SFO question

[ICXCNIKA]

I am currently in formation for the Secular Franciscan Order.

If you are a member of the SFO, could you please answer a few questions for me.

If you are NOT a memeber of the SFO, but want to make comments, please indicate that you are not SFO. It will help me.

What kinds of activities is your fraternity involved in?

In what ways does your fraternity help your spiritual growth?

How often does your fraternity meet?

When you meet, what are your fraternity meetings like?

Thank you.

 

[SLCFranciscan]

As a long-time professed SFO who has had many offices (including that of minister), I would urge you to make a deep investigation of what is going on in the current SFO. For example, the invited keynote speaker at the Quinquinneal (our every 5-year meeting) is an Episcopal priest who is notorious for promoting gay marriage. Ask those who are forming you what they think of these well-documented facts:

freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/950895/posts

Ask them if they think that these ideas are reflective of what Jesus and Francis would have us do? Ask other long-time SFO’s what they think of the current state of affairs and if they feel that the fraternity right now represents the same fraternity they joined many years ago or if it has been hijacked by people whose ideas are counter to the Magisterium. Ask for some answers and do not be satisfied until you get them. Don’t buy the explanation that it is all being done under the name of “diversity”. WHERE will all of this “diversity” lead you–closer to Our Lord or farther away? You need to do your due diligence and take it from there.

Pax et bonum!

 

[ICXCNIKA]

Our minister and everyone in the fraternity are orthodox, there is no problem in that.

However, I don’t think Francis blessed the third order so it could get together once a month and have a pot luck.

If the SFO does not lead me closer to Franciscan spirituality, and I can follow Francis and Clare toward Jesus without the SFO, then I don’t want to be professed just so I can have a pot luck and plunk down my “offering” to be used on paper work.

Not two blocks from where we meet are homeless men and women.

 

[SLCFranciscan]

You betcha! I agree with you. And when you consider that the National Fraternity officers all went to TAMPA, FLORIDA to meet to try to straighten this mess out, one wonders if that is the best use of our money. (It isn’t.) The money we give belongs to the poor. NOT for trips to Tampa, NOT for flying all around the country, NOT for an apartment in Rome, which the order just bought, supposedly to store records. (Sorry, but with the kind of disk storage that you can do these days, I am having a little trouble justifying a place in Rome. That is kind of like saying I need a car to get to work so I need to buy a Ferrari. Yeah, right.) I have never been more heartsick or heartbroken by anything as the direction this order has taken. The homeless and poor get sloppy seconds while our governing reps fly all around the country and host guests who would be better suited to a political action committee. My spiritual director thinks I should I leave and once again, I said, “You betcha!”

 

[ICXCNIKA]

Perhaps the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal ought to start a third order.