Is a nuns husband God Or Jesus?

[truevaticanii]

This is another reason why these allegories don’t work. Here is another good example. As a Carmelite your tradition views the religious community as a family. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, it’s predominantly a family of clerics.

In my Franciscan tradition, religious life is a brotherhood, not even a family as such. If you remember correctly, Franciscans don’t have Priors or Abbots. Therefore, we don’t have a FATHER. In fact, it is penalized under pain of sin, in the Franciscan rule, for anyone to claim the title Abbot or Prior. We have Ministers and they govern at the will and pleasure of the brotherhood. They are not allowed to make unilateral decisions, except in calling men to Holy Orders. It’s the only decision that rule allows them to make unilaterally. This is a good paradigm of family, as in a family there is a father or mother. Among Franciscan men there are no Fathers. You can’t have a family without fathers. Our paradigm is one of brothers bound by one single father, Francis of Assisi. And Francis never claimed for himself the title spouse of the Church. He identified himself as a brother to the Church…

As we move from one religious family to another the paradigms are very different. Since the paradigms are different, the allegories don’t work across the board. I know that in the Benedictine tradition the imagery is that of Sons. That’s why they have Abbots, meaning Father. A monk is not a spouse of the Church, he is a son of the Church.

The Dominican tradition uses a paradigm similar to that of the Carmelites. They are a family with a Prior. I know that the Dominicans follow the Rule of St. Augustine. Therefore, it is logical to conclude that the Augustinian tradition uses the same paradigm, a family with a brother who is the first (Prior) among his brothers.

I know no religious families of men who use the marriage imagery to describe their relationship to the Church or to God. They all seem to use either the filial or the fraternal model, which is much more concrete and visible.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

I would not say that allegories “don’t work”… they just don’t usually work when taken out of the context in which they were meant to be used in.

 

[JReducation]

I would not say that allegories “don’t work”… they just don’t usually work when taken out of the context in which they were meant to be used in.

I have a question for you and I mean no disrespect. I’m genuinely curious. I gather that you’re a secular person. Why is it important to you whether or not we religious use or discard this paradigm in our respective religious families?

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[truevaticanii]

I have a question for you and I mean no disrespect. I’m genuinely curious. I gather that you’re a secular person. Why is it important to you whether or not we religious use or discard this paradigm in our respective religious families?

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

I just don’t want you to dismiss the idea to/for someone else…

 

[JReducation]

I just don’t want you to dismiss the idea to/for someone else…

You have to remember that sometimes it was our founders who dismissed this idea and replaced it with another and we have an obligation to obey them, BLINDLY.

For example, when Francis of Assisi says that we are brothers of the Church, not spouses of the Church, he is not to be disobeyed. He commands a blind obedience to his vision of our life. In fact, he was so set on his vision of our life that he often taught that any brother who disobeyed him, even after his death, would literally go to hell. The man did not play games with the way of life that Christ himself revealed to him. I don’t want to mess with him.

Some other founders who were equally severe with their sons and daugters were Bernard of Clairveaux and Alphonsus Ligouri. Alphonsus was so tough that the Redemptorists almost kicked him out of the congregation. These folks were not to be toyed with. They had other paradigms that they demanded of their sons and daughters. Alphonsus and Bernard taught that their sons and daughters were children of the Church, not spouses. They were never to put themselves at an equal level with the Church.

So you have to be careful what you expect of religious. You need to know what their founders wanted of them. Much of this is not information that is available to the laity. Most religious communties do not share their Rule (if they have one) and their constitutions (which all have) with the laity. This is done to protect the religious from discussion such as this one.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[SRLAUREL]

I just don’t want you to dismiss the idea to/for someone else…

Meaning lay people? Then please let lay people learn from religious that the bridal imagery is not literal and rarely accepted by religious today — and then only figuratively IF it describes a particular experience of Christ. Please let lay people know that the notion of a Sister or Brother being a literal spouse of Christ or Christ their “husband” is not part of the theology of religious life or of the vows. Please let them know that, generally, active religious women don’t appreciate being identified as “Brides of Christ” and find that other imagery is far more accurate and helpful in explaining and allowing lay people to understand their actual vocations. Please let them know that priests are not married to the Church (saying which, in some important ways, is like saying they are married to themselves), nor are they married to Christ. Let them know that the use of marriage imagery for religious, beautiful as it is, can, when it is used exclusively or literally actually demean the Sacramental marriages most of them are themselves covenanted in. And please be sure to also make clear that the celibate love which is at the heart of the religious vocation is eschatological and proleptic (anticipatory) of a “time” when no one will be either given or taken in marriage.

On the other hand, no one here has said that the figurative language and imagery of marriage can be used by religious individually (or by anyone else for that matter!). My own vow formula speaks of a nuptial relationship with Christ. But, as I have noted before, he is not my husband and I am not his wife. Religious or lay men and women who experience Christ in spousal terms are still NOT wives, and Christ is still not their husband. This pushes the imagery too far. Religious, like anyone else, are completely free to describe their own personal relationship with Christ in whatever imagery fits best, but they are not free to universalize the experience, nor to literalize or push the imagery beyond appropriate boundaries. To do so is to misstate the theology of religious life and that of the vows. More, it is to mislead the rest of the Church and make sure that religious life is actually MISUNDERSTOOD in its very essence.

Ideas should be firmly dismissed if holding them is destructive, and this one is one of those which, as it has been used and abused, has mystified the laity, added an unwarranted mystique to religious life, helped the development of the phenomenon of putting religious up on pedestals, and contributed to the notion that lay vocations are second class and that Christ really loves best and gives himself most completely to those called to religious life. Further, it has destroyed religious vocations as well in women who came to believe their prayer lives were deficient because they did not experience spousal love either from or for Christ.

You have claimed in recent posts that you have come to a place where you affirm the Bridal or Spousal language and imagery of marriage is figurative of a profound union or unity and applies to everyone in the Church equally. (I say “come to a place” because your earlier posts explicitly contradict some of what you said in later posts.)The Catechism of the Catholic Church would agree, not just for the People of God as a whole but for every individual. (It says this explicitly.) Keeping this at the forefront of our usage for EVERY vocation, but especially for lay vocations could be very helpful in undoing some of the damage that has been done by applying the imagery to religious vocations alone. Why then would you need to apply it especially and in what sounds like an exclusive or at least unique way to religious or to make sure that others can do so??? Religious don’t generally do so, and the Church herself in the CCC does not, so why is this such an issue for you? Definitely time to let this go.