In Richard Rohr's essay, Franciscan Alternative Orthodoxy, a striking claim emerges: Francis was not limited to the Catholic Church of his time, which gravitated around sound doctrines and orthodoxy. Francis directed his gaze towards horizons the institutional Church of his era had ceased to contemplate. Through his prophetic witness and unwavering commitment to embodying the gospel, he forged what Rohr terms an "alternative orthodoxy"—a living tradition that would flow through Franciscan spirituality for centuries to come. The Franciscan alternative orthodoxy is a path that leads through suffering into solidarity, and through practice into the profound knowledge that comes only from doing.
One of the earliest biographical accounts preserves Francis's instruction to his first friars: "You only know as much as you do." This simple maxim contained a revolution. By elevating action, practice, and lived witness above theological speculation, Francis initiated a seismic shift in Christian spirituality—one whose tremors we still feel today. Many still think that Francis is against study and learning; but in truth he was against knowledge without action or doing.
In this context it would be interesting to note that the Bloom's taxonomy; created by Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues in 1956 and later revised in 2001, which provides a structured way for educators to define and measure the learning process, defines knowledge as the recall or recognition of previously learned information, ranging from specific facts to complete theories. It serves as a prerequisite for higher-order thinking and action. The knowledge dimension consists of a hierarchy of knowledge types, from concrete to abstract: factual knowledge: The basic, discrete pieces of information that a student must know to be familiar with a discipline. This includes terminology and specific details; conceptual knowledge: the understanding of how individual facts relate to a larger structure, such as theories, models, principles, and categories; procedural knowledge: the "how-to" knowledge of techniques, methods, and algorithms. It also includes knowing the criteria for when to use different procedures; metacognitive knowledge: the highest and most abstract form of knowledge, involving awareness of one's own cognition. It includes strategic knowledge and self-knowledge about one's strengths and weaknesses.
For Francis and his spiritual companion Clare of Assisi, Jesus ceased to be merely an object of worship and became a pattern for imitation. Christ was no longer confined to the sanctuary; he walked the dusty roads, beckoning his followers into embodied discipleship.
Until Francis's time, Christian spirituality had largely expressed itself through three channels: the rigorous self-denial of ascetic practice, the contemplative disciplines of monastic enclosure, and the intellectual architecture of academic theology. These approaches emphasised "correct belief," liturgical precision, and doctrinal purity—but rarely concerned themselves with a practical Christianity that could breathe in the marketplace and survive in the street. Francis redirected this focus entirely. He championed an imitation and love of Jesus's humanity, refusing to worship only his divinity. This was not merely a shift in emphasis—it was a fundamental reorientation of what it meant to follow Christ.
Throughout Christian history, the Franciscan School has occupied an unusual position: perpetually minoritarian, yet never condemned as heretical. Rather than contradicting Church teaching, it illuminated neglected dimensions of the gospel, calling believers towards fresh perspectives and transformative behaviours whilst exploring the full implications of the Incarnation. For Franciscans, the Incarnation extended far beyond the historical person of Jesus. God's enfleshing permeated all creation. As Francis declared with characteristic boldness: "The whole world is our cloister!" The monastery walls dissolved; the sacred inhabited everything.
A Different Starting Point: Where traditional theology began with human sinfulness and the need for redemption, Francis began with human suffering and God's solidarity with it in Jesus. This shift in foundation proved profound, yet it never brought him into conflict with Catholic doctrine. His Christ was simultaneously cosmic and intimate, his cathedral was creation itself, and his instinct always led him to the margins rather than the centre.
Francis habitually chose inclusion over exclusion, welcoming the outsider rather than protecting the privileges of insiders. He was, fundamentally, more mystic than moralist—more concerned with union than with rules.
Francis discovered what might be called a Third Way—the path that all prophets and mystics must eventually tread. It requires both creativity and courage, and it rests upon a foundational insight: the message and the medium must be one and the same. Rather than endlessly refining verbal formulations or defending doctrinal boundaries—the traditional "priestly" function, which Francis deliberately avoided—he emphasised the medium itself. The gospel became a way of being rather than merely a set of propositions to believe.
Both Francis and Clare understood that orthopraxy—"correct practice"—must stand alongside, and perhaps even precede, orthodoxy—"correct teaching." This was not an optional supplement to faith, nor merely a possible implication of belief. It was essential. The prophet's question echoes across the centuries: "Why aren't you doing what you say you believe?"
In Francis's life and teaching, we encounter a spirituality that refuses the comfortable separation between creed and conduct, between what we profess in the sanctuary and how we live beyond its doors. His legacy challenges every generation to ask whether our lives bear witness to the truths we claim to hold—or whether we have settled for words alone.
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