I still remember sitting in a classroom after school for a ‘sodality’ meeting. I don’t remember which one. Which sodality, I mean. I doubt if I even knew at the time that there’s more than one. I would have been perhaps ten years old. Not any older and quite possibly younger.
The moderator asked me what the purpose of the sodality was, and I had no idea. She thought my sister should have (would have?) explained it to me. I said, and it makes me cringe to write this even now sixty years later, that she didn’t know what a sodality was either. Since my sister had been a member for a year this was considered scandalous, and she was publicly rebuked, for what I said.
She of course was very upset and she had a lot of reason to be. I didn’t set out to cause trouble, but I sure succeeded although, as I look back, I can see that some grownups behaved very badly as well.
I spent the rest of my life not comprehending sodalities, or at least what they are supposed to be. Truthfully, when I look back, it’s not clear to me that anyone except myself was confused. I have never been able to remember things that I don’t understand, and in this particular case, I think my mother might have tried to explain sodalities after this little dust-up. If she did, it still didn’t make any sense.
Last week, while I was studying the Leonardo da Vinci pictures of the Virgin of the Rocks, (link below) I read the description of the people who had commissioned the painting. They were the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. (This is not as far as I can tell the same one that exists now and has a blue scapular.) They were associated with this chapel and had raised funds to decorate it. Somehow the penny finally dropped.{ con = with … fraternity = brothers} Confraternities and sodalities are simply associations of lay people meant to serve a (pious) purpose within the Church. Definitions from the 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia help this understanding though they also make clear that there is a lot of vocabulary wrapped around a very simple concept.
A confraternity or sodality is a voluntary association of the faithful, established and guided by competent ecclesiastical authority for the promotion of special works of Christian charity or piety. The name is sometimes applied to pious unions, but the latter differ from confraternities …. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04223a.htm
The sodalities of the Church are pious associations and are included among the confraternities and archconfraternities. It would not be possible to give a definition making a clear distinction between the sodalities and other confraternities; https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14120a.htm
The definitions and articles showed me more.
One of the stories of my childhood is my mother forming a study group to read the Papal Encyclicals. When she proposed this to her Catholic friends they unanimously said she had to get permission from a priest to do this. My lovely convert mother did not understand in the least why this was important, but she went to see the pastor of her church. He told her no, she should just stay home quietly. In disbelief she said that all she wanted was grownup conversation about the writings of previous popes. The priest said, more or less, Oh. Oh, yes. Go ahead. So she collected some friends, called the group the Jerome Study Group, and read a bunch of encyclicals.
So why did the pastor change his mind so swiftly and totally? If my mom understood why, she never communicated it to me, but the Encyclopedia articles suggest something. There are rules upon rules for confraternities and sodalities, especially because in the 1800’s there were indulgences of various kinds associated with them, and the rules for those indulgences included such things as this. If a particular sodality had twelve members then the goodness associated with the sodality also accrued to the priest who was supervising it, even if he wasn’t carrying out the ‘works’ of the group. But if the number dropped down to eleven, then the priest didn’t get any credit.
Okay, I find this insane. And I can easily imagine a priest in 1955 looking at my mom, thinking she was proposing another sodality that he would have to supervise and somehow find a canonical status for, and he just did NOT want to play that game. On the other hand, if she wanted to have a reading group that he didn’t have to pay attention to, well, go ahead.
The articles on sodalities in the Catholic Encyclopedia were interesting in another way. They looked, briefly, like an ultimate rabbit hole, but they didn’t turn out that way. After a few minutes I didn’t care at all. Too many rules and more rules and minute distinctions. The rules for sodalities usually included the idea of increasing piety. Suddenly I could see why my younger self, attending a Catholic school, did not understand why there was a Group ..(!).. trying to promote piety. Wasn’t that what our whole education was about? Why were some people set apart, meeting after school to carry out this proposition? I was never going to understand that when I was a kid.
I think I’ll just meditate on Leonardo’s pictures again. You can find them through this link.
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