I don’t understand this.
How can it be the parishioners fault?
Surely, these religious priests and brothers explain to the laity how they live and what they can expect from them from the get go?
Pulling these religious from the parish seems to suggest things have got to a very extreme point for all concerned.
Is it really all down to a misunderstanding of roles of the Religious by the laity, or is there politics involved?
Sorry, I don’t understand how these things work, so if the answer is obvious and I’m missing it from ignorance, forgive me, but I’m interested in understanding this situation.
Sarah x
In the past, religious orders did not run parishes. Because of a shortage of priests, Vatican I encouraged religious superiors to ordain more men and to help the bishops by taking on parishes. Between the 19th and the 21st century, religious working in parishes put all of their energy into the parishes. They took on these parishes, because they were poor. Most of them were either rural or urban parishes that served the immigrant poor.
However, they made one critical mistake. They ran these parishes as if they were diocesan priests. They accommodated their religious life around the life of the parish. A simple example, in some parishes the religious would adjust their prayer schedule and their community schedules around the parish schedule.
When Vatican II and later Pope John Paul II called male religious to return to their roots and to the vision of their founders, many superiors pulled their men back. They had to schedule parish functions around the functions of the community. You could no longer sit in the confessional for hours and miss community recreation, meals, prayers and community work. For example, a religious, if he was a priest, would have to leave the confessional in time to return to the house for a community function.
Religious communities have their own spirituality. For example, Franciscans have a preference for the poor. I know one friar who was a pastor who opened up the church for the homeless to sleep on cold winter nights. The homeless slept on the pews and in the morning the brothers served them something before they left. The people of the parish were scandalized. No matter how much the friars explained that Christ is not offended by the presence of the poor, the people complained to the bishop. Of course, the bishop said that it was out of his hands. He’s not their superior. He owns the parish, but not the friars.
A group of religious from another community were available for a few hours a day, because they are hermits. They spend most of their day in solitude and silence. This was new to the people. They were used to these men being available all day long. The new superior said that this was not going to happen any longer, because they were to return to their old ways.
Little things like this upset people. When they were told that the religious were to return to their old ways, most people didn’t like it, because they were very used to having the religious available to them all the time. However, most people are really very kind and they adjust. But not everyone adjusts. Some people fight. They begin to complain and to carry tales to the superiors. When the superiors look into these tales, they find nothing. They find that the religious simply won’t give in to the expectations of the people.
Remember, this is not a large number. It’s just a noisy number. Isn’t that always the case? The minority makes a lot of noise. The superiors finally become tired of the complaining and decide to pull out.
Another issue has to do with social classes. As I said, some parishes were very poor when they were founded. As time passed, they became middle class parishes. The religious introduced social outreach programs in their parishes, consistent with their vocation to serve the poor. Some people see this as political, Socialist, Modernist and other. This creates complaints. Again, superiors get tired and pull out.
What happens is that a small group that is very vocal and a larger group that is too intimidated to stand up to the smaller more vocal group push the religious against the wall. The religious have a choice to make: a) stay and fight, b) cave in, or c) leave. The first is not pleasant for anyone. The second is not what the founder had in mind. The option is to leave. They usually leave and go to areas or ministries where they can live according to their charism by starting from scratch.
