If there were any Priests and members of a religious order I certainly didn’t see any of them being very nice to me. I never saw any sign of any of the people on this thread being a Priest or a religious member, so could you please give me their names?
I’m just glad someone finally said they were attacking me. They acted like they were Saintly people that knew all (Accusing me of not having a vocation. Which, by the way, really got me angry), and then they would tell me I had anger problems just because I said “you people”. Honestly, I don’t find how that shows any “anger problems” but oh well.
Thank you. I’ll do that. It might be a bit hard at first but I’m always glad I did.
Dominus Vobiscum (That’s the first time in this thread I’ve said that without being completely angry
)
Did you ever stop to think that you may be confusing apples and oranges or that you may not have a strong understanding of the history here? Let me see if I can help.
You spoke about friars in an earlier post. When I read it, I quickly understood that you do not understand what a friar is and neither did many people who responded. Let’s begin with them. The term friar comes from the Latin, frater. These are communities of brothers, whose first and foremost mission in life is to live in a brotherhood of equals. Among them, many friars are ordained priests. They don’t cease to be brothers or friars.
A terrible thing happened between Vatican I and Vatican II. The laity is just as guilty as the bishops are in this regard. A policy was adopted, a very unjust policy that was not in the mind of Dominic, Francis, Albert or John de Matha, the founders of the mendicant movement. What was that policy? Clericalization.
If a young man was intelligent, he was allowed to go on for higher education. If he did not have an aptitude for higher education, he was assigned housework. With that came the idea that all the well educated friars should be ordained priests. That sent a message to the world. What was that message? That a lay friar, what many people incorrectly call a lay brother, was less intelligent and that’s why he was not a priest, but instead he was the cook, gardener, porter, housekeeper and beggar for the community. In the meantime, the clerical friars were preaching and teaching.
As time went by, other policies were put into place. The lay friars could not longer hold office in their own orders. Therefore, someone like Francis of Assisi, who was a layman, would not be able to govern his own order. But there was more. The lay friars did laundry, cooking, cleaning, and all the manual labor. The clerical friars, got up from the table and left their dirty dishes for the lay friars to pick up. They handed over their dirty habits to the lay friars to wash.
There is more. More policies were adopted. Eventually, the lay friars and the ordained friars could no longer pray together as brothers. Separate spaces were created for them to pray. Then a policy was adopted that they could not sit at the same table to eat. So, separate tables were set up in the refectory. Finally, the most cruel policy was adopted. The lay friars were not allowed to talk to the cleric friars unless they were spoken to first.
The laity watched and applauded, because the result benefitted the laity. The clerical friars were then pulled out of the friaries to do parish work. The laity had more priests. The lay friars were in the friary scrubbing and cleaning as if they were the housewives of the clerical friars, instead of their brothers.
When Vatican II came around, the superiors of these communities realized that they had deviated from the intention and model of life that had been handed down by their founders. They appealed to Pope Pius XII for change. Pius XII died and was unable to help. Pope John XXIII understood the problem and he mandated that the whole system be looked at again. The result was the decree, Perfectae Caritatis, which commanded the religious orders to go back to our roots. This meant that we had to bring down this entire system that had been created in a century or so. This was not easy. Everyone was used to their way of doing things. But it was necessary or the Church would lose the original way of life given to her by the Holy Spirit through the founders of the mendicant movement.
In order to create communities that were true brotherhoods, as they had been in the beginning, the cleric friars would have to come down from their pedestal and start doing laundry, washing cars, cooking and scrubbing floors. The lay friars would have to go to school and acquire knowledge of theology and philosophy or an academic discipline such as science, education, administration, nursing, medicine. However, they needed a minimum of theology and philosophy, because they were no longer going to be hidden behind the friary doors. They were going to be out in the field, along with their ordained brothers, working side by side.
Friars were pulled out of parishes. Many parishes had to be closed, because the bishops did not have enough diocesan priests to cover them. But the friars were determined to go back to being brothers and determined to go back to the ministries that they were founded to do. For Franciscans and Dominicans, this was preaching. Both are orders of preachers. The difference is that the Dominicans were founded as an order of preaching priests. The Franciscans were founded as an order of preachers, some were priests and some were laymen. They were not lay brothers. A lay brother is a very different vocation from a friar who is a layman.
I’m sure you can sympathize.