Rebuild My Church^[1]
Peter Damian Fehlner’s Appropriation and Development of
The Ecclesiology and Mariology of Vatican II

 Second in a Series
by
Edward J. Ondrako OFM Conventual
University of Notre Dame

“I seek you, I desire you, I rise to go to you, I welcome you, I exult in you; and, finally I cling to you.”^[2] Seven aspirations in a Bonaventurian mode express the love of a devout soul with the Lord in this life and in the afterlife. It is difficult to write about the afterlife. Dante’s Paradiso, however, works as almost nothing else works to say the unsayable. Saying the unsayable also works in the Collected Essays^[3] of Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner. The reader will discover what many of Fr. Fehlner’s students and listeners to his homilies experienced: the presence of a master teacher, preacher and Franciscan priest. Humbly and with brevity, Fr. Fehlner affirmed why he preferred the way of St. Francis of Assisi without ever forcing anyone to do the same and dissuading anyone from trying to imitate him. He understood that St. Francis and his theologian disciples, St. Bonaventure and Bl. John Duns Scotus, lived in easier times in premodernity. Do not expect to be theologians overnight, Fr. Fehlner insisted, while unfolding the daunting challenges of living in modernity and some would say, the twilight of modernity.

Fr. Fehlner was the first systematic theologian to explain St. John Henry Newman^[4] and heavily rationalist ecclesiastical climate in England during the nineteenth century. Earlier in my academic career, Franciscan teachers had lauded Fr. Maximilian Kolbe, but a comprehensive approach within the Franciscan School only came from Fr. Fehlner amplified Kolbe’s thinking in the daunting Scotistic framework which made Kolbe unquestionably a theologian. Kolbe’s other gifts such as his visionary approach with employing modern communications media for evangelization were known, but not Kolbe’s theology. After Kolbe’s Beatification on 17 October 1971 by Pope St. Paul VI and Canonization on 10 October 1982 by Pope St. John Paul II, as ‘martyr of charity,’ Fr. Fehlner wrote the definitive study for validating his claim to be a theologian that is masterfully argued first, from the order of intention; second, his theology and critical question; the love of learning and desire for God; Marian epistemology-metaphysics; third, cause of the Immaculate at the heart of the Franciscan charism; its Bonaventurian-Scotistic foundations; fourth, the historical genesis and development of the Kolben narrative; fifth, nature of and implementation of the Militia of the Immaculate; sixth, the “golden thread of Frnciscan history; Kolbe’s spiritual evolution in relation to the theology of history of St. Bonaventure; seventh, the historical and doctrinal backdrop in the Church; supported by a Marian metaphysics for interpreting history; eighth, a visible crescendo of the primacy of charity; ninth, Kolbean theory of the metaphysics of the will according to Duns Scotus; and ninth, the development of Kolbe’s theory of the will; all leading to the tenth and final section on theory and praxis explained with the clarity that follows a progressive illumination. The “order of intention” had its “order of execution.”

Fr. Fehlner added a glossary of terms to help readers find Kolbe’s thought strikingly readable. An extensive bibliography supports Fr. Fehlner’s claim that St. Maximilian M. Kolbe fulfills correctly the title “Theologian of Auschwitz.”^[5] The growth and development just described as a progressive illumination is a term that I first used with Fr. Fehlner and, happily, he approved and readily incorporated it into his theological vocabulary because he understood the way I was incorporating progressive illumination as it neatly binds the ancients, premodernity, modernity, postmodernity and our post-Christian culture.

Overview
The seven aspirations from St. Bonaventure’s “method” in The Triple Way or The Kindling of Love encapsulates Fr. Fehlner’s scholarly Franciscan practices, form of life and golden years. A learned believer, he lived the “goal” as summarized by The Journey of the Mind to God.^[6] The Triple Way and The Journey of the Mind to God. As companion works, they bind my seven part series to introduce “Rebuild My Church.” Seven aspirations express seven degrees of the unitive way.^[7] A way is not a stage of growth for one who desires to be perfect as Christ exhorts his followers, but a metaphor for the means available to a person to attain the three constitutive elements of wisdom or happiness. The metaphor of way conveys eternal possession of absolute peace, face to face vision of absolute truth, and full enjoyment of goodness or absolute love. Weaving such triplets, Bonaventure identifies the first way for beginners; the second way for the advanced; and third way for those who have reached perfection. The three ways are a ladder for the person to ascend and descend.

It may seem like a giant step from the three ways, but, Fr. Fehlner’s account of the timeless Franciscan vision of St. Bonaventure was fully in step with Pope St. John Paul II’s analysis of a certain positivist cast of mind relating to scientific and technical progress. In Fides et Ratio, n. 91, the Holy Father recognizes that some thinkers refer to our age as “postmodernity,” first used with reference to aesthetic, social and technological phenomena, then transposed into the philosophical field, but has remained somewhat ambiguous because postmodern is sometimes positive and sometimes negative. The philosopher Pope realized that a consensus in judgment has yet to align with historical periods. Postmodern designates complex and new factors that have produced widespread, powerful, and important changes with the terrible experiences of evil, the collapse of rationalist optimism, the disillusionment of putting too much trust in the progress of reason as the source of all happiness and freedom, which he called nihilism. Fr. Fehlner chose to condense his reasons for eschewing nihilism.

Summary
A straight line continues from the four gospels to St. Bonaventure and to the works of Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner as a metaphysician-theologian in the mode of St. Bonaventure, Bl. John Duns Scotus, St. Maximilian Kolbe, and Vatican II, from pre-modernity to modernity, the twilight of modernity and post-modernity. That same straight line continues into the twenty-first century, a time I now call a post-Christian culture. Difficulties and opportunities abound for Catholic thought to negotiate with figures on that historical trajectory. Fr. Fehlner was always ready to engage the contexts and concepts critically. He recognized weakness in providing Christian regulatory answers to methods that are hidden within any eclecticism because eclecticism played into the hands of those who denied the enduring validity of truth and the historical and cultural context for truth claims. Fr. Fehlner resisted any claim to the truth of philosophy to be determined on the basis of its appropriateness to a certain period and a certain historical purpose (Fides et Ratio, n. 87). He summarized: if the cultural circumstances have changed, never make the methodological mistake of saying that a writer has to reread what she wrote to be understood by herself in terms of a current and diverse cultural ambient. Pope John Paul II applied this principle to theological inquiry and compared historicism to modernism. Where there was a visible absence of critical evaluation in light of the tradition, this form of modernism was incapable of satisfying the demands of truth which is what theology engages.

Study Questions

• How might we identify the free fall of transcendence and truth in our post Christian culture?
• What might help us to climb out of the precipice or to chart a way beyond the free fall?
• What are the Triple Way and Fides et Ratio saying about the unsayable truth about God?

_____________________

^[1] E. J. Ondrako, Rebuild My Church (Hobe Sound, FL: Lectio Publishing, LLC., 2021). [ISBN 978-1-943901-19-0].
^[2] In te Exulto; et tibi finaliter adhaereo St. Bonaventure, De Triplici Via seu Incendium Amoris, ch. 3, 8.
^[3] J. Isaac. Goff, gen. ed., Collected Essays of Peter Damian Fehlner (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, Publ., 2021), first of nine volumes forthcoming.
^[4] John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Doctrine (London: Longmans, Green and Co., uniform edition after the original in 1845). Newman’s seven notes are: fidelity to the original idea; continuity of principles; the power to assimilate ideas from outside; early anticipations of later teaching; logical sequence discernible when developments are examined; preservation of earlier teaching; and continuance in a state of chronic vigor.
^[5] Peter Damian Fehner, The Theologian of Auschwitz: St. Maximilian M. Kolbe on the Immaculate Conception in the Life of the Church (Hobe Sound, FL: Lectio Publishing, LLC., 2020).
^[6] Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum was written after he visited the place where St. Francis had received the stigmata. De Triplici Via seu Incendium Amoris was written to explain Bonaventure’s original synthesis of the method of three ways for reaching union with God: purgative; illuminative; and unitive.
^[7] Way is a term from Pseudo-Dionysius to explain stages of perfection that can only be discerned if the person practices spiritual exercises that fit The Triple Way explained within a Franciscan context. The Triple Way is the method. The first way is purgative; the second way is illuminative, and the third way is unitive.

Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
Research Fellow Pontifical Faculty of St. Bonaventure, Rome
Visiting Scholar, McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame
June 12, 2021

June 11, 2021: Our Lady of the Angels Province friar Richard Rome, OFM Conv. (top left) renewed his Simple Vows during Mass, on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, at our pastoral ministry of Mother Cabrini Catholic Church, in Shamokin, PA, in the presence of several friars and the local faith community of the three Franciscan parishes in the Shamokin, PA area. Afterwards, everyone enjoyed heart to heart conversation over coffee and baked goods from the famous Broadway Bakery in Mt. Carmel. Friar Rich has been serving with the friars of Mother Cabrini Friary during his Apostolic Year of Formation, with the focus of his ministry serving as Director of The Franciscan Center, in Coal Township. The vow renewal took place at the hands of his Friary Guardian & Pastor of Mother Cabrini Catholic Church, Our Lady of the Angels Province friar ~ Fr. Martin Kobos, OFM Conv. (top right).  His vow renewal was witnessed by Fr. Michael Lasky, OFM Conv. (2nd from left – JPIC Commission Chairman and Pastor of Our Lady of Hope Parish – Coal Township & St. Patrick Parish – Trevorton) and Fr. Everest Valentine Nyaki Mkenda, OFM Conv. (bottom – a friar from Tanzania, who has been living and serving with our friars since 2019, while continuing his studies in America). Also pictured above if Fr. Angelo Geiger, OFM Conv., Parochial Vicar of all three Shamokin area parishes.
Simple Profession is for a term of three years, so friars often have to renew their vows, during their Post Novitiate stage of formation. During this time they are continuing their studies, including a Fraternal Apostolic Year of formation, which friar Rich has just completed. In July, he and two of his confreres will Profess their Solemn Vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience.

Please keep friar Rich in your continued prayers.

Rebuild My Church^[1]
Peter Damian Fehlner’s Appropriation and Development of
the Ecclesiology and Mariology of Vatican II

 First in a Series
by
Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
University of Notre Dame

“It pleases me that you teach the friars sacred theology, so long as in these studies the spirit of prayer and devotion is not extinguished, as is contained in the rule.”^[2] This is a quintessential direct answer from St. Francis of Assisi to St. Anthony of Padua, theologian, teacher, preacher, and miracle worker whose feast we celebrate on June 13. Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner, OFM Conventual (1931-2018), from Our Lady of Angels Province in the USA, followed the directive of St. Francis the founder of the Order to St. Anthony with an incredible fidelity to the history of the Franciscan Order especially in face of the massive challenges to faith from modernity, which has begun with the Enlightenment. In 2017 he had read closely my study, Rebuild My Church, about his life. “You have represented the development of my entire life’s thought correctly,” he said. I could not have wished for more and that serves as the prompt for this first in a series of short summaries to share the gift of getting to know and to understand this sometimes enigmatic friar thinker and teacher of countless Franciscan friars and faithful. Our Lady of Angels Province website has generously accepted my offer to make known a gifted and humble friar who is not known as well as he ought to be known.

Overview.
It sometimes happens that something present is not seen by persons who see other things that are in plain sight. St. Augustine calls this aorâsia (Greek) or caecitas (Latin) City of God: 22, 19). Hiddenness may architectonically hold together The Works of Peter Damian Fehlner and his lifelong scholarly engagement with the relation between premodernity and modernity. For his entire life, Fr. Peter Damian (1931-2018) taught what he believed to be the correct teachings of the Church throughout its history. That encompasses creation, the fall, the prophecies and miracles of the Old Testament that all lead to the Incarnation and sacrifice of Christ. Receiving the Word in her Immaculate Heart, Mary was found worthy to conceive the Creator and to nurture the beginnings of the Church. Fr. Fehlner critically engaged proof from prophecy to show evidence of a continuous intention found in Sacred Scripture. This intention is manifested in the unfolding of a continuous efficacious plan: the wisdom of God and the needed perspective for everyone to see. There is one Mediator who condescends to dwell with everyone. We are the Mediator’s temple and our heart is his altar. God desires the heart that is bruised, humble, and sorrowful. The only begotten Son of God is our priest. His sacrifice is real and truly free. The wisdom of the Cross is not the experience of suffering. Rather, cruciform wisdom is love willing to suffer, which requires becoming incarnate in the form of a servant. St. Francis of Assisi and his theologian disciples could not be further apart from Luther and Calvin on the theology of the cross and its implications for the hierarchy of truths in Catholic doctrine as articulated at Vatican II (UR, 11). The Council intended to open a kind of fraternal rivalry to prompt dialogue and lead towards a deeper realization of the unfathomable riches of Christ (Eph. 3:8). True sacrifice is designed to unite us to God which makes possible our true happiness. Truth is gifted to the Church through Christ in the Holy Spirit. The truth of the Church is renewed in the Eucharist. The prayer and good works of the Church, despite the stains of sin and scandal, is the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit which enables the Church to be the light of the world. One member is All-Holy, Mary, the Mother of the Church. She awaited the Spirit her Son had promised with the Apostles and became the pattern of the Church at prayer. She accompanies the pilgrim Church’s homeward steps with a Mother’s love until the Lord’s Day.

Summary.
“Rebuild My Church” is the first critical analysis of the development of the thought of Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner, for whom the work of Christ always moves forward, never backward. At Vatican II, engagement with modernity began in earnest for the first time with the Catholic Church’s irrevocable goal to build a “bridge” to modernity. As the Council intended, Fr. Fehlner critically engaged thinkers with Kantian, Hegelian-Marxist, and Heideggerian inspired thought that seeks to repackage Christianity. The Council taught that reform and renewal of the entire Catholic church meant that these daunting figures in modernity have to be engaged critically which Fr. Fehlner did both explicitly and implicitly as a gifted metaphysician-theologian. Whoever had the privilege of listening to him lecture and preach, never left with a doubt why he was repeating the Scotistic^[3] concept of the perfect will as radically ordered and unitive, and why the ordered will was not willfulness in modern philosophy or ideology, cloaked in freedom. I will identify ideas that are hostile to Christianity in a readable manner because their influence is ubiquitous and seductive. Vatican II taught us to invite many religious thinkers for dinner with whom we will wrestle but we are on the journey together through the storms of modernity. Some guests may have a cruciform pattern, but may become unruly guests.

Fr. Fehlner elegantly crafted his reply to the complex truth and phenomena thrown up by history. Vatican II taught to bring on board from modern life when the context of the believer and history have changed. Fr. Fehlner read the Catholic thinkers from St. John Henry Newman to Erich Przywara, S.J., Hans Urs von Balthasar, Yves Congar, O.P., Henri de Lubac, S.J. in the twentieth century and their full measure of direct or indirect reading of Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Heidegger. Catholic thinkers recognized helpful insights, but overall, read them negatively. Fr. Fehlner was no exception. Famously, he feared the Kantian deformation espoused by Kant for its insistence on the absolute autonomy of the transcendental “ego.” Fr. Fehlner identified why the radically autonomous will of the creature in the thought of Kant was the exact opposite to the radically humble will of the Immaculate Virgin and the unique Marian tradition from the origins of the Franciscan Order. In sum, there is no consensus Catholic view.

Hegel had no time for philosophical modesty and made the claim that his thought summed up all of philosophy. The interpreter may think this is tragic or comic, but Hegel risks everything to insist that all philosophies are oriented towards his. If we think Hegel’s claim is “out there,” for starters, ponder why and how people reinvent themselves today. Focus on the dramatic change about religious liberty during the course of recent political campaigns! Fr. Fehlner knew that incorporation of Hegelian thought foreshadowed the roll back of religious liberty and primacy of conscience. Pope St. John Paul II did not miss the potential and real rollback In Veritatis Splendor and Fides et Ratio, nor Benedict XVI in his panoply of writings. Pope Francis’ Fratelli Tutti is one of his writings that subtly exposes the historicist sleight of hand in current Hegelian interpretation. What does all of this mean? Hegel’s affirmation of Christian beliefs in the creation, incarnation, redemption, Church and afterlife are merely apparent. History is not to be interpreted as a spousal vision, but only as pedagogy. Modernity unveils the secret of the divine who was always ourselves. “I too am God.”^[4] Kierkegaard, the Danish Lutheran father of existentialism, refused to recognize Hegel’s presentation as Christian and thoughtHegel was an imbecile.^[5] What this means to a Christian believer today is that Hegel continued and developed Kant’s substitution of the invisible church of rational believers for the historical church of faith, which Nietzsche and Heidegger seemed to be only too happy to follow. Kant’s secularity replaced Hegel’s sublation. The historical Church is not dismissed but refigured as a shadow of the secular.

Our Common Journey
The greatest studies on the central mystery of our faith, the Trinity, are arguably by St. Augustine and St. Bonaventure.^[6] Learning about the mind and heart of Fr. Fehlner and “Rebuilding the Church” is to trust verses Hegel who is an extraordinarily learned philosopher who would leave us with nothing. Hegelian braggadocio and its adherents as Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger, have oceanic gaps from this quintessential Franciscan’s “deep knowing.” Hegel seems to know little about philosophy and theology between the third and sixteenth centuries. Hegel’s analysis of history strikes no prophetic complaint or echoes of lament of the Psalms. The post Vatican II dialogical world remembers the claim that in Protestant thought Hegel essentially rediscovered the central importance of the doctrine of the Trinity but with no mention of the traditional authorities of the doctrine of the Trinity: Augustine, Gregory Nazianzen, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, nor Luther, Calvin and other Protestant theologians. Hegel keeps strange company with Jacob Boehme (theosophist), Philo of Alexandria, and Valentinus. Creation is necessary and God has a lot to gain from creation of the world. Without the world, God is nothing. Fr. Fehlner reminds us that knowledge of the Blessed Trinity is the most practical of all knowledge for it reminds us of our goal and joy of life, sharing in the love of the Father and Son in the Holy Spirit.

Study Questions.

• If we forget the essential elements in a world of lowered expectations, will we remember what Christianity was and is?
• As Christian thinkers, will we unapologetically know where we are and where we stand vs. flight to a bunker mentality that witnesses only to those in the bunker?
• If we allow ourselves to be “reinvented by a hostile secularism,” what will our worldview be? Change in the Holy Spirit is knowing how to productively forget and what to remember.
• While engaging modernity critically, will we intercept subtle efforts to “repackage” Christianity?

_____________________

^[1] E.J. Ondrako, Rebuild My Church (Hobe Sound, FL: Lectio Publishing, LLC., 2021). [ISBN 978-1-943901-18-0]
^[2] Placet mihi quod sacram teologiam legas fratribus, dummodo inter huius studium orationis et devotionis spiritum non extinguas, sicut in regula continetur (EpAnt).
^[3] Bl. John Duns Scotus (1265-1308) was the “subtle doctor” and “Marian doctor” who systematically supported the absolute primacy of Christ, a theme that was the driving force for Fr. Fehlner.
^[4] “I too am God” is Ludwig Feuerbach’s skillful affirmation of Hegel’s thought that concludes that Christian beliefs are all myths and that the secret of modernity is that the divine was always ourselves. See Cyril O’Regan below.
^[5] See Cyril O’Regan, “97 Theses on Hegel and His Catholic Thinkers” in Church Life Journal, McGrath Institute for Church Life, University of Notre Dame (31 Auugst 2020). This is O’Regan’s hypothetical about Kierkegaard.
^[6] See P.D. Fehlner, in J. Isaac Goff, Caritas in Primo (New Bedford: Academy of the Immaculate, 2015), Afterword, 311-321.

Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
Research Fellow Pontifical Faculty of St. Bonaventure, Rome
Visiting Scholar, McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame
June 11, 2021

In this (eventually 12 part) series, Friar Tim Kulbicki, OFM Conv. delves into the Constitutions for the Order of Friars Minor Conventual; a document presenting the original charism of the Order, given to us from our founder St. Francis of Assisi 800 years ago, and describing how that charism translates into modern terms.

Eucharistic Procession led by friar Antonio and Friar Calixto

The June 2021 Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi) celebrations at our pastoral ministry of Holy Cross Catholic Church (Atlanta, GA) included the Eucharistic Procession through the neighborhood, led by Our Lady of the Angels Province student friar Antonio Moualeu, OFM Conv., with Benediction and Adoration presided over by the parish’s parochial vicar, Fr. Calixto Salvatierra Moreno, OFM Conv.
{Note: Photos taken from the Holy Cross Atlanta Español Facebook page where you will find several more beautiful moments from the celebration}

Why is friar Antonio in Atlanta?
During the Post-Novitiate stage of formation, our student friars not only engage in furthering their education, but also take the time to participate in active ministry. This past year we had four student friars in study in Washington, DC and two in study in San Antonio, TX.
Friar Antonio and friar Fabian Adderley, OFM Conv. lived in a large community of student friars from several provinces, in the Post-Novitiate San Damiano Friary (San Antonio, TX), under the direction of Our Lady of the Angels Province Friar Gary Johnson, OFM Conv. and Our Lady of Consolation Province Friar Andy Martinez, OFM Conv. While friar Antonio will return to San Antonio to continue his Doctoral studies after his summer break with our friars of Holy Cross Friary (Atlanta, GA), this summer friar Fabian will begin his Apostolic Year of Formation with our friars of St. Bonaventure Friary (Toronto, ON).
The other student friars of our province have also been assigned to spend the summer in varied friaries throughout our province. Please keep them all in your prayers as they proceed in their vocation formation.

Our province will be holding a Summer Discernment Retreat, from July 29 – August 2, 2021 (The Feast Day of Our Lady of the Angels). To sign up or for more information about vocations, contact our Province Vocation Director ~ Br. Nick Romeo, OFM Conv. at vocations@olaprovince.org.

Throughout our province Education Ministries, the students, teachers, staff, volunteers and friars are celebrating the end of the 2020/2021 School Year. It was not an easy year for our world. Our students, from PreK – Graduate School, had to learn to adapt and still thrive in a pandemic world. Although the struggles were very real, these young people grew personally, academically, and spiritually. We are grateful to have hopefully been able to be a source of strength for the school communities we serve.

Friar Pedro, friar Joseph and Friar Marek were joined by the St. Peter School Principal and the PreK teachers in a candid shot with the students.

June 2, 2021: To end the year with a joy filled and very Franciscan celebration, our friars of the St. Peter Friary (Pt. Pleasant Beach, NJ) were visited by the PreK students, teachers & principal of St. Peter School, to help with “Planting Day” in the friary garden. The students stayed and celebrated with yard games and treats for a well deserved job well done. The Point Pleasant Beach Police Department, which is very active in the local community and are often present on campus, helping with student activities and special projects, participated too. Fr. Pedro de Oliveira, OFM Conv., Fr. Marek Stybor, OFM Conv., Fr. Richard Rossell, OFM Conv., Fr. Brennan-Joseph Farleo, OFM Conv., and student friar Joseph Krondon, OFM Conv. enjoyed their participation in the planting and the fun.

Friar Richard, Friar Brennan-Joseph, and the local visiting police officers joined friar Joseph and Friar Marek for another shot with the students before the planting begins

Friar Marek works with the school principal and one of the officers to help a group of students plant in a side box, while the Friary Guardian, Friar Brennan-Joseph, oversees the whole project.

Friar Pedro joins in the fun with a game of cornhole against the officers, while the kids cheered for him!

Kicking on his summer break from classes at The Catholic University of America, friar Joseph started his summer assignment with his confreres of the St. Peter Friary with some planting instruction.

________________

The month of June is dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
In thanksgiving for the perseverance and successes acquired during this past academic year, we pray:

Prayer of Thanksgiving and Praise to the Sacred Heart

Lord, you deserve all honor and praise,
because your love is perfect and your heart sublime.
My heart is filled to overflowing with gratitude
for the many blessings and graces you have bestowed upon me and those
whom I love.
Forever undeserving, may I always be attentive
and never take for granted the gifts of mercy and love
that flow so freely and generously from your Sacred Heart.
Heart of Jesus, I adore you.
Heart of Jesus, I praise you.
Heart of Jesus, I thank you.
Heart of Jesus, I love you forever and always.
Amen.

June 1, 2021: Our Lady of the Angels Province friar Fabian Adderley, OFM Conv. renewed his Simple Vows in the Chapel of the San Damiano Friary – House of Formation (San Antonio, TX), where he has been in residence as a student friar, since 2018. The vow renewal took place at the hands of his Friary Guardian, Post Novitiate Director and Our Lady of the Angels Province friar ~ Fr. Gary Johnson, OFM Conv. His Simple Vows are now renewed for 14 months. The friary is one of several Houses of Formation in the USA, and is of the Province of Our Lady of Consolation. As such, two friars of that province, Friar Richard Kaley, OFM Conv. & Friar Tim Unser, OFM Conv., served as friar Fabian’s witnesses. Friar Fabian first professed his Simple (Temporary) Vows on July 16, 2018. Simple Profession is for a term of three years, so friars often have to renew their vows, during their Post Novitiate stage of formation. During this time they are continuing their studies and moving into their Fraternal Apostolic Year of formation prior to their Solemn Profession of the Vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience. This stage usually, but not always, takes more than initial three years. Soon, friar Fabian will being his own Fraternal Apostolic Year of formation, with our friars in Toronto, Ontario.
Please keep him, and his formation journey, in your continued prayers.

Photo from the June 1, 2021 – The Catholic Review online article: “Baltimore Basilica marks bicentennial with new perpetual adoration chapel” by Christopher Gunty.

May 31, 2021: Our Lady of the Angels Province Vicar Provincial, Fr. Michael Heine, OFM Conv. (2nd row, 3rd from right – photo from The Catholic Review) concelebrated at the Mass on the Feast of the Visitation, in celebration of the 200th Anniversary of the dedication of  Baltimore’s National Shrine of the Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  The Mass concluded with the dedication and opening of the Pope Saint John Paul II Eucharistic Adoration Chapel for perpetual adoration, in the undercroft of the Basilica.