J
JReducation
Guest
Actually, there is a common misunderstanding among the lay faithful regarding the Franciscan family. It’s really the Church’s fault, because of “Church Speak”.
There are only three Franciscan Orders and each order is subdivided into obediences. Our Holy Father wrote four rules: Friars Minor, Poor Sisters, Order of Penance and the Hermits. The Hermits were never an autonomous order. They are members of one of the three orders who live by the Rule for Hermits. That leaves us with three orders.
What happened, during Francis’ lifetime is that situations arose that were not covered in the rules. Francis then created the chapters in which the members of each order discussed, voted and created statutes to address these situations. These statutes became known as constitutions.
As the three orders grew, there were several constitutions. Eventually, the Franciscan family was reorganized according to which constitution each group obeyed. Hence the term Obediences. Each Obedience was allowed to elect its General Superior.
In essence, all of the obediences of the Franciscan family trace our roots back to Francis, because we are all part of one of the three orders that he founded. Each obedience follows one of the rules and comes directly out of one of the Franciscan communities.
There are other Franciscan communities that are not part of the Franciscan Orders. They do not have Franciscan Succession, because they were not founded by Franciscans. They are related to us in spirit, but not historically or canonically. A good example of this are the Sisters of St. Francis in the USA. They were founded by St. John Neumann, a Redemptorist .
The OSF or Order of St. Francis dates back to 1228. During his life time, our Holy Father founded the Order of Penance. It was referred to as the third order (notice lower case), because of the chronology. That was not its name. The Order of Penance was for secular men and women. It welcomes married, single, widows, deacons, priests and bishops who were not consecrated men. It always had a complement of lay and clergy. But they were not consecrated men and women. They lived in the world; however, they did form fraternities… They were penitential fraternities.
Some of these men and women were celibate. They gradually gathered into communities and adopted the conventual life. Eventually, in 1228, they were given their own General Superior and were given the name, Regular Brothers of Penance or Regular Sisters of Penance. But that name only stuck on paper. People referred to them by different names: Third Order Regular (TOR), Order of St. Francis (OSF) and many other names, as different Franciscan men and women founded new communities.
It is important to remember that all of these communities or obediences, follow one of the three rules written by Francis and their leadership has an unbroken line of succession that can be traced back to Francis. Because they came out of an existing Franciscan fraternity.
The Friars Minor were also divided into many obediences, with many constitutions. In the 1500s there were two large groups of Friars Minor, the Observants and the Conventuals. The former were called thus because they observed a strict form of poverty. The latter were called thus because they lived in convents (friaries). Four friars came out of these two groups and joined in one house. Long story short, out of that house there came another very large group of Friars Minor known as the Capuchins. In the 1800s, Pope Leo XII called all of the Observant Friars together. There were many constitutions. He asked them to merge them into one and elect one General Superior, instead of several. They did so. There was a question as to the name for the merger, Pope Leo said, “Franciscan”. That’s how we get the Franciscans (OFM). They are really a merger of many small Observant groups of Order Friars Minor.
All three orders were originally founded by St. Francis, but they quickly grew and evolved during his lifetime. All of the succeeding General Ministers (Superiors) are his canonical successors elected from among the line of succession and according to Canon Law.
It is believed that the Secular Franciscans may be the original foundation, even though their rule was written third in chronological order. Francis did not begin his life as a religious. He and the early brothers were a fraternity of penitents, whom Pope Innocent III elevated to the status of an Order of Pontifical Right. The remaining secular men and women who originally followed him were later given a rule and then elevated to an Order of Pontifical Right, today known as the SFO or OFS. They still have married, single, and clergy. They’ve actually had several popes including Gregory IX (who canonized Francis and Anthony), Pius X, Pius XII and John XXIII.
The friars were sent to the East to negotiate a union between the Greek Church and the Catholic Church. They were well received, but the question about the procession of the HS was a kink in the armor. However, they did attract Easterners. Through the centuries there have been many Eastern Catholics who have become Franciscans, mostly from Eastern Europe and Jerusalem. There is a lot of diversity in the Franciscan family, but only three rules, one Patriarch and Matriarch.
I don’t know if that answers the question.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
) Brother and Defender of Orthodoxy Todd/Apotheoun is referring to the “unlikely possibility” that St Gregory Palamas was a stigmatist based on a single line in his hagiographic bio - not St Francis.
