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"a community of priests who do not take religious vows "

What does it mean?

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Generally through the history of the church there are two types of priests: religious priests, and secular priests.

Religious priests belong to some kind of an order, like Franciscan, Benedictine, and take the three vows common to all religious orders: poverty, chastity, and obedience. They are, capital R, "Religious."

Secular priests do not take the three vows, though all in the Latin Rite take vows of chastity, and they all make a promise of obedience to their bishop, when they are ordained and incardinated, or placed in a particular diocese under a particular bishop. But they normally do not make a vow of poverty. These are your "normal" parish priests, vicars, etc.

The FSSP, like other traditional religious orders - from what I understand - are sort of a hybrid. They are not incarndinated or placed in a particular diocese, and while they belong to an organization, it is not a (capital "R") Religious organization with the three vows.

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Oh, I see. Thank you very much. This is something that definitely needs expanding in the article.

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Nice to see your name in the comment section, Andrew!

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The Oratory of St Philip Nero is the same kind of thing. Priests and Brothers, not bound by vows but by a mutual commitment of charity and to work in a specific place.

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Thanks for the article! I regularly attend a TLM in Ocala served by FSSP priests, and I have a friend who's a seminarian with them. The priests I've known were fantastic, very dedicated and very pastoral. I've got nothing but good things to say about the Fraternity, and I'm hopeful that they'll continue to grow!

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I used to be a parishioner at a FSSP parish. I am now a parishioner at a "Novus Ordo parish" (as they say), and I rarely attend the TLM now. That's just been a natural shift for me, and I still have a deep love and attachment to the TLM, the FSSP, and the ICKSP, etc. and so I like to claim that I still have skin in the game despite not being a TLM-regular (which I think actually bolsters me imo)

The continuing rise in parishioner headcount and seminarians is a sign that the TLM is not going to go away, despite TC aiming to effectively crush it to extinction. The majority of the people who attend the TLM are not those who lived prior to V2 and are clinging to their own nostalgia. These are people who have lived their lives post-V2, often for many years in "Novus Ordo parishes" (as they call them), and actually gravitate to the TLM and these fraternities out of devotion, joy, evangelisitc zeal, and love for Jesus and his Church.

This is not the 1970s (when the mindset of many Catholics-in-pews was "ok well I guess this is what we're doing now"), and the laity are not dopes who are going to let themselves be herded with no resistance. Whether you agree it's right or not, that's the reality.

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I'm also a former TLMer and would agree with this (in fact, a big reason we quit attending regularly was the ever growing crowds, which several members of my family with various sensory issues just could not handle anymore - packed in the pews like sardines and overflowing the aisles too sometimes). The priests are holy, the parishioners are devoted, and come from all walks of life. I'm really blessed to have a wonderful Novus Ordo parish too, which is also attracting quite a few people lately...and while not for the *exact* same reasons, from my perspective it's pretty similar. People are being inspired to strive for holiness, and being given the opportunities for grace through the sacramental life. This seems so surprising to many with authority in the Church and I... don't get why.

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If you want to get a large group of people to believe a lie, one of the most effective methods is to pick a very small number of lies, and repeat them over and over, as often as possible.

Some of those repeated lies include "The truth hurts", "Confession and penance are dark, unpleasant, and soul-crushing.", "Clear standards are disheartening and make people leave.", "Treating important things with care, formality, or concern for details scares people off."

Escaping this nonsense starts with questioning it. Once you've questioned, you have to get to the truth somehow or other. Once you've gotten to the truth, you still need a lot of courage to do things that you thought were harmful before, because your emotions and expectations were formed by the lie.

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I was thinking today about the expression "soft bigotry of low expectations" in a completely different context, but your comment suggests it fits very well in this one, too.

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By their fruit you will know them ...

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What on EARTH was the point of slipping in that last paragraph of completely unrelated information about Fr. Jackson ???? Is this supposed to remind us that - oh, by the way - there are sinners even in traditional communities, lest we don't know anything about human nature and think otherwise?

Is this the new standard at the PIllar we can look forward to - future articles providing overall positive information about a parish, religious order/community or a diocese and the writer will opt to include a last minute tag-on about some previous member brought down by scandal? Just so we know?

I'm not knocking on the reporting the Pillar did about Fr. Jackson previously, or when the Pillar reports on scandal, it's just that that paragraph is completely inappropriate for the gist of this particular article and it was completely unnecessary.

This is such lousy thing to do - this was just stuck in for --- why?? Where the heck was the editor. I would expect this from some place like NCReporter pearl clutching about the growth in TLM communties, but the Pillar should be above slop like this.

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It's a reminder that everyone needs to do a serious screen of seminarians and not just let them in because they apply but try to make sure they will be an asset to the priesthood.

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