Why would you infer something so negative from my statement and hold it against my brother? Could you not assume the best intentions and think maybe I am not familiar with all the differences between friars, brothers and priests? In trying to determine possibilities for my brother, would it not be important for me to know the composition of your community? Maybe I was writing a quick response to you and was in a hurry to leave for an appointment and trying to get to the point as quickly and simply as possible. I am sorry for offending you, it was not intended. My brother is an ordained Legionary and considering leaving the priesthood due to the current scandal involving their founder. I merely noticed you signed your post using the title “Brother” and was not sure if your community was composed solely of “Brothers”. If so, I would have to think maybe it was not a possibility for someone already ordained as a priest. No wonder he can’t bring himself to look at other orders. There appears to be way too much pridefulness and competition amongst them all.
I apologize if you were offended and maybe I should have responded in a different tone. I admit that it was a knee-jerk reaction on my part, for which I also apologize. For more than a hundred years, the Franciscans in the USA have been trying to get rid of the title “Father” from among our ranks and the laity does not cooperate. It’s not because the laity are bad. It’s because many lay people do not understand the Franciiscan vocation. Our primary vocation is to be religious brothers.
If a man comes to us ordained, he comes to us because he wants to be a religious brothers. Someone like your brother, who is already ordained would be asked a very simple question, “Do you want to live and work as a brother?” That question implies several things:
- He may have an assignment where he can perform all of the functions of a priest, such as a parish.
- He may have a assignment within the community, where no priestly functions are needed. Such an assignment can involve formation work at the novitiate or the house of formation, where he would be an educator or formator.
- He may have an assignment in a soup kitchen
- He may be assigned to the streets as are many of our brothers in the Franciscans of the Renewal. They are street rappers. They never see a parish in their lives.
- He may have a assignment as in the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word who work 24/7 on communication media and when they are not doing that they are contemplatives before the blessed Sacrament. If you watch EWTN, you will usually see the same familiar faces celebrating mass. The other brothers who are ordained do not celebrate mass for the public. Some celebrate mass at the shrine for the Poor Clares and the pilgrims, but most spend more time in the confessional at the shrine for the benefit of the pilgrims.
- He may be assigned to be the housekeeper, launderer, cook or in charge of the cars and go out on weekends to help a parish that needs an extra priest for Sunday masses.
- He may also have as his superior a lay brother. For some priests entering the Franciscans this is a turn-off and they do not enter. The idea that the Ordinary, with equal powers to that of a bishop, is a non ordained brother, is confusing or unacceptable to them.
- He may live in a house, such as the one in which I live, where no one is allowed to use the title “Father” except the superior, who in our case is not a priest. He would have to use the title Brother.
But the proof of a vocation is that the individual feels called to live the Gospel in this humble manner, always as a member of a brotherhood, with an intense life of prayer, silence, penance, mortification, solitude and great demands on his schedule and energies to serve his brothers and spend time with them. All other ministries flow from this way of life.
The core of all the Franciscan communities is Francis. We put a great deal of emphasis on Francis. As my mother would say, “He shows up even in or soup.” The object is not to go out and conquer the world. The objective is to live the Gospel as Francis taught it to us. Obviously, if we truly live it as he taught it to us, we will conquer the world. But that’s a lifetime process, to be so identified withe the Gospel that one goes from Gospel to life and life to Gospel without thinking about it.
As to your expression, “full-fledged” priests. That is not something that one should say to mendicants and to monastics. Medicants and monastics are very protective of their brotherhood. These terms have often been used by the laity to imply that our lay brothers are somehow on a lower rung than the rest of us. We find that very offensive. We consider ourselves to be equal in vocation, rights, and obligation. I remember our lay brothers having to put up with such comments from the laity as, “Oh you’re ONLY a brother.” or worse yet, “Why didn’t you go all the way?” We would cringe. None of us would dare think about our holy Father Francis as being ONLY a lay brother or as not having gone all the way. Yet, that is exactly what he was, a lay brother.
Again, I’m sorry for my knee-jerk reaction and I hope that I have explained what your brother would be walking into if he were to join one of the Franciscan obediences. By the way, they are called obediences because each branch of the order has its own constitutions to which they are obedient, be we have only two rules: the Rule of the Friars Minor and the Rule of the Penance. Francis wrote two rules and every community comes under one or the other.
By the way, a priest who enters one of the Fransican communities usually has to go through postulancy, novitiate and temporary vows. This process can take up to six years. During that time he would be back in school studying Franciscan theology, Franciscan philosophy. Franciscan history, Franciscan rule and constitutions, Franciscan prayer, Franciscan mysticism, Franciscan spirituality, Franciscan catechesis, Franciscan modus procedendi and also working in one of the community’s apostolates, except during the novitiate. During that time he must observe a strict enclosure and never leaves the novitiate house except to visit another friary. Novitiate can be from one to two years.
There are new Church rules that govern transferrance from one community to another. Since your brother is already a member of a community, I’m not sure how that it handled. The rules have changed since I was in formation.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
