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Document Details : Title: 'You say you did not come to the mission for that' Subtitle: Irish Lazarists in Catholic Reformation France Author(s): FORRESTAL, Alison Journal: Lias Volume: 49 Issue: 1 Date: 2022 Pages: 45-64 DOI: 10.2143/LIAS.49.1.3291723 Abstract : Under the leadership of their founding superior general, Vincent de Paul, the Lazarists (or Congregation of the Mission) became major innovators in the provision of formal missions, charitable welfare, and the formation of clergy, as well as one of the principal clerical groupings in the French Catholic Church during the seventeenth century. This article assesses the integration of Irish migrant clergy into this most significant of institutional actors in the dévot reform movement that shaped religious discipline during this period. It reverses the traditional scholarly pre-occupation with the return of a few Irish Lazarists to Ireland in the 1640s in favour of exploring the assimilation of Irishmen into the Congregation in France, from the year that the first of these entered (1638) to the time of de Paul’s death and the Restoration (1660). With unusual specificity, it details the origins and accession of the Irish recruits to the Congregation, before proceeding to examine the ways in which they were exposed to its spiritual and institutional life, their formation in the distinctive Lazarist ethos, and an evaluation of the positions that they assumed in the growing Lazarist network of mission, charity, and clerical formation. Overall, this reconstruction enables the conclusion that the diversity and innovative structure of the Lazarist mission offered significant options for ministry to its Irish members, as well as opportunities to organise initiatives for Ireland and the Irish specifically. |
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