He told them another parable: "No one tears a piece of a new garment to add to an old garment, otherwise we will rent the new, and taking part with the new one may think old.
Nor does anyone puts new wine into old bottles: else the new wine will burst the skins and then it will spread and the skins will be lost. Luke 5.36-37)
In August 1961, on my return from Rome, I was appointed professor at the novitiate in Granby. In June 1971 I left the community in which I lived happily for 28 years. I would not have predicted such an outcome. What happened? I try to tell you in soap operas that follow.
My resume during these ten years could be formulated as follows:
1961-1963 - Professor Novitiate at Granby;
1963-1967 - Pastoral Care of Vocations (recruitment) and Office of Catechetical St. Jerome
1967 to 1971 - Noah Young - Office catechetical St. Jerome and Marie-Victorin College (part time);
June 1971 - Release of community.
In brief, the background scenery of this journey.
To better understand what happened, it is good to keep in mind that this decade was marked by a widespread movement towards the modern world which affected both the Church the state and, in our case, religious congregations by their constitutions attached to the Church and, by agreement, to the State. (Overall the category of religious brothers and sisters dedicated to missions education, healthcare and social services. They were more than 60,000 in Quebec in the sixties).
Shifting of the Church - Opening the world
Vatican II
On January 29, 1959, Pope John XXIII announces the Second Vatican Council it opens Oct. 11, 1962. The deliberations of the council are divided into four sessions. Pope Paul VI, who succeeded John XXIII (died May 28, 1963) chaired the last three sessions and closing the council December 8, 1965.
John XXIII wanted to rejuvenate the Church and open to the world of that time. Most of the previous councils were held by the Church on the definition of Catholic doctrine and moral standards to be observed by the faithful. Vatican II is decidedly pastoral. It will make the Good News more audible for the people of our time.
Since 325, the Church was mainly used to build the kingdom of God on earth islands separated from the world, to incorporate any and all subject to the reign of God. It was for his followers and the world's "Mater et Magistra."
At Vatican II, it operates a 180 degree turn. It proclaims the universality of salvation already accomplished by Jesus for all life, to redefine its faithful and men of our time, the scope and sense of mission and indicates its willingness to working with all the establishment of lasting peace and improving living conditions of the poorest in the world. It will be the leaven in the dough, the herald of the Good News of salvation for all. This shift will initiate many changes to life in church and mostly for the exercise of his apostolic mission.
The Quiet Revolution
With the death of Duplessis and the advent of Jean Lesage, Québec undertakes also a shift in the same direction. Quebec monolithic, who was the principal of his ties and his references to the past and its traditions, diversified and turned resolutely towards the future. He began a rapid march towards modernity. Transformations that accompany this movement are major. Quebec intends to occupy its territory and take all responsibilities of a sovereign state. In 1971, he has completely changed his skin.
Mouvance religious congregations - towards secularization
Brothers and sisters by their state of life and their duties, have bathed in this double movement which affected Quebec and the Church. Transformations experienced by congregations during this period are numerous and significant. These changes are consistent with easier access to modernity and a more open world in which they accomplish their mission.
This double movement will lead to the secularization of their institutions and that many of their members.
For the Church and State, sisters and brothers in their respective areas (health and education) been successively precursors, the chaperones and term changes made by the Quiet Revolution and the Second Vatican Council.
This double movement will lead to the secularization of their institutions and that many of their members.
For the Church and State, sisters and brothers in their respective areas (health and education) been successively precursors, the chaperones and term changes made by the Quiet Revolution and the Second Vatican Council.
Precursors of the Church open to the world, they were already turned to the world to give him light (education) and life (health), while the Church of the clergy was concerned primarily with bringing the lost sheep in the fold.
Companions, they did not hide neither the Quiet Revolution, or Vatican II, they supported the two "incarnations "In the world and in modernity. The
term, their role ended with the secularization of institutions and a large portion of their members.
Companions, they did not hide neither the Quiet Revolution, or Vatican II, they supported the two "incarnations "In the world and in modernity. The
term, their role ended with the secularization of institutions and a large portion of their members.
must add to this background of other colors of the decor, a sort of strobe behind the decor and lights may be more scenes that take place there.
Fond du decoration 2
Two emails and a six-second radio tapped me awake in the forehead and the ultraviolet. First email from my friend Jacques. (2)
No, "he said, in years 60-70 my skin has not shuddered at Vatican II, but the Quiet Revolution. " I attach considerable importance to the Revolution in Tranq. Little or not at ear-Vac II phenomenon.
That too true! It turns faster than a snail in its shell.
And Jacques added: "My Vote" vital "no longer went to a god, a tradition transmitted to social pressure. I put my vote in a ballot referendum: live free or not! is camped. You only wait for the scene, scenes.
Second email : An archer of the first period. Daniel. He sends me five memories of the Ark Youth Center. Ah yes! Youth, youth! (3)
is a big piece of the scenery for years 60-70. The key perhaps. Young people, hippies, young people and their follies. But also, music. Three of its five memories alive with the music of time ... The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix ...
Six seconds CKOI
woke up this morning, radio, Sylvain Cossette with which it causes " sixties and 'seventies' speaks as music, hot music, vibrant, bubbly, brilliant time.
Three essential parts of the decor: FREEDOM YOUTH MUSIC .
How am I missed?
I am a handicapped music, I dream of a youth that I did not experience it, I shut myself so easily in my classes. While life was in full swing outside. That
good reasons for you to accompany me on the course of ten years hinges redid our world.
is before these backdrops moving in June 1971 without regret, with a little sadness, I decided to go outside my community's social and religious commitments she had nurtured and developed by me so kindly attentions. I will be forever grateful.
For a more detailed analysis of the Fond du décor click here.
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1961 Professor novitiate
When I arrived, Mount Sacred Heart spread out the luster of its glory fall budding. The orchard was responsible for red apples waiting gatherers. Vine slowly turning blue grapes. In the back yard of the Novitiate, colorful rows of gladioli were waiting for the next party to get on the altars. All driveways, straight, clean and groomed in a position to guard you followed the comings and goings of passers-by.
Inside, nothing really changed either for fifteen years. The Juvénat overflowing with new recruits, forty-three applicants from Montreal and Granby came to take the habit and many began their scholastic Scholasticate-third year-Normal School to obtain their teaching certificates and / or BA.
Although the province was separated Montreal community for over twelve years in the province of Granby, I was in the country known Mount Sacred Heart, I rediscovered some friends and several figures without tell me their names were familiar to me. It welcomed me warmly. At the outset, they took me up and great confidence. I arrived in Rome!
Brother Florentien, Master the novitiate since 1946, had strengthened its position throughout its area. He had turned into a vegetable garden that much of the ground in front of the cave, adjacent to the playground. He cultivated a wide variety of rare and gladioli an equally wide diversity of vegetables almost every mature. Prosperity and good order read everywhere.
At supper, after reading the life of the saint's day, the brother introduced me to Master Novice with his customary affability generous. At the table of the Novitiate was accompanied by brothers Jean-Berchmans and Placide. Brother Jean-Berchmans had studied in religious studies at the University of Montreal. He was in charge of Bible courses. (A new curriculum of religious novitiate. Placide's brother taught at the Novitiate in 1949. He gave the history lessons of the Institute. I had booked the course of "Christian Perfection and religious 'to be based on the textbook used since time immemorial and whose author faded in the mists of time. (4) The table was set, the game was to me the situation.
No new wine into old wineskins
I had few memories of the "Handbook of Christian and religious perfection" which was on the agenda when I did my novitiate in 1945-46 . In the flick, I was seized with an incurable allergy visceral. The vocabulary used irritated neurons.
This book was not meant for the man of our time, in flesh and blood, endowed with intelligence, engaged in arduous struggles for the triumph of love over hate, justice on the stigma of the peace war. He spoke to his soul. In his soul separated from his body, defiled by the flesh. A soul washing of sin, seeking purity of cut glass. Prisoner of opaque material and heavy, she was condemned to submission and suffering here on earth to be earned at the end of his days of place in a sky heritage located in the beyond time and space, with angels singing emasculated of any emotion, the praise of God reigning in majesty in a universe ordered to his glory.
I load ? I caricature? Alas! So little. See for yourself:
Handbook of Christian perfection and religious
" This mortification is so essential that without it, we can not even keep the title man. Our lives, indeed, is midway between the life of the animal that is worn by instinct to the satisfaction of his appetites, and the life of the angel who longs to fulfilling God's will. ... We endeavor to live the will of God, we liken ourselves to angels, but in seeking to satisfy our senses, we approach the animals. Or angels or beasts! That's what you're after that the soul governs the body or the body will retain the soul in bondage. " Handbook of Christian perfection and religion - Society of St. Augustine, Desclée, De Brouwer et Cie - Paris - Rome 1913, p. 590 - page 42
, "especially Remember, dear novice, self-denial that of yourself is an essential foundation for building your perfect . Op. cit. p.67
"Remember, dear novice, that you were created for the souls and the Heart of Jesus is counting on you as it became a law not save the children that through you ... " Op cit. p. 71
"What the novice never loses sight of this truth, his mind during a very special year of his probation must be victim's mind. " Op. cit. p. 89
73. "The vow, promise deliberate, fully free, God made a better act with the intention of binding themselves under sin is a contract donation, divine contract between our Lord and religious soul. " Op cit. p. 99
(Saying that any disclosure applies to show that the relationship between man and God based on the concept of marriage and love, not that of contract. Astounding such a distortion of the meaning of revelation?)
"The lust, this underlying disorder that comes from original sin and manifested in us by the 'old man' is 'appetite for pleasure, St. Thomas says, that is to say, a spontaneous inclination seeking the enjoyment that comes from the possession of sensitive assets and intellectual assets. " Op. cit. p. 133
And the final rallying cry:
"... to give selfish world the example of a model family, sweet and modest image of the family of Nazareth, a desire ... and let ': live together here on earth to replenish up there in a few days an immortal family more perfect and loving Cor Jesu ... Ametur! " Op. cit. p.558
Is it any wonder that language? Published in 1913, this manual can not speak the language of our time, it should be translated. This would be a lesser evil.
What tickled me in this book especially the options mentioned was the underlying joint. MANUAL OF CHRISTIAN PERFECTION AND RELIGIOUS! Nothing less. The living program offered to young novices to erect a statue in the model as it was a statue all those involved in the drama of human salvation.
I carries? Not so much.
In Chapter III of Part IV on "The Brother of the Sacred Heart as religious" one reads:
; 192. "Our title" Brothers Sacred Heart, "we reiterated the obligation incumbent on us to be perfect men and own as a first point of resemblance with our divine Model, man par excellence, the Man-God. "
Who does not read, underlying this formulation, N º 2 of the catechism, is blind in mind. It says:
2 - What is man?
"Man is a creature composed of body and soul and created by God in His image and likeness." Catechism of the ecclesiastical provinces of Quebec, Montreal and Ottawa by PE Lafargue - Quebec 1936, p. 2
is the first step of the podium is to be aimed, beyond and above the fray human.
The Church and build one that builds the kingdom of God within the dough is completely foreign to human basic goals of this manual. She appears in the background, behind the scenes at the end of a paragraph, as the authority that defines the canons of perfection to be achieved and those who proclaimed saints who achieve it. The Church is not the living cell that Vatican II will soon discover and animate. Consequently, it fails in this manual an important chapter on apostolic formation.
The sighting of the proposed training of novices in this manual is highly debatable. What is more serious and unacceptable is the content that deviates in its very foundations of the Christian mystery is expected to announce it.
The manual devotes a hundred pages to devotion to the Virgin Mary (p. 368-449) and more devotion to the Sacred Heart (p. 278-367). Jesus and Mary are portrayed as objects of worship seconded the Christian mystery.
No chapter is about the wonderful plan of salvation for mankind through Jesus Christ. Mention is sometimes blended gospel awards and fillers but the good news is not proclaimed. The revelation is intrinsically fragmented, deviated from its source. A glaring lack of scale and perspective that makes it a manual of recipes small-time, a collection of good advice for anyone who wants to correct its shortcomings and forge a wonderful personality.
short, I absolutely did not want to use this manual, I could not do it. No one lights a candle with a snuffer.
In his bill, in its interpretation of the Christian mystery, in the vision he projects the man and the world, ideally it offers young, it is absolutely inappropriate and even reprehensible. If I were in the Roman curia, I would put on the Index. If I knew the author, I accuse him of embezzlement Minors and vocations.
Instinctively, I did not cause a scandal by denouncing him. It was not worth the trouble. And who was I to denounce what had been underway for several years and who was venerated as a good family? Over time, this manual became harmless. His words were no longer worn on the minds of flu. He could lull by the purr of his tunes returning to all chapters. I opted for silence. I do not say a word to anyone and the manual that year remained at the bottom of desks. Nobody realized. The following year, he relied on shelves of the archives, and today it is hard to find a copy.
But I had a problem. I who was still reeling from a sparkling lightning and was burning inside to light the world, I did not have, to a week of classes begin, a tool that can help me transmit energy simmering under a bushel.
What could I do? I was without words holders. Advertise voiceless and audible words to a message without intelligence framework represented a challenge. And young people before me were burning, intelligent, ready to bite into any fruit, though he defended. The message that I had to deliver coded format Telegraph, could read as follows:
"A wretch, but brimming with desire and energy had once visited by a God erased who had opened the doors of his heart and those of the wider world. That God had made this man and every man his darling and invited to walk this world fruit of his love and to conquer. It was during the novitiate to prepare for this expedition. "
Thus formulated, the program seemed sickly and not very exciting. It should amaze, excite.
In this perspective, the great discoveries of our world have their place and large mobilizations against hunger, ignorance and violence too. Such a program, although ambitious and unproven, seemed to serve the objectives of the apostles engaged in training the Militia of Christ.
A teacher can Complacency is much of its fuel, but it seemed that I switched occasionally flicker the apple of the eyes of my listeners and I will raise interests, desires even fly higher than his navel.
I was, without confrontation, in flagrant opposition to the brother Master, values acquired from the environment, the traditional education offered and received. A new wine into old bottles. The old bottles n'éclatèrent not, they multiplied their reinforcements. "My" novice students did not collect bottles for new wine and spread it in the sand ... the years. Me, I had to change his stand.
vocation, a trap for
course, an important chapter of this program was to address the vocation. Despite the language employed, the concept of vocation in the religious world of the time, was more dependent in its meaning, its anchor and its scope, Greek Fate (destiny) as the Gospel invitation to work the Lord's vineyard. Vocation in the many speeches that evoked, appeared as a measurable object. It he we must discover it. It was revealed by an appeal which was heard more or less ambiguous. It was tantamount to a promotion that could spoil or lose a contract it had to meet once signed. It was normal to have doubts against his vocation. He very nearly think before changing vocation. The greatest misfortune was to lose, because then we lost her.
When he was delivered, the term vocation moved from internal discomfort and raised more ambiguities than it clarified.
And the congregation, all congregations in the process of survival or expansion, contributed by a variety of ways to accentuate the "Fate" of the concept. There was the work of vocations, we pray for vocations, it fell within the honor rolls for families, schools, parishes that had provided most of vocations to the Church. Were published and we read stories of famous vocations, and everyone was invited, at some point to deliver a witness or answer questions about the story of his vocation. In the fall, back to school, we reaped the vocations such as wheat in the west. And the brothers were for the purpose of the competition, cultivate vocations early while some congregations (the priests of the Holy Apostles) specialized in the late vocations as they grew produces ice wine. Vocation, a prosperous business survival that is fueled revenue and tested and well-kept secret.
How many brothers, resigned, have bent under the leaden weight of this concept! They are off living under the weight of their vocation that overwhelmed them from their earliest childhood. Just read some Greek tragedies to measure dominance fatum on the lives of men. Buddhist karma reported a similar fate that governs human destiny. Trapped in this confined space it was not surprising to see some budding vocations in more or less acute psychosis.
I had not given the task of cleaning the house in this concept or to psychoanalyze to my young and eager audience. However, the relationship of man to God in the Christian faith is much different than under the patronage of the Greek fatum I I had to intervene to make corrections that needed the most coarse. I knew that this area especially, I was walking on eggshells. I had carefully prepared my lectures on the subject. And was supported by a mimeographed publication of Father Carpentier, Jesuit (Witnesses in the city) that had addressed the issue in a clear and elaborate.
Especially with Father Carpentier, I insisted on complete freedom, the children in the Kingdom of God, that would create the concept of vocation. A vocation that does not give peace, which does not release, is not one.
On these issues, it seemed to me then, we listened with more attention. I felt like I hit the nail.
What were the concrete results of these lessons? I have never been measured directly or indirectly their reach into the secret of consciences. And nobody ever told me if my words had released or disturbed. Was there a link between my education and start some novice? I have the suspect but was never confirmed.
So, I remember that in mid-March of my second and final year as a professor in the novitiate, as my teaching on the subject had been more explicit, brother Master had shown for more than a week particularly disturbing. He was not eating, he was very taciturn and showed itself more to the community hall. This kind of depression manifested itself especially when novice think-tank left novitiate. Master's brother lived this agony two or three days before his departure and a few days later. This time, the depression lasted almost two weeks and for good reason: in the space of a week, seven had left the novice novitiate!
At the end of the year, the Brother Provincial me back into the territory of the province Montreal community where it was to appoint me another corner of the vineyard of the Lord to grow. I never sought nor knew the real reasons for this change.
You can not put new wine into old bottles, it was pouring elsewhere.
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(1) Modernity and its derivatives is a versatile term. Type "modernity" on google and you'll see. Here we use the term in its common meaning which is contrasted with what is traditional or ancient philosophy as in art or politics. The dictionary reflects Universalis among other such service. Cf Modernity Universalis
(2) Jacques is one of twelve former brothers of the Sacred Heart who inspired and supported the writing of my memoirs. For three years the annual meeting of the former is at home.
(3) Daniel was one of the founding pioneers of the Ark Youth Center. He created the famous PubZieutoPhonique we have the opportunity to talk.
(4) See Handbook of Christian perfection and religious No73, p. 99. At least ambiguous wording that reflects a very legalistic character of sin and religious life.
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The chronicle of Jean-Claude
No. 56
The brothers are a minority in school, wages are more interesting and the lay staff more than before.
There edition textbooks of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart.
There are 15 houses closed.
Sherbrooke Province opened a mission in the Belgian Congo.
The Brothers of the Sacred Heart get a new charter of incorporation for Community provinces of Quebec.
The decision to build scholasticates-normal inter-congregational schools is taken.
The brothers begin to set up camps in what was their vacation spot.
previous seven Canadian provinces:
- 1530 professed
- 89 novices
- 1329 juniors
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Next issue: # 30 - Brothers in tie
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