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Understanding A Religious “Order”<\/strong><\/h1>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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An Interview with Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.<\/h3>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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In this interview, Ken Pino speaks with Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm., about the Provincial Chapter, the election of province leadership, the process of postulation, and how Carmelite governance differs from diocesan structures.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>

Transcript:<\/span><\/em><\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>So thank you for taking the time to talk about this a little bit. So, I thought we would do just a quick little intro of who you are talking, so you can introduce yourself a little bit. And then just a quick of chapter: what it is, the general processes, the governmental, the constitution, etc… Then the added thing of… there was a provincial who was third term, so that’s a governmental process – postulation.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Fantastic.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>And if you’d maybe like to introduce yourself a little bit, just, who you are, and maybe a little bit about you were on the governmental commission, I believe, on the chapter, but then in general ministries… just a quick little intro.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>So, yes, so I’m actually a New Englander by birth, back in Rhode Island, and, joined the Carmelites way back when, you know, and it was ordained in 1977, so this is completing my 49th year, and have had varying ministries, but one of the ministries that I had for a while was working with the North American Forum on the Catechumenate, and that was an agency that worked with dioceses to help them to implement, at the time, Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, which is now the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults. That meant that I was doing a lot of meeting planning, so in 1993, the provincial at the time, Father Quinn Conners, asked if I would be willing to chair the upcoming chapter. I’m sorry, that was in a 93 chapter. It would have been in 91 he asked me about this. And, because of my meeting planning background, which chapters are meetings. A week-long meeting of our brothers in community. And so that began the process, and I’ve been involved with the chapters in varying levels, both as the chairs of them, as different aspects, but also in the government commission, which oversees our own legislation and how our community, this particular province, the Province of the Most Pure Heart of Mary, based in Chicago, operates. So that’s where I’ve come to be known as the person who does the legislation and the elections, organizing those and such, which we had just a few weeks ago, our chapter. I think one of the things to see about a difference with that is, you know, if you talk about a diocese, that’s a territorial entity. So as a province in a community, religious communities, territorial, ours tends to be very expansive: Canada, United States, Mexico, El Salvador, Peru, and Honduras. So it’s a very expansive territory in which we serve. One of the differences is, in the territory of a diocese, the Vatican appoints their ordinary, the bishop. Other religious communities, the members of that province. elects their ordinary, which would be the prior provincial, as well as the other members of his council. And so it’s a little bit of a different dynamic for us.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Just to make sure that everybody understands, there’s the Pope, and the Archbishop, and the bishop, and then the parishes are under that. So the order, when they’re working in a parish within the diocese, the diocese has kind of authority and control over that, but outside of that, they (the Order) are self-governing and have their own representation up to the Vatican, effectively.<\/p>

Carmelite Governance and the Provincial Chapter<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Right, yes, right, they do. Within our context, you know, similar to that would be is that our… our universal, worldwide leader is the Prior General. Who, in fact, resides in Rome, and is elected by an international gathering, which is called a General Chapter. At the provincial level, the Provincial Chapter elects the prior provincial, and so it’s in that lineup. And, so, we have options within our order to the style of chapter. You can have an elected delegate chapter, in which the members choose and elect who they’re going to have present, or you can have a self-delegated chapter, in which those members who have the prerogative to vote, we call that active voice, come to the chapter. And by being there, self-delegate themselves. And that’s the style that we have. And so, different people come from different places with that. And then that sets up the chapter. We have a roll call to begin with, how many people are there, and then in order to do business, you have to have an absolute majority, more than 50% present, to do any of the canonical business. There are other workshops that go on, or different things that happen, varying celebrations, it will vary from chapter to chapter, which happens every 3 years. Two pieces of canonical action are the election of officers and dealing with legislation. Now, the legislation piece is how do we as a province want to operate. But that’s also done in conjunction with our constitutions. So we have an international body of regulations, the constitutions, which are determined by the general chapters. And within them, they say, here’s how you have to do it. Oftentimes, unless local statutes say otherwise. So there’s a lot of flexibility at times within that, and there’s some that’s like, that’s it. And those also are shaped in light of canon law. So, they can’t contradict canon law. And then the Provincial Chapters, with their statutes, they can’t contradict constitutions, but the constitutions oftentimes leave leeway, unless local statutes determine otherwise.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>So this would be, for example, like \u201cfederal and state\u201d here in the United States.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Yes.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>And state can’t counteract federal, but state has its own, and that would be Province to… Order.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>To the order, right. Yes, yeah, that type of structure, right. And so it’s kind of set up that there’s different levels to the legislation, we call them statutes, would be those things that particularly refer to where the Constitution says, unless local statutes say, then we could put something in. You know, so it’s related to the constitutions. Then there’s norms, way in which we operate. that have become kind of the normal procedures that we do. And then we have what we call AIMS, would be very time-specific. So, for example. 3 years ago, at our chapter, the chapter… it decided to take on a 6-year aim on implementing Laudato Si\u2019. you know, raising up our consciousness about care of the Earth, the common home, and different ways of doing that. But it was a very specific time period, you know. Those things can change, so those things at the chapter, we can change those things as they go along, voting on them and stuff.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>So those are the Province\u2019s strategic plan and council goals…<\/p>

Officers, Terms, and Postulation<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Yeah, council goals that get in there, they come from that, that the council will set up goals, different types of things about operation, yes, right. And then we have the election of officers. A province has a prior provincial. He has a council of 4 people. You may or may not have a vice prior provincial or an assistant provincial. The constitutions allow for either of that. And it also allows for them to be elected or named. So a prior provincial could name his vice prior provincial, or his assistant. Our province chose to have it as an elected position, the vice prior provincial, and then you have four councillors, who will serve as a council to the prior provincial. So there are six members to our council at this point.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Got it.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>The norm is that you’re elected for a 3-year term. And then at the following chapter, you could be elected for a second 3-year term. But at the end of 6, you’re no longer eligible to serve in that office unless there is a 3-year period, another triennial period, where you’re out of office, to come back. The one exception is that the person who has served in two terms could be what they call postulated<\/em> to a third term. And that requires the consent of the Prior General and his council, because it is to provide a dispensation from that regulation of only two terms. It’s been many, many years since our province had that, in fact.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Have we had one before? I know not in our lifetimes, but…<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Yeah, and I checked in people who are even older than I am and stuff, and the probability would be, I think we have to go back to a prior provincial, Matthew O’Neill, who actually, I think, went for four terms until the General said, no more.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>No more. Yeah.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>And so within that… so this was the first time that we actually had that, and Carl was the prior provincial for 6 years, so the only way that he could be re-elected would be by postulation, which means that two-thirds of the voting members would have to choose him.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Okay. And they had to choose him once to put them on the ballot, and again to [actually elect him]…<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Yeah, he’d be nominated, we have a consultative ballot to start with for everybody, all the positions, to say who the members are thinking of. That’s a weighted ballot. You have to vote for so many for prior provincial, and the first choice gets this many, and the second choice, and so on. So we get a weighted ballot. It’s kind of a survey of the whole province, because not the whole province is going to be present at the chapter.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>And they must be present to vote in the actual election…<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Actually, yes, you have to be, because you can’t do it by email, and that’s constitutions that govern that. And it’s by secret ballot, so it’s not by hand vote or anything like that. To be elected regularly, it’s just an absolute majority, more than 50%, but postulation requires two-thirds of the assembly to do it. Now, in the regular run for elections, there’s… the nominees are placed up there, and then ballots are passed out, people write down the name, and they are counted. If no one gets in the regular scheme of things, if no one gets the the absolute majority, more than 50%, there’s a second ballot. If no one on the second ballot gets more than 50%, there’s a third ballot, but only the top two vote-getters of the previous ballot are on that. And they can’t vote.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Right, so you can’t vote for yourself in that round.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>That’s right. Or the other person, in fact, but you’re right. Right, right. Which we call active voice. Active voice is that you can vote. You lose your active voice in that. And whoever has the simple majority wins.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Okay, so they don’t have to have 51%, per se.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Yeah, right.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Whoever gets more.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Whoever gets more, right. Because you can also abstain. Or it could also have an invalid ballot, you know? They put down a third name. Well, there’s only these two candidates. Yes, no, or does the person’s name abstain or invalid, you know that everything\u2019s counted up. Still, whoever has the simple majority, more votes than the other, yeah. Right. And so that happens once in a while, once in a while. This chapter was a little unusual. We did have to go to a second ballot. When we were electing the prior provincial, Carl did not have the two-thirds majority at the first ballot, but he did in the second ballot. When we went on to Vice Prior Provincial, one of the councilors from the previous council, Chuy Paz, had served two terms as a provincial councilor so he would only be eligible to serve as Vice Prior Provincial or Provincial councilor by postulation. He was nominated for Vice Prior Provincial. But in the first two ballots, he did not receive the two-thirds, so his name was taken out, and we began the regular voting again.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>So, serving in any leadership position, council or provincial, vice provincial, two terms in a row, precludes you from going that next time for any of those positions?<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>No, he would have been eligible for the provincial.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Oh, okay.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Yes, that’s a very different role from the councillors. And we, in our statutes, our local statutes, look at the vice prior provincial, and the councillors as similar in their role in that they’re a council to the provincial.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Okay.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>They’re distinct roles.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Provincial stands on his own as a unique.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Yes, right. Okay. So one could serve in that context. When we went into the four councilors, three of the four elections went to a third ballot. Which was, I say, very unusual, very unusual with that.. And it’s interesting to see it as it happens, you know, certain people, you know, oh, they’ve had a term, and they’re very successful, they’re going to get a second term. But there is also an ordering that the first councilor says, the second council, third council report, there’s a sort of a ranking in that. In particular, that becomes very important if you don’t have a vice prior provincial. Many provinces don’t have that, because that first councilor becomes the vicar of the provincial in his absence.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Oh, okay.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>So there’s a role the first councilor has, you know, with that.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Kind of, and to relate it back to United States government, Speaker of the House.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Yeah. You got the President, the Vice President, Speaker of the House.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>So there’s sometimes a little bit of jockeying of that to get that order, and then once you get the first two in and the third, you kind of look at it and say \u201cwhere’s the gap in representation\u201d either by, you know, the skills of the persons, the territory of the persons, the ministries of the persons, the personality of the persons… and so that kind of shifts around. And so oftentimes, sometimes a dark horse ends up being [elected]. Part of that would be just, you know, no one in those first two get the absolute majority, more than 50%. Right. And so it goes to that third ballot, because they’re kind of splitting out, you know, people holding up for their particular person that they want or see, yeah. Right.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>And by the time you get to the third ballot, you whittle it down to two to, effectively, say \u201cwe need to finish this up\u201d.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Right. In each case, once the person is elected the general, who is present with us, or his delegate… but in this case we do have our general. I’ve always been with our general in all the different ones I’ve been at<\/em>… comes forward and he asks the person if he will accept the position. And then they accept and he confirms that. Now, in the case of postulation, as we had with Carl, he has to contact his council beforehand to see if they will approve it.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>And it was a bit of a time zone issue.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Yes, yes, because he had to call the roll. He told them all, \u201cyou see me calling at this hour, you answer\u201d. Right. And we asked him about that and said, you know, did you ask them before? He said, no, you can’t do that.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>So they were ready to do it.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Then, because he knew that they would approve, then he asked, do you accept? And then he confirmed the appointment of the election.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>And when you say he has to accept the position, I don’t know if we even covered back, when someone is nominated initially, they have the option to decline the nomination.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Yes, they do, right. And for us, that tends to happen. So if the person is there on the list of nominees, they’ve had an opportunity from that consultative ballot to know and to say whether or not they would withdraw, which avoids then getting into that, you know, all of a sudden happening. I was at a general council. A general chapter at one point, and the person who was one of the nominees for general was not elected, somebody else was. He was, in fact, nominated for vice Prior general. And when asked, he declined. So I’ve seen it happen, where they do stuff. But all of that… consultative, balloting, all that nominating happens there on site. He was willing to serve as a general, but not as vice general.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>That’s a point that I hadn’t really thought about, that it’s possible for someone to have been nominated for all three… effectively, so if they are then elected to provincial, they come off, so the ballots change down the line.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Right, yes, right, yeah. If they come off the list because they’ve already been elected, they’re no longer eligible for that office. Right.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>It’s quite the little process.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Yeah, so it does change a lot, and those types of things, and, you know, keeping people apprised, okay, where are we? So we were using, this, you know, projection of the names, and if someone was elected, then highlighting it, that they’re no longer eligible for this office, you know, the next ballot. But be aware that they’re on the council, and as you look at the others, who’s, you know, to kind of constitute a rather broader-based perspective council. Yeah. So what we did end up with in this time was, a very balanced, if you will, council. We’ve got North Americans and South Americans on the council. So, it really does reflect who we are.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Right.<\/p>

Council Representation and Ongoing Governance<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>You know, with the provincial, the vice provincial, Carl Markelz and Samuel Citero, both being North American Anglos. We have the first councilor, although he’s here in the States, is from Guatemala, Jorge Monterroso M\u00e9rida. Our second councilor is another Anglo from the United States, Michael Joyce, and then the two other councilors are from Peru – Ra\u00fal Marav\u00ed Cabrera, who is actually the commissary provincial of our community in Peru, and Lucio Lezama Aparicio, who is actually the president of our high school in Lima. And, so there, you know, so there are two Peruvians on the council with the Central American and the American… North American peoples. So it’s very [representative]…<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>In the province, the men can maintain their other ministries and positions that sit on the council, and even vice provincial. I know that normally the vice provincial is here at what we would call the Provincial House in Chicago. I’m not sure if Father Sam is going to be moving here. He may serve that out in New Jersey.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Yeah, for the vice provincial our statutes say it is their primary job… primary ministry… they’re not really beholden to another ministry, if possible, but they’re not required to live in Darien or the Chicago area. Yeah, they’re in their regular ministries, this type of thing, yes, right. They meet virtually, you know, it’s been a little bit easier now to be that international with Zoom meetings, and therefore do it also a little bit more regularly. When I had served on the councils before, it was pre-Zoom. And we would meet, like, every 6 weeks, but you’d have to travel to that place.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Right.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>You know, I was a commissary provincial, which is a regional provincial, one of the structures we had. That was my full-time ministry, so it wasn’t difficult. But then I served as a councilor while being a pastor of a parish. So you have to kind of juggle some stuff there, you know, because the other part of it is you also have school members who are on there, and so, you know, their work week Monday through Friday, you know, they’d like to meet on weekends. Pastors of parishes have a lot of work on weekends, so it was like, you know, it’s a little give and take on that.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Exactly. And with that Zoom point, I guess it’s important to recognize, as you said, from expense to time and ability to meet, it’s been phenomenal being able to do these virtually, but they do still make a concerted effort, I know, to have at least one council meeting here in Darien, one down in, you know, El Salvador or Peru, somewhere down in Central America. And maybe one up in Canada, or one out on the West Coast. So that they all get together.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Where they’re coming together. Yes, yeah. But they’re able to meet more frequently, too, on the Zoom piece, because that was oftentimes a real challenge, you know, six weeks you’re coming in, and you’ve got to catch up on everything.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Yes.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Whereas every month or something, it would be easier. Yeah. So that becomes the governing… that’s the governing body, then, of the province, is the provincial and his council, you know, which, again. In 3 years, you change them.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Do it all again.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>We did have an option, though, constitutions do allow, for making it a six-year term. That was also brought up at the, at the General Council one time, General Chapter.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Their generals are elected for 6-year terms, that have 2 for 12, and, you know, they were saying, for the most part, you know, with the provincial situations, most times it is a re-election. So why not make it 6 to match up with that other? And the thing was, no, the guys said, no, no, no, no, we want to keep it at 3 and 3, because if we don’t like the guy, we want to kick him out after 3.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Well, and now, and actually, that’s a good point, right… really, right before chapter, it was very close to Chapter and one of our friars, Fr. Rolf Nepomuk “Nepi” Willemsen was called up to Rome to serve as a councilor up there, councilor for the Americas. So even if he was someone that the membership was considering for a leadership position or anything, he was now unavailable.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>That’s right.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>And for 6 to 12 years, because he could serve two terms in Rome.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Right.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>So that may also have had an impact on, okay, who was… someone was coming 3 months earlier, thinking, oh, well, maybe that was who I was going to vote for, and then…<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>So, yeah, and that would be really one of the big differences between a religious community and a diocese, you know, because it does get to elect its officials.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Self-governing aspect.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Yes.<\/p>

Carmelites, Dioceses, Schools, and Parishes<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Well, you did a great job of covering it al. I didn’t have to really ask a lot of questions. I tend to get a lot of questions and I’m surprised how many people, even Lay Carmelites and lay staff in the province, don’t understand even the basic aspects of what’s a provincial, and who is the council, and all of that. But the structure of it, that we as laypeople work for a religious order and not for diocesan priests, you know, it’s kind of a different animal.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>And in that is, like, when we serve at a parish… Right. That parish belongs to the diocese, and you’re serving as the bishop’s vicar. So there’s, you know, you’ve got that local ordinary, and then you’ve got your provincial ordinary, and so it’s a little bit… whereas our schools are separately owned by us. And so the prior provincial is really the head honcho for our schools. However, they still have to work in tandem with the local bishop, because it has to have his approval to operate within his diocese. And so he can say, no, I don’t want you here any longer, because I don’t like what you’re doing, you know?<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Prior Provincial is kind of the… Say, of our five schools here in the States, the superintendent… sort of… from a public school perspective.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Yeah, he\u2019s over all of the schools, right, yeah. Sits on the board of each school… the board of members, the board of members is the provincial council for each of those schools, except for the co-owned schools, then, you know, on that board of members, there’s members from our province and the other community, the Franciscan Sisters in Joliet, or the BVMs in Mundelein, they have some members on the board of members. And then each of the schools has its own board of directors. And there are Carmelites that sit on those boards, and they do the, you know, more daily things. So, one of the ways of looking at it, we do the president-principal model. The board of members appoints the president.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Okay.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Board of Directors hires the principal.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Okay.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Each has their role in terms of the overall leadership of the school in a different way. In a parish, the Provincial does not appoint the pastor. He recommends to the bishop this person. And the bishop appoints the pastor.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Are there any parishes, though, that are province-owned?<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>The only one that we would say that we own the parish is St. Cecilia’s in Englewood, New Jersey.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>But we still have to go to the bishop. If we want to assign someone there, or…<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>That, I don’t know. Okay. We would probably… we’d definitely let him know, but I don’t know… It’s a pastor of those people, so it’s probably a mutual thing. I don’t think you just put somebody in. But, yeah, it’s a little bit… it’s a different relationship with the diocese. He can’t take it back from us.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Right. You have a much greater say there than in a diocesan parish.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Right, right, yeah. Whereas, for example, this past year, here in Phoenix, the bishop wanted to use the parish we were serving in as part of their seminary that they’re bringing back into the diocese to house some of their students, and because of the parish. And so he took it back from us.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Right.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>It was his parish to do that. In Englewood, he can’t take it back, he doesn’t own it.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Right.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Yeah, and that’s a very rare thing in our country, very rare. You’d find that a little bit more in Europe and stuff like that, because of the older places where parishes are owned by the order that’s serving it, yeah. And they tend to be more shrines than parishes.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Right, so I hope that clarifies a piece of our life that goes on, and how we structure what governs us as a province, both by virtue of personnel and the legislation.<\/p>

Helping People Understand the Carmelite Family<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>I think that will be very helpful, not only to the lay staff because a lot of them don’t have a good grasp on it, but just in general. My wife will say she was talking to someone, and they’ll say, oh, what does your husband do? Oh, you know, works for the Carmelites. Carmelites? What’s Carmelite? And then you have the whole Franciscan\/Carmelite thing. No, no, not the three knots, the belt, you know? And they’re like, oh, so for the diocese? Well, no, and you have to kind of explain it because people just don’t think about that. It doesn’t occur to them.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>It’s not in their world, yeah, yeah.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>When I told my mother I wanted to be a Carmelite, she said, you can’t. They’re women. They don’t talk.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>Oh, yes!<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>You lose on both accounts. She grew up down the street from a cloistered convent of Carmelites, went off to Boston, became a nurse, got a job in Newport, Rhode Island, which is my home of origin, and lived down the street from a cloistered convent of Carmelites. So she was very aware of Carmelites who were women and didn’t talk. Yes. That’s what people think of, is, yeah, the cloistered nuns.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>That is another one that I’ll often… if I say Carmelite, and if \u00a0Carmelite does trigger with people, they\u2019ll say \u201coh, the sisters\u201d. Yes, yes.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>Right, yeah, yeah. Yep, yep.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>So, but it’s a huge family. Although I knew the Carmelite family before I came in, it’s bigger than I even viewed it before coming in, now that I’m in it, looking at it, going, it’s a much larger family than I originally saw, from my, you know, from my perspective.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>It is.<\/p>

Ken Pino: <\/strong>So that’s been fun to learn about and see, so… All right. All right. Very good. Well, thank you very much, I appreciate your time, and.<\/p>

Fr. Ron Oakham, O.Carm.: <\/strong>You’re welcome. All right, great. Thank you, brother. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\n

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To learn more about the Carmelite Order and Charism, visit OUR SPIRITUALITY<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>

To learn more about the Carmelite Province of the Most Pure Heart of Mary, ABOUT US<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>

2026 PCM Chapter article and election results: <\/strong>https:\/\/carmelites.net\/carmelite-review\/a-provincial-chapter\/<\/a><\/p>

Fr. Ronald Oakham, O.Carm. profile: <\/strong>https:\/\/carmelites.net\/friars\/oakham-o-carm-ronald\/<\/a><\/p>

For any other information, please drop us a note via our CONTACT FORM<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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The Carmelites of the Province of the Most Pure Heart of Mary, in allegiance to Jesus Christ, live in a prophetic and contemplative stance of prayer, common life, and service.\u00a0 Inspired by Elijah and Mary and informed by the Carmelite Rule, we give witness to an eight-hundred-year-old tradition of spiritual transformation in the United States, Canada, Peru, Mexico, and El Salvador, and Honduras.<\/strong><\/p>

Please consider supporting their mission
https:\/\/carmelitemedia.tiny.us\/supportpcm<\/a>
to make a financial donation.<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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