What kind of commitment does your religious profession entail? Are you bound in obedience to the Provincial? Do you have to promise to yield to the local bishops authority? Did you commit to support the Franciscans financially even if there is no financial transparency? Arent you worried about getting more closely linked to them, when they might not yet have gotten their act together about the sexual abuse crisis?Even if there was a spiritually rich local community, because of problems of governance in the church at all levels, I would be nervous at the prospect of associating myself to the church more closely in a formal way. (Comment posted by Claire)

I would like to make two points before I address this. First, Franciscans are fond of saying that if you meet one Jesuit, you've met them all; but if you meet one Franciscan, you've only met one Franciscan. (I don't know yet how fond they are of saying this when an actual Jesuit is present.) The point is that Franciscans have a tradition of rugged individuality. So please note that what I say is always my personal opinion and that I am not speaking for the Order. (Although now you can see that Secular Franciscans are allowed to have personal opinions.) Second, I have never been a joiner. I hate joining groups of any kind.The last group I joined voluntarily was the Cub Scouts when I was a child, and Im still having second thoughts about that.Maintaining the illusion of my complete independence has always been very important to me all of my life.People who know me well were astonished that I joined a religious order.One person, an old high school friend who became a priest even blurted out something not altogether priestly when I told him my plans.Nathan, in his comments under my previous post,outlined quite well what our formal commitment to the Order is, using the language that the Order likes to use. In fact, the main commitment is simply to live up to our Baptismal vows. While this is a massive stretch for many (like me, for example), it means that the requirements of the Order are not necessarily as strange or scary as one might think. Since Secular Franciscans profess rather than take vows, there is no vow of obedience to anyone. One good reason for this is that secular priests, deacons, and bishops can also be Secular Franciscans. All popes from Pius IX through John XXIII were also members of the Secular Franciscans.We dont promise to yield to the local bishops authority in any special way. In fact, I have yielded to the bishops authority far more as a CCD teacher than as a Franciscan.Of course, as Nathan pointed out, a bishop can forbid members of the Franciscan clergy from preaching in his diocese. In my diocese (Rockford, Illinois) the local bishop apparently forbids the Friar Richard Rohr from speaking. So to hear him speak, his local fans just go into Chicago, where the food is much better anyway.Finances aretotally transparent.Each local fraternity is expected to be entirely self-supporting (if possible). There is no tithing and people give what they will. The money is in our fraternity bank account and is accounted for bya memberthe fraternity who is elected for that purposed every three years. We also get a regional assessment once a year (fraternities are organized under regions), but the assessment amounts to about what one would give at a second collection at a Mass. In any case, the regional fraternity is staffed by members elected from the local fraternities, and as far as I can see, the regionsstructuredjustlike the locals. Franciscan clergy (if available) are attached to the fraternities to provide spiritual advice, but the general goal is that each fraternity is entirely independent, with men and women sharing the burdens of all offices, both locally and regionally.Regarding the sexual abuse crisis: we are not regular clergy, so we are not members of those religious communities. While the question of the sexual-abuse scandal is complicated -- and I dont want to talk about it much here -- it has always seemed to me that the scandal was brought on, and is perpetuated by, a fearthat was itself brought on, and perpetuated by, a lack of faith. We all know that any human organization is bound to have criminals in it. The idea that the presence of these criminals must be hidden at all costs to protect the organization as such shows a lack of faith in the organization. Since I believe (or at least hope) that my faith is strong enough to believe in the durability of the Church come what may, it seems to me that people like me should try to get involved.Two more things.Claire, you say you like hanging around with Franciscans because you find that they are like you. Just go to one or two of their fraternity meetings to see if you like it,and see if they all turn into Stepford Wives after the meeting is called to order.Believe me, since they think that membership is a vocation, and something determined between you and God, they wont put any pressure on you at any point, even when you are a week away from professing. So my advice is to check it out.Second, why would I join an organization like this in the first place?Because the Church is, as usual, in trouble.The Franciscans began with St. Francis believing that he heard Jesus on the Cross of San Damiano tell him to rebuild the church. This was 800 years ago, when, as you know, Church and society were probably in far more chaos than they are now.Now I will confess that I misspent a great deal of my youth studying the social sciences and this has colored my outlook ever since. When I look back 800 years, I find that there were lots of people who were somewhat like St. Francis and lots of organizations that were somewhat like the Franciscans. These mostly proved to be dead ends, however good their intentions were. The Franciscans survived 800 years of internal crises (which began while Francis was still alive; he himself was removed as the head of his own order at one point), Church crises, and world crises. There is something about it that works.One of the things that has worked is that it never set itself against the Church.Another thing, I think, is its vertical structure. Not vertical in the sense of strictly hierarchical, but vertical in the sense that everyone from the pope all the way down to nobodies like me can all be equal members of it. And I believe that it is lay organizations like the Secular Franciscans drawing upon their 800 years of experience, including lots of things learned the hard way,that will play (once again) a crucial role in the rebuilding of our Church.