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CatholicGuy22
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Although i am a guy, I do have a great love for the poor claires. I go to mass in one of their convents and just being near them i could feel the presence of our Lord. Great Order!
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barb_finnegan
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Brother JR, you are always a fund of background info on religious life! Thanks!The PCPA are not part of the the OSC. They were founded as separate Franciscan community. They were given the option of becoming Second Order Franciscans or Third Order Franciscans. For a while, they were Third Order. However, since the sisters in the Third Order are either secular or women religious, the PCPA did not fit in. They are neither secular nor women religious. They are nuns. Eventually, they became part of the Second Order Franciscan. However, they do not follow the Rule of St. Clare. They follow the Rule of St. Benedict. That’s how Mother Angelica was able to move around the world. The Rule of St. Benedict calls for stability, but not for strict enclosure. That’s the Rule of St. Clare. Observe that you do not see the OSC (Order of St. Clare) on TV or outside of their cloister. There is a third branch of the Poor Clares that sign with the PC (Poor Clares). They often have a title after the PC such as Collatines, Capuchin, etc. They too follow the Rule of St. Clare in its first version, the version written by St. Francis, not by Clare. Clare’s version of the rule was mitigated by Pope Gregory IX. About two days before her death, he finally conceded to the privilege of poverty as a revealed right of the Franciscan Order. This was a sticky point, because the church does not acknowledge as public revelation anything after the death of the last Apostle. However, St. Francis maintained that the rule had been revealed to him by Christ himelf and could not be changed or watered down.
Because this was considered private revelation, the popes did not take this allegation too seriously in 1209. It was in 1223 that Pope Honorius finally acknowledged that the rule was Divinely Revealed to Francis and he put a Papal Bull on the Rule for the Friars and the Secular Franciscans, but not on the Rule for the Poor Ladies. That Bull came later from Gregory IX, who had been a close friend of Francis and had canonized Francis. Gregory was convinced that the rule was Divinely inspired, to use his words. He yielded to Clare’s petition and granted the privilege of poverty as long as the order used her rescript of the Rule of St. Francis.
Later, St. Collette, would return to the Rule written by St. Francis as a point of reference ot understand what Clare was trying to say in her own rewrite of the rule. That’s what caused the laxity. Clare’s rescript of the rule had too much influence from the Benedictine tradition, because she had been forced to live under the Benedictine Rule until two days before her death.
When the Franciscan Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament (PCPA) were formed, they took the Benedictine version of the Franciscan rule. Later, this would prove advantageous to them, especially in the USA, because most American women find the Franciscan version of the Poor Clare Rule to be too ascetic, while the Benedictine versioin is more flexible, especially in the area of poverty.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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