Thursday, January 26, 2012

A change in the Secular Franciscans

I just got word that along with recent changes in the Mass to conform with the Latin original, the same thing is happening with the acronym for the Secular Franciscan Order. Going back to the official Latin name of the order - Ordo Franciscanus Saecularis, we should use the acronym OFS after our names, not the SFO we had been using.

Here's the official statment:

THE OFFICIAL NAME OF THE ORDER
THE USE AND THE TRANSLATION OF THE NAME OF THE ORDER

1. The official name of the Order is Ordo Franciscanus Sæcularis.

2. Translations of the name of the Order

2.1. The translation of the name of the Order is already made in the four official languages, and these are the ones to be used in these languages, namely in Italian, in English, in Spanish and in French.

2.2. The name can be translated into local languages only when the literal translation from Latin is easily understandable even by the civil society and does not change its meaning or substance.

2.3. When the translation into the national language distorts the meaning of the name, or is linguistically impossible to transfer the genuine meaning, Ordo Franciscanus Sæcularis must always be used, which can be followed by expressions to clarify and make more understandable the nature of the Secular Franciscan Order to everyone in the local language.

3. The acronym

The acronym which refers to the name Ordo Franciscanus Sæcularis is OFS and is always to be used regardless of the language. For example, when Secular Franciscans use the acronym after their name, they must use “OFS”.

Encarnación del Pozo, OFS
General Minister

(Good thing I didn't order those new checks yet!)

Pax et bonum

4 comments:

Barb Szyszkiewicz said...

I'm not in a huge hurry to change the name of my blog, though doing so would deter all those google searches that really refer to the San Francisco Airport!

A Secular Franciscan said...

I keep fumbling over it!

Anonymous said...

The change in our post-nominal initials really had nothing whatsoever to do with the changes in the Mass. They're two different events.

Rather, the change in the initials from SFO to OFS is an instruction from the Minister General designed to help us understand ourselves as part of a world-wide order, instead of a club in a parish someplace in middle America.

A Secular Franciscan said...

I didn't mean that the change was directly tied to the Mass changes. I was just pointing out that as the Mass changes were made so the English words conform better with the Latin, so too the order of the letters were change to conform with the order in Latin. Sorry if my wording was unclear.