Brother JR, do you think any of these initiatives would been taken without the council?
Yes they would have, because they were already being discussed in the 1950s. Several General Chapters of Franciscan men, during the 1950s had already posed the question of declericalization of the order. There was also a movement among the Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites (O’Carm), and Benedictines to sort out and filter out what was not proper to their charism. For example, the Franciscans were sorting through and questioning how they had ended up living in monasteries, when in fact, they’re not monks. They do not make a vow of stability and they recognize only one man as Father, that is Francis. The Rule forbids having anyone as Prior and Abbot, but you had these men in a monastery, who were not allowed to go anywhere near a Priory or Monastery by their founder.
The Dominicans had already put on the table their concern that they had deviated from the combination of contemplation and study. They had become parish priests, instead of contemplative preachers. The Carmelites had raised the question for themselves about their lack of solitude and silence and too much activity. They were founded to be hermits who served their neighbors while preserving their solitude and contemplation, not circumventing it.
Enclosed communities had raised concerns about their way of life. The Benedictines had shifted from being the keepers of culture and faith to doing all kinds of other ministries: parishes, schools, universities, chaplains, etc.
All of these communities were looking to the Holy See for help. They already knew that they were going to lose many men and women and that they were going to be less attractive. But they were willing to have less numbers, but get closer to the founders. There were other religious who were leaving their communities to start new ones that were more Evangelical.
In 1946, Sister Teresa of the Institute of Mary, left her congregation to found an Indian Society of Missionaries of Charity who would live like the people, dress like them and pray like them, while preserving their Catholic faith.
In 1957, Pope Pius XII issued an encylical asking the bishops of the world to promote vocations to the Secular Franciscan Order. There was a renewed interest in secular orders. Both Pius XII and John XXIII were professed members of the SFO and both had gone through its five-year formation program after having gone through eight-years of seminary training to be priests. Already, there was a move to revive the old forms of the orders, secular and regular.
By 1963 the Daughters of Charity had changed their habit from cornette to a short veil. They has banished the concept of convent life and returned to the Sister’s House, as given to them by Louise de Marillac and Elizabeth Ann Seton. They had eliminated the novitiate and gone back to the seminary that Louise and Elizabeth had established. The idea of a seminary formation instead of a novitiate, is because a novitiate is proper for an order, secular or regular and to religious congregations. It is not proper for a public association of apostolic life, which never makes perpetual vows. This concept had been lost somewhere. You had the Daughters of Charity, who never make perpetual vows, so that they are free to leave on March 24 of each year, but they were being trained as if they were becoming nuns. Before Vatican II they had decided to return to the mind of St. Vincent de Paul, Louise de Marillac and Elizabeth Ann Seton.
Prior to Vatican II there were many little things happening in isolation. There was also resistance, as I said above. It was better for the Council and the popes to intervene. It decreased the internal conflicts. Some stayed and worked to recover the origins. Many left, because they felt that the original inspiration of the founder was not relevant to the 20th century. Others stayed and pushed to preserve what they had, refusing to go back to the founders, arguing that the founders would have done things differently if they lived in the 20th century. The problem with this argument is that it is speculative. We can only know what the founders wrote, how they lived and know their virtues. We should not try to imagine them outside of their context. As I always tell the novices, “You are following St. Francis. He’s not following you. Stop trying to fit him into your context…”
This is what had happened with many communities. We had turned the tables and the founders had become the followers and their descendants called the shots. Gradually, people like Maximilian Kolbe, Teresa of Calcutta, Joseph Roncalli, and others had begun to realize that what we needed was two paradigms, the newer one that had been adopted after the 1600s and the original one from before the Protestant Reformation.
You have to remember, the new paradigm of religious life was a reaction to the Protestant reformation. It was almost a defensive posture. It was not a deliberate defiance of the founders.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
