Edited by Michael Mulhall, O. Carm.
1989, xxiv+214 p., ill.

Esaurito. Seconda stampa in preparazione.

A compilation of conferences given during the North American Congress on the Carmelite Rule, held at Mount Carmel Spiritual Centre in Niagara Falls, ON, in 1982. Speakers included Carlo Cicconetti, O. Carm., Constance Fitzgerald, OCD, Bruno Secondin, O. Carm., Noel Dermot O'Donoghue, OCD, Redemptus Maria Valabek, O. Carm., and Kees Waaijman, O. Carm.

The Carmelites represent one offshoot of that rich, fervent, and creative society that formed Europe's medieval, and particularly Norman, society. Their Rule which confirmed them in their “way of life" exists today, not only as an historical artifact, but in a way that continues to generate interest and activity. The present state of the Carmelite family with all its divisions and sub-divisions reminds us of those creative tensions alive within the Rule.

The original group produced a text that linked together in a highly suggestive way many insights from Scripture and from the earlier traditions of the Desert Fathers and later cenobitic communities, as they were then understood. The Rule is a classic, not because it is an artifact from. the past, but because it is still operative and still has power to stimulate and guide the religious imagination of people eight centuries after it was given.