Our Holy Fathers

Our Lady of Mercy Chapter's Dominican and Franciscan
Ms. Ruth Raichele, op and Sr. Kathleen Deneven, osf  

October 5 is the Feast Day of St. Francis.  It is a venerable tradition in the Franciscan and Dominican Orders to call both founders, Our Holy Father Dominic and Our Holy Father Francis.  Both Orders do this in their Litany of Saints.  We also invite a preacher from the other Order to preach on our respective feast days.  For example, Our Lady of Mercy Chapter invited Fr. Martin Curtin, OFM Cap., and he gave an inspired Talk.  (Albeit impromptu, but it was excellent, nonetheless.)

Professor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira describes the complementary mission of these two Religious Orders:

"St. Francis and St. Dominic both received visions that allowed them to recognize one another. So when St. Dominic saw St. Francis in one of the churches of Rome, he went to him and embraced him. They both expressed their enthusiasm for the mission each had received and for the fact that they would support one another. This was the embrace of two souls, each one with every reason to hold the other in the highest esteem: on one hand, because their missions were very similar; on the other hand, because they were very different.

According to Catholic criteria, a great similarity leads to friendship, but so also does a great dissimilarity when it is not the dissimilarity of opposition, but rather one that is complementary. One had something that the other was lacking. Together they constituted a harmonic ensemble. For this reason, they admired one another.

Both saints had a profound Marian devotion. St. Francis was a great palatine of the Immaculate Conception centuries before it was defined as dogma. The Franciscans would spread that truth throughout the world. St. Dominic was the great apostle of the Rosary. Through the devotion of the Rosary the Dominicans would effect immediate and spectacular conversions. The Dominican is the Order of the Rosary par excellence. So, from the Marian perspective, there is a great similarity in the Orders.

However, even with this similarity of mission, there are also differences. The two Marian devotions represent in the minds of the faithful two different floods of light. Still, they are convergent lights, because it is not unusual for the person who believes in the Immaculate Conception to pray the Rosary, and vice-versa.

This balance between similarity and dissimilarity can also be noted in another point. The Dominican Order was called to convert persons by speaking to their will through their intelligence. It is clear that part of the Dominican mission is an intellectual work--the study and teaching of philosophy, theology, and apologetics. On the contrary, the dominant note of the Franciscan Order is to move the will through a manifestation of zeal. The great conversions of the Franciscans came about through the consideration of the Wounds of Our Lord, His Passion, His poverty and spirit of sacrifice. Once again, they are harmonic differences that merge in the spirit of the faithful. A Catholic instructed in the arguments of apologetics by the Dominicans should also be touched by the fervor of the Franciscans.

That embrace in a church of Rome, therefore, was not just the embrace of two saints, but something more. It was the missions of the two Orders that embraced in that moment. The two Founders were like the two hands of God uniting their efforts to work on this earth, to bring holiness and happiness to men and glory to the Catholic Church."

 h/t Friar Blog belonging to the Province of St. Joseph