Fra. Angelo: State of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate

Fr Angelo at 2011 Marian Symposium

In the interest of full disclosure, I love the FFI and pray for the friars I know daily by name.

I suspected that Fr. Angelo was one of the friars who appealed for intervention.  This is the first time he publicly admitted such.  I thought Fr. Angelo had written some good pieces on the topic of traditionalism vs. tradition.  It's along the lines of something Michael Matt talked about a while back asking what is this whole "tradition-minded" thing versus "traditionalist."  At any rate, there's distinctions to be made along those lines, but the point is Fr. Angelo was planning on publishing a book on the topic but it seemed to go by the wayside after the intervention began, and perhaps a sign of the struggles within the FFI.

I am one of the original five friars who appealed to the Holy See concerning the problems within our Institute. I mention this in the interests of full disclosure.

State of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate(full article there is a must read on the topic)

I do not ask the Friars at the Guadalupe Shrine anything on the topic of the visitation; I am on the outside looking in like everyone else.  Because Fr. Peter Fehlner wrote the forward to Fr. Angleo's book, I have assumed it would be a fair assumption that he also felt a visitation was needed for the order.

Also you may have seen that the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate have now been placed under visitation.  

For the most part I have not posted on this topic much(I guess this is probably my first time commenting at length).  I have appreciated efforts of the Rorate Caeli blog covering the story, and although Fr. Angleo has stated that it's a personal matter to the FFI and Rorate should butt out and quit stirring up the masses, I am one of the faithful whom go to the Friars for instruction and sacraments, so I don't feel like it's idle gossip or war mongering to try to learn the facts.  I mean, to have a religious order charge with "crypto-lefebvrian and definitely traditionalist drift" has so many implications it's hard to imagine why such a vague and quite frankly a non-criminal charge was brought.  Calling a religious a "crypto-lefebvrian" is like calling an American a "closet-communist."

Okay, so Father Angelo has posted details on why the visitation was called for and the current state.  The visitation was called for in January of 2012, one year before the resignation of Pope Benedict in 2013(I think an important point to note).  The list of grievances "definitely" brought forth at that time:

1. the authoritarian implementation of Summorum Pontificum,
2. the manipulation of the General Chapter of 2008 in this regard,
3. the traditionalist drift in the seminary and apostolic work,
4. our association with known sympathizers of the traditionalist movement,
5. the arbitrary character of the government of the Institute and absence of any mechanism to address this problem,
6. the ways in which all these problems had been affecting the formation program,
7. the influence of the former Mother General of the Sisters on the Founder,
8. and the increasingly radicalized character of the sisters’ community.

Number 4 seems to be an indication of a relationship with the SSPX or its members, although still at issue is what constitutes "traditionalist."  In this context, "traditionalist" seems to essentially equate to the SSPX.  But we can see that it was this original intervention that also lead to the recent intervention on the Franciscan Sisters (but honestly, I had assumed the intervention was all along on both orders considering their relationship).

And I guess this is what it boils down to, indeed an incredibly hefty charge, Fr Angelo states that the FFI founder,  Fr. Stefano M. Manelli,  directed the Friars to support a hermeneutic of rupture - or that specifically the Vatican II Council is fundamentally flawed and cannot be read within the tradition of the Church - and later claims the use of "every Machiavellian tactic" to suppress opposition.

The author presumes to suggest that the Founder and the friars who support him advocate the “hermeneutic of continuity” taught by Benedict XVI, when, in fact, under the Founder’s direction our Institute became one of principle instruments of the traditionalist movement in Italy to undermine the authority of that same hermeneutic.

Anywho, I'd highly recommend reading the article to those following the situation.

The order seems on the road to a definite split.