Why Must Each Member Of The FODC Subscribe To One Common Statement of Belief?
In Chapter 19 of his First Rule of Life, the Regula Non Bullata, St. Francis required that “All the brethren must be Catholics, living and speaking as Catholics. If anyone has wandered from the faith and the Catholic life in speech or in deed and has not amended himself, he is to be completely expelled from our fraternity.” Thus, the rule St. Francis produced for his Order demanded that each aspirant thereto give evidence of whole-hearted acceptance of the Catholic religion. Then, as now, many of those whom the Church might rightly expect to be her chief supporters were disloyal or disaffected through unbelief or worldliness. All such are likely to stir up controversy. It is obvious that a religious order needs unity, and one great means of this is coherence in the faith. Thus, in obedience to the prescriptions of the Franciscan Rules and in imitation of the practice of some other Anglican Religious Communities, The Franciscan Order of the Divine Compassion has drawn up a Credenda or s
