Thank you for your thoughtful and thorough response. I knew that about being brothers first, but reading an article about brothers on their site, I know some want to become priests, some are happy and feel called to lay brothers. They had an article about people thinking they were all “on the way to priesthood” I will put it below:
franciscanfriars.com/vocations/meet_the_brothers.htm
franciscanfriars.com/vocations/index2.htm
My thoughts were mainly that certain young men and women seemed to be drawn to communites such as this one and certain dioceses are without a priest. We have 2 joined churches in my community and just had 1 priest transfered so 1 priest does both. He had to cut a few masses to be able to do it. The Dominican church near me seems to do very well and I notice many communities as Fr. Groechel’s also do well in vocations.
My thoughts were that not as many decerning men seem to be drawn to the priesthood through their neighborhood seminary, but are drawn to what they see in these men and communities. Maybe that is part of our secular society and a thrist for something differerent.
With all due respect to the laity, part of the problem is that many young men who are entering religious orders, even those who are being ordained to the priesthood do not want to serve in parishes. They want to do the work of their order. I have heard many of our own Franciscan friars from the different Franciscan congregations say that they do not want to serve in parishes because the laity does not respect their Franciscan way of life. The laity refuses to hear what they have to teach them and refuses to embrace the Franciscan spirit… To these young men the spirit of St. Francis is their soul. It is their way of following Christ. It is as if it were the school of perfection where Francis is the teacher.
This also happens with Dominicans, Carmelites and other religious men. Their founders, his ideals, his mission is the soul of their spiritual life. They want to go to parishes that are open to hearing this message and that will join them in following this spirit.
In the past, religious ran parishes, but never spoke much about their religious order or about their spirituality. The result was tragic. These men gradually lost their identity as Carmelites, Franciscans, Dominicans, etc. They stopped wearing their habit. They didn’t pray the Divine Office as was required by their founders. They spent more time with the parish and the laity than they did with their brothers. They hired house keepers to clean for them instead of observing poverty and doing their own cleaning and cooking. They rarely attended community retreats, recreation, mass and meetings, because they were too busy in the parish. They owned cars, which is contrary to the rules for religious. Religious are to share a car, not each one have a car. In the house, they lived like diocesan priests. They had TVs in their recreation rooms, they ate when they were hungry instead of eating together, just like diocesan priests do. Eventually, when they were transferred back to religious houses they had a hard time fitting in. Many left the religious life and joined the diocesan priesthood.
As a result, religious orders decided to refocus on religious life and train our young to be place religious life first, even over ministry. We teach our young religious to serve the laity, but to avoid being contaminated by them, not to adopt their way of life or give in to their demands. If they do, they will become absorbed and they will suffer the same fate as our men did from the late 1800s to the 1990s, almost 100 years. For this reason, few religious men want to serve in parishes. What we are going to see is more and more parishes closing down until the bishop can get enough secular vocations to fill those posts. In the diocese where I serve we have 121 parishes and about 10 staffed by religious. At one time more than 30% were staffed by Franciscans of different congregations. We had Carmelites, Dominicans, OMIs, Benedictines, Jesuits. Gradually, they had gotten older and the younger religious do not want to replace them.
We can ask, don’t they have to obey? The answer is yes they do. But the Superior is bound by obedience to the Chapter of the religious community. If the brothers, gathered in Chapter, mandate that the superior gradually withdraw from certain parishes, the Superior is bound to obey under pain of sin. The tendency is to keep those parishes that are poorer, immigrant, and where the spirit of the religious order is loved and appreciated by the congregation, also those parishes where the congregation understands thar religious life takes priority over the priesthood and the religious cannot be available 24/7. But they will always be available for emergencies. This is part of their duty when they take a parish. They’re not going to abandon the faithful either. They will expect the faithful to help carry the parish in the spirit of St. Francis, St. Ignatius, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Francis de Sales or whoever the spiritual master of the religious order happens to be.
We have only one parish. But everyone is very Franciscan. There is a great devotion to St. Francis and a great enthusiasm for the poor, the immigrant, the unborn, the Eucharist, the Blessed Mother, the Sacrament of Penance, youth and children. We have 74 ministries all led by the laity. The brothers make sure to visit each ministry as frequently as possible. In this parish there are seven friars. Two are priests. The superior is not a priest. But all the friars are involved in the parish in some way. They are always treated with great charity by the laity. You can feel the love that exists between the friars and the people. The people protect the friars when a new comer arrives and asks why the priest had to leave the confessional to attend community recreatoin. Immediately someone will pop up and say, “They are brothers. They have a family life like everyone else.”
It’s beautiful.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
