The longer novitiate

Ed Peters discusses a proposal to increase the length of the novitiate in religious orders. (For those who do not know: when you enquire about joining a religious order, even if you are in residence for a while, you do so as a postulant; when you actually join – this is when you are "clothed" in the habit if there is one – you are a novice; when you reach the end of the novitiate you take temporary vows and become a junior. Up to this point leaving is fairly unproblematic and indeed foreseen, once you take final vows you are in for life.)

This two-year (and-a-half) year max applies only to novitiate, the completion of which period makes one eligible for temporary vows. Emphasis on temporary, meaning three to six years (per 1983 CIC 655), extendable to nine (per 1983 CIC 657 § 2). Now, one in temporary vows is a religious, and departures during temporary vows are distressing, but they are, in the final analysis, departures made during a period called temporary for a reason. At which point we may ask, is it probable that one, having gone through at least two years (maybe two-and-a-half) of novitiate, followed by at least three more years (possibly nine more!) in temporary vows, fails to perservere in religious life because of too-brief a formation period? It’s possible, I grant. But probable? Sufficiently probable to explain the tens of thousands of departures that the Church’s religious institutes have experienced over the last 40 years?

Peters refers to an essay from 1984 by the philosopher Paul Quay SJ, Renewal of Religious Orders, or Destruction? Fr Quay, writing in a journal of Canon Law, points out that given the procedures in place for dispensing people from their final vows, there is no longer any right, for those properly disposed and prepared, to take indispensable vows.

With the promulgation of the Code of Canon Law in 1917, however, the Church ceased to recognize any totally indissoluble vows of religion. In virtue of the Pio-Benedictine Code, the religious order as spiritually, if not always juridically, understood for many centuries, was abrogated, at least in the Patriarchate of the West. 

(There you go again: St Pius X reformed the Breviary and made the Liturgy the plaything of the Papacy – with the consequences we all know – but not content with that he also abolished traditional religious orders. And he is supposed to be held up as the traditionalists' favourite Pope!)

Quay's essay as published, and as reproduced by Peters, included a brief commentary by a Canon lawyer, Dominic Andres CMF. Quay concluded as follows:

As has doubtless been apparent throughout this article, I am not a canonist. The problem raised here may well have, for a canonist, an obvious and simple resolution; it may be no problem at all, but only a misconstrual on my part. Yet, having talked to many on this topic, I can attest that many so construe the law. It would, therefore, be of help to many if those more competent than I would address this matter. 

The commentary provides a magnificent hand wave, wafting all the problems away. Andres seizes on that final paragraph with the following smug observation (emphasis added).

The author, while a religious, is not trained in canon law, but in philosophy, and perhaps his acute observations are better understood under this light, for they are not groundless nor lacking in psychological and spiritual importance. Another step toward understanding this matter lies in the final paragraph of the study.

Well, Quay asked for a concrete proposal to resolve this problem. And what does this canon lawyer propose? Absolutely nothing. Literally. That was the end of his reply.

See also Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith The disappearance of traditional religious orders is changing the landscape of the Church.

The end of the Middle Ages (again)

The last Beguine, Marcella Pattyn, has recently died. This being the Economist there is the usual oogedy-boogedy about the Middle Ages, sexism, heretic burning and so on, but it is an interesting article all the same.
These places were not convents, but beguinages, and the women in them were not nuns, but Beguines. In these communities, which sprang up spontaneously in and around the cities of the Low Countries from the early 13th century, women led lives of prayer, chastity and service, but were not bound by vows. They could leave; they made their own rules, without male guidance; they were encouraged to study and read, and they were expected to earn their keep by working, especially in the booming cloth trade. They existed somewhere between the world and the cloister, in a state of autonomy which was highly unusual for medieval women and highly disturbing to medieval men.
Rest in peace.

UPDATE: Obituary from The Daily Telegraph (UK).

An illuminated history of Ampleforth

The porch of the North Transept of Ampleforth Abbey is connected by a corridor which leads past the monks' refectory into the Central Building of the school. At the beginning of the corridor there is now displayed a history of Monasticism in general and Ampleforth in particular in an illuminated calligraphic manuscript.  Until I read it in 2006, I did not know that Dom Anselm Bolton was the last priest to be tried under the penal laws and had never heard of Dom Sigebert Buckley. So I typed it up for the ages.

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Sung Mass with the Benedictines of St Louis in 1964

(From Chant Café)

Speaking of Dom Guéranger and the EBC, this is a video of Mass at St Louis Priory – now St Louis Abbey – in 1964.

American local TV stations still broadcast significant religious events. I once saw a recording of the installation of a Bishop of a diocese in the Western USA, broadcast on one of the local channels. This included an embarrassing incident where it turned out the Apostolic Mandate – absolutely necessary unless those involved wanted to get excommunicated – had been left in someone's car which was parked in a distant location. Since the major parties all had radio mikes, if you turned up the volume of the TV you could hear the panicked discussions.

From about 4:40 in the video below is an interview of the then Prior of St Louis Fr Columba Cary-Elwes. St Louis was founded from Ampleforth (hence the English accent) and my recollection is that Fr Columba came back to Ampleforth and was still alive when I was at the school. Ampleforth was founded (at several removes) from Westminster. I like the deadpan way Fr Columba handles the matter of the reformation at 9:00. "This is the famous Westminster Abbey? But that's not still a Benedictine Monastery is it?" "No, I'm afraid not. Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth the First have changed all that."

Solesmes and an English Benedictine

I have mentioned the Graduale Triplex before. It is one of many books of chant produced by the community at Solesmes. Charles Cole posts photographs of the place where these books were produced, and presumably still are: Atelier de Paléographie Musicale.

Judith Champ in William Bernard Ullathorne : A different Kind of Monk (Gracewing 2006) – about the monk of Downside who was an early missionary in Australia and later the first Archbishop of Birmingham – writes about Ullathorne's visit to Rome after leaving Australia to give an account of the Church there. Downside (like Ampleforth) is part of the English Benedictine Congregation or EBC which traces its origins back to English monasticism before the Reformation. The English monasteries on the continent were founded by refugees from English monasteries closed down by the reformers. When they were closed in their turn during the French Revolution ("closed" does not do justice to the violence involved in both cases) the monks came back to England bearing a tradition not unlike liturgical tradition itself.

On the way to Rome Ullathorne met Prosper Guéranger – the founder of Solesmes.
Dom Guéranger went to Rome, in 1837, to ask the Vatican for official recognition of Solesmes as a benedictine community. Rome not only granted Dom Guéranger's request, but on its own initiative raised Solesmes from the status of priory to that of an abbey making it the head of a new Benedictine Congregation de France, successor to the Congregations of St. Maurus and St. Vanne as well as the more venerable and ancient family of monasteries belonging to Cluny. On July 26, Dom Guéranger made his solemn profession in the presence of the abbot of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome.
"Dom Guéranger's Restoration" 
Champ remarks that Ullathorne still remembered the meeting with affection and pride, many years later, in a letter to the Abbess of Stanbrook.
I was the first professed monk, he told me, he had ever seen. I therefore claim some interest in the monks and nuns of Solesmes, who are his children, and I shall be obliged if you will tell the abbess and community that I claim an interest in them and their prayers, as I also claim some right to thank them for their tender and sisterly care of the Abbess of Stanbrook.
Quoted in Judith Champ, William Bernard Ullathorne : A different Kind of Monk (Gracewing 2006), chapter 2, p. 63. 
The first professed monk the founder of Solesmes had ever seen. Remember that next time you hear some trad make a crack about "Every Bodily Comfort" or a sniffy remark about the vernacular in English monasteries.