Vocation problem

[Busy_bee]

While it is true that we make mistakes and at times we deserve to be called on the carpet for those mistakes, it is more important to remember that religious continue to be the soul of the Church. While the priesthood nourishes the Church with the Eucharist, leads the Church in offering the sacrifice and forgives the members of the Church when we fail, it is the daily prayer and apostolic effort of the consecrated life that earns for the faithful the grace to seek Christ in the Eucharist and the Confessional.

It is only in the consecrated life where the faithful, priest and laity alike, will see on earth a glimpse of life in the Kingdom of God. Because the consecrated life foreshadows the life of the saints in heaven whose only desire is to exist in communion with each other praising God.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

I agree that religious are the soul of the church, in the sense that the Church counts on them to constantly offer prayers which obtains for us all graces we need to seek Christ and follow Him. However, I also think that in the Body of Christ, the heart cannot call the brain or the liver, or the lungs, or even the rectum useless
Everyone is important and so the laity have a responsibility of spreading the Gospel by their very lives in the very world that the whole church seeks to make Christ king of. I like to think that’s my “vocation”. So we count on you, and you count on us, and we all count on God. Sweet!
Am I right, brother?

 

[TiggerS]

The word “earn” concerned me. We can never “earn” Grace - it is a free Gift of God to whomsoever He pleases. God has chosen man to collaborate with His Grace, dispersed howsoever He may will. He gives the Grace of vocation and the Grace of holiness in that vocation whatever it may be. It is our work to collaborate, work with, those Graces. We may pray and ask God that certain Graces be granted but may His Holy Will be done, but we cannot earn Grace is any way whatsoever :

Catholic Catechism:
scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s1c3a2.htm#2003
2007 With regard to God, there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man. Between God and us there is an immeasurable inequality, for we have received everything from him, our Creator.
2008 The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace. The fatherly action of God is first on his own initiative, and then follows man’s free acting through his collaboration, so that the merit of good works is to be attributed in the first place to the grace of God, then to the faithful. Man’s merit, moreover, itself is due to God, for his good actions proceed in Christ, from the predispositions and assistance given by the Holy Spirit.

 

[TiggerS]

I agree that religious are the soul of the church, in the sense that the Church counts on them to constantly offer prayers which obtains for us all graces we need to seek Christ and follow Him. However, I also think that in the Body of Christ, the heart cannot call the brain or the liver, or the lungs, or even the rectum useless
Everyone is important and so the laity have a responsibility of spreading the Gospel by their very lives in the very world that the whole church seeks to make Christ king of. I like to think that’s my “vocation”. So we count on you, and you count on us, and we all count on God. Sweet!
Am I right, brother?

We do count on our religious to pray for us. Just as they count on us to pray for religious vocations and to the priesthood. It is the priesthood that is essential to The Church. Without priests we would not have The Mass and The Sacraments. Without marriage and children, The Church would be heading for extinction. Without religious life, The Church would be in trouble. We need each other and are interconnected and interrelated in the Mystical Body of Christ - and as you say, we each have our function in that body that is important to the whole body. We each have a God gifted vocation and a gift and for the good of the whole body.
I really liked your second paragaraph! Very sweet!

 

[JReducation]

Bl. John Paul made several changes to these ideas.

1. He stated that religious life is the soul of the Church, because through the religious life the Holy Spirit speaks to the Church and draws her into the eschatalogical mystery.
2. He also explained that it is the holiness of religious life that foreshadows the Kingdom. The individuals remain fallible and sinful.
3. He actually does use the word “earn” in Vita Consacrata. One has to understand how he is using it. Just as we earn indulgences, we earn grace. In other words, the life of the religious opens the way for God to pour grace into the Church.
4. Vatican II, Bl. John Paul and now Pope Benedict XVI have explicitly said that religious life though not part of the hierarchical structure of the Church as is the ordained ministry, is as essential to the life of the Church as the priesthood. It’s not that the Church would be in trouble. It’s bigger than that. It’s that religious life has always been part of the Church beginning with Christ himself. Christ was both priest and religious, unlike the Apostles who were priests. Christ teaches the religious life by living the Evangelical Counsels, community life with his Apostles, the contemplative life and the life of service, which is characteristic of the consecrated life, not of the priesthood.

This is where today’s layman has not been well educated and often holds an incomplete understanding of the place of religious life in the life of the Church and its essential presence in the Church.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[iloveangels]

…

This is where today’s layman has not been well educated and often holds an incomplete understanding of the place of religious life in the life of the Church and its essential presence in the Church.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

I agree, and I think that’s been a historical problem. It’s not only the young ones trying to find out what the Church teaches who have this misunderstanding; it’s several generations back too, so what you get are silly, shallow, empty comments like “there’s no point in being a nun if she doesn’t wear a habit,” meaning a long dress and veil.

But, and this is important, for historical and social reasons, the laity have also not been aware of the importance of their own vocation in the church. They live married lives, raise the children, are almost always the first Catholics non-Catholics ever see. Their fecundity, their work and their presence is their vocation. If Catholics are supposed to do something in this life, it will be a cooperative work shared by ALL the vocations in the Church. Priests consecrate and absolve, religious share charisms, prove that Christianity is liveable, provide a witness and pray, laypeople work, raise children, and interface with all the people in the world, of all faiths and none.

I would even go so far as to say that many of the problems we have now, as a church, are largely due to the fact that laypeople don’t understand their faith, live out their faith in public, or understand that their vocation is to do so. This is a historical and cultural problem in the Church. The laity in general are treated like “chopped liver.” Laypeople are allowed to be stupid about religious life and the mission of the Church because their ideas and actions have often been considered to have little value or consequence, just because they are laypeople.

Largely because of this, it’s possible for non-Christians to go around, pretending that there’s something bad about Christianity and get away with it because there are so few counterexamples in their own localities to what they say. They can always say Mother Teresa is an aberration, someone from India and that doesn’t count. What they need to confront is someone without a habit, without a roman collar, in their own house, neighborhood, workplace or store who takes their Catholicism seriously enough to live it.

The goal of the laity ought to be to a) serve God in holiness and b) make those kind of statements demonstrably ridiculous to the general public by our works. We haven’t done that. Most of the time, a person can work with a Catholic for years and never know they’re Catholic. That’s a big problem. Also, Catholics culturally don’t like to be singled out, and so they go with the flow to avoid detection. Another huge problem.

It’s entirely possible for a person who’s not a Catholic to claim they don’t even know any Catholics and mean it. Happens all the time. It’s also entirely possible that they could claim they know Catholics but the Catholics they know aren’t any different than any one else in any way, or heaven forbid, that they’re worse. This is very common also. It’s the job of the laity to get this changed.

People, even Catholics, can go decades now without even seeing a religious and that’s a fact. Many children don’t know what a sister or a brother, a nun or a monk is except on paper. Not that religious are not crucial to the Church, because they are whether people ever see them or not. But facts are facts; in evangelization, laypeople also have a crucial role and one they need to learn to fill.

There is a longstanding and important relationship between the health of the laity and the health of the priesthood and the health of the religious life. When one gets stronger, they all get stronger; when one gets weaker, they all get weaker. They are interdependent on each other to get the job done.

 

[iloveangels]

…

This is where today’s layman has not been well educated and often holds an incomplete understanding of the place of religious life in the life of the Church and its essential presence in the Church.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

Also, Br JR,

I think that’s because the only religious most of the laity ever really saw in the 20th century were teaching school and so on, and most of them were sisters. These sisters were often given huge classes and not enough preparation to teach, which hurt their work and their reputation with Catholics. And they wore the more conventional habits, which you’ve discussed already, instead of the dress their founders wanted. These habits took on almost totem significance as you can still hear when Catholics talk about religious; it’s what you hear about religious here on CAF a good part of the time.
Brothers were ordained to serve as priests, and for the laity priesthood is the important feature of that, for better or worse. It’s what they’ve been taught over and over and over. So they don’t know what to do with a brother that’s not been ordained. They think maybe he’s less, the gardener or the cook or something and dismiss him. They think of priests when they think of men in religious life, period. Not correct, but there you are.
This is the mental picture most people have of religious because this is what they were taught. This is the appearance that the Church presented them with, and they internalized it, for better or worse.

Real information about the religious life was also curiously not available to many Catholics and to some degree still isn’t. It’s not been understood that it’s a very important thing to teach laypeople about religious life in a candid way, partly because the laity has not been encouraged to work with religious in a real way, using both charisms together in harmony. To this day, when a person associates themselves with a religious order, the usual expectation is that they become a “little shadow” of a religious. [Because presumably a layperson has nothing to bring to the relationship or what?]

Many laypeople have seriously strange stereotypes about what religious do with their time and how they run their lives. Seen this first hand. That’s why these threads on religious life are so important and useful. They’re very unusual.

 

[iloveangels]

So yes, I agree with your point that religious orders aren’t understood, Br. JR.

When talking to most Catholics about the Church in a class, seminar, study etc, religious orders don’t usually come up much. When they do, it’s as if they are another topic, an “oh yeah, and then there’s that.” It’s like religious orders are a fashion accessory or something.

With some Catholics, you get shrugged shoulders and “what does that mean for us” looks because they really don’t know. Some start with the usual tiring tirade: “they don’t teach anymore, wear habits anymore, etc etc yada yada.” Some Catholics are really fairly negative about religious orders, believe it or not, because they don’t see how they matter anymore-particularly ultratrads, which is paradoxical, I know, but …

Catholic laypeople understand the vocation of religious only marginally less well than they understand their own vocation. That was my point in the paragraphs above. The whole thing needs work.

If my years as a teacher taught me anything, they taught me that the way to get something into the mind is a combination of clarity, repetition and practice. People internalize what they experience; and indeed the laity do that and have done that, and that accounts for their behavior, whether it’s acceptable behavior or not. Maybe what they were presented with was expedient but it was, nevertheless, what they were presented with.

To get a change, people need clarity, repetition and practice. Show the proper relationship and how things work with “clarity, repetition and practice.” And then it will change. That’s how people work. That and divine grace is why people “go to heaven in groups,” as St. Teresa of Avila said. We’re not so sophisticated as we think.

 

[JReducation]

I agree, and I think that’s been a historical problem.

There is a longstanding and important relationship between the health of the laity and the health of the priesthood and the health of the religious life. When one gets stronger, they all get stronger; when one gets weaker, they all get weaker. They are interdependent on each other to get the job done.

This is what Paul is speaking about when he says, “But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift,” (Eph 4:7). When one fails to make proper use of the grace that is given, it affects the one body.

Also, Br JR,

I think that’s because the only religious most of the laity ever really saw in the 20th century were teaching school and so on, and most of them were sisters.

Unfortunately, it was not until after Vatican II that women religious were allowed to study theology, Scripture and Church law. The sisters were one chapter ahead of their students when it came to religious ed. That’s why they used primers like the Baltimore Catechism. It contained the basics of the faith, without the discussion that led to those conclusions. Those discussions had by the Fathers, the early Apostles and the later Doctors of the Church would have blown the sisters away, since they didn’t have the background to read them properly. Many didn’t even have the right kind of library to find out more. If the students had asked, they would have been stumped.

The primers were excellent. They contained everything that the Catholic student needed to know, even if he could not explain where it came from or why it was this way and not that way.

Unfortunately, we threw those books out, instead of adding the background information, which was what they needed.

Brothers were ordained to serve as priests, and for the laity priesthood is the important feature of that, for better or worse.

Most communities of brothers gave them two choices:

a) be ordained or b) become a servant. Obviously, the number of ordained religious went through the roof.

Those men who wanted to be religious and did not hear the call to Holy Orders, but did not want to be servants either, entered the teaching congregations, such as the Christian Brothers. At one time, the Christian Brothers was the largest group of male religious in the world. Those brothers were well educated. The clergy and the laity treated them with great respect, because they needed them. The Christian Brothers and others like them educated most Catholic men, including most Catholic priests.

When Vatican II commanded the religious orders to return to their origins, communities of brothers, such as: Franciscans, Trinitarians, Servites, Benedictines, Cistercians, and Trappists started to send everyone to school and to give the brothers choices. They could:

a) be ordained, b) serve by doing manual labor, c) become scholars, d) learn a trade, e) run parishes without being priests, f) run religious communities, g) teach in seminaries, h) serve as chancellors without being priests, i) be choir monks or hermits, j) and do many other things that had been reserved for priests between Vatican I and Vatican II.

This was the kiss of death for the teaching brothers. Those brothers who felt the call to religious life, but not the call to teach, no longer had to fear being servants. They could become friars or monks and be equals to priests and lay people. This was the original plan of the founder. Vatican I took this away, because of the need for priests in mission countries.

Vatican II realized that male religious life had been dealt a dangerous blow. Where were the religious who were not priests but were theologians, Canon Lawyers, religious superiors, seminary rectors, soup kitchen administrators, spiritual directors, retreat masters, itinerant preachers, teachers, electricians, cooks, gardeners, mechanics, artists, scientists, doctors, nurses, etc?

They think of priests when they think of men in religious life, period. Not correct, but there you are.

The sad result is that many religious communities will no longer staff parishes. They are keeping the ones that they have, if they are poor or are in places where there is no way out. If they can close parishes or merge them with another and hand them over to secular clergy, they prefer to do that. Some are putting statutes into their constitutions that prohibit serving in parishes of any kind, poor or rich. In some communities the statutes are very specific about where they serve and whom they serve. My own community has a prohibition about parishes. We volunteer to help out with things like CCD, talks, spiritual direction or a mass and confessions on a Sunday and then we’re out of there. The parish is the responsibility of the secular priest and the laity. We work with the voiceless, the immigrant, the uneducated, the terminally ill and the elderly whose lives are in danger.

 

[JReducation]

Real information about the religious life was also curiously not available to many Catholics and to some degree still isn’t. It’s not been understood that it’s a very important thing to teach laypeople about religious life in a candid way, partly because the laity has not been encouraged to work with religious in a real way, using both charisms together in harmony. To this day, when a person associates themselves with a religious order, the usual expectation is that they become a “little shadow” of a religious. [Because presumably a layperson has nothing to bring to the relationship or what?]

You’ll find this interesting. Diocesan priests and secular priests who belong to societies like the SOLT, SSPX, FSSP, Maryknoll, Missionhurst, ICKSP and others will tell you that they have no clue what religious life is about. This is not taught in the seminary. They know that there are three vows, sometimes four. They know that religious have superiors and a formation program. They know a few terms: postulant, novice, monastery, abbot, abbey, convent, profession and vows. They have no idea about much else.

It’s not just the layman who has been in the dark. It’s the vast majority of priests too, because 70% of priests belong to a diocese or a secular society. Only 30% belong to religious communities.

This was the culture for a very long time. You needed to know only what affected you directly. This was not just inside the Church. It was about everything. People did not really understand the importance of knowing the big picture and many still do not. Just look around you. People from PA don’t give a hoot what goes on in TX. People in the USA could care less about what happens in Bolivia. People live in neighborhoods where they don’t know the people next door. Isolationism is not just a problem within the Church.

Unfortunately, isolationism leads to ignorance. Ignorance can lead to rudeness. Rudeness can lead to divisions. It’s a chain of events. Someone has to break that chain. That’s why I enjoy talking and explaining religious life, while taking out the priesthood, not because I don’t appreciate the priesthood, but because people don’t appreciate the priesthood.

Too many lay people have a very utilitarian view of the priesthood. They love to hate their priests and bishops, but want them around to say their masses and hear their confessions. The priest serves a purpose in their lives, but is not a person whom they want to love, trust or even hear from unless he says what they want to hear or what they believe he should say. They insert themselves into the hierarchy, some place between the pope and the priests. I can’t really understand how this works in their minds. In any case, it’s a very dismal view of the priesthood.

Either the priest has a functional purpose or he’s a religious and does whatever it is people imagine that religious do.

The idea of two distinct vocations, essential to the life of the Church, because they give life to the Church, just as the brain and the heart are essential to the life of the body, is very foreign to people who can’t think outside of the box.

Many laypeople have seriously strange stereotypes about what religious do with their time and how they run their lives. Seen this first hand. That’s why these threads on religious life are so important and useful. They’re very unusual.

Especially in the USA. Americans are notorious for stereotyping. The worse movie that Hollywood every put out was The Bells of St. Mary. Everyone wants a priest like Fr. O’Malley and a sister like Sr. Benedict. I love it. If people only knew that most pastors were not interested in their parish schools, because they were a pain. They were more than happy to build them and hand them over to the sisters to run and most sisters did not want the pastors involved in their schools, because they knew nothing about education or administration.

More fights were fought between pastors and principals and more people were transferred because of ill feelings over schools than any other issue in the Church. Many sisters were more than happy to escape the Catholic schools as soon as they could, just to get away from the pastors and the demanding parents.

Life was not like at St. Mary’s. LOL. If only that were true.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[iloveangels]

This is what Paul is speaking about when he says, “But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift,” (Eph 4:7). When one fails to make proper use of the grace that is given, it affects the one body.
…

The sad result is that many religious communities will no longer staff parishes. They are keeping the ones that they have, if they are poor or are in places where there is no way out. If they can close parishes or merge them with another and hand them over to secular clergy, they prefer to do that. Some are putting statutes into their constitutions that prohibit serving in parishes of any kind, poor or rich. In some communities the statutes are very specific about where they serve and whom they serve. My own community has a prohibition about parishes. We volunteer to help out with things like CCD, talks, spiritual direction or a mass and confessions on a Sunday and then we’re out of there. The parish is the responsibility of the secular priest and the laity. We work with the voiceless, the immigrant, the uneducated, the terminally ill and the elderly whose lives are in danger.

This is probably a good thing, rather than a sad thing, Br JR. People need to see religious for what they really are, rather than as filling a role (like teacher or priest). They need to see religious who are real people living a religious life and the values of that religious life. They need to see where religious fit in the whole symphony that is all the vocations working together in harmony. And they need to understand what is their role in the Church as laypeople too, and this can definitely help. It’s rather like singing in a choir where hearing the other parts helps to define yours if you really listen well, while resulting in a balanced harmony for the listener outside the choir.

If religious are the 1st & 2nd sopranos, laypeople are the altos. Nobody wants to be an alto… Their parts sound sort of monotone and pointless when sung alone and they have to stand in the middle… …but the choir sounds tinny without them.

 

[iloveangels]

You’ll find this interesting. Diocesan priests and secular priests who belong to societies like the SOLT, SSPX, FSSP, Maryknoll, Missionhurst, ICKSP and others will tell you that they have no clue what religious life is about. This is not taught in the seminary. They know that there are three vows, sometimes four. They know that religious have superiors and a formation program. They know a few terms: postulant, novice, monastery, abbot, abbey, convent, profession and vows. They have no idea about much else.

It’s not just the layman who has been in the dark. It’s the vast majority of priests too, because 70% of priests belong to a diocese or a secular society. Only 30% belong to religious communities.

This was the culture for a very long time. You needed to know only what affected you directly. This was not just inside the Church. It was about everything. People did not really understand the importance of knowing the big picture and many still do not. Just look around you. People from PA don’t give a hoot what goes on in TX. People in the USA could care less about what happens in Bolivia. People live in neighborhoods where they don’t know the people next door. Isolationism is not just a problem within the Church.

Unfortunately, isolationism leads to ignorance. Ignorance can lead to rudeness. Rudeness can lead to divisions. It’s a chain of events. Someone has to break that chain. That’s why I enjoy talking and explaining religious life, while taking out the priesthood, not because I don’t appreciate the priesthood, but because people don’t appreciate the priesthood.

Too many lay people have a very utilitarian view of the priesthood. They love to hate their priests and bishops, but want them around to say their masses and hear their confessions. The priest serves a purpose in their lives, but is not a person whom they want to love, trust or even hear from unless he says what they want to hear or what they believe he should say. They insert themselves into the hierarchy, some place between the pope and the priests. I can’t really understand how this works in their minds. In any case, it’s a very dismal view of the priesthood.

Either the priest has a functional purpose or he’s a religious and does whatever it is people imagine that religious do.

The idea of two distinct vocations, essential to the life of the Church, because they give life to the Church, just as the brain and the heart are essential to the life of the body, is very foreign to people who can’t think outside of the box.

Especially in the USA. Americans are notorious for stereotyping. The worse movie that Hollywood every put out was The Bells of St. Mary. Everyone wants a priest like Fr. O’Malley and a sister like Sr. Benedict. I love it. If people only knew that most pastors were not interested in their parish schools, because they were a pain. They were more than happy to build them and hand them over to the sisters to run and most sisters did not want the pastors involved in their schools, because they knew nothing about education or administration.

More fights were fought between pastors and principals and more people were transferred because of ill feelings over schools than any other issue in the Church. Many sisters were more than happy to escape the Catholic schools as soon as they could, just to get away from the pastors and the demanding parents.

Life was not like at St. Mary’s. LOL. If only that were true.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

I love that movie! I like Sister Act too, for the music. But I know it’s just entertainment. It’s a MOVIE.

 

[iloveangels]

This is what Paul is speaking about when he says, “But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift,” (Eph 4:7). When one fails to make proper use of the grace that is given, it affects the one body.

… My own community has a prohibition about parishes. We volunteer to help out with things like CCD, talks, spiritual direction or a mass and confessions on a Sunday and then we’re out of there. The parish is the responsibility of the secular priest and the laity. We work with the voiceless, the immigrant, the uneducated, the terminally ill and the elderly whose lives are in danger.

Yes, but yours is a Franciscan community. There are many other communities of Dominicans, etc who have a vocation that involves other levels of society.

If the perception of religious life is to change, and people are to draw understanding from the lives of religious, laypeople have to see some religious explicitly living the lives of religious, rather than serving as schoolteachers and parish priests. Otherwise, these perceptions are not going to change among Catholics in general, regardless of what documents exist. Luckily, mass media can help a bit, although not completely, obviously.

RE stereotyping: Americans are very visually oriented partly due to our entertainment and teaching methods and partly as a matter of history and practice here. It can also be put to good use however. We are real monkeys when it comes to learning to do things, far more than those who are accustomed to Socratic method etc. and other learning styles. The trick is to reinforce the activity long enough, so as to answer the questions and perfect the jive, until we stop aping and start doing. To really teach, you have to get it “into” them, not just “on” them.

 

[JReducation]

This is probably a good thing, rather than a sad thing, Br JR. People need to see religious for what they really are, rather than as filling a role (like teacher or priest). They need to see religious who are real people living a religious life and the values of that religious life. They need to see where religious fit in the whole symphony that is all the vocations working together in harmony. And they need to understand what is their role in the Church as laypeople too, and this can definitely help. It’s rather like singing in a choir where hearing the other parts helps to define yours if you really listen well, while resulting in a balanced harmony for the listener outside the choir.

If religious are the 1st & 2nd sopranos, laypeople are the altos. Nobody wants to be an alto… Their parts sound sort of monotone and pointless when sung alone and they have to stand in the middle… …but the choir sounds tinny without them.

I really like this analogy. Is it copyrighted?

Yes, but yours is a Franciscan community. There are many other communities of Dominicans, etc who have a vocation that involves other levels of society.

If the perception of religious life is to change, and people are to draw understanding from the lives of religious, laypeople have to see some religious explicitly living the lives of religious, rather than serving as schoolteachers and parish priests. Otherwise, these perceptions are not going to change among Catholics in general, regardless of what documents exist.

People need to see the whole garden and how each flower and plant contributes the the garden.

Many people complain that priests are often cold, distant, disinterested or disconnected and it’s true. But the truth is that many priests who entered the seminary between 1950 and 1970 only knew priests who were commodities. They celebrated the sacraments and administered the parish. These were their role models. Very often, this is the kind of priest that they became, sacrament dispensers and administrators. The Father Paytons, Father Flannigans, Father McGiveneys and Archbishop Sheens of this world disappeared.

Today, with a greater awareness of what the priesthood is really about, we’re beginning to see a younger generation of priests who are more engaged.

The same can be said of religious life among men. As we make the distinction between the call to be a consecrated religious and the call to be an ordained priest, we’re beginning to see a rise in the number of male religious.

We’re never going to get back to the numbers that we had before Vatican II and that’s OK with us religious. We want men who enter the religious life to live the religious life, not to be secular priests who wear a habit.

Some of my favorite priests are among the Franciscans of the Renewal. These guys never set foot in a parish. They rarely witness a wedding, baptized, bury the dead and they never know what it’s like to run from one committee meeting to another. They are not allowed to do parish ministry. However, it’s awesome to see them together as brothers.

You don’t know who’s ordained and who’s not until it’s time to say mass or hear confessions. The guy under your sink fixing your plumbing may be a priest who has a PhD in theology or Sacred Scripture. The guy who is the local superior of the house may be a lay brother who only has a master’s degree. But when you see them, you see friars.

Most of us who are Franciscan look just like homeless men who are very happy.

View attachment 12847

I also believe that there is a proper place for religious like the Christian Brothers. Catholic education is important. However, it’s even more important that these brothers educate the poor first. That was the idea of the founder. They belong in the developing nations where there are few educational opportunities, in cities with large immigrant populations and among the students with disabilities. They were not founded to run our pristine middle class schools. The middle class can afford to hire Catholic teachers and principals. The poor cannot. As Mother Teresa once said, “The poor deserve the best.”

If these teaching brothers are among the best educators in the world, which I believe they are, then the poor have a greater right to them than anyone else, because the poor are already deprived of much. I was taught by teaching brothers. I learned more from them than I did in college. When I entered graduate school it was easier for me than for those who did not have the benefit of teaching brothers.

We had strong academic skills, culture, social skills, values, a work ethic, and strong faith. We also had the brothers as role models. Even those who did not want to be brothers found something to admire and imitate.

Many of my former schoolmates became teachers and went back to teach at our high school. They eventually replaced the brothers. They were just as good as the brothers. The only part that they could not provide was the spirituality that the brothers brought into the school. Lay teachers cannot provide that, because it’s not in their experience or their formation. But these teachers walked, talked and taught like their former teachers who were brothers.

Unfortunately, we’re now two generations away from the brothers and the new generation of teachers does not have it. They are highly qualified and very devoted, but they just don’t have what I call the scent of the brother. That was unique to the first generation of lay teachers trained by the teaching brothers.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[iloveangels]

I really like this analogy. Is it copyrighted?

Nope. You’re welcome to it.

People need to see the whole garden and how each flower and plant contributes the the garden.

…

Unfortunately, we’re now two generations away from the brothers and the new generation of teachers does not have it. They are highly qualified and very devoted, but they just don’t have what I call the scent of the brother. That was unique to the first generation of lay teachers trained by the teaching brothers.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

I understand what you’re saying. The middle class schools aren’t so pristine anymore though. Many people aren’t really Christian now and maybe this sounds a little harsh, but frankly many of them live like animals anymore.

There is a place for religious, if only for showing people that the Christian life in its fullness is liveable and realistic in not one, but several ways; this is one of the great gifts of religious life to the world.

I believe in Providence, Br JR, even though what prompts it might not look like what we’d want to have happen; in this case, the lack of religious in our midst and all the confusion following Vatican II. Maybe this time is the time when laypeople are supposed to find a way to add their flowers to this “garden” (to stay with your metaphor). There are ways to live the Christian life in its fullness as a layperson, and they need to become better understood, and not only that but lived.

 

[iloveangels]

…

Unfortunately, we’re now two generations away from the brothers and the new generation of teachers does not have it. They are highly qualified and very devoted, but they just don’t have what I call the scent of the brother. That was unique to the first generation of lay teachers trained by the teaching brothers.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

Unfortunately in the Catholic schools, part of this effect is caused by the fact that they have re-fashioned themselves as prep schools now that the Catholic population as a whole has become upwardly mobile.

PS that photo is cool. They look like a happy bunch.

[They look dressed fine to me, but what do I know, my father was a sharecropper with his family when he was young, and then a factory worker later on. People never believe this, but it’s not so terrible to be poor. My family was a happy bunch too. There are worse things that can happen than being poor, lots of them.]

 

[JReducation]

The middle class schools aren’t so pristine anymore though. Many people aren’t really Christian now and maybe this sounds a little harsh, but frankly many of them live like animals anymore.

Schools like that really need preaching orders. That’s what Dominicans, Carmelites and Jesuits do well. They are not bound to serve the poor.

There is a place for religious, if only for showing people that the Christian life in its fullness is liveable and realistic in not one, but several ways; this is one of the great gifts of religious life to the world.

As the new president of the Conference of Male Religious Superiors said. “There will always be a place for religious that neither priests nor laity can fill. The problem is convincing priests and laity to step aside.”

Maybe this time is the time when laypeople are supposed to find a way to add their flowers to this “garden” (to stay with your metaphor). There are ways to live the Christian life in its fullness as a layperson, and they need to become better understood, and not only that but lived.

There are wonderful things that the laity can do, if they organize themselves and stop arguing over the most ridiculous things and worrying about the insignificant stuff. If I see one more thread about wearing a veil to mass with more than 300 answers to it, I’m going to be ill. Why can’t 300 people discern the vocation to start a secular institute for the service of the poor, the Catholic school student, the retired, the unemployed, the person who needs catechesis, the promotion of vocations, etc? There is a provision in Canon Law for secular institutes and societies of apostolic life for lay Catholics: married and celibate.

The few institutes that exist, such as Opus Dei, Schoenstatt, and SOLT provide a wonderful service to the Church. Many of them are lay, married and have children.

Unfortunately in the Catholic schools, part of this effect is caused by the fact that they have re-fashioned themselves as prep schools now that the Catholic population as a whole has become upwardly mobile.

I know. That’s when Franciscans dropped out of parish schools. They were not called to live among upwardly mobile people. Once upon a time, those parish schools served the children of farmers, miners, immigrants, factory workers, ethnic minorities or children whose families were Catholic but were not yet Christian. Converting Catholics to Christians has always been a primary concern of Francis and Clare, especially Clare. That’s how EWTN began. It was not to convert non Catholics. It was to convert Catholics. St. Clare often said that they were probably safer than the average Catholic. The non-Catholic didn’t know or didn’t understand the faith. The Catholic didn’t care about the faith . . . big difference. Clare did not have many nice things to say about the Catholics of her day. If she were around today, she’s probably have less nice things to say. That’s why I love Mother Angelica. She reminds me of Clare. She was never afraid to take Catholics to task and be gentle with the non-Catholics.

PS that photo is cool. They look like a happy bunch.

We are a happy bunch of people. It’s interesting. The more traditionalist Catholic does not like us. I believe it’s because of our informal appearance and manner. However, once people get to know us, they can’t seem to get enough of us.

My CCD students asked me how my cancer was coming. I told them that I was past due. Two years ago, the doctors said that I was not going to last this long. The kids all chimed in and said, “You can die on us. That’s not fair.”

One kid said, “You have to stay around until we make our confirmation.”

I said, “But that’s two years away.”

Another kid responded, “So . . . you’re on a schedule. God will just have to wait.”

These parents did not want me when I first arrived at this parish. The comments were:

1. His habit smells.
Duh! We have only one and we wash it once a month.

2. His beard is unkept.
No kidding. We’re beggars not beauty queens.

3. Why can’t he be like the other priests in the parish? He wears the same habit every day and carries three plastic bags with his books in it. Why can’t he use a briefcase like any other professional?
Helloooooo, homeless people don’t buy briefcases.

4. If this brother is so well educated, why isn’t he a priest?
Ask God, not me.

Three years later it’s . . .

“Brother can we help you?”

“Brother, what’s the answer to . . . ?”

“Brother, can you talk to my son who is struggling with the faith?”

“When brother walks into the room, his presence is one that commands respect.”

“Brother, I didn’t know that about Jesus.”

My favorite . . .

“Brother, you guys are nuts; but since you talked to my son, he started to go back to mass and confession.”

[They look dressed fine to me, but what do I know, my father was a sharecropper with his family when he was young, and then a factory worker later on. People never believe this, but it’s not so terrible to be poor. My family was a happy bunch too. There are worse things that can happen than being poor, lots of them.]

My mother came from a family of 18 children. These 18 siblings have 65 children between them, including me, over 100 grandchildren, and several great grandchildren. Obviously, they grew up poor. Not a single one has ever been in jail, used drugs, stolen anything, been accused of marital infidelity or abuse and all 18 of them went to college and beyond. My grandfather was a math teacher and my grandmother was a seamstress. Happiness and success is rooted in love, cooperation and discipline, not money.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[joanofarc2008]

Schools like that really need preaching orders. That’s what Dominicans, Carmelites and Jesuits do well. They are not bound to serve the poor.

As the new president of the Conference of Male Religious Superiors said. “There will always be a place for religious that neither priests nor laity can fill. The problem is convincing priests and laity to step aside.”

There are wonderful things that the laity can do, if they organize themselves and stop arguing over the most ridiculous things and worrying about the insignificant stuff. If I see one more thread about wearing a veil to mass with more than 300 answers to it, I’m going to be ill. Why can’t 300 people discern the vocation to start a secular institute for the service of the poor, the Catholic school student, the retired, the unemployed, the person who needs catechesis, the promotion of vocations, etc? There is a provision in Canon Law for secular institutes and societies of apostolic life for lay Catholics: married and celibate.

The few institutes that exist, such as Opus Dei, Schoenstatt, and SOLT provide a wonderful service to the Church. Many of them are lay, married and have children.

I know. That’s when Franciscans dropped out of parish schools. They were not called to live among upwardly mobile people. Once upon a time, those parish schools served the children of farmers, miners, immigrants, factory workers, ethnic minorities or children whose families were Catholic but were not yet Christian. Converting Catholics to Christians has always been a primary concern of Francis and Clare, especially Clare. That’s how EWTN began. It was not to convert non Catholics. It was to convert Catholics. St. Clare often said that they were probably safer than the average Catholic. The non-Catholic didn’t know or didn’t understand the faith. The Catholic didn’t care about the faith . . . big difference. Clare did not have many nice things to say about the Catholics of her day. If she were around today, she’s probably have less nice things to say. That’s why I love Mother Angelica. She reminds me of Clare. She was never afraid to take Catholics to task and be gentle with the non-Catholics.

We are a happy bunch of people. It’s interesting. The more traditionalist Catholic does not like us. I believe it’s because of our informal appearance and manner. However, once people get to know us, they can’t seem to get enough of us.

My CCD students asked me how my cancer was coming. I told them that I was past due. Two years ago, the doctors said that I was not going to last this long. The kids all chimed in and said, “You can die on us. That’s not fair.”

One kid said, “You have to stay around until we make our confirmation.”

I said, “But that’s two years away.”

Another kid responded, “So . . . you’re on a schedule. God will just have to wait.”

These parents did not want me when I first arrived at this parish. The comments were:

1. His habit smells.
Duh! We have only one and we wash it once a month.

2. His beard is unkept.
No kidding. We’re beggars not beauty queens.

3. Why can’t he be like the other priests in the parish? He wears the same habit every day and carries three plastic bags with his books in it. Why can’t he use a briefcase like any other professional?
Helloooooo, homeless people don’t buy briefcases.

4. If this brother is so well educated, why isn’t he a priest?
Ask God, not me.

Three years later it’s . . .

“Brother can we help you?”

“Brother, what’s the answer to . . . ?”

“Brother, can you talk to my son who is struggling with the faith?”

“When brother walks into the room, his presence is one that commands respect.”

“Brother, I didn’t know that about Jesus.”

My favorite . . .

“Brother, you guys are nuts; but since you talked to my son, he started to go back to mass and confession.”

My mother came from a family of 18 children. These 18 siblings have 65 children between them, including me, over 100 grandchildren, and several great grandchildren. Obviously, they grew up poor. Not a single one has ever been in jail, used drugs, stolen anything, been accused of marital infidelity or abuse and all 18 of them went to college and beyond. My grandfather was a math teacher and my grandmother was a seamstress. Happiness and success is rooted in love, cooperation and discipline, not money.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

Again can I borrow that.

 

[TiggerS]

My comments are several posts back and obviously there is no interest in this thread in those comments and so I wont take up my points further.

I would like to say that just as the laity needs to love and respect, value, other vocations, so these other vocations need to love and respect, value, the laity and their vocation. To do else is divisive and not to work towards unity so close to the Heart of Jesus “that they may be one, Father, as we are one”. And the Blessed Trinity is three distinct persons sharing the one nature.

Some posts can repeatedly betray a very low opinion of lay people, almost disdainful, and at times in a very sweeping manner. The vocation of the laity is also a Gift of God. It is not some default position that we can find ourselves ‘stuck in’ or, worse, dismissed to - and for one reason or another. It is a vocation and call from God, a dignity, as with any other vocation and call from God and needs to be lived out with dedication and appreciation.

Religious life is a great gift to The Church, but then so is the priesthood and marriage and other forms of total commitment of a life to the radical living of the The Gospel gifted to The Church. Each has a very important part to play in the life of The Church and the Work of Christ and this is why The Holy Spirit motivates and inspires, supports them with Grace. They are Gifts of God and should be appreciated and respected as such, along with those who, though imperfect and sinful, do strive to make honest efforts to live out their vocation.

We all are imperfect and fail some here and others there. We share a common humanity and differ only in the kind of imperfections and mistakes probably. One person’s strength and weakness is here, while another person’s strengths and weaknesses are there.

 

[JReducation]

My comments are several posts back and obviously there is no interest in this thread in those comments and so I wont take up my points further.

I would like to say that just as the laity needs to love and respect, value, other vocations, so these other vocations need to love and respect, value, the laity and their vocation. To do else is divisive and not to work towards unity so close to the Heart of Jesus “that they may be one, Father, as we are one”. And the Blessed Trinity is three distinct persons sharing the one nature.

Some posts can repeatedly betray a very low opinion of lay people, almost disdainful, and at times in a very sweeping manner. The vocation of the laity is also a Gift of God. It is not some default position that we can find ourselves ‘stuck in’ or, worse, dismissed to - and for one reason or another. It is a vocation and call from God, a dignity, as with any other vocation and call from God and needs to be lived out with dedication and appreciation.

Religious life is a great gift to The Church, but then so is the priesthood and marriage and other forms of total commitment of a life to the radical living of the The Gospel gifted to The Church. Each has a very important part to play in the life of The Church and the Work of Christ and this is why The Holy Spirit motivates and inspires, supports them with Grace. They are Gifts of God and should be appreciated and respected as such, along with those who, though imperfect and sinful, do strive to make honest efforts to live out their vocation.

We all are imperfect and fail some here and others there. We share a common humanity and differ only in the kind of imperfections and mistakes probably. One person’s strength and weakness is here, while another person’s strengths and weaknesses are there.

Maybe you missed it, but we were talking about the fact that there are wonderful things that that laity can contribute to the Church and that Canon Law makes provisions for such contributions through associations, secular institutes and societies of apostolic life. The problem that many lay people have is that they can’t seem to agree on how to live the Gospel or how to approach a particular need in the wider Church or in their local community.

All too often, the people who are doing the greater amount of communicating are not focusing on the need and the possibilities for the laity, but on details that in the end, turn out to be distractions.

On the other hand, there are many lay people who do wonderful things for the Church, but they are out there either alone or loosely connected to others in some kind of team that needs more cohesiveness.

I’ve seen people who are terrific youth ministers, religious educators, pro-life workers, Catholic educators and retreat ministers. When the activity is done, they each go their way. What they seem to need is a sense of community, more than a few hours of apostolic work and then home. Everyone needs to belong to some kind of community.

These people would be significantly strengthened if besides doing CCD on Sunday mornings (an example) they also had other activities that included their families, prayer time, recreation, on-going formation and that these things happened consistently rather than sporadically. Very few parish communities arrange for these to be ongoing relationships. The focus is placed more on doing than on being. I believe that many lay people are looking for that sense of community.

In the old days, most Catholics lived in very closed neighborhoods, almost Catholic ghettos. They not only went to Church together, but they worked in the same factories, baby-sat for each other, sat on the stoop in the summer and just talked, watched the kids play on the street in front of their homes or the dads would go bowling on Thursdays, etc.

As the lay Catholic is dispersed through suburbia, this sense of community is lost. Lay participation in Church life is often reduced to volunteering a few hours per month and Sunday mass. People are left feeling hungry for more.

The younger generation does not realize what it’s hungry for, because it did not live in those days of the “Catholic ghetto”. What he’s really hungering for is that Catholic community where people not only engage in a certain apostolic activity, but also feel Catholic.

When we look at groups like Opus Dei, which has many lay people or SOLT with has mission teams of priests, brothers, sisters and laymen or some of the secular institutes, we see the difference between those people and the majority of the people in the pews on Sunday.

It’s not a matter of the laity not having a place in the Church or not having dignity. It’s a matter of needing to get organized in ways that will give the lay person a sense of being Catholic, contributing to the ministry of the Church and including their families, not just one member of the family who steps out to do volunteer work at some Catholic apostolate.

There is a need for these forms of associations, because of the decline of the old Catholic neighborhoods where people spontaneously formed communities that integrated the entire family.

Another association that comes to mind is Schoenstatt (sp?). They have many things going on that include the entire family in the life of the Church and they fill an important part in the life of the Church.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[Julia_Mae]

Too many lay people have a very utilitarian view of the priesthood. They love to hate their priests and bishops, but want them around to say their masses and hear their confessions. The priest serves a purpose in their lives, but is not a person whom they want to love, trust or even hear from unless he says what they want to hear or what they believe he should say. They insert themselves into the hierarchy, some place between the pope and the priests. I can’t really understand how this works in their minds. In any case, it’s a very dismal view of the priesthood.

Either the priest has a functional purpose or he’s a religious and does whatever it is people imagine that religious do.

It is a dismal view. But I believe you are attributing thoughts and attitudes to us,we don’t have.

I worked full-time in my Parish as a volunteer. I worked in the office, I wrote various things, I assisted all the staff members at one time or another with projects, I was the Sacristan, sang in the choir, reorganized a bunch of stuff, oh, I did all sorts of things.

Father was far too busy meeting with committees and supervising the basic running of the Parish to have much time for parishioners, unless they were dying, marrying, or donating large sums of money. We would love to love our priests, but we don’t see them or interact with them except up there in the Sanctuary during Mass. So he becomes, by virtue of practical experience, this symbol you speak of.

The majority of Catholics aren’t like people here on CAF being “formed” by a small but dedicated group of “Traditional Catholics” to call the Bishop and complain at the slightest drop of a word in the Liturgy. Most Catholics are just looking for God, for the Presence of the Holy Spirit in the world, for a Priest who helps us find that.

My dearest Brother, we don’t need you to leave the Parishes. We need you in the Parishes, alongside the secular priests, to bring US into a religious life by living your religious life among us, in part. Lay people get to be religious people, not Liturgical automatons. Who’s going to model that for us, or lead us to it, when all we have left are priests who are removing themselves even more from us?