A
LETTER TO THE DOMPOST EMAILED A DAY LATE, AFTER I FOUND IT LURKING IN MY
DRAFTS FOLDER:
If
Mrs Bennett’s wondering how she’s going to keep suspected child abusers out of
parks and pools, may I suggest the good old-fashioned scarlet A, branded on
their foreheads? Otherwise how will this egregiously unjust legislation be
policed?
And
in the meantime thousands of real child abusers, men who get their rocks off
and then tell their partners to go get an abortion, ‘doctors’ who sign off
abortions and ‘doctors’ who perform them, carry on regardless. Too right, Mrs
Bennett, there are too many children dying in pain, and most of them in our
hospitals, before birth, at the taxpayers’ expense. They’re unborn, they’re
unseen, they’re unwanted. Does that make it all right?
If
we think we can start preventing violence and abuse after birth – as now for
instance, with pathetic attempts to stop toddlers bullying in pre-school -
we’re deceiving ourselves. And ‘O, what a tangled web we weave, when first we
practise to deceive!’
Julia
du Fresne
What the Catholic Church has been keeping secret
(First published in NZ
Catholic, July 28.)
The Catholic
Church has been keeping a secret – not just in our lifetime, but for roughly
six hundred years.
Relax. This is nothing salacious. I
refer to the international army of foot soldiers for Christ called the third orders.
They’re mostly lay people, as opposed to first orders (priests) and second
orders (nuns) but sharing with both the spirituality of the saint/s under whose
colours they do battle.
If it weren’t for the devilish
connotation you might say ‘their name is Legion, for they are many’ (Mk 5,9). If
the somewhat obscure Servites number 400 in the US, we can only guess at the
numbers in third orders world-wide.
But as a lay Carmelite, my
impression is that Mass-going Catholics’ knowledge of third orders is hazy. If
women get wind of my involvement they’re likely to describe it to third parties
as ‘training to be a nun’ and ask me, archly, what does my husband think about
that, while men regard ‘im indoors with pity, guardedly expressed.
Let me explain. Men in third orders
might be deacons, but only rarely priests (diocesan). Women outnumber men (natch)
but they’re not the sort who hanker after the priesthood and they’re not ‘some
kind of nun’. Nuns live in monasteries
and take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience which under canon law are
binding, as opposed to the promises made by lay Carmelites, lay Franciscans,
lay Dominicans, Cistercians, Benedictines or Marists, married or single. Lay Carmelites
of the original order (O Carm) as opposed to the reformed (OCDS) for example, promise
to live in the spirit of the rule of St Albert, and both orders share the
charism of contemplative prayer.
A sine qua non for members of third orders is a disciplined prayer
life. The daily Mass, Divine Office, mental prayer and spiritual reading
required of lay Carmelites - although much less than for nuns - prompted a priest to say I might as well be in
the convent.
Well, not really. You can’t have
babies and work in your husband’s pharmacy if you’re in the convent. You can’t
commute weekly to a caravan in another city to mind your toddler great-nephew,
or care for a husband with Parkinson’s and dementia, or work in a university
and run a Catholic Workers group, or have eight children, as do the lay
Carmelites I know, in a convent.
While I, as everyone knows, just lie on a
sofa and eat chocolates and read magazines, these others commit themselves to
authentic prayer, sustaining and deepening their love for God and others.
According to their different charisms, third orders are out there in the thick of things, otherwise
Pope Francis might be justified in calling them Gnostics. Any suffering, and
the sacrifice of time others spend on shopping, eating, telly, the gym or
travel must serve the same purpose, otherwise His Holiness could say they’re Pelagians.
‘Evangelisation’, as Francis notes,
’is done on one’s knees.’ Third orders might be called love at the heart of the
Church.
