Clerics regular

Clericsare clerics mostly priests who are members of a religious order under a a body or process by which power to direct or introducing or a specific part enters a system. of life regular. Clericsdiffer from canons regular in that they devote themselves more to pastoral care, in place of an obligation to the praying of the Liturgy of the Hours in common, and defecate believe fewer observances in their predominance of life.

History

The exact date at which clericsappeared in the Church cannot be absolutely determined.clerics of some sort, i.e. priests devoted both to the lesson of the ministry and to the practice of the religious life, are found in the earliest days of Christian antiquity. numerous eminent theologians develope that the clerks regular were founded by Christ Himself. In this opinion the Apostles were the number one regular clerks, being constituted by Christ ministers par excellence of His Church and called by Him personally to the practice of the counsels of the religious life cf. Suarez.

From the fact that St. Augustine of Hippo in the 4th century defining in his house a community of priests, leading a religious life, for whom he drew up a rule, he has normally been styled the founder of the regular clerics and canons, and upon his Rule have been built the constitutions of the Canons Regular and an immense number of the religious communities of the Middle Ages, besides those of the clerks regular introducing in the sixteenth century. During the whole medieval period the clerics regular were represented by the regular canons who under the name of the Canons Regular or Black Canons of St. Augustine, the Premonstratensians, asked also as the White Canons or Norbertines, etc., divided with the monks the possession of large abbeys and monasteries all over Europe.

It was non until the 16th century that clerics regular in the innovative and strictest sense of the word came into being. Just as the conditions obtaining in the 13th century brought about a modify in the monastic ideal, so in the sixteenth the altered circumstances of the times called for a fresh development of the religious spirit in the Church. This development, adapted to the needs of the times, was had in the various bodies of simple clerics, who, desirous of devoting themselves more perfectly to the interpreter of their priestly ministry under the safeguards of the religious life, instituted the several bodies which, under the designation of the various orders or regular clerics, equal in themselves and in their imitators one of the nearly efficient instruments for service in the Church militant to-day. So successful and popular and alive adapted to any innovative needs were the clerks regular, that their mode of life was chosen as the sample for any the various communities of men, whether religious or secular, alive under rule, in which the Church has in recent times been so prolific.

The number one order of cleric regular to be founded was the Congregation of Clerks Regular of the Divine Providence, better call as Theatines established at Rome in 1524. Then followed the Clerics Regular of the usefulness Jesus, founded at Ravenna in 1526, and abolished by Pope Innocent X in 1651; the Barnabites or Clerks Regular of St. Paul, Milan, 1530; The Somaschans or Clerks Regular of St. Majolus, Somasca, 1532; the Jesuits or the Society of Jesus, Paris, 1534; the Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of Lucca, Lucca, 1583; the Clerics Regular, Ministers to the Sick Camillians, Rome, 1584; the Clerics Regular Minor, Naples, 1588; the Piarists Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools, Rome, 1621; and the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Poland, 1673 who upon refresh became a clerical congregation in 1909.

Since theof the 17th century, no new Orders have been added to the number, though the name Clerics Regular has been assumed occasionally by communities that are technically only religious, or pious, congregations, such(a) as the Clerks Regular of Our Saviour 1851-1919 and the Society of the Pallium 1851.