J
JReducation
Guest
Actually, religious orders, religious congregations, institutes of apostolic life ae getting more vocations than the dioceses are. The diocese in the USA that was at the top of the heap on vocations was the Diocese of Arlington, VA. I’m not sure if they still are up there.
Most diocese depend on religious to staff their parishes. As I said before, there is only so much that a bishop can demand of a religious, because they are free to pull out on a moment’s notice if they disagree or if they feel that he is stepping on the toes of the superior.
Do most people here realize that a superior of an Order or a Congregation of Pontifical Right is also an ordinary? He does not have to be a bishop, not even a priest. As long as he is the major superior, his priest are totally subject to his authority, not the bishop’s. There are ground rules and contracts that govern the relationship between the bishop and the religious who staff his parishes. But the one concession that is never made to the bishop is obedience.
Does everyone here realize that religious priests owe obedience to four agents: their founder, their rule, their chapter and their religious superior. They owe the same obedience to the bishop as any other Catholic, unlike a diocesan priest.
I hear all of this talk of changing this or that as if it were that easy. We do not have enough secular priests in this country to run our parishes. That’s why we rent priests from religious orders and congregations. However, they have no obligation to serve in parishes. Most of them were founded to do other ministries.
The Marianist Brothers recently took up a parish in York, PA, I believe. I could be wrong about the town. They are a teaching congregation. Their priests may vote in a chapter, but may not hold positions of authority. Only the Lay Brothers may govern. Most of their Lay Brothers are involved in some form of education. If a conflict developed between the bishop and the congregation, the Brother Superior can pull his priests back into the classroom.
When you live in a country where most young men are joining religious communities, there are not going to be enough priests under the direct authority of the bishops. We don’t even have enough secular priests to take over dioceses. During the past 20 years we have had to ordain more religious to be bishops than ever before.
Most of the ordinations to the priesthood are from the religious orders, congregations and apostolic institutes. Look at the Eternal Word Missionaries, the Franciscans of the Reform, Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, the Capuchins, and the Brothers of Charity. They have ordinations every year.
Right now, Mt. St. Mary’s in Emmitsburgh is headed by a Capuchin Friar. It’s a diocesan seminary, but they could not find a secular priest qualified to be the Dean. St. Charles Borromeo in Cleveland is another diocesan seminary, but half of its teaching staff are Capuchin Friars. They didn’t have enough secular theologians.
I’m wondering where people think what we’re going to get these large numbers of young secular priests. It’s not happening in the USA, not in enough numbers to take over the parishes that are run by religious.
As to training every priest to say mass in latin using the Tridentine form, that only applies to secular seminarians, not to religious. His Holiness’ call for the teaching of the Latin mass does not include religious. He has not included them in his call. Religious can go with it, but they have not been ordered to do so. There is a procedure for this. It is up to the formation council of the religious community to decide that, unless the Holy Father demands it of religious. This he must do by asking each General Chapter to include it in their Constitutions. He has not done this.
We have to bend a little or we’ll snap and we have to be sensitive not to cause problems for our bishops. There are two sides to every issue.
JR
