Apostolate of the Order • IV
The fourth apostolate of the Order is a fraternal life lived in common — the college fraternity restored to the purpose it should always have served. Men have always banded together in brotherhood. The question has never been whether they will, but what the brotherhood is for.
Ours is built upon the Faith and not upon the lodge. It has no secret oath, no hidden degree, and no allegiance that competes with Christ and His Church. What binds our members is the Rosary prayed in common, the Mass attended together, the sacraments frequented, and a rule of life that all have accepted in the open.
And it is set squarely against the vices that the fraternity houses of this age have come to excuse — the drunkenness, the cruelty dressed up as initiation, the use of women, the whole squalid inheritance that has made the word a byword. A brotherhood that forms men in those things is not a brotherhood. It is a conspiracy against them.
A fraternity that exists only for itself curdles. Ours is ordered outward from the beginning: to the campus, to the parish, to the town, and to the society that surrounds it. Members give their labour, their means, and their time to works of charity and philanthropy, and they do it under their own name, in the open, as Catholics.
The three marks we hold ourselves to are simple. Faithful — to Christ, to His Church, to Our Lady, and to one another. Charitable — in deed before word, beginning with the brother beside you and reaching to the stranger. Philanthropic — giving back to the communities that formed us, and to a society that has forgotten how to ask.
"Bear ye one another’s burdens; and so you shall fulfil the law of Christ." — Galatians 6:2
Members gather. They pray together, eat together, study together, and hold one another to the standard they have accepted. They keep watch over the brother who is drifting, and they go after him when he goes.
And they work: service to the parish and the community, support for the other apostolates of the Order, and the plain unglamorous labour that every charitable work eventually requires of somebody.
No soldier is sent out alone. If you are looking for a brotherhood worth belonging to, this is one.