Chapter I. Nature of the Religious State

WE learn from the Gospels that, besides the ordinary way of the Commandments to be followed by all who wish to save their souls, our Lord proposed the way of perfection to the select few who wished to follow him more closely.¹1 This way of perfection consists in renouncing the goods of this world and the cares of family life, and following our Lord’s example of perfect obedience to the will of our heavenly Father. From the first ages of the Christian Church there were many who accepted our Lord’s invitation and lived in voluntary poverty and chastity. Comparatively few historical documents of the earliest centuries of the Christian era have survived, but we find traces of a body of ascetics and virgins to whom a place of special honour was assigned in the Church. At first they seem to have lived in the bosom of their families, but soon they fled to the deserts of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, and for guidance and encouragement put themselves under the rule of some experienced hermit. Nothing was then wanting to the essence of the religious state except vows and a rule. When the counsels of perfection began to be practised under vow cannot be determined exactly; the first formal religious rules are the work of St Basil and St Benedict. Thus in its essence the religious state has been instituted by Jesus Christ, and, as historically evolved under the guidance of his Church, it may be defined as a fixed and stable way of life approved by the Church for the faithful who, under a certain rule and a common way of living, wish to aim at perfection by the observance of the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, with the entire surrender of one’s self to God. Thus those who devote themselves to works of piety and charity without vows, or with only private vows, are not in the religious state, nor are they technically called religious. They want the necessary stability. This stability is given by the profession of public vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, the chief of the counsels of the Gospel, by which a person renounces the attractions of this world which draw so many away from God, in order to give himself wholly and entirely without let or hindrance to the love and service of God. The Church has always watched over and fostered the practice of religious life. In the thirteenth century there was danger of the great variety of religious orders causing confusion, and the Fourth Council of the Lateran forbade any new orders to be founded. The practical effect of this law was to prohibit new orders without the approbation of the Holy See. It is still in force as regards orders with solemn vows, which cannot be founded without the special approbation of the Pope. According to the new Code, bishops, but not Vicars Capitular or Vicars General, can found religious congregations with simple vows, but they are forbidden to found them or allow them to be founded without consulting the Holy See. If there is question of founding tertiaries living in common, the leave is also required of the General of the first order to which the tertiaries are to be affiliated (Can. 492).

A religious congregation founded by a bishop may in process of time acquire houses in other dioceses, but it remains diocesan and is wholly subject to the local Ordinaries, according to law, until it obtains a decree of the Holy See in praise of its end and scope, or one of formal approbation.

The end of religious life is perfect union with God, in which man’s perfection consists, and this union the religious disposes himself for by the constant practice of works of sublime charity and of renunciation of all that could be an obstacle to charity. Thus the religious state is the state of perfection; not that religious are supposed to be already perfect, but because perfection of Christian charity is the end aimed at, and suitable means are furnished therein for obtaining that end.

¹ Matt. xix.

The special obligations under which a religious lies follow from the nature of the religious state which we have described. Inasmuch as he devotes himself to the service of God in religion, he must do nothing that would endanger his perseverance or cause him to be dismissed from the order. He is especially bound to observe his vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, which he has voluntarily made to God, and in which the essence of religious life and the chief means of practising perfection consist. He is bound to keep the rule which he takes for his guide in life by the very fact of entering into the order which he has chosen as well as by ecclesiastical law (Can. 593). The obligation imposed by the rule is not the same in all religious orders. In some it binds under sin like the precepts of the superior. The rules of the Dominicans, Jesuits, and of most of the-modern congregations, of themselves, speaking generally, do not bind under sin. Particular precepts are sometimes inserted in the rule, and these of course are to be observed under sin like any other precepts of obedience. Apart from these the rule is rather a guide of conduct in religious life, and an indication as to how the superior should govern his subjects, than a rigid code of law binding under pain of sin. However, divines point out that frequently violations of such a rule will be sinful, not precisely because they are infractions of the rule, but because there will frequently be something defective in them as moral acts. If the silence which the rule prescribes is broken without just cause, the act will be sinful on account of the motive which led to it, the scandal which it causes, and its tendency to loosen the bonds of religious discipline. Formal contempt of the rule, by which a religious refuses to be guided by it, and wishes to show his independence, is mortally sinful, because it is directly contrary to his religious profession.