I did a search and they finally have a web-site. From the pix there it seems that all of the older brothers that were there when I was have passed.
Yes, I know they are huge in Germany where the motherhouse is they actually seem to have grown in numbers.
I recognised several of the brothers, esp my former master of novices Bro. Gerald.
I wish I didn’t have hypertension with the ensuing stroke later. I really wanted to stay, but God had different plans.
Now I am 56, and take 4 different prescriptions daily for hypertension and heart.
Godd memories!
They are growing, because communities such as Franciscans, Cistercians, Benedictines and even some Carmelite communities have gone back to the roots and realized that they had to change the focus in their vocation recruiting from recruiting men to be priests to recruiting men to be religious.
Once that shift was made, these communities have begun to take off and the other communities that have priests have seen a steady decline in the number of men that they ordain, but not a decline in the number of men who come to them seeking the religious life.
It gives the impression of a severe vocation shortage, when in fact, the shortage is due to two things.
a. There are less Catholics being born. Therefore, there are going to be less priests.
but
b. Those large numbers of men who were entering religious communities to become priests are not entering, because there are some communities that are not actively recruiting for priests. If they come they come. But these communities are actively recruiting for the religious life.
With the drop in birth rates and the lower numbers of men entering the religious life to be priests, it gives the impression that there is a greater shortage than what there really is… The truth is that the number of men who want to be priests is on the rise. They are entering the dioceses or institutes for priests. Many dioceses have standing room only in their seminaries. While many religious communities are seeing an increase in the number of men who are called to the religious life, but not to the priesthood, the number of religious brothers and the number of communities of brothers is on the rise.
Communities like the Franciscans of the Holy Cross now become more visible and are attracting more men. The younger generation is no longer equating religious life and priesthood. Today’s young men understand that they are two distinct callings and that in some cases, they are bundled, to borrow a colloquialism from AT&T, but they need not be. You can be a very good and holy priest without being a religious. You can be a wonderful religious without being a priest.
This trend is lost on many Catholics and upsetting to others. It is lost on those Catholics who are not aware of the growth in the numbers of religious men who are not priests. Others who may be aware tend to panic and even discourage young men from entering to become religious, because they fear that the Church is going to run out of priests, which will never happen. It can’t happen, for the simple reason that the Church needs priests to be the Church and Christ knows this. There will always be at least one bishop out there. That’s my exaggeration. Obviously there are going to be many. My point is that there is no need for concern when we see a community like the Franciscans of the Holy Cross growing and the Franciscan Observants (OFM) slowing down. The reason that they are slowing down has more to do with the shift on emphasis on the religious life.
Someone asked me once if the fact that even cloistered monks now take a vacation every so often is part of the reason why we have less monks. I had to think about this. Then I realized that the answer is “Negative.” We have less monks because we have less Catholic men and because monks are not attracting as many men who want to be priests. If they observe that the man is good material for the priesthood, but poor material for the monastic life, they punt him over to the diocese.
Actually, I believe that the vacations may help to promote vocations. When Uncle Tom, who is a Trappist, comes for his trienniel vacation, it may be the only time when the teens in Tom’s family ever get to see a monk. There are not many teens who are eager to go visit “their uncle the monk.” He was sort of out of sight, out of mind…
Now, the younger members of a family can hang out with their uncle the monk or their uncle the friar for a few days a year or every other year. They actually begin to look at this way of life and become more familiar with it. It’s no longer the, "I have an uncle who is a monk or a friar whom I have not seen since I was 10, because now that I’m 22 my parents can’t drag me down to visit him twice a year as they did int he past. " It’s the case now that “I’m 22 and I went to a movie with my uncle the monk the last time that he came to visit. After the movie we went for pizza and I got to hear all about life in a cloister or life in a friary.”
I think that the religious benefits from the periodic vacations with family and the younger members of the family also benefit. Even if they don’t become religious, they have more knowledge of the day to day life of a religious than we did when we were kids in the 1950s and 60s.
In other words, some of these changes, such as vacations, have done a lot of good for religious and for their young relatives, who would probably not see their uncle ever again were it not for the vacation.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
