Pope Francis, Two Churches, Potential for Schism, and Bridges Too Far

I have done several postings over the past two years on the Franciscans of the Immaculate, one of the new communities that has sprung up in the Church in the post-conciliar years.  When living in Rome, I would often see the friars and sometimes the sisters of this community in their bluish grey habits, especially near the little church of the Annunziatina at the foot of the Borgo Santo Spirito just as you cross the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II on the way to Saint Peter’s.  The Friars of the Immaculate were established by Father Stefano Manelli and Father Gabriele Pelletteri, Conventual Franciscans, and in 1998 were separated from the Conventuals into their own independent congregation.  In July 2013, just four months after his election, Pope Francis stepped in and replaced Father Manelli, the superior general, with an Apostolic Commissioner, Father Fidenzio Volpi.  Father Volpi is not a member of the Franciscans of the Immaculate—the whole idea of an Apostolic Commissioner is to appoint an outsider to the group to correct the problems that are beyond the ability of an internal administrator.

This is not the first time that the Holy See has removed a religious superior of general rank.  When the Jesuit General, Father Pedro Arrupe—whom John Paul II deeply distrusted for the direction in which Father Arrupe was leading the Jesuits—suffered a debilitating stroke in 1981, the Pope appointed Father Paolo Dezza to head the Order in place of the Vicar General, the American Father Vincent O’Keefe, who would have followed Father Arrupe’s line of action.  Father Dezza governed the Society for two years until a General Congregation was called and elected Father Peter Hans Kolvenbach to succeed Father Arrupe as General.   A key difference, of course, is that Father Dezza, while appointed over the Society by the Pope, was himself a member of the Society of Jesus.  Father Volpi, while not a Franciscan of the Immaculate, is, as a Capuchin, a member of the Franciscan family and from a branch of that family that has a long and established Franciscan heritage. 

When Father Manelli realized he was about to be removed from office he apparently moved some portion of the community’s financial assets—both property and liquid assets—from the community’s control to the control of members of his own family to prevent Father Volpi having access to them.  Father Volpi reported this in a confidential memo to the members of the community as was both his right and his obligation.  Someone leaked the memo, however, and the Manelli family sued Father Volpi for defamation of character.  The moving of community assets to outside sources is, after all, embezzlement and so the memo could be read to accuse Father Manelli and his family of embezzlement. 

In Italian law, before a lawsuit can go to court, there must be recourse to an arbiter who will try to settle the matter without a formal judicial process.  Father Volpi explained to the arbiter that he had merely reported the transfer of assets, made no accusations against the family (though anyone can see that  1 +1 does = 2), and agreed to clarify the matter on the Congregation’s website by publishing a joint statement with the Manelli family explaining the facts.  All well and good.

No, not all was well and good.  The Manelli family, through a family friend who remained anonymous, published a press release that Father Volpi “had admitted his slander and lies” against them in court, was found guilty, and had been sentenced to pay a fine of €20,000.  Father Volpi has since come out and denied the rumor that he admitted guilt and was convicted and fined, and has, in turn, sued the Manelli family for defamation. 

OK, OK, so we have a tempest in a Roman teapot.  Why should this be seen as revealing a fault line for possible schism?  The barque of Peter is navigating far more tempestuous seas than the struggle for control of the assets of a small community of friars and nuns.  We have phase II of the Synod on the family and the Francis faction is fighting for some drastic changes in the discipline of who can who cannot receive the Eucharist.  Indeed there is a conflict brewing over the indissolubility of marriage and the integrity—or lack thereof—of same-sex unions.  Meanwhile, there is a shift in the sort of men Rome is naming as bishops and not all are confident in the “orthodoxy” of the Francis men.  The Dogs of War have been called off the American Nuns who are busy again riding around on buses agitating for the forgotten and overlooked in our society.  Francis himself says that it time for us to get over our “obsession” with the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage and that we need to look at a broader spectrum of todays’ issues: like climate change and immigration.  Who cares about the Franciscans of the Immaculate.  They are supposed to be poor anyway.   Why do they need any assets?

The plight of Father Manelli and his Congregation have galvanized the right-wing not because of the particulars of this case, but because of what Father Manelli stands for.  What brought on the removal of Father Manelli and the appointment of an Apostolic Commissioner is that even before Francis was elected, Friars from the Congregation had appealed to Pope Benedict against Father Manelli’s leadership. Father Manelli had imposed the usus antiquior (the “old Mass”) on the Congregation as its normal liturgy and while the Friars of the Immaculate tend to the conservative, this was too much for some of them who wished to continue using the Novus Ordo (the Vatican II Rite). But it was not only the liturgy.  Father Manelli was turning the clock back to a pre-conciliar era across the board.  The initial formation of the friars and their theological education were also being reorganized to bypass the Second Vatican Council.  The Congregation’s customs and constitutions too were being pushed in a direction more and more divergent from the rest of the Church.  This proved too much for many of the Friars who feared that they were drifting into the Lefebvre schism.   They saw Father Manelli’s program  was not a matter of being conservative or traditionalist, it was becoming a repudiation of the Council in everything but word.  The visitation of the community ordered initially by Pope Benedict led to his successor appointing an outside commissioner to put the congregation back on track with the Church.  So what you have here in Father Manelli and his faction is a clear symbol of “Here I stand (in opposition to Vatican II); I can do no other. God help me.”  And in Father Volpi you have a surrogate for Pope Francis—by whose authority Father Volpi has taken on Father Manelli and his faction—and everything Francis stands for in his Vatican II march to the sea.  The Vatican II Church and the Resist Vatican II Church which has grown within the belly of the Vatican II Church have, in the saga of the Franciscans of the Immaculate, a clear field of battle. 

One of the groups which have led the charge of the Resist Vatican II Church is the Lepanto Institute and its founder, Michael Hichborn, formerly of Judy Brown’s American Life League.   Michael Lofton, a convert to Catholicism affiliated with the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter (The Anglican Usage Ordinariate in the United States), has written a scathing attack on the Francis pontificate published on the Lepanto Institute Webpage.  Lofton considers the Church under Francis to be in its “Babylonian Captivity” and he begins his attack with Father Volpi’s governance of the Franciscans of the Immaculate and then moved on to attack Archbishop Bruno Forte’s work as Special Secretary of the Synod on the Family, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldiserri as Secretary General of the Synod and Father Thomas Rosica as press-liaison for the Synod.  Lofton accused Father Rosica and  his betters of having advanced the “Kasperian” agenda that would permit a change in the Church’s discipline regarding admitting divorced and remarried persons to the Sacraments.  Lofton’s outspoken attack on Francis’ leadership puts the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter in an awkward position for though he has no official standing in the Ordinariate such opinions make this group of ex-Anglicans appear less than fully committed to their new Catholic family,

Lofton is only one of several writers for the Lepanto Institute that is pulling at the leash that holds the Resist Vatican II Church to the keys of Peter.  Recently Italian Catholic writer and historian Roberto de Mattei, an outspoken critic of Pope Francis, published an article on the website of his Lepanto foundation asserting that developments since the election of Francis, including his famous “Who am I to judge?” remarks about gays, risk “a road that leads to schism and heresy.”  De Mattei should know better.  Pope’s don’t lead to schism.  A Pope can go into heresy, but he can’t go into schism.  The schism is with those who reject his authority. De Mattei’s anti-Francis rhetoric has grown so strong that even very conservative Catholic sources such as Radio Maria have begun to distance themselves.  But not the bloggers—the Katholic Krazies on the blogosphere like Rorate Caeli love de Mattei and quote him frequently ever widening the divide that is growing in the Church in the controversies over Vatican II.  The Krazies have picked up the Volpi incident and had a field day with it.  Some—and here is credit to Rorate Caeli—have published Volpi’s defense and let the readers decide but many others have only published the Manelli family’s version.  All in all it leaves a very sour taste and certainly undermines the credibility of those who are trying to advance the Resist Vatican II Church agenda.  

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

Sister Joan Chittester OSB

I want to return for several entries to the subject of an evangelical renewal of Religious Life.  The Vatican Report on the Religious Sisters in the United States is supposedly to be released on Tuesday and I am anxious to read what it has to say, but I am not overly hopeful that the Holy See will—or, for that matter, can—do a substantial critique of Religious Life as most of those who hold key positions, other than Pope Francis himself, are not Religious and have typically shown (as have our American bishops) a gross inability to capture the substance of the vocation to the consecrated life.  I think of Bishop Paul Loverde of Arlington, a somewhat typical American bishop—that is to say a well meaning but dense individual who has no appreciation for the limits of his own knowledge and who, in a once-hopeful ambition for higher things (The Archbishopric of Hartford) has traded his moral compass to become nothing more than a “company man.”  Now that the “company” has had a change of direction under its new pontifical leadership, the Bishop is befuddled and confused and the Church entrusted to his care is finding its wheels spinning but unable to move forward.  Tragic.  But I digress.  The Bishop remarked to some friends regarding a community of women Religious that has to withdraw from their apostolate in his diocese for lack of vocations that “everything would be fine if they only still wore veils.”  Now I think this particular community of women is dying out in great part for reasons of their own doing, but not for lack of veils.  In fact, I think the preoccupation in the pre-Conciliar Church for how veils got pinned or how the Sisters were to keep their eyes lowered left many religious congregations totally incapable of the sort of renewal to which the Council called them. 

I mentioned in previous blogs George Weigel’s vision of an Evangelical Catholicism and while I think his treatment of the renewal of Religious Life is absolutely from Planet Qo'noS or some other distant unreality produced by a mind unaccustomed to having to confront the daily challenges faced by those who belong to the working class, I do agree with his fundamental thesis that

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.

 From which thesis I have drawn the following principles to look at Religious Life.

1.   The Religious vocation, like all other vocations in the Church is rooted in the baptismal vocation common to all Christians.

2.    Therefor all Religious, of whatever tradition they belong, are called to participate in the evangelizing mission of the Church

3.    The authenticity and power of the Gospel to which they bear witness will be dependent on their integrity as human persons (human decency)

4.    Their integrity, in turn, flows from their friendship with Christ

5.    This friendship with the Risen Lord is nourished by an immersion in the scriptures

6.    This friendship with the Risen Lord is nourished by a rich sacramental life

7.    This friendship with the Risen Lord is sustained by a life of deep personal prayer

8.    This friendship with the Risen Lord will bring us into a profound solidarity with the least of his sisters and brothers.  

We have discussed the first three of these principles in an earlier blog; let’s look at the fourth, which by the way, I consider key.  Sister Joan Chittester in her book The Fire in These Ashes which concerns the renewal of Religious Life writes that there is one reason and one reason only to come to Religious Life and that is to find God.  A friend of mine, himself a Religious and a Professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, expanded on this and said in a homily: “There is only one reason to come to Religious Life and that is to Find God through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”  To me this is spot on and I think it is what Weigel means by “to make friendship with Christ.”  It is great to want to be a missionary or to teach children or to nurse the sick or to work with the poor but these are not reasons to enter Religious Life.  And the problem with many of the communities founded in the 19^th and 20^th centuries is they copied the trappings of the monastic vocation—habits and choral prayer and kissing one’s scapular when begging pardon—but not the essence of the monastic vocation which is the solitude of the heart in search for God.   Many of these communities, both of men and women, have great pieties but no spirituality at their foundation.  The particular group of Sisters to which Bishop Loverde was referring run a retreat center where they have for years triaged the spiritually ill and comforted them with palliative care but not given them the health of a mature and genuine spirituality.  And they couldn’t because, while several of the individual sisters had discovered the spiritual life, their Congregation itself never understood the substance of Spirituality proper to their particular identity.  In fact many Religious today have nothing more to offer than the milk and cookies of the Spiritual Life.  That must change if Religious Life is to survive.       

I have to say that I am not impressed by most American Religious today.  On the one hand you get the mascara-wearing latte-sippers like Sister Sara Marks who was written about in the article that triggered this series.  On the other hand you get groups like the Friars of the Renewal or the Franciscans of the Immaculate or the Sisters of Life which groups revert back to that model where the religious are so different from the rest of the Church that they cannot effectively serve as witnesses to the universal call to holiness.  On the one hand, in a world that needs the witness of community, we don’t need Religious living individually in apartments—we need the example of people who are struggling to live in an intimate communion with one another despite the individual differences and preferences that we all have.  We need people who choose to live together in charity and to work out their differences and conflicts in mutual respect with one another so that there is an example for families—and by families I mean all the arrangements of human persons that designate themselves as families—that some sort of communal life is not only possible but an attractive alternative to the isolation of our modern culture.  In this secularized world we need examples of men and women who are educated and intelligent and professional who still gather for prayer and consider such a gathering the most important time of their day.  In a world of crass consumerism we need the challenge provided by men and women who have what they need to live with dignity and self-respect and to accomplish the work entrusted to them but who aren’t out to have the latest and the newest and the most costly of everything.

At the same time, we need to have men and women who embrace a simple life freely and whose lack of life’s frivolities are their own mature choices and not because someone else has determined what they need and what they don’t need.   We need mature men and women who can make sound decisions for themselves in in how best to serve God and his kingdom and not be at the whim and prejudice of a “superior.”    We need a Religious Life that brings out maturity in its members, demands of them a responsibility for their choices and actions, and permits them to respond to the graces that God has given them individually and not expect them to conform to some cookie-cutter “ideal” that a founder or a bishop has/had for them.  A mature spirituality will evoke this psychological autonomy  balanced with a free desire for self-emptying (kenosis) from Religious that will enable them to serve as examples of mature Christian discipleship.  I admire the enthusiasm of the various new congregations that are springing up; they are a welcome breath of spring after the burned out and tired old souls who no longer have the passion for radical commitment but I at the same time I am afraid that the enthusiasm will shortly be quenched by unhealthy structures of power copied from pre-conciliar days and a lack of roots due to the shallow pieties that characterize the devotional life of these new communities.  A genuine renewal of Religious Life will find a via media that will both provide a depth of the Spiritual Life and a psychologically healthy model for communal living.  To be cont.  

The Trojan Horse in the Tridentine Mass

Franciscans of the Immaculate

meeting with Pope Francis at

Casa Santa Marta June 10

I have written before on the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, a group originating in the Friars Minor Conventual (OFM Conv.) but becoming an independent Institute of Religious Life of Pontifical Right in 1998 with Father Stefano Manelli as their Superior General. Last year Pope Francis removed Father Manelli as Superior and put the community under the governorship of Capuchin Father Fidenzio Volpi OFM Cap.  It is not an extraordinary gesture for the Holy See to remove a Superior General and appoint a Vicar of the Holy See’s own choosing, but it is exceptional to bring in a superior from outside the congregation itself.  It seems that the fuss is because the Franciscans of the Immaculate—or their leadership—made the decision that henceforth they would celebrate only the pre-conciliar rite known as the TLM or “Traditional Latin Mass” or the “Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.”  But it turns out it is far more complicated and involves the issue of whether or not the friars accept the magisterial authority of the Church as expressed in the Decrees of the Second Vatican Council.
Of course, for a religious community entrusted with parish churches and public shrines to decide that it will no longer celebrate the “ordinary” Rite of the Mass, that is the Novus Ordo, is problematic for any bishop who knows the pastoral needs of his people require the ordinary form as the ordinary every-day rite.  The bishop must provide for those of the faithful who want the “extra-ordinary form” but even more he must provide for the far greater numbers who want Mass in their own language and according to the 1970 Missal.  But it turns out that the problem runs deeper than the rite.
The Holy Father met with a delegation of Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate on June 10.  The meeting was a bit tense on both sides though all remained cordial.  What is interesting though is that after the meeting with the Pope, a considerable number of young friars who were present—novices and those in temporary profession—applied to leave the Order.  One spilled the beans, saying that he left “because he (the young friar) does not accept the Second Vatican Council.”
This is the problem—not with the Franciscans of the Immaculate Conception, the majority of whom I am sure accept the Second Vatican Council, but with many who “hide out” from the Church in the TLM.  The problem is not the rite; it is the Council just as the Council is the sticking point with the quasi-schismatic Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X.  (I say “quasi-schismatic” because though the excommunication against them was lifted, they have still not been restored to the unity of the Church, and this is because they refuse to accept the teachings of the Council.)  We can no more accept in the Church those who reject the authority of the Council than we can accept those who reject the authority of the Pope.  One might disobey a Council (we do every time we kneel in a Sunday Liturgy or during the Easter Season) or one might disobey a Papal teaching (contraceptive Catholics, for example) but disobeying is not the same a rejecting the authority.  As regards the Second Vatican Council, for example, one might personally choose not to have anything to do with non-Catholics, but neither now can one deny the authority of the Church to enter into fraternal dialogue with Protestants or with non-Christians, or criticize a bishop or priest who permits non-Catholic Christians to use a church for their worship, or who participates in non-sacramental worship with them.  That, of course, is only one example but for the majority of those who reject the Second Vatican Councils, the rejection is on matters of Ecumenism or Inter-Religious Dialogue.  
The problem is not only with the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate.  I know a parish in the Arlington Diocese which hosts a weekly TLM Mass and which permits parents to “home-school” their children according to the Baltimore Catechism rather than participate in the Religious Education program of the parish.  (The same parish does not have a Catholic School because the pastor does not want to provide an education subject to the diocesan guidelines which would require too many “concessions to modernism.”)  The Baltimore Catechism, a book which provided the basic religious education for many of us, has not been revised to bring it into accord with the teaching of the Church these fifty years since Vatican II and consequently differs from the magisterium on any number of points. 
If the TLM continues to provide an alternative Catholicism, a Catholicism without the Council, it will end up being suppressed.  There is room for a variety of Rites in the Church—we have always had a variety of Rites—but there is no room for rejecting the teachings of an Ecumenical Council.  Ultimately,  unless a conformity of catechesis is maintained across the Roman Rite, Pope Francis or one of his successors will end up suppressing the Rite and the secret schism within the Church will be forced into the open. 

The Obamazation of Pope Francis III

The Founder of the Franciscans of Immaculate,

Father Stefano Manelli, with the Sisters of the

Congregation

For many neo-trads, Pope Francis’ most damning stance was taken on that airplane back from World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro when he was asked—in regard to the case of a priest, Monsignor Battista Ricca, accused of having had several same-sex affairs—what policy he would follow in regard to gay clergy.  Pope Francis first said that he had investigated the rumors about Monsignor Ricca and did not find them credible, but then went on to say: "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?"  This comment sent the world of Catholic neo-trads crazy.  It was a marked departure from the policies of Francis’ two predecessors, Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II, both of whom said that men with deep-rooted same-sex attraction should not be admitted to the priesthood.  Ironically, Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict, despite their tough talk on the issue, were notoriously lax in turning a blind eye to homosexual indiscretions among the ranks of their closest aides and advisors.  In fact, both popes moved rather effortlessly in the atmosphere of sexual ambiguity that has developed in the Roman Curia over the past thirty years.  Francis too seems not to be threatened by being surrounded by a significant number of gay clergy but, unlike his predecessors, he is both honest about it and determined to address the issue.  I am not expecting the reforms of the Roman Curia currently being directed by the commission of eight cardinals to purge every Vatican worker with same-sex attraction.  That would be neither desirable nor realistic.  I am expecting a Curia that has integrity—an administration in which the men and women (yes, there are women in Vatican posts—though not the most significant ones) who are charged with assisting the Pope in the governance of the Church will be people of their word; men and women who, regardless of their sexual attraction, conform their lives to the values the Church proclaims. And I certainly don’t limit such integrity to matters of celibacy as there are far more problems in the central administration of the Church than sexual misconduct.  We need to see a Curia that witnesses to the Gospel to humble service rather than give itself to careerism, graft, and the raw abuse of power.  However, in answering the now-famous question, Pope Francis dealt with the issue of gay clergy very appropriately—as a matter of sin and grace rather than ideology.  Human nature being what it is, even after the reform of the Curia, both sin and grace will still have an operative role in the administration of the Church—after all, that is what our Christian Gospel is about.  And we must keep the mystery of sin and grace front and center in our perspective.  But those who were upset with Francis and his response were unhappy precisely because they want to deal with it as a matter of judgment—not leaving it to the judgment of God but to their own petty pharisaic preoccupation with the speck in their neighbor’s eye. After all, if the Pope declines to judge, how can they claim to have any title to the task?   To bolster their arguments, they even dragged in Franklin Graham, son of the famous Evangelist, Billy Graham.  Unfortunately the younger Graham lacks the Wisdom of Christ’s Gospel that allowed his father to transcend sectarian and other biases and bring people to Christ rather than drive them away with pharisaical harshness.  For many neo-trads who were convinced that the “liberal” ideas of the Vatican II and post-Vatican II years had been turned back forever, this statement of Pope Francis came as quite a shock.  Most bloggers were too stunned to react and scrambled to put the Pope’s comments into a “context.”  There was some concern that he used the word “gay”—an English expression inserted into his Italian remarks—because it “validated” the gay perspective by using a word by which those who identify with the LGBT movement(s) identify themselves.  Among the quick to react was one “Thinking Housewife:” (http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/)   who wrote

ONE of the most disturbing things about Pope Francis’s recent comments on the plane from Rome to Rio was his implication that the Church may legitimately view homosexuality as a permanent inclination and a form of identity. But there is no such thing as a Christian homosexual. There are obviously Christians who have homosexual desires, but not homosexual Christians.

One of her respondents wrote

Those who define themselves by some sin have no place in the Church, and in rejecting the sin, the Church must reject those who identify themselves as willingly, unrepentingly, participating in that sin. 

Talk about make-it-up-as-you-go-along theology.   Well, actually not: I should call it a borrowed theology.  If we were Calvinists this would be true, but in our Catholic world, the wheat and tares grow together in the same field only to be separated out at the final judgment by the One who is to Judge.   This is a key part of the problem with the Francis-bashers.  The Jansenism in which they have been steeped is simply a variation on Calvin’s twisting of Saint Augustine.  The Catholic position is that the Church has a mission to sinners—not after they repent or when they repent—but precisely at that point in their lives when they find themselves in conflict with God’s plan.  I seem to recall something about “Healthy people do not need the physician, the sick do.  The Son of Man has come not for the righteous but for sinners.”  But then perhaps I take Jesus too much at his word.

The Thinking House Wife’s reaction was mild compared to Mundabor’s Blog (http://mundabor.wordpress.com/) whose author’s frustration poured forth in this invective: There is no week now without this disgraceful man reaching for a new deep from the gutter in which he has already put himself.  And this about the Vicar of Christ, the Successor to Saint Peter.   The Liberals were never so vile in their anger with John Paul or Benedict—but hey, not everybody is happy about the changed menu in the Catholic cafeteria. 

In fact, most people took Pope Francis’ comments on gays quite positively and so, considering the dramatic impact of this new approach, the neo-trad critics got surprisingly little traction on this issue.  Moreover the reaction was undoubtedly dulled by another controversy brewing at exactly the same time, and one that stole the gay-thunder by causing a flap about the “Extra-ordinary Form” of the Liturgy and the right of priests to celebrate that form guaranteed by Pope Benedict XVI in Summorum Pontificum.   

Before flying home from World youth Day Pope Francis had appointed Capuchin Franciscan Friar Fidenzo Volpi as Apostolic Commissioner to settle difficulties among the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate.  It is still unclear—and the smoke of this still raging fire is making it ever more unclear—what the root issue is that has divided the community. (I have a number of blog entries on the Franciscans of the Immaculate: August 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 14  2013.)   The problems seem to have originated with a decision of the Founder/General Superior of the Congregation, Father Stefano Manelli, that in their friaries only the pre-conciliar rites would be used.  While the Congregation is quite traditional, not all friars were quite that conservative and wanted to maintain the option to use the Novus Ordo.  They appealed to the Holy See to protect their rights to use the “Ordinary Form” of the approved Liturgy of the Church.  When Father Volpi began to unravel the complexities of the complaints, he found that it was about far more than which liturgy to use.  The conservative nature of the Congregation had attracted any number of candidates and friars who not only preferred the Baroque Rite, but who rejected the Rite of Paul VI (the Novus Ordo).  Moreover, it was not simply the rites they rejected but the teachings of the Second Vatican Council on issues such as ecumenism, inter-religious dialogue, and freedom of conscience.  At this point the issue becomes are these friars Catholic?  The requirement to accept the teachings of the Council and validity of the post-Conciliar Rites is the very sticking point that is preventing the healing of the Lefebvrist schism.  Father Volpi took severe action.  He insisted that the current Rite must be the normative form of the Liturgy and that permission was needed to celebrate the pre-conciliar Rite.  He also undertook a thorough examination of the course of studies for the friars and decreed that until he was satisfied that the friars were being educated according to current Catholic doctrine, no man would be advanced to ordination.  When he met with resistance from Father Manelli and his chief supporters, Volpi assigned them to remote friaries where they could cause less disruption.  Those friars who wanted to impose the traditional forms on the entire Congregation did not take Volpi’s decisions lying down and the neo-trads—especially those such as the blog Rorate Caeli (http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/) which are primarily interested in restoring the traditional rites, picked up the hue and cry. Neo-trads complained that the rights to celebrate the old liturgy (or to avoid the new) “guaranteed” by Pope Benedict had been abrogated.  The shrieks spread to sites like The Eponymous Flower (http://eponymousflower.blogspot.com/) that have a more popular readership among the neo-traditionalist crowd.  Injudicious remarks about Pope Francis abound among those who defend the rebellious friars.  This too has led to a growing estrangement between Pope Francis and what has become a Tea Party within the Church.  I find it interesting that when in 1981 Pope John Paul stepped in and appointed Father Paolo Dezza as Pontifical Delegate for the Society of Jesus after the liberal generalate of Father Pedro Arrupe in order to bring the Society back to the center, the conservative cheered.  Now once again, as so often with Francis, the shoe is on the other foot and some people are not so happy.  Francis is being portrayed as a bully who is persecuting these friars and the religious women attached to the Congregation.  More and more for those on the farther right reaches of the Church, Francis can do no good.  The same polarization that is undermining us as a nation by clogging our political processes with polemic is now driving a wedge in the Church.    

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.