Juniper OEF January 2012,

Reviewed and commented on by Dale Carmen OEF & Br. Robert Hugh SSF

There was a major Franciscan renewal toward the end of the nineteen century.  The Friars in the Roman Church were divided in hundreds of different fraternities. The Pope required that they reunite into one of the three major groupings¹, the OFM.

The romantic writers rediscovered Francis and there was a series of lives written that emphased Francis’s poverty, his commitment to nature and his mysticism. Previously he had become a figure very connected with the obedience to the church and of service to the Church.

One major life was written by the protestant theologian Paul Sabatier  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Sabatier. Although his Life of St. Francis of Assisi was placed on the list of forbidden books by the Curia, Franciscan scholars were deeply affected by this view of Francis as a more universal and less doctrinal figure. Another major non Roman Catholic source on St Francis and Franciscanism is Bishop John Moorman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Moorman.

At this same time there was a revival in Franciscan calling in England among member of the Church of England.  An early effort was a community of sisters, the Community of St Francis, founded in 1905, and still in existence as part of the First Order of the Society of St. Francis with houses in England and in San Francisco.  A men’s, and a parallel women's community, The Society of the Atonement was formed in the US in 1898.  After some years in 1909 they became Roman Catholics and became the Graymoor Friars & Sisters.  Two of the early CSF sisters, including the original foundress, became Roman Catholics and moved to Peekskill NY and found a community of Franciscan sisters.  *{typos corrected again and some changes}

There were several beginnings of the present SSF.  After Graymoor went to Rome, a prayer group was form in New York City to pray for the reestablishment of the Franciscan life n the Episcopal Church.  As fruit of that, in 1917, in Cincinnati, a group held a novena to pray for direction in their vocations.  From this some became third order members and Joseph Crookston and one other moved to Merrill Wisconsin and began living a conventual Franciscan life. These communities were known as the Order of the Poor Brethren of St Francis and the Third Order of the Poor Brethren of St Francis.  It was only in 1967 that the American order merged with the English orders to become what is presently known as SSF and TSSF.  By the time the brothers moved from Wisconsin to Mt. Sinai, Long Island, NY in 1929, the community included a group of sisters living conventual life.  These sisters built a convent on the land at Mt. Sinai.  Sometime in the late1930s a decision was made that these sisters should become enclosed Poor Clare’s.  Several members left as a result.  From the early thirties till the late nineties there were enclosed Poor Clares of Adoration and Reparation living in Mt. Sinai.

The foundation of English SSF started in the 1890s with the Society of the Divine Compassion in the East End of London, a conventual community.  Then a group of men and women started seeking Franciscan discernment in Poona India in 1922.  They began a Christian Ashram after the way of Francis.  Some members of Christa Seva Sangha http://archive.org/stream/MN5126ucmf_8/MN5126ucmf_8_djvu.txt discerned a third order life and others lived a conventual life.  In the 1930s an English expression of the community developed forming the Brotherhood of the Love of Christ which then amalgamated with another English Franciscan beginning, the Brotherhood of St Francis.  The Brotherhood of St Francis was a Franciscan community formed in 1921 to respond to the wayfarers on the roads after the First World War and they became a part of a series of hostels around the English countryside.  These three merging communities in the mid-1930s formed the Society of St Francis.

In 1959, SSF sent a group of brothers to live in Papua New Guinea.  This has grown into the Anglican Franciscan life in the south Pacific, in Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands (1970), Australia (1964) and New Zealand (1970).  In the 1960s & 1970s SSF & TSSF began communities in Central Africa. (Zambia 1964; Tanzania 1971; Zimbabwe 1985)   For the past twenty years there have also been Korean Friars and Sisters.

In the 1990s a group of Brazilian Episcopalian began to discern Franciscan vocation.  They approached SSF to help structure their common life.  The Brazilian Anglican Franciscans are forming both a First Order and a Third Order expression.

From the very beginning of the Order of the Poor Brethren of St Francis in the US, the Third Order had been a very important part of its life.  Many tertiaries had come under the paternal spiritual guidance and profound influence of Father Joseph the founder, or one of the other friars, and they lived a devout and deeply committed life.  But when in 1966 Brother Paul was elected to be the new Minister Provincial, he had a vision for the Third Order that would have it stand free and clear as an Order in its own right, with its own leadership, administration, pastoring and formation, parallel with rather than dependent upon or defined by the life of the Friars and Sisters.  When Br. Luke became Minister Provincial in 1970 he supported that vision and over the next eight years, first Br. Robert Hugh and then Br. Mark Francis had the task of 'working themselves out of a job' as Friar Chaplain to the Third Order, visiting Fellowships and individual tertiaries to share this vision..  So since the late seventies, the Third Order has directed its own life.  Peter Funk and Marie Hayes were the first tertiaries to lead Novice Formation, John Scott to lead Administration, and Kale King to provide Chaplaincy.

A later Director of Formation Counseling was Glen Ann Jicha in Chicago.  Glen Ann was working in The Loop and started regularly attending the OFM parish St Peters.  Benet Fonck OFM became Glen Ann's spiritual director.  Benet Fonck was the friar who was responsible for the third order groups in the province of OFM.  He became interested in the structure being developed TSSF.  Shortly thereafter, Benet was taken to Rome by the American Minister General John Vaughn to become the Friar responsible for the third order.  Benet took with him the TSSF structure and formation letters and over the next few years in conversation with the OFM Caps and the OFM Conv, SFO was born as the modern expression of the secular Third Order.  The American TSSF structure largely influenced the wider TSSF structure over the 1970s.  It is quite amazing the degree of consultation between Anglican and Roman Catholic Franciscans at this time around third order structure.

In the midst of this Dale Carmen, a UCC minister, approached TSSF about joining.  She was clear that she was called to live a Franciscan life, but equally clear that she was not called to leave her own Church.  TSSF was recovering from a very divisive split over the Episcopal Church’s decision to ordain women to the priesthood.  At that moment in time, it was one step too far to take a protestant into the community who was not “in Communion with the See of Canterbury”.  Instead the TSSF Chapter decided to encourage the formation of a non-Anglican, non-Roman Catholic Franciscan expression.  The UCC Franciscan entered formation in TSSF but once the formation was completed, instead of being elected to Profession in TSSF, her vows would be received by her own church authority.  The intention was to form a new community around her, originally of UCC Franciscans.  But as it turned out a much wider Ecumenical vision was developed with the formation of the Order of Ecumenical Franciscans.

It is true that the formation was done with TSSF, but at the time and still till today, SFO has been a close friend and supporter of the formation of OEF.  OEF has looked to SFO for formation and governance material and OEF has participated in SFO gathering almost since the beginning.  This of course was happening in the US where there is a really large Roman Catholic Franciscan expression.  US Roman Catholic Franciscanism does not live under the state church system in England and is therefore much less juridical about ecumenical relationships than our Franciscan siblings in the UK.

It would be a mistake to understand that the Third Order was always a creation of the First Order.  At least in the US, In Poona and in Brazil, a group felt called to follow Francis.  Some lived a conventual life and others a secular life.

¹ The Leonine Union of the Order of Friars Minor 1897 / by Maurice Carmody; edited for publication by Daniel McLellan - St. Bonaventure, N.Y: Franciscan Institute, 1994 - Series: Franciscan Institute publications. History series; no. 8.  Rev. ed. of the author's thesis (doctoral) - Gregorian University in Rome, 1988