Francis wanted them to do. Is this not worth preserving?
Look at the Trappists. They now have the opportunity to have more ordained monks, because they can gather as one body to concelebrate a mass. Prior to concelebration, they had few ordained monks. They didn’t need more than a few priests to hear their confessions and to celebrate one community mass. Monks who were priests got to celebrate mass for their community once or twice a wee, if they were lucky. In large monasteries, it could be once or twice a month or several times a year. Now they can concelebrate daily.
The Ordinary Form meets a great need in the Church, as does the Extraordinary Form. In his wisdom, the Holy Father has sought to protect both and preserve both.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
