We Are an Organic Union
Kathleen Molaro, OFS
National YouFra Commission Chair
Kathleen Molaro, OFS National YouFra Commission Chair
As a young mom, I often felt overwhelmed with the myriads of daily tasks…everyday responsibilities that seemed to squelch my ability to connect my deepening faith with real life. I felt alone and detached from any understanding of what the priest meant about being Eucharist in the world!
I joined a women’s Bible study group led, coincidentally, by Secular Franciscans. I didn’t know that at the time, but I finally asked them about the funny crosses they wore. That’s when my journey began!
During initial formation, when we prayed and studied the Rule, I was struck by Article 2—especially the words “organic union.” What did that mean? The word organic implied, to me, living, breathing, and growing. If we’re an “organic union,” did that mean I would find that life and growth and connection I so craved? That I would build relationship with Christ and with others who shared my beliefs? Yes!
Article 2 continues, explaining that we are brothers and sisters, who strive for this holiness in our own secular state. I discovered through my fraternity brothers and sisters an understanding that service to my family was my way to live the gospel values and to give life to the gospels. Even the most ordinary tasks became acts of worship and reasons for gratitude and joy.
I still, thirty plus years later, live and grow and breathe my faith with the love and support of this beautiful organic union of Franciscans. Thomas of Celano describes the gift we received from Francis. This holy man of God “like a plenteous river of heavenly grace, watered with streams of gifts, he enriched the field of their hearts with flowers of virtue, for he was an excellent craftsman … To all he gave a norm of life, and he showed in truth the way of salvation in every walk of life.” (1 CEL 37)
OFS Rule; Article 2
The Secular Order holds a special place in this family circle. It is an organic union of all Catholic fraternities scattered throughout the world and open to every group of the faithful. In these fraternities the brothers and sisters, led by the Spirit, strive for perfect charity in their own secular state. By their profession they pledge themselves to live the gospel in the manner of St. Francis by means of this Rule approved by the Church.
General Constitutions.
3:3 The vocation to the OFS is a vocation to live the Gospel in fraternal communion.
https://www.secularfranciscansusa.org/2025/11/we-are-an-organic-union/
Enduring in Peace
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CCBY
(This article originally appeared in the TAU-USA Summer 2025 Issue #116)
By Joseph Makley, OFS
Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation Commission Chair
The first time I heard about Father Louis Vitale, OFM, was when he joined the protests at Fort Benning’s infamous School of the Americas. As a fairly new Secular Franciscan, I was studying the Rule: “Let them individually and collectively be in the forefront in promoting justice by the testimony of their human lives and their courageous initiatives…” Father Louie spent six months in jail on two occasions for stepping past those gates at Fort Benning. A year in jail is something to be endured in peace.
Fort Benning did not have the School of the Americas when I first visited there in December 1969. It was a major training area for Vietnam-bound soldiers. I was in the car when my mother drove through those gates to take my older brother, Philip, back to the base after Christmas leave. I saw troops marching along the roads and heard their songs of bravado. I was a senior in high school with my own choices to make soon, and my mother, Elroyce, had to find a way to endure her son’s deployment in peace.
Father Louie had been busy long before the protests at SOA. He had led an impactful movement to stop nuclear testing for years and had co-founded Pace e Bene, an organization that provides training in nonviolence. As an air force veteran, he felt a special responsibility to bring his love in action to military installations. In 2006, he was at Fort Huachuca, in Sierra Vista, Arizona, protesting the torture training manuals being produced there after 9/11. He was arrested, along with two others.
At the same time, down the road in Tombstone, my brother Philip, who had survived the war, was playing Doc Holiday in the gunfight recreations at the OK Corral. He was never the same after the war, but he had supported himself by driving deliveries for the Jacksonville school system. This was his retirement dream: to be a cowboy. He had serious health issues, but he always endured what came in peace. In August 2008, I travelled back to Tombstone to be with Philip, who was finally succumbing to the effects of his exposure to Agent Orange on the docks at Long Binh port. We celebrated his 60th Birthday and he died that fall.
It’s like Faulkner said, “The past is never dead; it’s not even past.” We all bear the wounds of every war that was ever fought. And Pope Francis never let us forget, “No more war. Never again war!” Father Louie worked for justice and human dignity, both of which are necessary for peace. He emptied himself for peace and for the movement of active non-violence. He endured long periods of incarceration in deep love and peace. Reading something he wrote gave me a clearer picture of how he experienced jail time:
“These days [in jail]
are a journey into a new freedom and a slow
transformation of being and identity: an invitation to
enter one’s truest self, and to follow the road of
prayer and nonviolent witness wherever it will
lead.” 1
So, enduring in peace doesn’t mean just to wait out periods of tribulation. It means to grow through them, to love through them, to continue to reach out toward all people of goodwill for the chance to establish a just peace in this temporal world.
1 Ken Butigan (2023, Sept. 6) Nonviolence in Action:
Remembering Louie Vitale. Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service.
Paceebene.org
https://www.secularfranciscansusa.org/2025/11/enduring-in-peace/