Oratory of St Philip Neri. CONGREGATION OF THE. The origin of the Congregation of the Oratory has been described in the article on St Philip Neri, its founder (see NERI). Here something must be said of its constitution and work. The primary idea of the institution was that its members should be bound by no religious vows. They were to be secular priests living together under a common rule, and practising obedience as free subjects, with liberty to quit the community if they so willed. Each father must contribute an annual pension towards the upkeep of the house, and have, moreover, a sufficiency of private means for his personal expenses. Otherwise he has absolute control over his own property. The government of the congregation is of a remarkably republican character. Each community is entirely independent, being subject to no mother-house or general-superior. The community is composed of three classes—the novices, triennial and decennial fathers. A member after passing his novitiate becomes a triennial father, with a consultative voice in the affairs of the congregation. On the completion of his tenth year he becomes a decennial father, with a decisive vote. The superior, who is generally spoken of as 'the Father,' is elected every three years, and with him are elected four deputies, who form a committee which meets weekly, has the appointment of the other officers, distributes the ecclesiastical work, and controls the ordinary expenditure. But no large expenditure or new undertaking can be entered upon without the consent of the general congregation, where in all cases the voting is by ballot. The father superior, primus inter pares, has no privileges and is exempt from no rules. He takes his turn in the waiting at table in the refectory, and has his share in the work of the church. The principal religious exercise of the community, beyond the duties common to all priests, is half-an-hour's mental prayer in the evening followed by the litanies, for which three times a week is substituted the taking of 'the discipline' or self-flagellation in a darkened room. The ceremonial for this exercise will be found described in Hone's Ancient Mysteries. The ministerial work of the Oratory consists chiefly in constant attendance in the confessional and in the characteristic daily preaching. Another essential part of the institute is an external brotherhood similar in some respects to the 'Third Orders' of the older religious orders, but consisting of men only, who meet in a separate chapel called the Little Oratory, under the direction of a father prefect. The brothers, as a rule, observe the same exercises as the fathers. It is in the Little Oratory that the musical services which originated the oratory are held. Music was so often performed in the oratory at Seville that Blanco White speaks of it as the 'spiritual opera-house.' Philip Neri, who governed the community at Rome as long as he lived, committed no rule to writing. The traditional rules drawn up at a later time were approved by Paul V. in 1612.
The Oratory spread rapidly through the chief cities of Italy, and there were several houses in Spain. In Germany it never took root. In France Cardinal de Bérulle took the institute as his model in a new foundation (1611), approved by Paul V. in 1614, under the name of the 'Congregation of the Oratory of our Lord Jesus Christ in France.' But it differs essentially from the Oratory of St Philip Neri. It was governed by a superior-general, and was mainly concerned with the institution of seminaries for the training of priests.
The life in the Roman Oratory admitted leisure for private study; and the founder, in encouraging Cesare Barouio to write his great work on church history, set an example which was followed by many distinguished scholars—Bozio, Gallonio, Aringhi (Roma subterranea), Bianchini (Evangelium quadruplex), Gallandi (Bibliotheca patrum), and others. It was natural that the character of Philip Neri and the community life which he established should have a particular attraction to a number of men from the English universities, who were led by the Oxford movement to the Church of Rome. Dr Newman when at Rome obtained from the pope a brief (26th November 1847) authorising him to establish the Oratory in England. Shortly afterwards F. W. Faber, who had founded a new order, 'the Brothers of the Will of God,' generally known as 'Wilfridians,' joined, with his whole community, the Oratory at Birmingham. In 1849 Father Faber was sent to London with some other fathers to set up a house in King William Street, Strand, which in October 1850 was constituted an independent congregation, and in 1854 was transferred to its present abode in Brompton.
There seems to have been a project of introducing the Oratory into England in the reign of James II., and there is in the British Museum an extremely rare if not unique copy of an English translation of the Rule printed in 1687.
The early history of the Oratory was written in 5 vols. folio by Marciano, Memorie Storiche, &c. (1693-1702). Compare Newman e la Religione Cattolica in Inghilterra, ovvero l'Oratorio Inglese, by Capecelatro (Naples, 1859), and Life and Letters of F. W. Faber, by J. Bowden (1869). The Instituta Congregationis Anglicae was printed in Rome at the Propaganda Press in 1847.