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1 Spirit and Life 10 Hermitage or Marketplace? The Search for an Authentic Franciscan Locus in the World1 (Revised) Michael F. Cusato, O.F.M. Introduction The 1960s were, without a doubt, a decade of tremendous social change in the world at large as well as in the United States. It is almost axiomatic to note that these monumental changes have had an enormous impact upon the Church: its life, its teaching, its institutions, its understanding of its role and mission in the world. The symbol of this “new wind of change” blowing in the Church is, of course, the Second Vatican Council. Moreover, the subsequent changes wrought within the Church itself contributed to even further changes in society at large, fostering a symbiotic, but tense, relationship of change between the Catholic Church and the world into which it has historically been inserted. One of the entities within the Church in the United States which has been most strongly affected by these decades of change has been the religious life. The Order of Friars Minor has not been exempt from these changes and their consequences.2 Indeed, it is the effect which these monumental changes have had within the Franciscan Order which has been prompting American provinces to undertake both a close 1 This article is an expanded and corrected version of a streamlined draft which first appeared in Franciscan Leadership in Ministry, Spirit and Life Series, 7 (St. Bonaventure, 1997), 125-148. It is reprinted here for the first time in its original form, together with its companion piece, “Wall-to-Wall Ministry” (see the following article). When read as a diptych, they provide the reader with a coherent vision of how Franciscan ministry (the second article) can be seen to flow from the more fundamental question of Franciscan identity (the first article). The aforementioned volume was the fruit of a three-year project which met annually each March in Denver between 1993 and 1995 and which had as its stated aim to describe what is meant by the term “Franciscan ministry.” Each presenter was asked to use contemporary experience as the starting point of his or her article, followed by a retrieval of the theme of ministry from a historical, spiritual, or intellectual perspective within the Franciscan tradition. In this present version, I include the original introductory section of the article, which, for reasons of space, appeared in a condensed form in volume 7. 2 In this presentation, I am concerned solely with the First Order of the Franciscan Family. 2 / Michael F. Cusato, O.F.M. examination of the situation in which they currently find themselves and the drafting of realistic plans for the future life of their respective communities. 1. A Current Problem: the Impact of Decreasing Numbers on Ministry. One of the most visible effects of the changes following the Second Vatican Council has been the slow exodus from the Church of thousands of previously “church-going” Catholics—an exodus which has been only slightly reversed in recent years. This exodus, moreover, has had its parallel in religious communities, as hundreds of men and women have left the vowed life to live out their Christian commiment —or sometimes explicitly to abandon it—in a world free of the structures and demands of the religious life. This exit from religious life has had a profound impact upon the ministries performed by religious communities and has created an atmosphere of crisis within them as they face the future. It is this crisis3 in ministry which serves as the point of departure for my reflections. A deeply troubling aspect of the post-conciliar Church for all provincial administrations continues to be the catastrophic impact which the declining numbers in the community has had upon ministry: ministries which provinces have been trying to maintain in the present as well as those which may (or may not) be possible in an apparently bleak future. Franciscan provinces have had to face the hard fact that many of the ministries in which the friars have faithfully served the people of God for decades are no longer tenable as they presently exist. Put succinctly: we simply do not have the manpower to continue in them as we have in the past. As a result, over the last two decades, a variety of strategies has been developed and implemented in the various provinces in order to meet this “clear and present danger”: consolidation of parochial resources where possible; relinquishment of ministries to dioceses where...

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