So useful a function did the lay brothers perform that the institution was perpetuated; when new orders or communities of priests were founded, it often happened that lay brothers were introduced from the beginning. Today, especially in the United States, the recruitment of lay brothers has become increasingly difficult, and some orders have almost despaired of keeping lay brothers as a part of the community. The wind of democracy has blown hard in our times, and learning, at least in its elementary forms, has spread far and wide. The institution of lay religious, both brothers and sisters, has been attacked as undemocratic.

It is over a hundred years after the introduction of lay brothers that we next hear of brothers. The two well-known interests of the Middle Ages were religion and war, and these two interests were combined in the military orders which were founded during the Crusades. Both priests and brothers were found in these orders, but primarily they were brothers. A great spate of such orders came into being: Knights Templar (1118), Order of Teutonic Knights (1199), Knights of St. Lazarus (1250), Knights of Malta, Santiago, Calatrava, and on and on. Most of these were suppressed after the Crusades, and many lost their religious character in time. The wars with the Mohammedans gave rise to another type of brother, designed to work for the Christians captured and enslaved by the Moors. Such were the Mercedarians, founded in 1218, which bore a brother-saint, Peter Nolasco.

As can be seen, there is no clear continuity from the eleventh century to the brothers of today. The works which we usually associate with brothers, and in which most brothers engage, are teaching, social work, and the care of the sick. The first point of continuity came with St. John of God, who founded the Brothers Hospitallers in 1535, which remains an order of brothers down to this day. They were approved by Pope St. Pius V in A.D. 1572. The Alexian Brothers also share in this tradition of care for the sick.

The renaissance of the brother's vocation came about with the founding of the Brothers of the Christian Schools (Christian Brothers) by St. John Baptist de la Salle in 1681. St. John was very insistent that his religious should not become priests, so much so that he forbade them to teach Latin, or acquire any knowledge of that language. The Christian Brothers have grown today to be the second largest religious institute in the Church, second to the Jesuits.

In the United States there are 12,000 brothers and lay brothers, an increase of almost 100% since 1945. It is hard to imagine the work of the American church without the services of these men. Their outward works, the overflow of their interior life with God, have flowed into their most useful and natural channels, the apostolate of education, social work, the missions, and care of the sick. The most common work of brothers is teaching. 5,500 men are engaged in this apostolate, conducting some 20 colleges, over 200 high schools, and somewhat less than 100 elementary schools. The Christian Brothers, Holy Cross Brothers, Xaverians, Marianists, Sacred Heart Brothers, Irish Christian Brothers, Brothers of Mary (Marists), and several others have education as their primary work. It is often felt that adolescent boys are best taught by men, and the various papal pronouncements on education, including the advocacy of co-institutional schools, has lent impetus to the desire for brothers as teachers.

The Alexian Brothers, the Brothers Hospitallers of St. John of God, and the Franciscan Missionaries of the Sacred Heart devote their external energies to the care of the sick. The Alexian Brothers Hospital in Chicago has an outstanding nursing school for male nurses, the only one in the United States. The Holy Cross Brothers and Christian Brothers do notable work in the field of homes for delinquent or underprivileged boys. The Father Gibault Home for Boys, conducted by the Holy Cross Brothers in Terre Haute, Indiana, has probably the highest rehabilitation rate of any such institution, private or public, in the country. The Oakdale School conducted in the East by the Christian Brothers is also outstanding in its work with delinquents. Brothers working in these institutions often have degrees in sociology or social work, and some are accredited case workers. Lay brothers do farming, maintenance work, and cooking, and work as printers, accountants, typists, and business managers for orders of priests. The lay brother is often a highly skilled worker whose contribution is not the least in his order.

In all, brothers and lay brothers are working in 130 of the 139 archdioceses and dioceses of the United States. The works which they perform are limited only by the shortage of vocations. The greatest hindrance to the further increase of brothers and lay brothers is the lingering lack of appreciation for the sublimity and

completeness of this way of life among some clergy and faithful, coupled with a fear that an increase of brothers' vocations will lead to a decrease in priestly vocations. The more rapid developments of the brothers' works will depend largely on correcting these views. Meanwhile, brothers and lay brothers continue to do an indispensable work in the Church, and to provide an essential way of life. Indeed, "the harvest is great, but the laborers are few." FRANCISCUS WILLETT, C.S.C.

Holy Cross High School
Flushing, New York

FIFTY YEARS AGO

The leading article in The American Ecclesiastical Review for November, 1913, contributed by Fr. F. P. Siegfried of Overbrook Seminary, is entitled "The Department of Philosophy in the Seminary." Actually the article discusses the place of all the studies in the seminary curriculum, pleading for a greater unification so that the student will "carry away from his philosophical studies an habitual sense of the unity that is at the heart of the infinite complexity of the world of reality."... Msgr. Bickerstaffe-Drew, writing from England on "Isolation or Federation," believes that the number of converts to the Church would be greatly increased if there were greater confederation among Catholics. Too many, he says, are working for the Church in an atmosphere of isolation. . . . George Metlake, writing from Germany on "St. Columban and the School of Luxeuil," describes the austere rule of this early monastic founder. Even boys of four or five were admitted to the cloister and submitted to a rigid discipline in which "proficiency in the musical art was acquired only with much difficulty, and the singing-master appears to have used his baton quite as often to beat his pupils as to beat time." . . . Fr. P. McDermott writes on "Our Colonial Bishop." He refers to Bishop Challoner of England, who was Vicar Apostolic of the English colonies of North America in the eighteenth century. "For twenty-three years Bishop Challoner was the sole spiritual ruler over New England and over the diocese of Portland, of whose very name he had no notion." Strange to say, this good English prelate officially remained the bishop of the American colonies even during the War of the Revolution. . . . Fr. F. Donnelly, S.J., writes on "Fr. Pardow (1847-1909) as a Preacher." . . . Dr. A. O'Malley, treating the problem "When does the Intellectual Soul enter the Body?" argues that the spiritual soul is present from the first moment of conception. . .

...

F. J. C.

FAMILY STRUCTURE AND

RELIGIOUS ORIENTATION

There is a commonly accepted generalization that a "religious home makes religious children." This is no more nor less true than the old sociological saw, "bad homes make bad boys." It all depends. The family atmosphere is certainly influential, but it is not a predetermining variable and above all it is not the only condition which influences orientation and behavior. Moreover, the socialization process is a complex and subtle phenomenon. It is often not the most overt traits of family structure, nor the most overt values of the parents which a child internalizes. "Anxiety over the possibility of losing affection, feelings of guilt, and a wide variety of symbolic gratifications complicate the picture." Values may be learned through instruction, but most often they result in a context of consistent emotional actions and reactions on the part of parents and children. Furthermore, religious values of mothers and fathers aren't necessarily related to the religious values of their children. The subtleties of the American family structure itself and the possible strains upon parent and child may and do influence religious orientation.

It is difficult to discuss in summary fashion current family structure in the United States. Each region, social class, and age level has its own variations, but many of their distinguishing traits are in the process of change and there seems to exist a definite trend toward a common pattern.2 With increasing industrialization, the family has given up many of its older functions and now concentrates on the socializations of the young and the emotional support of the adult. In our society these are prerogatives of the family, almost exclusively, and they have necessitated radical changes in its role and authority structure. Intimacy has become a must. Unfortunately, the father, as provider and status-bearer, is now the main, if not the lone link with the overall society, and the very nature of structural specialization prevents the other members from

1 Tamotsu Thibutani, Society and Personality (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1961), p. 478.

2 Reuben Hill, "The American Family Today" in Ginzberg, The Nation's Children (Washington, D. C.: 1960), Vol. I, pp. 76-107.

forming a true partnership in this area. He has primary responsibility for the family, the mother primary responsibility within the family. This unfortunate but necessary division of labor has created many complex strains among children and parents alike. It is these strains which are often at the root of a specific religious orientation.

The family is an interaction system, each member expecting something from and reacting to the others. If, from any source, a disturbance is introduced in the complementarity of expectations, a strain and the need for adjustment arises. The strain may be resolved by suffocating a need, by transferring affections toward some other person or object, or by changing the accepted values within the system. If, for some reason, these solutions are not possible, a compromise can be attempted, but at a price, that of ambivalence, a tendency to conform to and a tendency to become alienated from a value or an object. When an alienative tendency exists, but the need for conformity is greater, a person very often performs or agrees compulsively. When the alienative tendency is greater, a type of withdrawal, active or passive, is often the result.3 It is unfortunate, but at times a particular religious orientation is darkly colored by the need for such tendencies and religion becomes a tool for the resolution of strain inadequately handled. This problem becomes all the more crucial when no religious voIcation is at issue.

There exists ample evidence that individuals, overtly sincere in their choice of a vocation to the priesthood or sisterhood, have in effect mismanaged their destiny. Father Vandervelt has written extensively of priests, hospitalized because of alcoholism or some other deep-rooted problems. These men were highly motivated religiously, but 91 per cent were dominated by their mothers and this seems to have affected their emotional life. Fathers Evoy and Christoph write of the nun, aloof, bitter and of whom community life is often the occasion of spiritual decline. She may have entered in good faith, but she has to keep people away from the "real her"

3 Talcott Parsons, The Social System (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1951), pp. 252-259.

4 Robert McAllister and Albert Vandervelt, "Factors in Mental Illness Among Hospitalized Clergy," Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 132 (Jan., 1961), p. 84.