Chapter 9
Founding Fathers and Mothers
In This Chapter
Looking at the founders of the Franciscans and Dominicans
Checking out some other Church Fathers and Mothers
Just as a country honors its founding fathers and mothers, the Church honors the holy men and women who helped establish religious communities that have served the needs of many throughout the centuries. In this chapter, we look at the men and women who are considered the founders of various religious orders.
These founding fathers and mothers determined the name of the society they established as well as the charism, or spirit of the group. Even though a more formal name may have been used when these religious communities were created by their founders, many times the nickname of the organization comes from the personal name of the founding mother or father (Dominicans for the Order of Preachers; Franciscans for the Order of Friars Minor; Vincentians for the Congregation of the Mission; and so on).
St. Alphonsus Ligouri
Campania, Kingdom of Naples (current Italy) (1696–1787)
Beatified: 1816
Canonized: 1839
Patron: moral theologians, ethicists, arthritis sufferers
Feast day: August 1
Alphonsus was something of a child prodigy, earning his doctorate in law by the age of 16 and having his own legal practice at age 21. Despite his legal prowess, however, just one significant loss forced Alphonsus to reassess his life choices and realize his true calling was the priesthood.
With his legal background and thinking style, Alphonsus was able to teach moral theology in a manner that was neither too lax nor too rigorous. His manuals in ethics have been considered classics for centuries, although he was met with some early opposition from those who considered him either too progressive or too reactionary.
Alphonsus was ordained in 1726, and in less than six years, he inaugurated a new religious community for men known as the Redemptorists after Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ the Redeemer. The Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (CSsR from the Latin initials) was established as an order of missionary preachers who, to this day, are renowned for their eloquent homilies and sermons.
St. Augustine of Hippo
Algeria (AD 354–AD 430)
Patron: theology and philosophy professors, former playboys
Feast day: August 28
Augustine — the same man who would go on to establish a religious order of monks called the Augustinians — spent his early adult years in a life of debauchery and moral decadence. He immersed himself in a lifestyle filled with overindulgence and illicit pleasure, mimicking what was happening in the Roman Empire at the time. Once a stoic and respected empire, it had degenerated into rampant drunkenness, promiscuity, and hedonism.
As the empire crumbled and barbarians raided and invaded the frontier and the capital, Augustine’s desire for ultimate pleasure at all costs began to wane. At the age of 18, he had already fathered a son out of wedlock, Adeodatus (meaning “gift from God”), but “the good life” took its toll, and Augustine began to yearn for something more substantial. He realized that a spiritual realm coexisted with the material world.
Unfortunately, Augustine turned from his hedonistic lifestyle to dualism, or Manichaeism — the belief that anything physical is intrinsically evil, and only the purely immaterial is good. Instead of turning to religion as his mother, St. Monica, had prayed he would, Augustine adopted a Persian philosophy that viewed the battle of good and evil as being fought between the spiritual and material.
The book of Genesis tells us that God created both the spiritual and the material and that it was “good.” Christianity takes this concept a step further: The doctrine of the Incarnation teaches that God took on a human nature in Jesus Christ. In other words, the pure spirit (God) took a physical body. How could this happen if the body were evil?
St. Ambrose of Milan first broke through to Augustine, explaining that, while the world contains both good and evil, they are not equal forces. Evil is the absence of a good that ought to be present. A physical evil, for example, would be a violent hurricane that destroys a peaceful village. A moral evil is when a human being does something wrong instead of doing the right thing (like telling a lie rather than telling the truth).
Augustine pondered Ambrose’s words, and after much thought and prayer — and with the help of divine grace — he accepted the faith and became a believer. He and his son were baptized in AD 384 and became ardent Christians. Augustine became a staunch defender of the faith and used the philosophy of Plato to explain and defend Catholic doctrine. After the death of his beloved mother, he sold his possessions and founded the first monastery in the West.
Augustine also fought the Pelagian heresy, a belief that any man or woman could get into heaven on his or her own merit, without the assistance of God. Augustine staunchly opposed Pelagianism and taught that any and all supernatural good works are the result of divine grace.
Augustine’s religious order was named after him, the Order of St. Augustine. The abbreviation OSA comes at the end of the name of an Augustinian monk — for example, Rev. Dudley Day, OSA. Augustine initially intended to live the life of a hermit — one of solitude and little or no influence from the outside world — in an effort to escape the brutality of the Barbarians.
Augustine wrote Confessions, an autobiography in which he admits his wild, decadent youth and his imprudent overreaction in embracing dualism. He then explains that the Judeo-Christian religion is true because it’s rooted in reality; namely, that God created both the material and the immaterial, the physical and the spiritual. Either one can be abused and misused for nefarious purposes, but good ultimately triumphs because it’s inherently superior to evil.
St. Benedict of Nursia
Cassino, Italy (AD 480–AD 543)
Canonized: 1220
Patron: Europe, poison victims
Feast day: July 11
In sharp contrast to St. Augustine’s early years, Benedict was turned off by the wild and rampant living taking place in Rome and fled to Subiaco, Italy, where he lived in a cave for three years. He later moved to the mountains of Monte Cassino, where he established a monastic way of life. He and his monks lived by the creed ora et labora, or “prayer and work,” which left him to divide his days equally between spiritual reflection and manual labor. At his monastery, the chapel bells rang every three hours to call the monks to prayer.
Benedict offered stablility and guidance in the darkness of invasions and the collapse of Western civilization. His monasteries grew and spread quickly. Benedictine monasteries proliferated in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. The monks initially left the dangerous cities to live a life of simplicity, but after the Roman Empire fell (AD 476) and the barbarians became civilized, the monks’ mission evolved into preserving the culture, art, literature, and education from antiquity. The monks not only preserved the Latin and Greek languages but also taught the former barbarians how to read and write. Eventually, people moved out of the old cities, and, over time, they built new ones surrounding the monks.
Benedict’s twin sister, Scholastica, established the female counterpart to her brother’s monastic order. Benedictine nuns operate much like their male contemporaries, also following the “ora et labora” way of life. Both men and women of the Benedictine order have the letters OSB after their proper names to designate that they’re members of the Order of St. Benedict.
St. Clare of Assisi
Assisi, Italy (1194–1253)
Canonized: 1255
Patron: television, goldsmiths
Feast day: August 11
When she was 18 years old, Clare heard a popular preacher, St. Francis of Assisi (see his entry later in this chapter), for the first time and was so moved that she immediately decided to found her own branch of religious women to be of spiritual support to the Franciscans.
Clare established the community of the Poor Ladies (now known as the Poor Clares) to meditate day and night and offer prayers for the Church. She was joined by her sister, Agnes, as well as many other women who lived in religious poverty, much like their Franciscan counterparts. With no money or land, they begged for their daily sustenance.
The Poor Clares are still active today, with likely the most active group in Alabama at Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) — the international Catholic media network that includes radio, Internet, shortwave radio, and satellite and cable television.
St. Dominic de Guzman
Calaruega, Province of Burgos, Kingdom of Castile (current Spain) (1170–1221)
Canonized: 1234
Patron: preachers, astonomers, the Dominican Republic
Feast day: August 8
The first vision to affect Dominic’s life happened before he was even born; while she was pregnant, Dominic’s mother had a vision of a dog with a torch in its mouth. The religious order Dominic would one day establish is called the Dominicans (Order of Friars Preachers) — domini cani, the Italian equivalent, means “hounds of the Lord,” a phrase used to describe steadfast preaching.
Dominic was ordained a priest in 1194. By 1215, he formed his own religious community as a mendicant, or beggar, much like St. Francis of Assisi. The Dominicans, like the Franciscans, are technically not monks but friars, and they live in friaries, not monasteries.
Dominic’s greatest challenge was the Albigensian heresy. Similar to the Manichaeism and dualism that St. Augustine battled centuries before, Albigensianism held that Christ didn’t have a true human nature. These heretics believed that anything material or physical was intrinsically evil and that Jesus only pretended to have a real humanity along with his divinity. Creation was not good, according to the Albigensians, and Jesus was only divine and not human.
Despite his eloquent preaching talent, Dominic was unable to dissuade the lay faithful in Spain and France from this growing heresy. Discouraged, he prayed for assistance, and the Virgin Mary gave him an answer. In a vision, he saw the Blessed Mother with the child Jesus, and she gave Dominic a Rosary (prayer beads). Since Hebrew times of the Old Testament, believers have used prayer beads to keep count when they pray the 150 Psalms as found in the Bible. Those same 150 beads could also be used to help defeat Albigensians, according to Dominic’s vision.
Common folk used prayer beads to pray the Psalms. St. Dominic asked them to use those same beads to think about the mysteries of Christ (see the nearby sidebar, “Contemplating the mysteries of Jesus”), which reveal both His humanity and His divinity. Only a man can suffer pain and death, yet only a god can rise from the dead and ascend into heaven. The spiritual “tool” of the Rosary worked, and the Albigensian heresy was defeated. The people embraced the orthodox teaching that Christ is true God and true Man, one divine person with two complete natures, human and divine.
St. Francis de Sales
Château de Thorens, Savoy, France (1567–1622)
Beatified: 1662
Canonized: 1665
Patron: journalists
Feast day: January 24
Francis was destined by his father to study law and enter into politics, but it was his Holy Father who calmed him during a stressful and overwhelming time, causing Francis to resign himself completely to the Divine Providence. He decided to become a priest and was ordained in Geneva in 1593. He was later named Bishop of Geneva and consecrated in 1602.
Francis established the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales (Oblati Sancti Francisci Salesii, O.S.F.S) to help promote the faith beyond the confines of the parish and diocese. The spirituality is based on Introduction to a Devout Life, a book Francis wrote for those struggling to become better Christians.
St. Francis also is one of the incorruptible saints; see his entry in Chapter 5.
St. Francis of Assisi
Assisi, Italy (1181–1226)
Canonized: 1228
Patron: animals, pet owners, veterinarians; San Francisco
Feast day: October 4
Francis — known now for his life of poverty and his work with the poor and needy — was once a spoiled young man who lived a life of ease, partying through the day and night and spending time with his friends.
Italy didn’t become a unified kingdom until the 19th century, so in Francis’s time, frequent battles took place between the cities and states. The people of Assisi and Perugia often were at battle; in one fight, Francis and his friends went to defend Assisi. The Perugians defeated Assisi, however, and Francis was jailed for a year.
Francis became ill with fever while in jail and spent time in the infirmary, providing him with plenty of time to think of how he had wasted his life thus far. He decided to join the military and serve with honor when he was released and went to join Count Walter of Brienne. While traveling, he had a vision of the Lord saying to him, “Go, Francis, and repair my house, which as you see is falling into ruin.”
Francis misunderstood the Lord’s request. He ran to his father’s cloth shop and took the most expensive materials he could find. He sold the materials and his horse and took the money to the priest of a church in San Damiano that was in disrepair. Knowing that Francis had stolen the materials from his father, the priest refused the money.
Francis’s father, Bernadone, was incensed when he learned what his son had done. His temper was so intense that Francis fled and hid in a cave in San Damiano for a month. He emerged dirty, unshaven, undernourished, and a general mess, making himself the subject of ridicule. His father dragged him home, beat him, and locked him in a closet. His mother helped him escape one day when his father was away on business.
Francis returned to the church in San Damiano and helped the priest there. When his father came looking for him, he told him: “Up to now I have called you my father on earth; henceforth I desire to say only ‘Our Father who art in Heaven.’” He then stripped himself of his clothes and handed them to his father, donning instead the clothing of a beggar. Over time, Francis acquired some companions who sought to rebuild the Church, and he realized what the Lord had meant: The Church he wanted Francis to rebuild was not the buildings but rather the people who came to worship in them. Francis realized his mission was to preach spiritual renewal to the people of God. Pope Innocent III gave permission for him to establish a new religious community, the Order of Friars Minor (OFM), which would later be known as the Franciscans.
Francis and the others took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. However, unlike the monks in the monasteries who also took a vow of stability to live and die at that monastery, the Franciscans and their colleagues, the Dominicans, were mendicants; they begged for their sustenance, as they had no land and no money of their own. They literally had to live on the generosity of others.
St. Francis is known as the patron saint of animals and animal lovers because he spent time in meditation outside and was sometimes found conversing with these creatures. He even befriended a wolf in Gubbio that had been bullying the local villagers. He admonished the beast to behave, which the wolf did from then on.
Francis also traveled to the Holy Land in an attempt to convert the Muslim Saracens and thus end the Crusades peacefully. He was unsuccessful in that specific goal, but he did secure the admiration of the Caliph, who ordered that certain Christian shrines in Jerusalem be placed in the care of the Franciscans — a role the Franciscans have carried out for centuries.
Well before his life ended, Francis was blessed with the gift of the stigmata, the manifestation of the five wounds of Jesus on the person without any physical harm (stigmata disappears immediately at death, however). Figure 9-1 shows St. Francis with the stigmata on his hands, meditating on the Gospel while praying over a skull (a symbol of the dying self, or replacing the ego with the will of God).
Figure 9-1: St. Francis.
St. Ignatius of Loyola
Loyola, Spain (1491–1556)
Beatified: 1609
Canonized: 1622
Patron: military personnel
Feast day: July 31
Ignatius had long sought a soldier’s life, and in 1517, he entered the army and served in numerous campaigns with bravery and distinction. His life took a turn, however, when his leg was shattered by a cannonball in 1521.
Recuperation was long and painful, and Ignatius had little to do but read the Bible and the Lives of the Saints. Ignatius plowed through both, eventually determining that he shouldn’t be risking his life for an earthly king when the King of Kings promised him eternal life. Ignatius laid down his secular sword and became a “soldier for Christ,” allying himself with Jesus. He established a community of men he called the Society of Jesus, later to be known as the Jesuits (see Figure 9-2).
Ignatius saw the advantage of training men in all the classics of theology and philosophy, as well as geography, science, math, languages, and other humanities. He planned to conquer error and heresy with truth and knowledge, which is why the Jesuits to this day are one of the most educated of religious communities. In addition to taking solemn vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, Ignatius added a fourth vow, of complete service to the pope.
Popes in different times used the Jesuits and their growing influence to promote and defend the faith. Secular kings and princes, however, resented and envied the Jesuits’ success and finally pressured Rome to suppress the Order in 1767. Not until the Council of Vienna in 1814 after the Napoleonic Wars was the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) restored.
Figure 9-2: St. Ignatius contemplating the Holy Name of Jesus (IHS, the first three letters of Jesus’s name in Greek).
St. Lucy Filippini
Corneto, Tuscany, Italy (1672–1732)
Beatified: 1926
Canonized: 1930
Patron: Catholic grammar schools
Feast day: March 25
After being orphaned as a young child, Lucy was taken under the wing of Cardinal Marc’Antonio Barbarigo, who inspired and protected her and encouraged her to work among the younger girls of the diocese. The Cardinal wanted Lucy to help make sure that the girls received a Christian education and upbringing.
Lucy established the Religious Teachers Filippini in 1692 to educate and train religious women, who in turn taught the young, especially young women, to prepare them for life, whether they married or entered the convent. Boys commonly received instruction to prepare them to become priests or lay Christian gentlemen, but young women seldom received such spiritual and academic guidance. The Religious Teachers Filippini was established to give these young women the tools they needed to spiritually succeed.
St. Philip Neri
Florence, Italy (1515–1595)
Beatified: 1615
Canonized: 1622
Patron: U.S. Special Forces
Feast day: May 26
Philip spent most of his life as a devout layman, only becoming ordained to the priesthood in 1551, when he was in his mid ‘30s. Until then, he studied and prayed and worked in the hospitals helping the sick.
He had a strong devotion to the Holy Eucharist and encouraged others to spend time in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. After he was ordained, Philip established the Congregation of the Oratory (CO) to help priests become holier and thus help their parishioners as well.
St. Philip Neri’s oratories were and remain today an innovative creation: priests living together in a quasi-community but still working as typical parish priests. The fraternity and camaraderie, as well as spiritual support, is an attempt to compensate for what’s missing in most rectories (where most parish priests live). One of the most famous oratories is in London, England, where Cardinal Newman, the Anglican convert, spent his final years.
St. Vincent de Paul
France (1581–1660)
Beatified: 1729
Canonized: 1737
Patron: social workers, seminary professors
Feast day: September 27
Vincent de Paul’s priesthood got off to a somewhat turbulent start. Five years after being ordained, he was captured by Turkish pirates and held hostage for two years. He eventually converted his “owner” to Christianity and was granted freedom. He returned to Rome to expand his studies and eventually ended up in a wealthy parish in Paris.
In Paris, he befriended some affluent parishioners and convinced them to use their wealth to help the poor, one of two great needs he recognized in the early 17th century. The other great need he saw was the education of the clergy; poorly educated priests helped sow the seeds of the Reformation, and ignoring the plight of the poor was equally devastating to the church and society at large.
The Black Death (bubonic plague in 1348–1350) decimated a third of the population of Western Europe and killed two-thirds of the clergy. So desperate were people for priests to administer the sacraments that sometimes uneducated and incompetent men were ordained, and their misbehavior and/or unorthodox ideas made fertile ground for religious revolution.
Vincent established the Congregation of the Mission (CM) to work on those two priorities: service to the poor and education of the clergy (seminary formation). The Council of Trent had met from 1545–1563 in response to Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. One of the council’s decrees was the establishment of adequate seminaries to educate and supervise the formation of clergy to better serve the spiritual needs of the people in the parish.