The Religious Orders in England and Wales

Extract

The varieties of religious life are but variations on a single theme, that of Christian perfection sought in a life lived in common according to rule. But a religious order in its beginnings is always an answer to a contemporary need: the centuries pass and modifications may be necessary. Circumstances change and they have to be met in a new way. But, as was suggested in speaking of the monastic order, what is essential remains—and the idea behind the life of every religious order is written throughout the Gospels: the counsel that those who want to love Christ perfectly will leave all things to follow him.

The end of the twelfth century saw grave threats to the Church’s unchanging mission of presenting the Gospel to the world. The bitter struggle between princes and the Papacy was affecting the primary work of the Church. Prelates were often largely engaged in affairs of state, while the ranks of the lower clergy were often recruited from men too ignorant or too worldly to commend the spiritual backing of the Church. In the new universities the rediscovery of Greek philosophy was making for a materialist scepticism which could attack the very roots of religion. And in France a new and terrible heresy had grown up—that of the Albigenses—in effect a revival of the Mani- chaeism against which St Augustine fought. The Albigenses taught a dualism, that there were two gods, one good and one evil, and in fact attacked the foundations of faith, and through their organization, the foundations of society itself. The spiritual life of Christians who remained faithful had itself grown careless and was grievously affected by worldliness and corruption. It was at this critical moment of the Church’s history that two men rose who were to meet the challenge of religious decline and unbelief. They were Francis and Dominic, founders of the Friars Minor and of the Order of Preachers.