Francis of Assisi Heritage and Heirs: Eight Centuries Later

IV. The Fundamental Values of Franciscan Identity

Thaddée MaTura 94 small number” (Celano, The Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul, ch. XL, 294.) iv. THe fundaMenTal values of franCisCan idenTiTy It is normal and even necessary that, facing the future, Franciscans need to ask themselves about their identity. The reflections that follow propose to describe what is being sought, raise a few critical questions, and provide the contours of the values which seem to provide a basis for this identity. Before broaching these themes, I do not think it is useless to stop for a few moments to ponder on the expression , Franciscan identity, so as to add precision to the meaning with which we use this expression. Human beings possess, first of all, an innate identity. It is their very unique and incommunicable person as a man or a woman. To this is added an acquired identity which comes from family, cultural, social, and religious factors. By coming into the world we are immersed in a world of values which influence and shape us. One need only think of the language, the particular culture, and the religious world to which we belong. These values always entail a certain vision of the real – a theory – and propose practical behaviors – a praxis. According to the measure in which these values are assumed, they shape persons, give them form and figure, insert them in a cultural, social, and religious world, and confer upon them a collective identity. The individuals, nonetheless, preserve their freedom and originality. If there is a French or an Italian identity, each individual, French or Italian, remains different . Taken in this sense, the adjective “Franciscan” means that there exists a set of values, a vision of human and Christian reality as well as a praxis, which is lived by a specific group of men and women, namely, the Franciscans. This set of values draws its origins from a founding figure, Francis of HEIRS 95 Assisi, and by an historical tradition, now eight centuries old, and comes to us today. It is a set of values, moreover, which is very complex and only one movement, a variant within the total Christian reality, inheriting with it a history with its evolution, its additions, and its losses. Along with the Christian faith, it is confronted today by historical inquiry, critical examination, and doubt. We who at the beginning of this new millennium, a turning point in history, are part of this Franciscan movement and have been marked by it have every reason to ask ourselves what our identity could be. The first question to be raised is to know which are the areas where the founding values of our identity are being proposed? What are the indisputable references to which we can turn? Which keys can we use to have access to them and understand them? Once this question is clarified one will need to broach, after some critical questions have been raised, the following: what are these values, their hierarchy, that is to say their relative importance , their articulation, their impact on the formation of the inner person as well as their concrete expression at this beginning of the twenty-first century? an area WHiCH serves To Carry THe idenTiTy: THe franCisCan faMily The spiritual current emanating from Francis belongs to the entire Church and all of humanity. If the Franciscan family does not have the monopoly of it, it is, nonetheless, its main depository and its historical continuity. This multiple family, composed of three Orders, which in spite of the crisis which is affecting all of religious life in the Church, occupies a considerable place. This is evident simply on the basis of statistics. According to the latest available ecclesial statistics the Order of Friars Minor in its three branches (Friars Minor, Capuchins, Conventuals) numbers about 32,000 brothers, or eighteen percent of all male religious. In relative percentag- Thaddée MaTura 96 es, it is the largest number. The numbers are as high among women religious. There are 350 diverse Third Order Franciscan congregations and these number more than 100,000 members. As far as the contemplatives are concerned, Poor Clares and others who are attached to Francis’s spirituality number about 10,000. The secular Franciscan fraternities, also called the “Third Order,” number about 600,000 men and women adherents. All together there are some 750,000 members. To mention this is not triumphalism, but simply taking stock of the fact...