The Traditional Catholic "Movement"

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BTW. HCC, this is the story, not of the order that gave me my teachers, but about another order the Immaculate Heart of Mary nuns & the destruction of their community:

culturewars.com/CultureWars/1999/rogers.html

An excerpt

By the spring of 1965, James Francis Cardinal McIntyre, archbishop of the archdiocese of Los Angeles, had become upset at the large number of Immaculate Heart nuns who had asked to be dispensed from their vows. Large, as time would show, was a relative term in this respect. Soon the number of nuns asking to be laicized would turn into a flood, and the sensitivity training which Carl Rogers would unleash on the order under the auspices of the Education Innovation Project would play a major role in their leaving.** By the time the experiment was over, the order would cease to exist,** leaving subsequent generations to puzzle over an incident which had become a classic instance of renewal gone wrong in the aftermath of Vatican II.

I don’t think that Catholics, raised after Vatican II, have any idea what was taken from them.
 
CradleCath said:
BTW. HCC, this is the story, not of the order that gave me my teachers, but about another order the Immaculate Heart of Mary nuns & the destruction of their community:

culturewars.com/CultureWars/1999/rogers.html

An excerpt

By the spring of 1965, James Francis Cardinal McIntyre, archbishop of the archdiocese of Los Angeles, had become upset at the large number of Immaculate Heart nuns who had asked to be dispensed from their vows. Large, as time would show, was a relative term in this respect. Soon the number of nuns asking to be laicized would turn into a flood, and the sensitivity training which Carl Rogers would unleash on the order under the auspices of the Education Innovation Project would play a major role in their leaving.** By the time the experiment was over, the order would cease to exist,** leaving subsequent generations to puzzle over an incident which had become a classic instance of renewal gone wrong in the aftermath of Vatican II.

I don’t think that Catholics, raised after Vatican II, have any idea what was taken from them.
Click to expand...
What happened with the Sacred Heart was tragic, what happened with the IHMs is down right diabolical.

BBC documentary, A Century of Self, gives a synopsis:

youtube.com/watch?v=jZ64VMUnIPo (**click to about :24 seconds in)
 
HCC said:
What happened with the Sacred Heart was tragic, what happened with the IHMs is down right diabolical.

BBC documentary, A Century of Self, gives a synopsis:

youtube.com/watch?v=jZ64VMUnIPo (**click to about :24 seconds in)
Click to expand...
We have to be careful here, because there are several congregations of IHM sisters. I know them from VA, my hometown. They were originally one congregation, but they were divided by the Vatican into four or five for the purpose of incardinating them into different dioceses. The history of one is not the history of all. This was done in the 1940s.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
CradleCath said:
You’re right HCC. I kept in touch with many of my teachers for several years. All but one left the order during the 70’s & it IS a tragic story.

I read the following on a customer review of the book you linked me to:

“But when the edicts of Vatican II threw open the doors of the Catholic Church to the 20th century, they sowed seeds of disorder throughout the Society. The call for renewal, to become attuned to the world of today, turned the congregation upside down. Lives that had been restrained by the rule of cloister and the monastic traditions of the past were not easily adaptable to the freedom of the new edicts. The nuns suffered an unplanned- for defection from their ranks and many of their well-known and exclusive academies were forced to close.”
Click to expand...
This may have been a mistake on the part of their general chapter, but what they did was legal. What the Sacred Heart did was ask to transition from being an order to being a congregation. Obviously, when you do that, you have to change the infrastructure of your community. There are certain practices and laws that are not allowed to congregations and the other way around.

Hind-sight is always 20/20. One can say that the transition from order to congregation was an imprudent thing to do given that they had a long tradition of monastic life. Congregations of women are not allowed to live monastic lives. This is a privilege reserved only for men and for order of women, not congregations of women. In essence, when you do that, you’re “refounding” your community. They may have thought this was a good idea and it may have been the worse idea they ever had, because it affected so many of their sisters.

That being said, this is not the fault of Vatican II. Perfectae Caritatis did not call us to refound our communities. It called us to go back to the vision and charism of the founders. That’s a whole different mandate. I know, because Franciscan men have been working on that since about 1970. What we have had to do is to downsize by dividing into smaller communities, because the large corporative order was very contrary to the spirit, vision and charism of St. Francis. But the smaller brotherhoods are well within the vision of St. Francis. As we have done this, these smaller brotherhoods are thriving. In the USA alone we have 14 new smaller Franciscan brotherhoods. The big four are still around and they will be around forever. But there is not a mass exodus. What has happened is that those friars from the big four who want to return to the 13th century vision and mission have grouped themselves into smaller fraternities such as the Franciscans of the Renewal, Franciscan Brothers of Life, Little Brothers of St. Francis, Franciscan Brothers of the Eucharist, etc etc. Can you see the difference between going back to the vision and mission of the founder and refounding the community? The latter is not what Vatican II commanded. It was the former.

Our nuns have also gone back to the original vision and mission of Francis and Clare. They are increasing in numbers. They are now up to 20,000 around the world. Unfortunately, many of the sisters, did not go back to the founding vision and mission. They recreated or as I call it, reinvented the wheel. Therefore, the Franciscan sisters are suffering for it, where as the Franciscan nuns are thriving.

I alwasy say that you cannot improve on round.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
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