Word of the Day: Oblates

OBLATES. A term that has a long and varied ecclesiastical history, originally designating those children who were sent to monasteries to be brought up by religious. Some of these oblates became religious. After the early Middle Ages oblates were lay persons who were united to a religious order by a simplified rule of life, but who did not become full religious; this practice still continues. In modern times the name has been adopted by a number of fully established religious institutes, of which the best known are the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (O.M.I.), founded in France in 1816 by Bishop Charles de Mazenod, and the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, originally founded by their namesake and re-established in 1871 by Louis Brisson, a priest of Troyes in France. (Etym. Latin oblatus, offered.)

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The Benedictiones are the best known Order that has oblates, which are analogous to tertiaries in the mendicant Orders. The English Congregation of Benedictines use the term 'confrater', rather than 'oblate'. The Anglican Benedictines of Nashdom and St Gregory's Abbeys have adopted it as well.

Years before becoming a Catholic, I was a Confrater of St Gregory's. When I became an Orthodox, I wrote the Abbot, asking what that did to my membership in the Order. His reply? 'St Benedict was Orthodox, too!'

As a result, I remained a Benedictine when I joined the Church,  becoming an Oblate of St Scholastica's, Atchison, KS, before finally becoming a Tertiary of Mount Carmel.