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

[JReducation]

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.

Bold is mine. That’s too funny. I love someone with a sense of humor.

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?

I was wondering about this. Is it that people don’t want to say so . . . you may be right.

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.

I’m not too sure about this. I must say that religious life is a phenomenon that is complex in many ways and it does take a lot of reading, studying and observing for people to understand. Not only are there many different religious communities, but there are different forms of religious life, from hermits to consecrated virgins and everything else in between. Let’s face it. How many people know that Pope Francis is a Clerk Regular? How many know what a Clerk Regular is?

No, I know that, I just meant Franciscans in particular.

What happened to not explaining anything to lay people? Haha, thanks for the explanation, though.

I didn’t know that you could call someone “holy father” if they weren’t the Pope. Hm.

In the Latin Church there are three men who are called Holy Father: the pope, St, Dominic and St. Francis of Assisi. The Catholic Church also recognizes some of the Orthodox patriarchs as Holy Father, but I can’t remember which.

My thing is that he was elected as the Pope. So I don’t care what he wears. He’s the Pope. I don’t know why people take an issue on whether he’s doing things their way or someone else’s way. Again, he’s the Pope. So Catholics should accept him, trusting that the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit. I’m right there with you on this.

That was my point.

For example, when he did the footwashing, for heaven’s sake the pope can dispense anyone from the rubrics, including himself. Any intelligent person knows that the pope can dispense himself and it does not mean that he’s dispensing anyone else unless he says so. Those who take that as an excuse to dispense themselves would do so regardless of what the pope does.

When I said, “not so religious”, it was just a funny way to say “secular.”

Ahhh, that’s the disadvantage of the internet. You can’t see a person’s face or hear their voice. For me, it’s often a challenge to know when someone is teasing, joking or serious.

Obviously, if we had a Pope that was “not so religious” that would be… uh… really, really weird. I just had this mental image of someone asking the Pope to join him in Bible Study and the Pope saying, “Nahh… I’m not so religious.” LOL.

Don’t forget the Borgias. Those guys were rascals. :yup:

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?

You find this around the web, especially forums and blogs.

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.

LOL Several years ago, I was in treatment for cancer. I was grounded. When you get chemo, it destroys your immune system. I had to stay away from my usual activities. I’ve always taught at seminaries and colleges. I had a superior who suggested that I start an online teaching ministry. I started looking around and became very involved with CAF and now am working on a blog, which I hope to open up to the larger community soon.

I’m no longer grounded and now I’m the superior, but I have kept up this apostolate, because I find that it helps people. On average, I get about 8 PMs and/or emails per day just from CAF, people asking for help with one question or another. There are two ways to teach. You can give someone an answer that is helpful to them or you can give an answer that the person can say, “I disagree.” In that case, the person has eliminated one possibility. Without the person knowing, he has discovered something.

[/QUOTE]

 

[Dempsey1919]

On a thread about Pope Francis’ latest statement on Vatican II, a post wrote that he or she wanted to go back to the days when monasteries and convents were full. Let’s start with the fact that those monasteries and convents are filled with religious, not laymen. There are lay religious, but these men and women are not part of the laity.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think I am the person you referred to in your original post.

I think you misinterpreted my meaning. I want to see full monasteries and convents because I love our Religious Orders. I sincerely wish we had more more Brothers and more Sisters. The Church needs them badly.

Furthermore, I am glad we have a religious Pope. I am trying to “read Francis through Benedict” just like Father Z suggested. I will continue to pray for Pope Francis.

 

[YoungTradCath]

Other considerations:

1. Never before have our media been so good at doing what they want to do. Never before have our communications been so good. So when Pope X does something different from Pope Y, it’s going to be noticed, it’s going to be nitpicked. Even sixty years ago I don’t think there would have been this kind of attention given to these kinds of things.
2. Wealth. Most Western people have a generally comfortable lifestyle. However, there is a silent, invisible underclass. There is also the rest of the world. Most of the world does not live like your average Westerner. I wager that these non-Westerners and poor living in the West would have a radically different experience of apostolic religious orders/congregations/groups/whatever.

This makes me think of how funny it is that relatively wealthy Westerners, supposedly with more resources to free them up to enjoy finer aspects of life that others cannot, often do not have the… sublimity of heart?.. to be able to appreciate religious men and women. On the contrary, wealth has made us love wealth for itself, and so we view everything in material or, in this case, as Br. JR has said, utilitarian terms.

Perhaps religious life is doomed to a state of permanent misunderstanding in any relatively wealthy society.

 

[SMHW]

…but I have two objections:

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

I grew up in the Church and I think I have a pretty decent understanding of it so I do believe that growing up in the Church is useful. However I don’t know that I would have as thorough an understanding or appreciation if I didn’t also have the perspectives of those who were or are outside of the Church.

And the above statements paired together are illogical.

…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”?

I realize this was not as clear as it could have been. In this case age and general experience were the prevailing factors, not Protestant experience in particular. Many of us cradle Catholics here at CAF have shared our knowledge and experience of the problems with liturgies prior to 1969. Anyone older than age 50 or so should be able to tell you that there were good things as well as seriously problematic things to be found in all institutions back then, whether religious, political, economic, educational, social, or otherwise.

---

Since this mini discussion is wandering away from the thread topic I will try to bring it back by saying that Brother JR has pointed out how some of the fondly remembered aspects of Religious communities from the earlier part of the 20th Century were actually somewhat deviant when measured against the original rules for those communities.

Perhaps I am mistaken, but I think that someone who did not directly benefit from the deviance has an easier time of accepting that the deviance was a mistake. I think the “deviance” of the Church in the 1970s and 1980s was of benefit to me and many others I know because we are still Catholic. I can’t imagine most people here thinking that justifies all that craziness.

 

[McCall1981]

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.

Br. JR,

I didn’t have problem with this thread or anything you said at all; a couple of the later posts seemed a bit confrontational to me, and its something I’ve noticed elsewhere, so I just wanted to bring it up. I’m sure I do the same thing from the other direction sometimes too

 

[SMHW]

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.

I don’t know how I could have said it better than by putting quotes around the word. I did not call our Faith tainted. I used “tainted” to modify the word “view”.

Our view/understanding of our Faith is distinct from The Faith at its essence.

I’m sorry I was unclear.

 

[JReducation]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think I am the person you referred to in your original post.

I think you misinterpreted my meaning. I want to see full monasteries and convents because I love our Religious Orders. I sincerely wish we had more more Brothers and more Sisters. The Church needs them badly.

Furthermore, I am glad we have a religious Pope. I am trying to “read Francis through Benedict” just like Father Z suggested. I will continue to pray for Pope Francis.

I read Father Z 's comment. I’m not sure that I agree with him that we read Pope Francis through Pope Benedict. I think that each one has a gift that he brings to the Church that is uniquely his own. To understand the gift, one needs to understand the man in his own context, not the context of another. I would not try to read Pope Benedict through Pope John Paul. They’re very different people. Even their priorities were very different.

On the contrary, wealth has made us love wealth for itself, and so we view everything in material or, in this case, as Br. JR has said, utilitarian terms.

Perhaps religious life is doomed to a state of permanent misunderstanding in any relatively wealthy society.

I here you; but I sincerely hope not.

Br. JR,

I didn’t have problem with this thread or anything you said at all; a couple of the later posts seemed a bit confrontational to me, and its something I’ve noticed elsewhere, so I just wanted to bring it up. I’m sure I do the same thing from the other direction sometimes too

OK, does that mean that we’re still friends?

 

[Rich_C]

I realize this was not as clear as it could have been. In this case age and general experience were the prevailing factors, not Protestant experience in particular. Many of us cradle Catholics here at CAF have shared our knowledge and experience of the problems with liturgies prior to 1969. Anyone older than age 50 or so should be able to tell you that there were good things as well as seriously problematic things to be found in all institutions back then, whether religious, political, economic, educational, social, or otherwise.

In my experience, knowledge of these things stops with people much below age 60.

Anyone 50 years old today was about 1 year old when the Latin Mass began disappearing. They probably don’t remember it at all.

Otherwise, now that you re-phrased what you were saying, I’m inclined to agree on a lot of points.

 

[Lucky7]

I’ve seen people say that the religious is not the same as other Catholics and he or she has nothing to say to the lay Catholic.

I haven’t read through the rest of your post yet, Brother, but this struck a chord with me. IMO it;s not that the religious have nothing to say to the lay Catholic, but I do sense that your experience is so very different from the average lay person in an average parish. As a result, I feel as if you don’t really know what we are experiencing and although your perspective/advice is so welcome here I sometimes feel as if you don’t get what many of us are dealing with. In some ways ti does feel as if we live in two very different worlds even though we are definitely of the same Church. As a result, we can never really get what you, as a religious, are dealing with.

I hope that made sense with upsetting you at all.

Added: After reading the rest, I wonder whether these same feelings is part of what some of us are feeling towards our Pope. Since we have never been alive while the Church had a “religious” Pope, we are not sure whether he will understnad us…as average lay folk. ??

 

[JReducation]

I haven’t read through the rest of your post yet, Brother, but this struck a chord with me. IMO it;s not that the religious have nothing to say to the lay Catholic, but I do sense that your experience is so very different from the average lay person in an average parish. As a result, I feel as if you don’t really know what we are experiencing and although your perspective/advice is so welcome here I sometimes feel as if you don’t get what many of us are dealing with. In some ways ti does feel as if we live in two very different worlds even though we are definitely of the same Church. As a result, we can never really get what you, as a religious, are dealing with.

I hope that made sense with upsetting you at all.

I think that most religious who belong to the renewal communities will agree with you that we (religious and layman) live in different worlds. The challenge that we are facing is how to bring the layman into our world.

Once upon a time (not so long ago), religious tried to move into the layman’s world. It was a disaster.

Someone once said that those who do not study history are bound to repeat it. Obviously, many religious in the 1970s did not study the history of religious life in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance. They repeated the same mistake. Rather than bring the layman into the world of the religious, the religious became very secularized. Each time, they ended up in crisis. The orders ended up deviating from the original vision of the founders and had to be renewed and reformed.

People like me are saying that we will not do this again. We must help the layman come this way, not us move that way. I think that one of the biggest influence in this was Mother Teresa. Now, I’m beginning to see Pope Francis doing the same thing. He’s not letting go of the Ignatian and Franciscans schools in favor of a more secular papacy. Instead, he’s inserting the Ignatian and Franciscan schools into the papacy.

By the way, I’m using the term secular here in the canonical sense, not in the other sense.

 

[Lucky7]

It probably would have helped if the Holy Father had simply reminded people that he was trained to avoid pomp and embrace simplicity. I know that he as the pope is not accountable to anyone on earth, but simply casting aside clothing meant to express symbolism, and eschewing the papal palace with only a vague reference to humility can have unintended consequences.

1. It can give the impression that the predecessors were not being humble in using what Pope Francis has cast aside. Plus, it puts any successor who wishes to bring them back in a tough spot. I can picture the accusations of puffed up pride and self exaltation.
2. It gives the impression that those things no longer have any meaning or value. That can have a devastating impact on the spiritual level.

Again, it’s unintentional.

I think this post lends some support for my other one. I agree with it. Since the laity do not understnad the ways of a religious/religious Pope it would behoove him to share this/teach us as he goes along making decisions. It comes back to trying to step into the shoes of the laity.

I don’t think I’m making sense/coming across clearly though.

 

[Lucky7]

I understand your position. However, it’s also important to understand that of the religious. The religious is trained not to explain himself to the laity, to avoid contamination. Your place in the Church is to serve, not to engage in question and answer about your way of life. Very often, when you try to explain something, it rarely stops there. Usually, you explain and the person comes up with “But . . …” or "What about . . . . " and it can become an unending dialog.

History has proven that such dialogs only lead to the contamination of the religious. It rarely ends in the laity taking something positive from the religious. Most of the time, those laymen who question the religious life have already formed their opinions and are not about to change them. They want the religious to change. Whenever religious have tried to adapt to the lay culture, it has done serious damage to the religious life. The mind of the Holy Spirit is that religious life draw the layman into the mystery of the Kingdom of God, not that the layman draw the religious into his world.

I agree with you 100% on this point.

Honestly Brother, this idea of being contaminated by the laity really sounds awful. And I think if this is how the Pope thinks with all due respect, then this could be an ongoing problem for the laity and the Church.

 

[Lucky7]

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.

Ha ha! Me too!

 

[JReducation]

Honestly Brother, this idea of being contaminated by the laity really sounds awful. And I think if this is how the Pope thinks with all due respect, then this could be an ongoing problem for the laity and the Church.

I agree that contamination is not a good word today. Once upon a time, this word had a very different meaning. Another word would be “influence”. I’m not sure that it has quite the same meaning.

When contamination was first used by the Fathers of the Council of Trent, they were concerned that religious would be influenced by the destructive forces that were affecting the laity of the time, especially Protestant thought.

I guess that’s what happens when you say something in a dead language vs saying it in a living language. In Latin it has only one meaning; whereas in English, the meaning has different nuances and usages as time passes.

I have often wondered what would be a modern word that would say that same thing, but I can’t, for the life of me, find one.

 

[Lucky7]

People like me are saying that we will not do this again. We must help the layman come this way, not us move that way. I think that one of the biggest influence in this was Mother Teresa. Now, I’m beginning to see Pope Francis doing the same thing. He’s not letting go of the Ignatian and Franciscans schools in favor of a more secular papacy. Instead, he’s inserting the Ignatian and Franciscan schools into the papacy.

For the record, I have no issue with our Pope not letting go of his religious self, etc. I do think, however, that if the Pope and other religious want to help move the laity more in that direction, they are going to HAVE to explain things…and not just do it and expect all of us who do not know and understand to just accept it. I’m not sure how those explanations “look” but it goes back to my call for clarity in the Church.

And just so you know, I know that I have a much better understadning of Pope Francis due to your posts. However, most Catholics do not have you to help clear things up.

 

[SMHW]

I think this post lends some support for my other one. I agree with it. Since the laity do not understnad the ways of a religious/religious Pope it would behoove him to share this/teach us as he goes along making decisions. It comes back to trying to step into the shoes of the laity.

I don’t think I’m making sense/coming across clearly though.

But the problem is that the Pope has (at least I hope he has) more pressing things to do with his time than explain everything to those who are unfamiliar with Jesuit ways.

I don’t have a lot of sympathy for those who think Pope Francis isn’t “progressive” enough. Those who think he is not orthodox enough or not traditional enough are hopefully learning otherwise due to resources like this thread. It may take time but I say better ours than the Pope’s time.

In real life I have not met any serious Catholics who are anything but thrilled with Pope Francis.

 

[Lucky7]

But the problem is that the Pope has (at least I hope he has) more pressing things to do with his time than explain everything to those who are unfamiliar with Jesuit ways.

Of course he does. Does that mean there is no other way to disseminate this information? What about soem other group in the Vatican? Vatican Insider seems to report on his daily homilies, etc. Why not include reports on his actions and words and how they fit into the Jesuit ways?

 

[JReducation]

For the record, I have no issue with our Pope not letting go of his religious self, etc. I do think, however, that if the Pope and other religious want to help move the laity more in that direction, they are going to HAVE to explain things…and not just do it and expect all of us who do not know and understand to just accept it. I’m not sure how those explanations “look” but it goes back to my call for clarity in the Church.

And just so you know, I know that I have a much better understadning of Pope Francis due to your posts. However, most Catholics do not have you to help clear things up.

I think that the actual teaching of what’s happening belongs to others, not to the pope. The man has enough on his plate. There is some explaining going on; however, you’re right. There is a need for much more.

The first few days of his papacy there were many Jesuits and Franciscans interviewed by different people. They explained this and that. But the fervor of the reporters seems to have died down. Maybe it’s just my impression. I have not seen any interviews lately.

 

[floresco]

Personally, I was appalled at the amount of criticism directed at Pope Francis in his first weeks as pope. (Not here, in general.) But I did not have the impression that it had much to do with him being a religious. I think it is because he is the Pope and, in general, we have lost the traditional understanding of the love and loyalty due to the Supreme Pontiff.

 

[Lucky7]

I think that the actual teaching of what’s happening belongs to others, not to the pope. The man has enough on his plate. There is some explaining going on; however, you’re right. There is a need for much more.

The first few days of his papacy there were many Jesuits and Franciscans interviewed by different people. They explained this and that. But the fervor of the reporters seems to have died down. Maybe it’s just my impression. I have not seen any interviews lately.

Yes, someone else is absolutely understandable (see other post).