Sodalities

Sodalities (Lat. for societies), a term applied to certain associations in the Roman Catholic Church. These are composed of laymen, and are instituted for the encouragement of devotion, or for promoting certain works of piety, religion, and charity, under some rules or regulations, though without being tied to them so far as that the breach or neglect of them would be sinful. An example is afforded by the Sodality of the Living Rosary. Fifteen persons form a company or circle, each taking by lot one of the fifteen "Mysteries of the Rosary" and reciting its decade (=ten Hail Marys, with a Lord's Prayer before it, and a Gloria Patri) every day. A number of circles, united under a clergyman as director, constitute a sodality.