YOUR Favorite Priestly Society/Order?

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jwinch2 said:
Beautiful video wasn’t it?

Peace,

Jason
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Very beautiful. That is one Saint I don’t know about. Saint Dominic. I love their focus on prayer and preaching.

Makes me want to be a Dominican brother. 😃
 
TrueLight said:
Very beautiful. That is one Saint I don’t know about. Saint Dominic. I love their focus on prayer and preaching.

Makes me want to be a Dominican brother. 😃
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The thought crossed my mind as well. However, since I am a happily married man with a good deal of student loan debt and a mortgage, I think that ship has sailed. Oh well, I would have been lousy at the celibacy anyways! 😉

I does reinforce my plan to look into the Dominican Laity this fall when a new inquiry class starts.

Peace,

Jason
 
Brother JR, I really enjoy reading your posts. My fav Order is the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity.:signofcross::
 
We’re very funny people. Orders don’t want to be confused with congregations. Congregations don’t want to be confused with societies of apostolic life. Societies of apostolic life don’t want to be confused with religious. Secular orders don’t want to be confused with lay orders and so forth. Each has a very special charism, grace, and mission of which they’re very proud, as they should be.

At Trent, I don’t think that religious and clergy want to fry you in oil for liking the SSPX. The problem is their current status. They can be the nicest people in the world, but until they are regularized, every religious community, society of apostolic life, religious congregation, secular order, and lay order wants to keep their distance. Frankly, we don’t know where they will end up.

As Bishop Fellay correctly said, there was no earth shattering announcement about their regularization. They remain in a state of Limbo. While they are in that state, Rome does not allow us who are religious, congregations, societies, secular orders or lay orders to recommend them to anyone.

When anyone comes looking for a Traditionalist society, we’re to refer them to Christ the King and the FSSP. If they’re looking for Traditionalist religious, we’re to refer them to the Canons of St. John Cantius, the Carmelite Monks or the Franciscans of the Immaculate. I didn’t include the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, because to the best of my knowledge, they’re not in the USA. But if someone is willing to go to Europe, that’s another religious community to which we can refer, but with a caveat. Those who join them must know that they are not allowed to ordain anyone. You are a religious in temporary vows until the paperwork is finished. Afterward, I believe the plan is to erect them as a clerical congregation, which would hand over the reigns to the priests in the community. At least they have a canonical status. They do not have a decreee of erection. But that’s just paperwork. It can take anywhere from a few months to a few years to get it done, but it will happen.

The SSPX, we just don’t know what will happen. If the Vatican makes an offer and if they refuse it, then we (lay, cleric or religious) cannot refer vocations to them. We would be nurturing a society that is in conflict with the Church. Canonically, such societies do not have a thoelogical right to exist.

At present, they are not in conflict with the Church. The Church is in conflict with them. They’re on the safe side, even though they don’t have a canonical status, as long as they don’t allow Bishop Williamson to speak for them. Then they’re in trouble. The dear man has a way of upsetting the Holy Father. The Holy Father is not an easy man to rattle.

If they get an offer from Rome and they accept it, then we can refer to them as many men as are interested. Because once they accept the offer, they don’t have to be erected. They wee already erected almost 30 years ago. That has not changed. The decree of erection was never revoked. In other words, they were never suppressed.

The Transalpine Redemptorists were in a different situation, because the Redemptorist General Council suppressed them. Part of the deal in order to enter the Church again was that they had to accept to apply for erection as a separate community that is not part of the Redemptorist family. That’s why they had to change their name. They can keep St. Alphonse as their patron, but they may not claim him as their father nor may they have a voice or vote in anything Redemptorist. I don’t think they’re upset about that. I think they actually prefer the autonomy.

I just had a horrible thought. This is just Franciscan humor. Can you imagine if the Holy Father told the SSPX that they can be fully regularized as a branch of the Society of Jesus.

I would love to be a fly on the wall to see the faces of the SSPX and the Jesuits. :eek:

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂

PS. It will never happen, but it’s a bizarre thought. For one thing, the Jesuits are not allowed to admit bishops.
 
PrayRosary said:
Brother JR, I really enjoy reading your posts. My fav Order is the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity.:signofcross::
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That’s another group that’s in transition. That’s Fr.Corapi’s community. They began as a secular society of apostolic life. However, they seem to be reorganizing themselves more like a congregation. I’m wondering if they’re going to ask for a change of status.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
JReducation said:
When anyone comes looking for a Traditionalist society, we’re to refer them to Christ the King and the FSSP. If they’re looking for Traditionalist religious, we’re to refer them to the Canons of St. John Cantius, the Carmelite Monks or the Franciscans of the Immaculate. I didn’t include the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, because to the best of my knowledge, they’re not in the USA.
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Br. Jr,

Are the Benedictine monks considered traditional?
 
TrueLight said:
Br. Jr,

Are the Benedictine monks considered traditional?
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That’s a tricky question to answer. Let me begin by saying that they are not Traditionalists. What does this mean? They are not bound to the missal of 1962. It’s up to the Abbot to decide what missal they can use. Some abbots allow it and some prohibit it. Other abbots allow it on special holy days.

All of the orders and some congregations are traditional is you stop to think that we have a tradition and a history that goes way back. For example, the Benedictines and Basilians go back more than 1,000 years. They have cutoms, rituals and rules that have never changed and will never change, because St. Benedict wrote them down and they Church will not allow them to touch those rules. They also have rules and customs that came long after Benedict was dead. As is always the case, new things happen that the founder nerver foresaw. The monks have to deal with these new situations. Each house has a meeting called a chapter. They decide what to do and they create laws for these new situations. This is going to cause one Benedictine house to be a little different from another, because they chose to respond to a new situation differently. But they are traditional, because they follow the Rule of St. Benedict as he gave it to them and this cannot be change.

The same is true about Carmelites, Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, Norbertines, Trinitarians, Cistercians, Trappists and Carthusians. We have very old traditions and customs.

Traditionalists, normally do not like any of us unless we celebrate the EF, use Latin, Gregorian Chant, and keep women away from the sanctuary. That’s unfortunate that they feel that way. What it says is that they don’t understand the magnifude of Catholic Tradition. These families are part of Catholic Tradition. As the Church herself teaches, they are essential to her existence. Without them, she would be spiritually dead. These families not only serve in many ministries, but they also earn graces for the laity and the secular clergy through their lives of prayer, ascetecism, study, and brotherhood.

The reason why they’re not attached to the EF with as much passion as the SSPX, FSSP or other groups, it’s because the mass was never an issue for them. They celebrated it using their own style anyway. Each family is very traditional, but it does not follow what the SSPX or FSSP would call traditional. To the Benedictines and other orders, traditional is not just the mass, it’s their rule, their customs, their mission and the vision of their founder, their place in the Church, their service to the Church, and their relationship with each other. These are all things that they struggle to preseve and have struggle to preserve for centuries.

The English almost wiped out the Benedictines in England. The Lutherans wiped out the Franciscans in Germany. The Muslims almost wiped out the Carmelites in Palestine.

Each of these families has struggled to reach this time in history. They have tried to remain as faithful as possible to their traditions. They deviated here and there. Most of it was the fault of the laity and the bishops who were demanding that these communities meet their needs with little regard for the traditions and needs of the communities. The communities depended on them for income, they yielded. Some superiors liked the relationships with the bishops and the wealthy. That really hurt them.

Today, that’s not longer the case. Bishops and laity have become much more open to the traditions of men and women such as the Benedictines. They leave them alone to do their thing. They’re a wonderful family. Each monastery is very similar and yet each has its own personality, because they’re not attached as are Dominicans, Carmelites or Franciscans. They are authonomous or bound together in some kind of loose federation for mutual cooepration nd support.

Even when they celebrate the EF, they do it a little differently. We have an abbey here that has the EF, but every monk in the community responds to the prayers. The priest is commanded by the abbot to speak up so that his brothers can participate as his equal, not as his subordianate. This is very important to Benedictines. They were founded as brotherhood of equals where priest were an accident. They were not required. They have always had the priest there to celebrate mass FOR THEM. I put that in upper case, because that’s how they emphasize it. The priest is at the service of his brother monks. They need a mass and he celebrates it. But it’s not a quiet affair between him and the Lord. It’s a community celebration. This goes back before the year 1,000. Each monastery tweaked it here and there.

If you attended an EF at a Benedictine abbey, the only thing that you may notice is that the monks stand around the altar and that they answer the prayers. Some abbeys don’t do that. They do it as the Romans do it. The priest is at the altar and the monks are in their seats. They’re not sticklers about it. I guess that means that they are not traditionalists. Though they would be hurt if you told them that. To them, liturgy is so important. They put a lot into planning a mass. I remember watching them and it took aboiut two hours to plan a low mass in Ordinary Time. Benedict left them a series of instructions that they have to follow to plan a mass. For many of them the OF was a sigh of relief. It’s much easier to plan it. There is less to orchestrate. It’s a more austere form of the mass.

So my answer is that they are very rich in tradition, but they don’t all celebrate the EF.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
JReducation said:
The reason why they’re not attached to the EF with as much passion as the SSPX, FSSP or other groups, it’s because the mass was never an issue for them. They celebrated it using their own style anyway. Each family is very traditional, but it does not follow what the SSPX or FSSP would call traditional. To the Benedictines and other orders, traditional is not just the mass, it’s their rule, their customs, their mission and the vision of their founder, their place in the Church, their service to the Church, and their relationship with each other. These are all things that they struggle to preseve and have struggle to preserve for centuries.
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(the bold emphasis is mine)

I thought that this was an interesting point and represents something I just found out recently as well. I was unaware that individual orders had their own Rite for celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. I think there are many Catholics who think of older rites as meaning the EF and are not aware of the other rites that existed. It was certainly the case for me.

I found this set of videos detailing the Low Mass of the Dominican Rite which I found interesting. Here is a quote with a description of the Mass being presented:
The Dominican Province of Saint Joseph:
LINK
The exemplar of the Mass of the Dominican Rite is the Solemn Mass; one seeking to understand fully the Dominican Rite, therefore, must see its various ceremonies and parts in light of that Mass. As St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, however, the end is first in the order of intention but last in the order of execution. To reach the heights of the Solemn Mass, one is well advised to begin by learning the relatively simple Low Mass, and then the slightly more complex Missa Cantata.

Unfortunately, the Low Mass – our starting point – lacks many of the virtues of the Solemn Mass, and some of its features may seem particularly foreign to one accustomed to the Novus Ordo. The most prominent of these, the silent Canon and the lack of vocal participation by the congregation, are already much less prominent in the Missa Cantata (where, for example, the choir may be singing during a significant part of the Canon), and even less so in the Solemn Mass (where there are clearly defined and important roles for priest, ministers, and the brethren in choir). Indeed, the Low Mass developed as the Mass of an individual priest not celebrating a conventual or principal mass, and therefore it required only a single server. It is rightly called a Missa privata, that is, a Mass reduced to the bare essentials, and it can only be fully understood in light of the Solemn Mass.

The Missa Cantata is a later compromise between the Solemn Mass and the Low Mass; it lacks a deacon and subdeacon but may have multiple servers. William Bonniwell’s Dominican Ceremonial for Mass and Benediction lays out its rubrics, which were conceded to the Order by the Holy See in the modern period. (In brief, the priest’s rubrics at a Missa Cantata are the same as at a Low Mass, except that the priest sings all that is sung in the Solemn Mass, he uses incense for the Gospel and Offertory, and he may sit down at the Gloria and Credo.)

The text of this Rubrical Guide consists principally of the detailed rubrics for the Low Mass and Missa Cantata in the Dominican Rite in English, as found in Bonniwell’s Dominican Ceremonial, along with the Ordinary of the Mass in Latin, and the line drawings from the rubrics of the Missale S.O.P. of 1939. The rubrics and text of the Mass are for the Dominican Rite Mass as it existed in 1962. The Guide was initially prepared by friars from the Province of the Holy Name of Jesus (the Western U.S. Province), who have kindly granted permission for its use. It was then edited for use on this website.
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Here also is a Requiem Mass in the Dominican Rite.
 
TrueLight said:
Br. Jr,
Are the Benedictine monks considered traditional?
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I see Brother JR already answered, but,

Are you speaking particularly of the Benedictines at Clear Creek, OK (or Fontgombault) or all Benedictines generally?

The Benedictines at Clear Creek are traditional, but perhaps not what some would consider “traditionalist”.
 
I try to keep up with the Trappists of Mariawald in Germany, who recently returned to the traditional Mass and traditional Trappist lifestyle. I pray for their success.
 
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