Evangelical Catholicism and It's Not The Veil That Makes The Nun

I recently saw an article on YAHOO entitled “What’s It Like To Be A Thirty-Something Nun” (http://waysify.com/a/225086/what-its-like-to-be-a-30-something-nun)

Here is the opening paragraph:

Sara Marks is a 31-year-old nun. But, put away all your preconceived notions of how a sister should be — she'll defy all of them. Marks wears mascara and Calvin Klein dresses. She loves the Back to the Future trilogy and watches reality TV. She couldn’t live without a hair straightener. She loves to dance and wander around Manhattan ducking into adorable coffee shops. She travels and goes to the beach. She’s a photographer. She writes music and plays the guitar. She’s funny and warm and loves her life.

I wish I could say that the interview gets better from there, but it really doesn’t.  It’s not bad, mind you, it’s just—well—superficial.  About the best is

"We are normal people leading normal lives who happen to be committed to living simply, promoting social justice, and speaking out for those who are poor and marginalized. We are centered on God and faith, and we do pray, but we also sit down and watch television and go to the movies, just like anyone else."

This is good—but you know this is something that should be able to be said about every baptized Christian.  You don’t need to be a nun or a monk or even a priest to promote social justice or to speak out for those who are poor and marginalized.  Same about this quote about the vow of obedience:

It is really obedience to God’s word, to really listening to the other sisters, your friends and your family to learn what God is calling you to do. That is all fluffy and wonderful and sounds great on paper, but living that is hard. It is a balance.

I am not writing to denigrate what Sister Sara aspires to be—to the contrary, I only want her and others like her to aspire to be more.  but first let me defend her against some of the katholik krazies that write things like

Sorry to inform the readers, but these women aren't Catholic nuns. The Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia is a New-Age cult that has nothing to do with Catholicism or Christianity. They worship an entity they call the "Cosmic Christ" which is NOT the Jesus of the New Testament. This article gives no information to the person who would truly like to know what the life of a Catholic nun is like.

Sister Sara’s community, the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, are a recognized community of Religious women in the Catholic Church.  The are part of the Sisters of Saint Francis of the Neumann Communities, a federation of Franciscan communities founded by Saint John Neumann, Bishop of Philadelphia, in the nineteenth century.  They are recognized as Catholic Religious by the Holy See.  Furthermore, all Christians  who hold to Christian orthodoxy worship the “Cosmic Christ” who is no other than He Who is described in Colossians 1:15-20.  

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he himself might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness^* was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the blood of his cross [through him], whether those on earth or those in heaven.

Now I want to put all this in the context of the theme we have been touching on occasionally which is a response to George Weigel’s book, Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21^st Century Church.  Weigel’s Thesis, with which I could not agree more, is

The Catholic Church is being invited to meet the Risen Lord in the Scriptures, the Sacraments, and Prayer and to make friendship with him the center of Catholic life. Every Catholic has received this invitation in Baptism, the invitation to accept the Great Commission, to act as evangelists and to measure the truth of Catholic life by the way in which Catholics give expression to the human decency and solidarity that flows from friendship with Christ the Lord.

 But when he unpacks his thesis into what this Evangelical Catholicism looks like, Weigel tries to force a far more free Vatican II evangelical foot into a very narrow John Paul II shoe.  And when it comes to the place of Religious in a Vatican II Church, Weigel wants to return the nuns to veiled servitude and locked into the motherhouse at 5 pm for rosary, prayers, and a penitential supper of 2 day old bread, watery soup, and rancid cheese.  Nevertheless there has to be a via media between scrubbing the floors a la Audrey Hepburn in The Nuns Story and the somewhat vapid life of mascara and finding a Calvin Klein dress at the Goodwill that Sister Sara describes. 

I am not worried about whether nuns wear habits or whether monks catch a movie at the local ten-plex from time to time, but what I want of Religious is for them to blaze the trail for a more evangelical life for all of us.   I want people that can stop and make us question if we are on track towards the kingdom of God.  I see too many people around me, and around me at Mass, not concerned about whether or not their life style negatively impacts the lives of others.  When it comes to poverty I want to know how to have less so that other might have enough.  Can somebody show me how not to get caught up in the materialistic whirl that surrounds me with having to drive a gas-guzzling SUV or spending 200.00 on a pair of sunglasses?  Can someone show me how to love someone else without needing to control them?  Or show me how to love without becoming preoccupied that I am loved back? Or show me how to live life for simple pleasures and not constantly feed my id?  Can someone show me how to live for others, to empty myself in service for others as Christ emptied himself and took on the nature of a slave for me?  Can someone show me what the freedom is to live and do for the sake of pure love rather than to achieve or possess or control?  And above all, can someone show me how to “pray constantly” and live in that sort of relationship where all is God and God is all?  I think it is great that Sister Sara drives old ladies around and, from compassion for them, digs into her own near-empty purse to buy them a hamburger at McDonalds, but frankly, Sister, I expect even more of you.  Mother Theresa gave me more.  Saint Francis gave me more.  Most important, Jesus gave me more.  Show me how to receive what they have given us!  Don’t be good enough, be as good as you can be and show me how I can follow. 

Now as for that nut-case who whines Sorry to inform the readers, but these women aren't Catholic nuns…, honeychile, bless your black little withered heart, but when you give up your avocation as a Pharisee and are half as faithful to your vocation as a Christian as Sister Sara is to hers as a Sister of Saint Francis, I will take you seriously, but the criticism you level at her and her Sisters not only show your hypocrisy but your lack of basic Christian Doctrine and Catholic Church polity.  

Too Late for Tara

Archbishop Wilton Gregory's Tara 

The gracious living of the “Old South” ain’t the only thing Gone with the Wind. It looks like Archbishop Myers and Bishop Tebartz van Elst aren’t the only ones coming under scrutiny for their new and costly residences.  Atlanta Archbishop Wilton Gregory recently built a 2.2 million dollar residence and now is ‘fessing up about it.  It seems that Joseph Mitchell, nephew and heir of Margaret Mitchell (author of Gone with the Wind) left 15 million dollars to the Archdiocese with the bulk of it earmarked for the Cathedral—Mr. Mitchell’s parish.  The Cathedral had an expansion program that required the demolition of the clergy house and so the parish bought the Archbishop’s residence to use as a Cathedral rectory.  Thus the Archbishop needed to find a new place to live.  Archbishops have meetings and also host social events connected to fund-raising and charities.  His advisors were only too quick to “discern” what the Archbishop might need and Mitchell’s one story home in a fashionable neighborhood was torn down and a handsome Tudor Revival mansion built on its site.  In addition to suites for the Archbishop and several of his key aides, the house has several large meeting rooms as well as more formal rooms for receptions and social events.  There was a time when no one would have thought twice of a bishop owning such a home, but Pope Francis’ style has changed all that.  Unlike Myers or Tebartz-van-Elst, Gregory got the message early on and has signaled his willingness to move and have the home sold should the various diocesan advisory groups recommend that course.  Given the publicity they can hardly do elsewise. 

Gregory issued a statement saying:  “I am disappointed that, while my advisors and I were able to justify this project fiscally, logistically and practically, I personally failed to project the cost in terms of my own integrity and pastoral credibility with the people of God of north and central Georgia.” He went on to say: 

"I failed to consider the impact on the families throughout the Archdiocese who, though struggling to pay their mortgages, utilities, tuition and other bills, faithfully respond year after year to my pleas to assist with funding our ministries and services," he added.

Unlike the home of Archbishop Myers, Gregory’s residence does not belong to him personally, but to the Archdiocese.  Whether or not the Archdiocese sells it, it would be surprising if Archbishop Gregory doesn’t move out and into somewhat more discreet quarters.  

Why Are They Afraid of Pope Francis? 3

Gregory XVI

I think a third reason why so many are afraid of Pope Francis is his being a religious, and in particular being a Jesuit.  The last religious to be elected Pope was the Camaldolese Benedictine Mauro Cappellari who reigned as Gregory XVI (1830-1846).  He was one of the most conservative men to sit on the Throne of Peter.  In reaction to the French Revolution and the overthrow of the ancien regime, Gregory resisted the introduction of any and every novelty to the Papal States.  He was succeeded by the liberal Pius IX but despite the new Pope’s openness to reform, the repression of Gregory’s reign burst into open rebellion in 1848—the year that revolutions swept all Europe—and Pius had to flee Rome until French troops could restore order.  The challenge to his temporal authority represented in the revolution drove Pius to the extreme conservatism that marked his reign and has made him an enduring hero to the wing-nuts of the Catholic right.  Pius and all his successors—Leo XII, St. Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI have been diocesan priests, but in the intervening years, religious life has changed from representing the more conservative face of Catholicism to being the voice of Catholic liberalism.
The roots of the monastic and mendicant Orders (the Benedictines, the Cistercians, the Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, and Augustinians) were in part in protest against the socio-economic structures of their times. The friars in particular rejected the budding urban capitalism of the 13^th centuries in favor of communal property.   Both the monastic and mendicant movements were at first extra-canonical movements of the laity who were discontent with the options offered them by the clerical and institutional structures of their days.  (Neither Benedict nor Francis was a priest and both their movements were originally lay movements that accepted priests among their members but only as equals to the lay monks (Benedict) or lay brothers (Francis).  (The Carmelites and the Augustinians were also originally lay movements.)   The mendicants understand their role to be a prophetic voice that warns about those elements in society—and in the Church—that contradict the values set forth in the Gospel.  Moreover, from the beginning the mendicants rejected hierarchy and authoritarian government in favor of a radical democracy in which their superiors were not only elected by the brothers but were accountable to the brothers gathered in Chapter. 
Ignatius used a different model in establishing the Society of Jesus.  Drawing from his experience as a soldier and determined to effectively combat the inroads of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformers, Ignatius imposed a military structure on his new Society and demanded unquestioning obedience to one’s superiors in the society.  He also placed the Society at the disposal of the Pope for whatever missions the Pope required them to serve.  But in that service they were given remarkable freedom.  Ignatius did away with the choral recitation of the Divine Office—traditional not only for all religious up to that time but even for the secular clergy.   He also chose that his men would not have a religious habit.  While they normally wore a black cassock, standard clerical dress, they were free to abandon it for lay clothes as the mission required.  When the first Jesuit missionaries arrived in China they abandoned western dress for the saffron robes of Buddhist monks but then as they understood the culture better, they adopted the silk gowns of Confucian scholars in order to be more effective in presenting their ideas to the Chinese.  They celebrated Mass in Mandarin rather than Latin and adopted other elements of Chinese culture.  They were wildly successful in their mission and served in the Imperial Court where they wielded immense influence until the Augustinians and Franciscans, jealous at their successes, complained to Rome about the “Chinese Rites.”  Forced back to western expression by Rome, their mission failed as spectacularly as it had succeded.
Today most religious see their role in the Church very differently than do diocesan priests—and this is often a source of tension with bishops who are, for the most part, drawn from the diocesan clergy.  A Benedictine or Trappist who is ordained will tell you he is a monk first and a priest second. They are usually reluctant to take on ministries that require them to leave their monasteries. Similarly a Franciscan or Carmelite or Augustinian will tell you that he is a brother who is ordained for the service of the Church but who takes his primary vocational identity from his religious community rather than from his being a priest.  More and more religious look to serve in ministries that reflect the charism of their particular congregation and are anxious to leave parish ministry to the diocesan clergy.  Many religious priests today wear their religious habits in the Church or around their monastery or school, but beyond that dress plainly in ordinary clothes.  All this is fine, but to my mind it is the icing on the cake.
In the Civil Rights movement of the early and mid-sixties and in the anti-war movement of the late sixties and early seventies, the religious were first to get involved.  Not the religious priests, however, but the Sisters.  The world was shocked—and then delighted—to see Catholic Sisters marching with Dr. King from Selma to Montgomery.  The women finally shamed the men into putting on their jock straps and joining them.  Once into progressive causes, the men were not shy.  The Jesuit Father Daniel Berrigan and his brother, the Josephite Philip Berrigan were the leading Catholic voices against the war in Viet Nam.  Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, wrote thought-provoking books giving the spiritual roots of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements.  Bishops clamped down on the clergy—Cardinals Spellman of New York and McIntyre of Los Angles in particular—and while the diocesan guys had to cave, the religious, independent of the bishops, went on against the war, for open-housing, against American support for Latin American dictatorships, and for a series of social justice issues.  When Liberation Theologian Gustavo  Gutierrez fell afoul of the Peruvian hierarchy he found refuge in becoming a Dominican.   
These social changes worked their ways into the curriculum of Catholic schools, colleges, and universities—again, for the most part the province of religious communities.  Religious began to see that they had a role to play in being an alternative voice in the Church and for the Church—not contradicting the magisterium but raising the questions posed by the evangelical values laid out in the gospel even as Saint Francis had done in his day. 
Religious often refer to this role as their “prophetic call.”  I am not sure yet if that role has evolved to where it is truly prophetic.  I think religious need to look at themselves long and hard and ask themselves if they themselves are faithful to the gospel.  Frankly, I don’t think the renewal of religious life envisioned by the Council has reached anything near its potential.  Religious are still often very much a part of the systems they decry.  Nevertheless, I think someone needs to be a prophetic voice in and for the Church today.  Whether it is bishops who spend millions on refurbishing their residences, or the failure of so many Church institutions to pay a just wage or allow their employees to unionize, or the lack of just processes in ecclesiastical trials, the Church needs to be held as accountable as the Church wants to hold secular institutions and it is often the religious who are most outspoken in “outing” the injustices.
On the other hand, we need to see that leading prophetic voices in the Church such as Dom Helder Camara or Archbishop Oscar Romero or John XXIII came from the diocesan clergy.  How many secular priests staff inner-city parishes where they fight for better conditions for their parishioners and for their neighbors regardless of religion.  And when these diocesan priests run afoul of their bishops for their social activism they don’t have the escape hatch of a supportive community and the possibility of a new assignment that religious have.   

As a Jesuit Francis was never cutting edge.  In fact, he played the game very safely working closely with the Argentine hierarchy and even turning a blind eye to much of the injustice in his native land during the years it was ruled by a military junta.  Nevertheless, it is clear that Francis thinks differently than this predecessors.  He is more spontaneous and far less attentive to the fine details of rubric or law.  He is emerging as prophetic voice—not the radical Amos or even a Jeremiah—but prophetic none the less.  It is clear that there is a new sheriff in town.  When it comes to simple things like whether women can be included in the Holy Thursday Rite of the Washing of the Feet  or the call for us all to look at how we live and can we scale it back a notch or two, Francis is setting a new pace.  I don’t think there is much to fear, but then I don’t want to be a bishop who lives in a 41 million dollar Residenz. 

The Legacy of Saint Francis



I mentioned in an earlier posting that I had always—with one exception—found the Franciscans of whatever stripe given to charity.  The observant Greyfriars of Greenwich whom I had mentioned in some postings on Henry VIII were most notable in this regard.  When  Henry VIII sent his visitators to close the friary and disperse the friars, the visitators reported that the friars were bonded together so closely as brothers that no one could come between them.  Fraternal charity is characteristic of Franciscans but, as I had pointed out, there is one notable exception of which I am aware and it occurred within the Capuchin branch of the Franciscan family. 

Giotto's portray of Francis' soul being

taken to heaven

In 1987 a small group of Capuchin friars located in the Bronx (New York) led by Father Benedict Groeschel and with the encouragement of Cardinal John O’Connor, then Archbishop of New York, separated themselves from the Capuchin Order and established themselves as the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal.  The Capuchins themselves had been a reform movement with the observant Franciscans in the early sixteenth century.  Father Groeschel and his disciples claimed that they were simply trying to return to a more authentically Capuchin way of life but the particulars of how they separated themselves from the Capuchins involve a certain about of duplicity and deceit that left their Capuchin brothers deeply hurt.  Moreover, they represented themselves, or allowed themselves to be represented to benefactors and vocation prospects, as the authentic heirs of the Capuchin heritage so as to imply that the Capuchins had lost their charism.  Though Groeschel and the others should have known better than to allow this to happen, the villain, if there be a villain, in this process was Cardinal O’Connor who despite having no idea of what religious life is about—he himself was a diocesan priest, not a religious—interfered with a number of religious communities, often sowing seeds of dissent. 

Benedict Groeschel is, in addition to being a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal and a priest, a psychologist.  Some of his fellow priests are skeptical of him as a confessor or a spiritual director claiming that he is, or was in the days of his active ministry, “controlling” of penitents and spiritual directees, forbidding them from seeing other priests or counselors for advice and otherwise establishing his monopoly over their consciences. He certainly has taken very unnuanced stances in regard to a variety of issues and especially those involving human sexuality and his approach could be considered to verge on the sort of control one finds in some cults. 

Certainly the separation of various “reform” movements within religious orders is always a difficult process and often involves pain on both sides.  The difference in the Vatican II era is that most groups have tried to stress not “reform” which carries certain judgment values but “renewal” which is a less onerous term and doesn’t reek of the sort of spiritual pride to which many “reformers” are given.  Of course Groeschel’s group are known as Friars of the Renewal, but as in another community which Cardinal O’Connor set up, the Sisters of Life, there is also a certain smarminess in their attitude to those religious communities who see their role in the Church, and indeed who see the Church itself, in a different light. 

When Francis of Assisi established his Friars Minor in 1210 (the year of their approval by Pope Innocent III—the original brotherhood had gathered around Francis in the year or two immediately prior—he maintained a critical distance from the hierarchical Church.  Francis was by no means disloyal but neither was he complicit.  He saw that the hierarchical Church had drifted far from the evangelical ideals of the Gospel.  Humility and service had been abandoned for pomp and power.  Francis established his brotherhood to be a witness to the Gospel in a Church that had so compromised itself with the world of its day that the Gospel was all but forgotten.  Francis had a deep personal friendship with Pope Innocent III as well as with many of the prelates of his day—those who wanted to see reform in the Church, but he and his friars refused to compromise their vision of a Gospel Life to accommodate the power and the pomp of prelates.  Habits and cords, or even austere poverty, don’t of themselves make one a disciple of Francis, or of Jesus Christ.  The spirit of Francis today is found more among the “nuns on the bus” than some of those who claim to be his sons or daughters but have lost that critical distance from the institutional Church. Even further from Francis and his ideals is the failure of fraternal charity and the triumph of spiritual pride. 

Franciscans of the Immaculate--Saint Francis 3

The Crucifixo of San Damiano

which spoke to Francis

In looking at Saint Francis and the lay hermit movement out of which his Franciscans developed I think we can identify seven characteristics.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->1.     <!--[endif]-->Centrality of Christ.  The lay hermit movement of the 13^th century was Christocentric in its spirituality which is to say that they were focused exclusively on Christ as the organizing program of their spirituality.  The Gospels provided them with a direct encounter with Christ who was the only path to the Father.  There certainly was a tender love for the Blessed Virgin  Mary and an admiration for the saints, especially the apostles,  but it was Chris and Christ alone who was their model. 

<!--[if !supportLists]-->2.     <!--[endif]-->In their love for Christ, they consciously copied the life of Jesus and his apostles and used the example of the early Christian Community as described in Acts 4 as their model for their own communal life. 

<!--[if !supportLists]-->3.     <!--[endif]-->Their identification with Christ was rooted in a deep appreciation of his humanity and in particular with his poverty and his suffering.  Especially for Francs, but certainly for all the lay hermits of the time, the key to imitating Christ was to emulate his poverty.  Poverty was not only the rejection of such luxuries as fine habits and the best of food and drink, but was a rejection of the privileges that came with being identified with the institutional Church.  Francis and others rejected living in monasteries choosing instead only the shabbiest of dwellings.  Clerical titles and honors were rejected in favor of all, even the priests, being called “Brother.”  No distinction was made between the ordained and the non-ordained in their communities or in their ministries to the laity other than in the administration of the sacraments.  In other words, they rejected the hierarchical aspects of the institutional Church and even when they were required to accept the office of bishop or cardinal they maintained the strictest marks of poverty and humility. 

<!--[if !supportLists]-->4.     <!--[endif]-->Their rejection of living in monasteries was also due to their commitment to be like the Son of Man who had nowhere to lay his head—homeless wandering was an essential characteristic of the lay hermit life.  Francis insisted that the hermitages and simple “convents” (as opposed to monasteries) where his “lesser brothers” (Friars Minor) lived be owned by others and only given to their use so that, if others judged them unfaithful to their vocation, they could be expelled.  They were to own nothing, either individually or collectively. 

<!--[if !supportLists]-->5.     <!--[endif]-->Lay hermits imitated Christ in their solitary prayer.  While some lay hermit groups, and Francis’ brotherhood was one of them, prayed the Divine Office together, the heart of their prayer was solitary discourse with God in their cells or other abandoned places during the night.  Jacques de Vitry, a Belgian Bishop met Francis and his hermits at the papal court in Perugia in 1216 and mentioned how they “retreated to their hermitages at night to spend the night in prayer.” 

<!--[if !supportLists]-->6.     <!--[endif]-->Lay hermits were not cloistered as were monastic hermits such as the Carthusians. They rejected most monastic practices because their vocation was quite essentially different than the monastic vocation. Rather they were expected to have a ministry among the sick and especially lepers, as well as widows, orphans, the disabled, and the poor.  They also reached out to sinners and those alienated from the Church. 

<!--[if !supportLists]-->7.     <!--[endif]-->Finally, in imitation of Christ and the Apostles, Francis and other lay hermits preached the Kingdom of God—a life of discipleship, a new way of living out the Gospel in one’s daily life.  The Kingdom of God is not about what happens after we die—and that was never the emphasis of Francis’ preaching—it is about living in this world under the authority of the Gospel.  The Kingdom of God is putting into practice the teachings of Jesus in our daily lives.  Francis understood this. 

The Franciscans of the Immaculate carry on the Franciscan Charism in several respects.  They live simply and without luxury.  They reach out and encounter ordinary people and particularly those on the fringes of our economic structures.  In their fervor as a new community they certainly reject many of the material comforts to which some religious have accommodated themselves.  On the other hand there are significant ways in which they differ from Francis and the Franciscan tradition.  Their approach to Christ is through his Immaculate Mother and their spirituality is more “Marian” than Chistocentric.  In this regard they follow the example of Saint Maximilian Kolbe more than Francis.  They also, while maintaining a fairly austere life, have kept many of the monastic trimmings that had crept into Franciscanism (and other mendicant orders) through the centuries after Trent and especially in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  Their prayer is primarily liturgical/ceremonial rather than solitary and contemplative and their liturgies are, despite their general poverty, given to some degree of splendor in ritual and the accouterments.  Their emphasis is more on teaching the Church than preaching the Kingdom and they are considerably more enamored of the institutional model of Church than the kerygmatic model of Francis.   All of this is perfectly acceptable of course but it indicates that they are more disciples of Saint Maximilian Kolbe than Francis of Assisi and their model of religious life is more based in 19^th century romanticism than the 13^th century evangelicalism of Saint Francis. 

What will happen, as it most usually does in religious life, is that as some of the Franciscans of the Immaculate study the Franciscan charism the group itself will make certain corrections of course to being them more into what we might call “Franciscan Orthodoxy.”  Hopefully in that process they won’t lose the fervor and commitment to simplicity that marks them.  If they can move beyond their attempts at a literal emulation Saint Maximilian to become disciples of Francis, they could be a real leaven for renewal in the Franciscan family.  

Franciscans of the Immaculate--St Francis 2

Pope Innocent III 

Well, let’s get back to Saint Francis.  As I had mentioned two posts ago, Francis had given up on his party animal life and took on the position of a lay hermit.  Lay hermits were, as I had written, canonically recognized laity who lived in poverty and prayer, not a cloistered life but a life of wandering in the towns and villages talking about the Gospels and the challenges of following Jesus in the very materialistic society of  13^th century Europe.  These men—and they were invariably men—dropped out of a society they had come to consider shallow and pointless.  (A similar but not quite equivalent option for women were the beguines.  Beguines were not given to the extremes of poverty that characterized the lay hermits.)  Most of the men drawn to the lay hermit life were from the prosperous bourgeois families, were somewhat educated, able to read and write and usually with a little Latin.  What characterized the spirituality of the movement was an absorbing fascination with the humanity of Christ, especially manifest in his suffering and in his poverty which they sought to imitate. 

In the last decades of the 12^th century, the Church had lost many members to new movements arising out of an evangelical zeal for discipleship that had seized the Middle Class.  A wealthy merchant of Lyon (in what is today France but at the time was more culturally tied to Lombardy in northern Italy) by the name of Peter Waldo had been seized with fervor by the gospels and had taken literally the words of Christ to go sell all you possess, give to the poor, and to then come and follow him.  Waldo, who had been immensely wealthy, did precisely that and became a street beggar preaching in the towns and villages around Lyon.  The Archbishop of that city, embarrassed by his wealth in contrast to Waldo’s poverty had ordered him to stop preaching.  Waldo went to the Pope, Alexander III, who commended his dedication to live in the poverty of Christ but, as Waldo was not in Holy Orders, supported the Archbishop’s ban on Waldo’s preaching.  In the end, Waldo and his followers separated from the Church over this ban on lay preaching.  

The Church was facing a steady drain of some of its most zealous members precisely because their evangelical fervor was a threat to the comfort and luxury of the bishops and some priests.  Men like Waldo were considered fanatics and extremists by clergy and hierarchs who wanted to enjoy the privileges their status brought them.  In addition to Waldo and his followers, sometimes called the Poor Men of Lyon, or the Poor Men of Lombardy (to which they had spread from Lyon) there were other groups such as the Umiliati.  Still others were seduced into a form of Gnosticism called Catharism which, unlike Waldo’s followers or the Umiliati, crossed the boundaries into heresy. 

In 1199 one of the greatest—if not the greatest—of men to occupy the Chair of Peter was elected to the papacy.  Lotario, Count of Segni, was elected Pope and took the name Innocent III.  The new pope had studied Theology in Paris, the premier theological faculty of the time known for its liberal thought, and then had studied law in Bologna, the leading faculty for civil and canon law.  Moreover, not only was he highly educated, he was personally holy.  Despite his high office, Innocent led an austere personal life (sound familiar?) wearing the simplest of robes, made of wool rather than silk and expensive fabrics. He ate spartanly and his private apartments were plain.   He upheld the dignity of the papal office by integrity rather than by pomp.  At the same time he was a strong leader who brooked no opposition.  One of his first acts was to distinguish between canonical preaching (doctrine) and giving what we might call today “witness talks.”  Laity could, with the permission of the bishop, inspire others by being given the opportunity even in church to speak of what the Gospels meant to them and how they might better live out the teachings of Jesus.  This role of lay preaching was especially entrusted to these lay hermits.

The Lay hermit movement was especially taken by the sentence attributed to Saint Jerome in his vocation—“naked to follow the naked Christ.”   Lay hermit groups sprung up all over Europe as these men renounced material possessions to voluntarily live in the most abject poverty, to minister to the least of Christ’s brothers and sisters—especially the lepers—and to speak to others of making the Gospels real in one’s life.  This is what Francis sought to do.  He returned to his ruined church of San Damiano where he lived, spending the nights in prayer. By day he ministered to the lepers and other social outcasts, all the time slowly rebuilding the ruined chapel.  His former friends came to see him.  Some brought him help in his projects.  A few joined him, taking the habit of hermits themselves.  They were not, at this point, religious but they did have canonical standing, blessed by the Bishop of Assisi.

In the popular and lovely 1972 Zeffirelli film, Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Bishop Guido of Assisi is portrayed as an obese and slothful prelate who doesn’t take Francis seriously.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.  Guido, a friend of the reforming Innocent, was enthused by Francis’ vision and anxious to help him.  He provided the necessary introductions to have Francis meet the Pope.  Now the Pope, while ardent in programs to reform the Church, did not at first see Francis as a serious aid in this project.  For an educated man used to the corridors of power, how could this repentant playboy from a mediocre Umbrian hill-town with no theological training be of any real help in cleaning out the nest of sycophants and parasites into which both the Roman Curia and local hierarchy had, for the most part, degenerated?  (If this sounds familiar, remember that the past gives us insight into the present.)   The story goes that the Pope had a dream in which he saw Francis holding up the crumbling Lateran Basilica.  (The Lateran was, at the time, the papal residence.  The Popes only moved to the Vatican in the 15^th century and even then it didn’t become the primary papal residence until the 19^th.)  It is a lovely story and there may be some truth to it but it is more likely that in the interview that Innocent gave to Francis, the Pope’s mind was changed and he saw the potential this hermit had to give the Church new spiritual energy.

An important question is why Francis did not choose to enter a traditional religious order of his day.  He certainly had options,  there were monasteries—Benedictine and Cistercian as well as Carthusian—that would have permitted him traditional religious life.  There were also the Canons Regular—religious, mostly clerics, who led a community life while doing pastoral work in parishes and preaching.  We can see by the choices he made why traditional religious life did not attract him.  Religious had security.  Their monasteries provided a roof over their head and food on their table as well as winning them a respected place in society.  As Francis’ brotherhood developed he forbad them to own property, even the houses in which they lived.  They lived in the neighborhoods of the poor, outside the city walls and the protection those walls afforded.  They wore the patched clothing of the poor, not proper religious habits.  They didn’t aim for the respect of the Middle Class—far from it, they went out of their way to identify with the poor who were held in contempt by the merchants and business owners.  In fact, however, their integrity in embracing the poverty of Christ did win them the respect of almost all in society and they drew vocations in great numbers from the very classes whose values and lifestyle they were rejecting. 

Francis started a revolution that reformed the Church.  Thousands of men took up his lifestyle.  Eventually this small band of lay hermits in Umbria grew into an Order of tens of thousands of brothers spread across the known world. Francis’ spiritual sons would go off to Muslim lands and die as martyrs; they would go on expedition to Peking and the court of the great Kahn.  They would accompany Cortes and Pizzaro in the Americas.  A son of Saint Francis would be the first white man to see the great cataracts of Niagara.  Franciscans would sit on the throne of Peter—some as good popes, others as bad.  Most important though was that the work of Francis and his brothers among the poor and working classes probably staved off a Luther or a Calvin for three hundred years.  It was an evangelical renewal of the Church—something we could use today.