History
Edmund Rice’s founding charism gave birth to two congregations: the Congregation of Presentation Brothers and the Congregation of Christian Brothers.
In the early days, when Edmund first began to attract followers to his way of life, these formed themselves into a small group of companions. They lived together in community and began to follow an adaptation of the Presentation Sisters’ Rule. The Holy See had already approved of this Rule when Edmund and his followers began to use their adaptation of it in 1809 to guide their first faltering steps along the path of religious life.
The granting of the Apostolic Brief in 1820, allowed the infant Congregation to become an Pontifical Institute - a defining moment for all of the early brothers. The majority accepted the Brief and went on to become the Congregation of Christian Brothers. Today there are Irish Christian Brothers in 17 different countries.
A few Brothers, notably Michael Augustine Riordan, continued to live by the Presentation Rule. They continued as the Presentation Brothers and became a Pontifical Institute in 1889.
Like the Irish Christian Brothers, the Presentation Brothers have followed the missionary example of the great Irish missionaries Brendan and Colmcille, responding as they believe Edmund Rice would have, to different needs as they encounter them in different regions and different circumstances.
The main foundations have been: U.S.A. 1843; England 1876; Canada 1910; West Indies 1946; Ghana 1968; Peru 1969; Geneva 2007; Nigeria 2007; Slovakia 2007.
Read more about this topic: Presentation Brothers
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger, infinitely.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)
“Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)