New EF Community - Servants of the Children of Light

[Nunsuch]

@truthfinder, yes, you are right; we have pirated the thread. Maybe we can say more separately or in direct message.

[dominicansoul]

Wow an EF community?  I hope they persevere!  

[Sponsa-Christi]

On 11/8/2021 at 5:14 PM, Feankie said:

It appears this Public Association of the Faithful has only 1 member as yet -  the foundress.  

So I have question for those of you more familiar with foundations (not my area of expertise)...is there a time limit on a new PAF to increase in size, or can it continue with 1 member indefinitely? I was very surprised when I went to the website to see it is comprised of only 1 Sister who is in First Vows.  The website (and its contents) appears, at first glance, to be very ambitious and representative of more than 1 Sister. 

No criticism, but Just curious as to process.

Maybe this is a bit off-topic, but I personally think it's relevant (or at least useful context here)...technically, a group doesn't need to go through the "association of the faithful" stage at all before becoming a full-fledged religious community. Theoretically, a group could just canonically start out as religious institute of diocesan right if the local bishop wanted to do this--although these days, as per canon 579, a bishop would have to get Rome's approval first, and it's extremely unlikely Rome would approve a new institute with just a very small handful of members. But there actually aren't any canonical membership number required anywhere; Rome decides this things case-by-case, even though canon lawyers involved in these matters will tend to notice patterns. 

Associations of the faithful are sort of the closest fit to having something like an organized group living a religious life and accountable within canon law, but without officially being religious. It's not a perfect arrangement, but on a very practical level it does tend to work. 

Interestingly, I had a canon law professor who actually thought it was regrettable that the category of public association of the faithful was so often used for proto-religious communities. His thought was that this category should really be used more for what it was originally, primarily intended: i.e., for Catholics in various stages of life to associate themselves for some common (but "non-vocation") spiritual or apostolic purpose. 

With this situation specifically, I don't know what is going on canonically behind the scenes. But my best guess is that if this is an attempt at a new community with only one member in "first vows," then probably what is going on is that the foundress made a technically private vow with the bishop as a witness. 

[lanpingpug]

Looks like she is a teacher at the Catholic Montessori school and the website says that the sister's apostolate is Montessori education.