Is it against tradition for a pope to be a religious?

[Mintaka]

To be fair, it’s not entirely a matter of mindset or personality.

For decades, whenever somebody would say, “We’re going to do something a bit different at Mass/school/etc.,” it would turn out to be something fakey and annoying, or something that seemed pleasant or cute at first but ultimately detracted from Mass/school/etc…

This is not the way to teach people to be open to the wide variety of legitimate Catholic expressions, not in anything.

Studying Catholic world history, the history of Mass, the wide variety of Catholic traditions and festival customs, and the daily lives of the saints and of normal Catholic people, etc., is a good antidote to this, but not everybody has had a chance to run across this stuff.

 

[Rich_C]

I know how you feel, Superior JR. Most people feel the same way about trads.

I’m curious though, do you find this attitude elsewhere than on CAF? I’m sure you’re right about how important the religious communities are to the Church but in my experience, the postings here are fairly dominated by members with religiouos affiliations and it can be a little “in your face,” sometimes if you know what I mean, even if they’re right.

 

[curlycool89]

As a religious, I find this attitude very offensive and very discouraging. I often feel as if someone were saying to me, “We like having you around so that you can do whatever we want. However, please don’t get in our way with your ecclesiology, your charism, your faith, your spirituality, your traditions, your history and your way of living the Gospel. We find it highly inconvenient and we’re not interested. Our only use for you is to have you pray for us, administer the sacraments, and run institutions for us.”

I’m not sure if you intentionally meant to make a parallell, but I see a very clear one between this and the secular culture.

How many times have people of faith in general been told that it’s ok (or tolerable) for them to have a religion so long as it doesn’t affect anyone else? How many times have we been told that we can have our “religious version” of marriage so long as we don’t “impose” that on other people (marriage being exclusively between a man and a women for example).

And it seems to me that Br. JR is asking the exact same question of the laity. It’s a very uncomfortable parallell if people think it’s ok for religious to have their own charism, faith, spirituality, and traditions so long as they never affect me. It’s very uncomfortable to think that some people feel the need to almost ghettoize the religious (yes, the word choice is intentional) lest they feel they may be affected by them.

Religious do many things. But everything that religious do can be done by seculars. What makes a religious a special gift to the Church is how he lives the Gospel, not what he does.

This reminds me of a story of Catherine Doherty.

She was called to settle a dispute in one of her Friendship Houses in New York (I believe it was a soup kitchen), and her decision was to close the house. One of the people of the community asked “But who will feed the poor?”, and she told them “Atheists can feed the poor just as well as we can. The difference is that we do it with love for each other”. What they were doing mattered very little compared to how they did it.

 

[Rich_C]

During my man years doing this ministry (online teaching) I have noticed…

You know, I always wondered how you could write so much here in a day and still have a ministry. I didn’t know this *was *your ministry!

Now it makes sense.

 

[McCall1981]

I don’t think that people are specifically “against” Pope Francis because he is a religious.

I think that there is a group of Catholics who are convinced that every Catholic should be doing things exactly the same way, especially in the Mass, but also outside the Mass.

**For them, there is no room for any variation in the liturgy, and they have a very difficult time with the EF and OF co-existing. They don’t understand that Holy Mother Church is a large “umbrella” with room for many different types of Catholics and many different liturgies.

There is something about their personality that has a difficult time accepting diversity, and so they long for everything to be exactly the same everywhere.**

I’ve read posts over and over again on this forum about how Catholicism needs to be “unified”: ALL Masses all over the world should be done in Latin, with Gregorian chant, and NO variation at all. Any error in the liturgy, no matter how small, is considered the beginning of the end–it is a major disaster, an act of utter irreverence toward Jesus, and the harbinger of the end of the Church. The priest who allows the error is considered a “liberal” or worse.

And any variation in the liturgy, even if it is allowed by the rubrics, is highly suspect. Huge debates have occurred on CAF over variations in the liturgy that are clearly allowed in the rubrics; .e.g., musical instruments other than the pipe organ. Many of the people with the “All Masses Should Be The Same” mindset seem to believe that all the variations that have developed over time were once “aberrations” that the Church reluctantly was forced into allowing, and therefore, we should all resist these variations because they were once errors. Yes, I’ve seen this argument over and over on CAF. It’s amazing.

So of course, Catholics with this mindset would see Pope Francis’ act of washing women’s feet as absolutely unacceptable and heretical.

It’s my personal opinion that a lot of these Catholics have very little knowledge of Church history and theology, which of course means they don’t know about or understand the differences between religious and secular priests. I think a lot of these Catholics learned one way of doing Mass and daily life, and to them, THAT way is THE way, and there is no other way.

I’m sorry, but this post and some others in here are starting to get a little offensive.

I am one of “those” Catholics who voiced concerns over the foot washing and some other things too. I don’t believe any of what’s bolded above. I am not ignorant of Church history or teaching. I don’t have problem understanding the nature of the Church.

You’re setting up a straw man argument here, to make the thoughts of those you disagree with look ridiculous.

Given the liturgical abuse that has gone on the past several decades I believe it is perfectly reasonable to have concerns like these. If you disagree with me, fine, but I don’t appreciate being characterized in this way, its not charitable.

 

[Boy_Wonder]

JR

Please don’t think me rude for saying this.

It appears to be a product of your imagination. No one is discriminating against religious or refusing to acknowledge their many many contributions to the faith.

Seriously. Think about it. We all face adversity, but rarely is there organized adversity to what we say or do. It just seems that way. Don’t let the enemy get you discouraged. We LOVE our religious.

 

[dshix]

I’m sorry, but this post and some others in here are starting to get a little offensive.

I am one of “those” Catholics who voiced concerns over the foot washing and some other things too. I don’t believe any of what’s bolded above. I am not ignorant of Church history or teaching. I don’t have problem understanding the nature of the Church.

You’re setting up a straw man argument here, to make the thoughts of those you disagree with look ridiculous.

Given the liturgical abuse that has gone on the past several decades I believe it is perfectly reasonable to have concerns like these. If you disagree with me, fine, but I don’t appreciate being characterized in this way, its not charitable.

I agree. Cat has this habit of setting up straw men to make anyone who opposes her personal opinions look like a fool. Thanks, you responded to her better than I could have.

 

[Eufrosnia]

We want religious, but God forbid that if one of them becomes pope he should live as a religious. If that’s not offensive, what is?

I do admit that we have lost the tradition of electing our popes from among religious.

To want an increase in religious is not the same as saying we want a Pope from a religious order though. Just thought I will point out that distinction.

I guess my question is still not answered. My question is very simple. Why is it so wrong for this man to live like a religious?

To answer your question, I think what people want to say is that just like there are traditions of religious, there are traditions of Popes. A person identifies a Pope and his authority through these traditions. It is just how humans perceive things.You might say now that it is just ceremony or outward signs. But those outward signs form a language that people understand and interpret.

Those in the Church who do not know how to interpret this language will see no issue. Those in the Church who want to see a change in the Papacy and things like decentralization of authority will also see no issue. But those in the Church who know what these signs stand for, or see how certain actions communicate implicit meanings to the observer will feel worried.

You might say now that there is nothing to worry since the Pope is drawing from a religious tradition. BUT, then the traditions surrounding the Pope maybe lost. If a Franciscan stopped being a Franciscan, then the whole Franciscan tradition will not die off since there are others who are keeping it. But if a Pope stops following traditions surrounding a Pope, who is to keep the traditions alive?

You might say that we can just reinvent the traditions by scratch. But is that necessary? Also, how effective will it be in developing a rigorous enough expression? Why destroy or neglect the rich and expressive traditions we already have and try to reinvent the wheel?

I am of the camp that this whole problem is compounded when we look too closely at the Pope. So we should just ignore most of what he does and just remain faithful to what he teaches using his authority as Pope. In this view, I feel that we have nothing to worry since we are relying on teaching which the Pope cannot change. The traditions around the Papacy on the other hand might get lost but we live in a time where historical records will exist for someone to restart them at a later time.

I also feel that we should discourage trying too look to papal actions as en example to shape our lives. Its not like we haven’t had some bad apples in history that anyone would agree as being not worthy examples of imitation. So we must be following teachings and trying to imitate the lives of those who have been already canonized saints.

 

[JM3]

I guess my question is still not answered. My question is very simple. Why is it so wrong for this man to live like a religious?

I think it has something to do with our perception of authority. If I was more eloquent (and, yes, I had to look that word up ), I would be able to explain it better. Instead, I’ll just say that we were expecting a Moses and got Jesus.

Mark 2:16 And the scribes and the Pharisees, seeing that he ate with publicans and sinners, said to his disiples: Why doth your master eat and drink with publicans and sinners?

 

[YoungTradCath]

1. Are we of such little value to the layman?
2. Is our way of life an inconvenience when it becomes shared with the wider Church?

1. Yes, I think the unintentional perception is that, practically speaking, religious are of little value to laypeople unless they operate institutions. Nobody likes to say that, nobody would admit it, but yes, I think that’s the reality.
2. Yes, I think it does become an inconvenience, even though nobody would personally say so.

I think a lot of this comes from a lack of education. How many Catholics even know what a male religious is, or even a female religious anymore? They think of some old lady in a full body habit teaching grammar school. For most laypeople, religious life is a distant relic. Why is that? Because laypeople don’t regularly see religious anymore. If a Catholic guy sees some Dominicans on the street, his likely response is something like, “What are they? I think I’ve seen them before,” and moves on with his life.

Perhaps the saturation of religious to laypeople is too low. Perhaps this is all a matter of experience. Laypeople largely don’t experience parish life, or life otherwise, with religious anymore–exception: my parish is run by Redemptorists, but I’d say that, even here, people don’t really comprehend that, since it’s never talked about, but I digress–so they just don’t have any “use” for them.

You say using only utilitarian terms to understand someone’s role in the Church is bad. I agree, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with an understanding of role/job/ministry being even a large part of interpersonal interaction. How are we supposed to understand our parish priest? Well, what’s most important, the fact that he offers Mass every day, or the fact that he likes the Rosary without the Fatima Prayer, or that his favorite pasttime is fishing, or that he likes to go to McDonald’s on Tuesday afternoons for lunch, or that he’d rather shop at Target instead of Walmart, or that his favorite color is green and he hates purple? A person’s role is just what we use to understand someone. I don’t think that will or can change.

So people understand you, Br. JR, as an online teacher, as a Franciscan superior, etc. I’m not sure what else you want people to understand. When I look at you, what else am I supposed to see? Am I supposed to see Francis? That is a more profound understanding of a religious man or woman, perhaps that is the next step in depth of understanding of religious life.

But maybe it isn’t supposed to be understood by laypeople. Maybe this tension is just how it is and how it will be. Maybe religious life can really only be understood and appreciated from the inside. I don’t know.

 

[CB_Catholic]

I think it has something to do with our perception of authority. If I was more eloquent (and, yes, I had to look that word up ), I would be able to explain it better. Instead, I’ll just say that we were expecting a Moses and got Jesus.

Mark 2:16 And the scribes and the Pharisees, seeing that he ate with publicans and sinners, said to his disiples: Why doth your master eat and drink with publicans and sinners?

 

[SMHW]

Quite to the contrary.

Cat gives voice to views that are not “tainted” by having grown up Catholic. And she’s old enough to understand that the pre-Vatican II Church was no where near as liturgically idyllic as some here seem to think.

(And just for the record, I don’t always agree with her perceptions nor does she agree with mine.)

Of course liturgy is merely one aspect of what our dear Br. JR is talking about.

 

[Cat]

Quite to the contrary.

Cat gives voice to views that are not “tainted” by having grown up Catholic. And she’s old enough to understand that the pre-Vatican II Church was no where near as liturgically idyllic as some here seem to think.

(And just for the record, I don’t always agree with her perceptions nor does she agree with mine.)

Of course liturgy is merely one aspect of what our dear Br. JR is talking about.

Thank you.

I had no intention of “setting up a straw man.” As I stated several times in my post, I was voicing “my personal opinion.” I tried very hard to make it clear that my opinion applies to only “some people,” not ALL. Forgive me if that was not made clear enough in my post.

 

[SMHW]

1. Yes, I think the unintentional perception is that, practically speaking, religious are of little value to laypeople unless they operate institutions. Nobody likes to say that, nobody would admit it, but yes, I think that’s the reality.
2. Yes, I think it does become an inconvenience, even though nobody would personally say so.

I think a lot of this comes from a lack of education. How many Catholics even know what a male religious is, or even a female religious anymore? They think of some old lady in a full body habit teaching grammar school. For most laypeople, religious life is a distant relic. Why is that? Because laypeople don’t regularly see religious anymore. If a Catholic guy sees some Dominicans on the street, his likely response is something like, “What are they? I think I’ve seen them before,” and moves on with his life.

I think you’ve got something here. Most lay people see the purposes of both religious and clergy to be living out the second greatest commandment rather than the first.

But maybe [religious life] isn’t supposed to be understood by laypeople. Maybe this tension is just how it is and how it will be. Maybe religious life can really only be understood and appreciated from the inside. I don’t know.

I think this is partly true. But I think it is prudent for some religious to try to explain.

 

[Rich_C]

Quite to the contrary.

Cat gives voice to views that are not “tainted” by having grown up Catholic.

And she’s old enough to understand that the pre-Vatican II Church was no where near as liturgically idyllic as some here seem to think.

Not interested in discussing another forum member but I have two objections:

I think growing up in the Church is advantageous to understanding it, which you seem to disagree with.

And the above statements paired together are illogical.

I never discuss a woman’s age, but how would growing up Protestant in the 1950s help someone “understand that the pre-Vatican II Church was no where near as liturgically idyllic as some here seem to think”?

Sorry, but that makes no sense unless this Protestant child happened to go to a lot of Catholic Masses, which is not what’s implied here.

 

[SMHW]

Not interested in discussing another forum member but I have two objections:

I think growing up in the Church is advantageous to understanding it, which you seem to disagree with.

And the above statements paired together are illogical.

I never discuss a woman’s age, but how would growing up Protestant in the 1950s help someone “understand that the pre-Vatican II Church was no where near as liturgically idyllic as some here seem to think”?

Sorry, but that makes no sense unless this Protestant child happened to go to a lot of Catholic Masses, which is not what’s implied here.

 

[Saints_Alive]

Quite to the contrary.

Cat gives voice to views that are not “tainted” by having grown up Catholic. And she’s old enough to understand that the pre-Vatican II Church was no where near as liturgically idyllic as some here seem to think.

(And just for the record, I don’t always agree with her perceptions nor does she agree with mine.)

Of course liturgy is merely one aspect of what our dear Br. JR is talking about.

Wow, you paint a wonderful image of cradle Catholics there. Tainted huh ?
Shove aside the tainted Faith our grandparents and parents instilled in us and make way for the opinions of the converts ?

Say it “Taint” so

That’s one of the most offensive things I’ve read on this forum.

 

[McCall1981]

Thank you.

I had no intention of “setting up a straw man.” As I stated several times in my post, I was voicing “my personal opinion.” I tried very hard to make it clear that my opinion applies to only “some people,” not ALL. Forgive me if that was not made clear enough in my post.

Cat,

I don’t mean to unduly single you out, so I’m sorry, I have just been noticing a general trend around here and trying to call it out a little. I feel like if I voice an opinion of concern over anything the Pope does or says, the reaction is that I, and others like me, must be Pharisees who want to homogenize everything, and hate Jesuits/Franciscans.

I don’t think that anything Pope Francis has done or said so far is problematic in itself. My concern is that some of these things will be used by others to further their own agendas. Pope Francis washes women’s feet, that’s fine by me; others use this as an excuse to abuse liturgical rules, then I have a problem.

Will this liturgical abuse actually happen? Maybe not, but I for one think its a legitmate concern. It has nothing to do with our Pope being a religious, and its not like I’m somehow incapable of understanding the Jesuit/Franciscan charism. I’m just concerned that there will be negative consequences in the future. Maybe I’m wrong (in fact I hope I’m wrong), but we should all be able to discuss it.

(And for the record I will fully admit that some of us go too far in the other direction, and that’s not good either)

 

[curlycool89]

You might say now that there is nothing to worry since the Pope is drawing from a religious tradition. BUT, then the traditions surrounding the Pope maybe lost. If a Franciscan stopped being a Franciscan, then the whole Franciscan tradition will not die off since there are others who are keeping it. But if a Pope stops following traditions surrounding a Pope, who is to keep the traditions alive?

This might be a little frank for people, but here goes anyways.

What traditions?

The Papacy is an office that has been continually defined by it’s many, many holders, not by some ancient “tradition”. If you really want to nit-pick, the traditions of the Papacy now really only date back to 1929, to the Lateran Treaty. Before then, the Papacy always included in it the concept of being a secular king with wide swaths of land and subjects and taxes and administration. The King-Pope no longer exists; that tradition of the papacy is dead. The Pope is still considered a Head of State as the head of a sovereign nation, but it is drastically different then what existed before.

Now, there are some things that are intrinsic to the office. The Pope is head of the Catholic Church, and head of the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope has a charism of infallibility as defined by Vatican I.

But how the Pope carries out his day to day office? Up to the man who is Pope. As Br. JR has pointed out time an again, many of what we would consider to be Pope “traditions” were brought to the Papacy by whoever was elected, not by some ancient rules. In the exact same way, Pope Francis will bring new traditions with him, some of which may be adopted by his successors and some of which may be disregarded.

What it really sounds like is that people are afraid. People don’t like change. People like everything to be comfortably the same. Well, we are not called to be comfortable. We are always called to grow in our love for Christ, which is what the Holy Father is trying to lead us to.

 

[JReducation]

I’m sorry, but this post and some others in here are starting to get a little offensive.

I am one of “those” Catholics who voiced concerns over the foot washing and some other things too. I don’t believe any of what’s bolded above. I am not ignorant of Church history or teaching. I don’t have problem understanding the nature of the Church.

You’re setting up a straw man argument here, to make the thoughts of those you disagree with look ridiculous.

Given the liturgical abuse that has gone on the past several decades I believe it is perfectly reasonable to have concerns like these. If you disagree with me, fine, but I don’t appreciate being characterized in this way, its not charitable.

I’m sorry if you are offended. It was not my intention to do so, nor to pose a strawman argument. I’m simply reflecting on what I see around the internet, not just on CAF. The Holy Father is a Jesuit. What he does and how he does it is very consistent with the vision that St. Ignatius had for his order. But I often get the impression that people react, because they’re not familiar with Ignatius’ vision for his order. That’s the kind of understanding of history to which I’m referring. Maybe, I should have been very specific and say that people probably react because they don’t know Ignatius’ vision for his order.

JR

Please don’t think me rude for saying this.

It appears to be a product of your imagination. No one is discriminating against religious or refusing to acknowledge their many many contributions to the faith.

Seriously. Think about it. We all face adversity, but rarely is there organized adversity to what we say or do. It just seems that way. Don’t let the enemy get you discouraged. We LOVE our religious.

I’m not discouraged that way. I find it sad that Jesuit pope comes under the microscope when he lives like a Jesuit. I thought that people would be very happy to see this, since we have not seen a religious in the Vatican since the 1700s.

To want an increase in religious is not the same as saying we want a Pope from a religious order though. Just thought I will point out that distinction.

I understand that. I was thinking that the chances of seeing more religious popes has increased exponentially with Pope Benedict’s appointment of new cardinals and now Pope Francis’ election of new bishops. On average, these two popes have named more religious than the popes of the last 200 years. There was usually only one or two religious in the College. Today, they make up about 20%. In the USA alone, 3/4 new bishops named in the last 10 years are from congregations and orders. Pope Francis, in less than one month has elected only two (a new one today) diocesan priests as bishops. All his other elections are religious.

To answer your question, I think what people want to say is that just like there are traditions of religious, there are traditions of Popes. A person identifies a Pope and his authority through these traditions. It is just how humans perceive things.You might say now that it is just ceremony or outward signs. But those outward signs form a language that people understand and interpret.

Those in the Church who do not know how to interpret this language will see no issue. Those in the Church who want to see a change in the Papacy and things like decentralization of authority will also see no issue. But those in the Church who know what these signs stand for, or see how certain actions communicate implicit meanings to the observer will feel worried.

You might say now that there is nothing to worry since the Pope is drawing from a religious tradition. BUT, then the traditions surrounding the Pope maybe lost. If a Franciscan stopped being a Franciscan, then the whole Franciscan tradition will not die off since there are others who are keeping it. But if a Pope stops following traditions surrounding a Pope, who is to keep the traditions alive?

I understand what you’re saying. However, there are some difficulties here. The papacy is not a way of life. It’s not even part of the Sacrament of Holy Orders. In our current case, being a Jesuit is a vowed state in life. The current pope does not lay aside his vow state in favor of a secular state. None of the religious popes have ever done so.

Every religious who comes to the papacy, hopefully will be a faithful religious. Hopefully, we won’t elect some rascal. If he’s a faithful religious, the secular externals of the papacy will be laid aside. This is not new. It’s rare, because popes have been secular priests for a very long time. Whenever we’ve had regular priests elected popes, this was the common thing to do.

So we should just ignore most of what he does and just remain faithful to what he teaches using his authority as Pope. In this view, I feel that we have nothing to worry since we are relying on teaching which the Pope cannot change. The traditions around the Papacy on the other hand might get lost but we live in a time where historical records will exist for someone to restart them at a later time.

They have never been lost. We’ve had Benedictines, Dominicans, Franciscans and now a Jesuit pope. If a secular priest is elected to succeed them, he picks up on what he wants and leaves behind what he does not want. That’s an advantage of being pope. Traditions are not laws and all laws are subject to his approval. He can dispense himself from any and all if he so chooses to do.