What life is like now for the Franciscans of the Immaculate

In short, it ain’t pretty.  It’s amazing how petty and authoritarian those supposedly swinging progressives can be.

The sufferings of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculata are receiving much heavier coverage in Europe, and in particular, Italy, than they are here in the US.  Tancred at Eponymous Flower has again provided a translation of an article at Katholisches on the plight of this once vibrantly growing order.  This article I think stems from an original Italian source I don’t have a link to. The commentary was written by a member of the order.

Suffice it to say, the Friars are not permitted to do much of anything they don’t have explicit permission for.  They cannot even get a copy of the calendar their order produced!

The Franciscan of the Immaculate Conception described in his letter that he passed by   the office of Order internal publishing,  Casa Mariana, in Frigento recently. “My heart beat. I felt in me an unusual emptiness and dismay at the thought that we can no longer write for our own publishing house, and are not even allowed to distribute the books of our own publishing company in our convents.

I look at the house. In there are our books. Many of them we have written, and much more contributions to our religious journals: Fides Catholica , Annales Franciscani , Immculata Mediatrix … Many books have been translated by us from  Latin, others we have from Italian, the language most used in the order, translated into other languages.

That  is our life inside, years of study, sweat and sacrifice. The Apostolic Commissioner has ruled that we are no longer authorized to use them. What sin do they represent?

I took courage and rang the bell at the door. A sister opens and I ask her about the new liturgical calendar of the Order, because we didn’t have one in the monastery.

“I can not give you one Father, you know that it requires a permit,” replied my sister, kind and understanding.

What could be sinful about a liturgical calendar?

“But it needs a permit.”

Exactly the permit.

Whose?

“From the Apostolic Commissioner of course!”

And now begins the pathetic litany of things the FFIs are no longer permitted to do without explicit permission from the Apostolic Commissioner Fr. Volpi:

Since we have been under provisional administration,  our life is governed by applications for “special permits” to the Commissioner. You are to provide  a copy in writing  and are granted permission only by expressed personal validation .  [I think that should mean, express written permission from Fr. Volpi]

A permit is needed to use the books of the Order from the Order’s  own publishing house and be able to impart them. Any “public dissemination” is prohibited. 

 A  permit is required to celebrate the Holy Mass in the traditional Rite. 

 A permit is required to use the Roman Ritual for the Old Rite. 

 A permit is required for the Liturgy of the Hours to celebrate it in the Vetus Ordo. 

A  permit is required to celebrate the Holy Mass with the Sisters of the Order, for both the Old and the New Rite. [The Sisters are not even under censure!  As such, they are treated as if they are unclean?]

A permit is required to conduct a meeting of the lay community of the Order or of the Third Order. 

A permit is required  to carry out a “Day for Maria” (a day of prayer, which is performed by the Order on pilgrimage or in parish churches and is open to all). 

A  permit is required to visit our Founder. It is strongly advised not to make such a request at all, which is actually not approved anyway. [Almost no one has seen the founder. Fr. Stefano Manelli, since this apostolic sacking came down July 11 last year.]

A permit is required for any initiative in the Order. “

Even more permits are needed of the founders of religious orders:

“Our Founder even needs explicit permission to be treated at the hospital. He needs an explicit authorization in order to move from one convent to another. He was blamed on the official website of the Order publicly for the fact that he had at first dared to visit the convent of Teramo. In reality, the Apostolic Commissioner had even given the permission to do so.” A grueling guerrilla war.

Part of me says these FFIs should fight all this, because it is so unjust.  Part of me hopes it is a great test of their charism from God, after which they will shine with so much greater glory.  It is, perhaps, some of both, both a test but also a grossly unjust act against a formerly thriving, holy order – one of the few we have left in the Church!  I don’t know what to counsel, aside to pray for them.

I will however note the that there is apparently ONE area of the Church where there is still a will to apply stern, even unjustifiably harsh authority, and that is towards tradition-leaning Catholics.  Progressives obviously get a total pass, as do even some horribly sinful groups and individuals (at least until the civil authority becomes aware), but if you start to drift traditional, the hammer drops, and hard.

Very, very strange times.