Sodalities: Schools of the Catholic Apostolate
Where will we train the good Catholic of tomorrow?—It is prudent and even practical, before we venture into this inquiry, first to resolve the defining question: what is meant by the term “good Catholic”? Is the good Catholic simply good because he is not bad, or, at the very least, not so bad? Or is the good Catholic merely he who is not an average Catholic—a Catholic who makes subtle and small-seeming concessions in music, movies, fashions or fads because “let’s be honest, it’s not a mortal sin and maybe not even venial”? Or is the good Catholic he who goes to Mass and the sacraments, keeps himself in the state of grace while paddling his way through the world without making a wave or even a ripple in the world? None of these are the good Catholic; rather this term refers to
exemplary Catholics, Catholics par excellence, men and women who may be pointed to as typical instances of what members of the true Church should be and do in order worthily to show the Faith that is in them. The term “good Catholic” … embraces all the piety, thought and action which should go to make up the life of a devoted follower of Christ.… Not the mere fulfillment of the obligations imposed by the Church on all her children is here intended, but the living-out in all its details of the holy ideal of Christian life and service.1
And so, where will we train such a Catholic? It is imperative to realize, that the conversion of the world, or even smaller worlds like the workplace or the home, depend upon such souls. As Pius XII said,
Our times demands fearless Catholics who consider it entirely normal to profess their faith openly in word and deed whenever God’s law and Christian honor require it. Real men, whole men, determined and fearless! Not half-men whom the world itself today rejects, thrusts back, and tramples upon!2
The Church has long encouraged and fostered various associations for the laity. In the Medieval world, guilds were not merely “occupational” associations but were also social and religious. Religious in the sense that they encouraged special devotions of their members, and they organized works of charity. There were Third Orders: namely, Benedictine, Franciscan, and Dominican third orders. They were composed of laymen who sought to follow a higher mode of Catholic living and unite their personal good with that of the Church. The Jesuit Sodalities arose out of a similar notion. The Sodality of Our Lady started as a small gathering of students, some of the best Jesuit students at the Roman College, at the feet of Mary, honoring her with prayers and hymns, and meditating on her and her Son. This mustard seed sprouted into the famous Prima Primaria (the First Primary) in 1563, to which all other sodalities were to be attached. With the approval and encouragement of Gregory XIII, the Sodalities spread throughout Europe. Every Jesuit college had them—a corps of students who aspired to the best the Catholic Church had, and how could they not aspire for this perfection? They had as their patroness the Virgin whose last words were “Quodcumque dixerit vobis, facite.” And as children of Mary, they received her maternal words and wisdom. As knights of Mary, they swore to take those words to heart, to strive for perfection and accept nothing short of it, to love God and their neighbor as themselves. Such a patroness and such a philosophy cannot but help nurture good ground in which to sow good seed from which will grow good fruit. So immediate and so significant were the results of these earliest of sodalities that the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum (the official directives on education) decreed that the prefect of a school had an obligation to found a sodality in his school and, more so, was not to allow a boy to enter an academy—these were special student organizations within a school for advancing the most dedicated and promising students—unless he first entered a sodality. This was to guarantee that the boy who wanted to advance his learning to a high degree must first want to advance his soul to perfection, “for what does it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?” (Mt. 16:26)
While each sodality had rules particular to its purpose, such as works of charity, visiting the sick or imprisoned, teaching of catechism, etc., the basic rules of the sodalities were simple: devotion to Mary, meetings and meditations, frequent confession and Communion, some participation in the Divine Office, and works of charity. The rules may seem simple, but the point was to teach students aspiring towards more than ordinary sanctity the ways of true spiritual perfection, which means not only a personal sanctity but a sanctity that must, as a consequence of sincerity of soul, extend into all external activities. Each portion was to form something unique in the soul. Devotion to Mary was the cornerstone as she became the unique patroness and protectress of those who willfully took her as their model and their mother. “Without a doubt, the inmost source of the Sodalities’ fruitful apostolate,” says Pius XII,
is a fervent life, one that is nourished by a devotion to Mary that continually becomes more delicate and at the same time more active, a life which according to your own Rule strives for sanctity itself. This life remains hidden in the interior of hearts. Nevertheless, it reveals itself in the works it produces, in the numerous vocations it helps develop, and in the wonderful legion of saints, blessed, and martyrs who are its evidence in heaven.3
Following this devotion to Mary, the daily meditations trained the soul to think of Christ and to speak to Him constantly; frequent confession and communion preserved the soul from the habits of sin and provided Christ as the spiritual food; the parts of the Divine Office united the prayers of sodalist with the prayers of the Church, drawing him outside of himself and teaching him to see and to seek the needs of the Church; and the works of charity, which are the final fruit of the sodalities, are the overflowing of the personal piety into society. As again Pius XII told a group of sodalists in 1953,
Action, without which there is no true Sodality of Our Lady, must overflow from an intense interior life. In a concrete manner, action must express a charity of supernatural origin, a charity that is devoted, patient, and makes an imprint on the neighbor’s soul.4
In other words, the soul grew in love of Christ and that love, like the lantern in the house, could not be concealed but must burn outward, kindling other fires as it itself intensifies. Pius XII, who considered the Sodalities of Our Lady “among the most powerful spiritual groups defending, propagating, and fighting for Catholicism,” affirms that their success grew out of these simple rules “which guide each Sodalist in his own way to such excellence in the spiritual life that he can then scale the very heights of sanctity.”5 In addition to the graces of their consecration to Mary, the prayers, their meditations, their words, the popes gave special indulgences and spiritual privileges to these, as Pius XII styled them, “battalions of Mary.”
The results, from the beginning, were something miraculous. Within the first years of the sodalities, hundreds of sodalists became priests. Hundreds others exerted influence in all other spheres of society. Two Jesuits, Fr. Elder Mullans6 and Fr. Augustus Drive7, provide an extensive litany of influential priests, politicians, artist, popes, and saints who were sodalists. The popes included Urban VIII, who is said to be the first pope to canonically crown an image of Mary, Alexander VII, Clement IX, Clement X, Innocent XI, Innocent XII, Benedict XIV, Pius IX, Leo XIII. To which we must add Pius XII, who, in his speeches to the sodalities, spoke with great reverence of his own Sodality. (To put this list of pontiffs in perspective, from Urban VIII in 1623 to Pius XII in 1939, there had been 25 popes, and 10 of them are numbered as sodalists.) Among the saints are Robert Bellarmine, Charles Borromeo, Alphonsus Liguori, Stanislas Kostka, Aloysius Gonzaga, John Berchmans, Camillus of Lellis, Leonard of Port Maurice, Vincent de Paul of Rome, Peter Claver, Peter Fourrier, John Eudes. And among the statesmen are Don John of Austria, Tilly, Leolpod of Austria, Sigismund III, and Emperor Ferdinand II, who had inserted among his royal titles “Sodalist of the Holy Mother of God, to whose constant protection he recommends himself.”8 Pius XII adds Eugene of Savoy, Charles of Lorraine, and Jon Sobieski,9 the great Polish warrior-king who, when all Europe trembled at the Ottoman army amassed at the gate of Vienna, answered the call of a fellow sodalist Innocent XI and defeated the Turk, saving Europe.
At first these sodalities were only open to boys and to men. But Leo XII, when he restored the Society of Jesus, not only spread the sodalities far and wide by permitting priests of all orders to found sodalities and attach them to the Prima Primaria, but extended it even farther and wider by commanding sodalities to be also open for girls and for women. Under such influence, the famous Children of Mary joined the Jesuit Sodalities in 1847, with the same spiritual benefits, as a means of perfecting young souls by means of Marian devotion, prayer and meditation, and works of charity.
If the sodalities had such great value yesterday, when there was still a vestige or, at least, a veneer of Christendom, how much greater is the need of sodalities today when Christendom seems all but a ghost in history and when the identity of anything Christian or Catholic is trudging the grueling road to Calvary? Now more than ever souls are needed who grow not merely pious but are imbued with the very spirit of piety. “Piety does not mean,” Fr. Reynold Kuehnel told the women sodalists under his charge,
that we must be continually moaning, whining, or weeping; it does not mean that we must be on our knees day and night; it does not mean that we have to spend all our time in church; it does not mean that we have to keep the beads running through our fingers all day; it does not mean that we have to have the sad look of an undertaker leading a funeral procession; it does not mean that we have to fast all the year, or make a daily practice of the extraordinary acts of the saints.… True piety consists in living in union with God. God is infinitely happy, cheerful, and serene. Nothing in, beneath or above this whole wide world can for an instant cast a shadow of gloom over the happiness of God. In living a life of true piety we live in union with God. Hence, to some extent,—in so far as it is possible for us to share the happiness of God even in this world—with piety we share even on earth the happiness and serenity of God. You see, then, that, far from meaning gloom, sadness and tears, true piety means the enjoyment of the happiness and peace of God.10
Piety was an old Roman family virtue: being devoted and loyal to kith and to kin, and to the patria (the fatherland). With the Christian virtue of piety, a man apprehends, as St. Thomas points out, his debt to his parents, to his country, to the Church, after his debt to God as his creator and savior, and acts accordingly.11 This piety comes from honor of Our Mother and obedience to her command “Do whatever he shall tell you.” This piety is part of the roots of the Catholic apostolate, to the actions of the good Catholic. As Pius XII told his beloved sodalists, the Sodalities are
not simply pious associations, but are schools of perfection and of the apostolate. They appeal to those Christians who, not satisfied with doing a little more than necessary, are determined to respond generously to the urgings of grace and to seek and put into practice, according to their station in life, all of the Divine Will.12
Forming this kind of piety then—the piety of the good Catholic—is the principal work of sodalities. In our day and age, the Society of St. Pius has handed down, in varying degrees, the spirit of these Sodalities. What parish is there that does not have the Eucharistic Crusade, the grammar school of sodalities, with its devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and its monthly prayer intentions? Wherever the Society’s Sisters have a foothold, there will be found the famous Children of Mary for teenage girls. In some parishes, such as St. Vincent de Paul in Kansas City, boys and girls groups called the Cadets or the Guides provide a sodality-like association. In St. Marys, Kansas, the Knights of the Immaculata give teenage boys a sodality devoted to Mary Immaculate. Fr. Kuehnel, a diocesan priest in Detroit in early twentieth century, whose own apostolate was among the youth, decried the lack of sodalities as a great handicap in our modern time to educating the good Catholic:
…One cannot gather figs from thistles; nor can one expect that the men of to-morrow will rally around the standard of Christ, if the boys of to-day are permitted to shift for themselves in religious matters.
Even though a small a parish contain but twenty boys and young men, these twenty deserve as much attention and supervision as the hundreds of a larger parish. If these twenty boys are neglected it will soon mean twenty men sadly lacking in filial devotion and loyalty to holy Mother Church. Nor is this all. These twenty, whether they stay at home or scatter abroad, will exert an influence for the worse. They will help to tear down where we try to build up.
There is no parish so small but it should have well-conducted sodalities, not only for girls and married women, but for boys and men as well. Pious girls and women are of great help to the parish; but if there be a dearth of religious-minded and dutiful boys and men, the parish must soon loose ground. Where boys have no sodality to regulate the performance of their religious duties, they will receive the Sacraments when “they feel like it,” which will, at best, mean once or twice a year. Such boys will not supply the well-instructed and pious men that are needed in our day. A well-conducted sodality will, in its promotion of frequent holy Communion among men, be a powerful means of “restoring all things in Christ.”13
Endnotes
1 Fr. Edward Garesche, Sodality Conferences (New York: Benzinger, 1923), 42.
2 Pius XII, “Ideals and Norms for Sodalities,” Address on the Golden Anniversary of the Sodality (January 21, 1945), Pope Pius XII on Sodalities, (St. Louis: Queen’s Work, 1959), 4.
3 Ibid., 6.
4 Pius XII, Address to Teenage Sodalists from St. Vincent High School, Rennes, France (August 29, 1953), Pope Pius XII on Sodalities, (St. Louis: Queen’s Work, 1959), 31.
5 Ibid. “Bis Saeculari.” Apostolic Constitution on the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Papal Bull Gloriosae Dominae, (Sept. 27, 1948), Pope Pius XII on Sodalities, (St. Louis: Queen’s Work, 1959), 11.
6 Fr. Elder Mullan, “The History of the Sodality of Our Lady,” Ecclesiastical Review, 34, no. 5 (1906): 480-493.
7 Fr. Augustus Drive, The Sodality of Our Lady: Historical Sketches (New York: Kenedy, 1916).
8 Ibid, 139.
9 Pius XII, “Ideals and Norms,” 4.
10 Fr. Reynold Kuehnel, Conferences for Young Women, (New York: Wagner, 1916), 13.
11 Summa. IIa IIae. Q 101. Art 1
12 Pius XII, “Touchstones for the Sodalist,” (Sept. 9, 1954), Pope Speaks, 1, no 3: 286.
13 Fr. Reynold Kuehnel, Conferences for Boys, (New York: Wagner, 1914), preface.