Michael J. Matt | Editor
The following letter was sent to The Remnant a couple of weeks ago. It is not atypical of the thousands like it that we’ve received in recent months, posing similar questions. Perhaps posting it here will help instigate a constructive exchange of ideas about the question every one of us must answer, sooner or later: Where do we go from here?
Editor, The Remnant: I am grateful for your strong defense of this order on Remnant TV http://youtu.be/tn2nF_b76WA. It has dismayed me to learn of their dismantling under the Vatican’s Fr. Volpi. Your perspective and defense of the friars has helped me to deal with this blow.
To know the friars personally is to love and respect them. It is to wish to emulate them, if you love Jesus Christ and His true Church. I first encountered the friars in New Bedford, Massachusetts. I used to visit their chapel sometimes during lunch hour or after work and was amazed at their reverence for Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. I learned much from their homilies and example about the goodness of true adoration, reverence and devotion for our Lord, present in the tabernacle. Later, I encountered them in their little, dirt-floored chapel in Baltic, Connecticut. There I learned of the friars’ commitment to humility, sacrifice, and poverty. Later, by God’s grace, they would have a church built in Griswold, Connecticut. I was never able to attend Mass there regularly because of the distance from my home, but I continued to hear about their work from time to time; seeing them in the news for their pro-life witness, for example.