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Toward a theology of secular institutes : non-clerical secular institutes in theological perspective.

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Toward a theology of secular institutes : non-clerical secular institutes in theological perspective.

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Content TOWARD A THEOLOGY OF SECULAR INSTITUTES:
"
NON-CLERICAL SECULAR INSTITUTES
IN THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
by
Carol Lee Cowgill
\' I
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
{Religion)
January 1968
K
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007
c__ g
This thesis, written by
. __________________ .Q.R,X_Q_l __ l,~~--Q~w&.t.l_l ______________________________ _
under the direction of h __ ffJ:.. __ T he sis Committee,
and approved by all its members, has been pre
sented to and accepted by the Dean of The
Graduate School
1
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
Date ......... Jan uary, .... 1.9 68 ..................... .
THESIS · COMMITTEE
.............................. .d. .. X.~
Chairman
Chapter
INTRODUCTION
TABLE OF CONTENTS
• • • • • • • • • • e • • • • • • • • •
Page
1
I. SECULAR INSTITUTES IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE. 5
Religious Life before Monasticism: The
Flight from the World ...•.
• • • • •
Monasticism: Seeking God in Community.
• •
The Break with Monasticism:
toward the World ••...
The Turning
• • • • • • • •
The Genesis of Secular Institutes: The
Return to the World ..... .
• • • • •
II. SECULAR INSTITUTES: COMMUNITIES OF ESCHATO-
LOGICAL FAITH
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Introduction.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Ecclesial Witness
• • • • • • • • • • • • •
Christian Perfection and the Witness to the
Holy •••••..
• • • • • • • • • • • •
The Evangelical Counsels.
• • • • • • • • •
Community
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
III. SECULAR INSTITUTES: ESCHATOLOGICAL WITNESS IN
A SECULAR MODE
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
The Church and the Secular
• • • • • • • • •
. .
11
6
14
20
31
42
42
52
55
64
72
84
84
Chapter
The Apostolic Witness of Secular Institutes
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY . .... .
• • • • • • • • • •
iii
Page
98
114
INTRODUCTION
One of the most significant actions to have occurred
in the renewal of Roman Catholicism represented by Vatican
Council II is the consideration of the precise relation
ship obtaining between the Church and the world. The
Council's action represents the culmination of a century of
increasing concern of both laity and hierarchy, a concern
which generated many groups of evangelically dedicated
people who are totally committed to th~ task of bearing the
mystery of Christ to the world.
The world has come into its own. No longer feared
or resented, the secular order is at last the object of the
Church's explicit love. The Church, therefore, encourages
Roman Catholic Christians to enter with Christ into the
world: priests, laymen, religious are all called. But
specifically, in order to show her concern both for the
world and for those who attempt to live a full evangelical
life in the world, she has officially approved the secular
institutes--those groups seeking to live fully their own
Christian life by committing themselves to the evangelical
1
2
counsels and to communicate this life to the world in which
they live. In fact, so conscious is the Church of the
potential value of the secular institutes to the mission of
the Church that she has raised these institutes to a dig
nity equal to that of the religious congregations and has
cordially invited those with a vocation to the life of
total dedication to embrace this life as particularly suited
to the needs of our time.
Much has been written . of the needs of our time.
Unfortunately very little thinking has been devoted to this
particular answer of the Church to those needs. Especially
has it been difficult to find an attempt to put secular
institutes into theological perspective.
This thesis represents, then, a preliminary attempt
at theological perspective. The point of view from which
it is written has been determined by the practical need to
come to grips with the most controverted, though certainly
not the most important, issue: whether the secular insti
tutes are "religious" or "lay" associations. Although the
presumed opposition of these two categories is the result
of a simple failure to define terms, the distinction makes
a useful basis of division. After a discussion of the
ecclesial tradition out of which secular institutes arose,
3
the theological discussion proper will take up two prob
lems. The first thesis which I will attempt to prove is
that secular institutes are religious in substance, i.e.,
that they are in the mainstream of the historical develop
ment of the religious state, and therefore are charismatic
ally distinct from the ordinary laity. This is the problem
of the second chapter.
On the other hand it is necessary to show in what
way secular institutes are to be differentiated from reli
gious. I have attempted to show that the differentiation
lies in the particular relationship of the secular insti
tutes to the secular order, a relationship which religious
up to now have not had. This is the relationship that
Vatican II specifically recommends to the laity. In apos
tolic approach, therefore, the secular institutes are
externally more like the laity than like the religious.
Since, however, the secular institutes share with religious
a specifically eschatological orientation, this orientation
enters into the apostolic task, specifying the secular
institute witness in a way in which the witness of the
laity is not specified and hence distinguishing secular
institutes from the laity in essential witness, though not,
perhaps, in accidentals. The conclusion to be drawn from
4
the whole discussion is that although the secularity of the
secular institutes makes them look like simple lay associa
tions, in their theological orientation they are religious.
Finally it is necessary to explain a rather large
omission. This study concerns itself entirely with non
clerical secular institutes. Because the priestly ministry
is an extremely complex subject, the secular institutes of
priests have not been discussed. The priestly ministry
.
is,
first of all, too specialized a task to be significantly
compared with the ordinary task of the laity, except super
ficially. Moreover, as a specifically ecclesial phenomenon
the priestly ministry is too easily relegated to the sphere
of the "holy" considered as being in opposition to the
specifically secular. To oppose this prejudice would
entail either raking a full study of the holy or limiting
the concept of the secular to the non-ecclesial. Since the
first task is too broad and the second would entirely
obscure the secularity of the institutes, I have decided
not to handle the problem of clerical institutes at this
time. The question of the way in which priests' institutes
are secular does need study, but study within the context
of the theology of the priesthood. To examine the problem
is impossible within the limits of so brief a study.
CHAPTER I
SECULAR INSTITUTES IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
In attempting this kind of historical survey, the
problem remains generally to keep the vast body of material
which might be included reduced to that minimum necessary
to point general directions without over-simplifying move
ments to the point of historical inaccuracy. For this
reason I wish to focus only on those elements of the reli
gious state which are constitutive of it and on the points
of development which mark the critical and far-reaching
changes of direction. Since the changes in direction were
often reflections of the theological developments of the
time, there will perforce have to be some discussion of the
theological presuppositions: the form which religious life
has taken is generally a reflection of what is seen as
constitutive of Christian perfection. Obviously, however,
sociological factors must also be taken into account. The
discussion will be divided into three sections: the reli
gious ideal before monasticism, the monastic ideal, the
movement away from monasticism.
5
6
Religious Life before Monasticism:
The Flight from the World
The linking of the concepts of religious life and
flight from the world is actually misleading. It is founded
on the presupposition that religious life began with the
flight of the hermits into the desert. For a full under
standing of the phenomena, however, we must go back further,
to pre-Gnostic and pre-Manichean Christianity, for without
some insight into the earliest Christian practice complete
understanding of the meaning of medieval and modern reli
gious life is simply not possible.
Religious life has its roots in apostolic times, in
forms of dedication to the Lord associated with the prac
tice of celibacy and consecrated virginity. That the early
Church should be dedicating to the Lord members of the
Christian community who were by that fact already conse
crated and dedicated would seem to be rather pointless.
The explanation can be found seminally in Paul, who, in the
light of his own eschatological hope, saw virginity as
higher than marriage:
And the unmarried woman or girl is anxious about the
affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit:
.•• I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any
restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to
secure your undivided devotion to the Lord. (I Car.
7:34-35)
7
Virginity was thus seen as a means, a means to more inten
sive concern with the Lord. Although exegesis of this
passage might describe virginity simply as an ascetical
practice like any other ascetical practice, nevertheless,
since virginity has remained the core of religious life it
must be considered from a broader point of view.
This passage does point out two essentials of the
life of total dedication: holiness and singleness of pur
pose in the service of God. This life of dedication was
one expression of the early Christian desire to be "dis
solved" and be with Christ. Thus virginity was the
immediate corollary of the expectation of an imminent
parousia. Lebreton says of St. Paul:
Later on, when this perspective of the Second Corning
was less prominent in the apostle's mind the desire to
be with Christ remained as active as ever .... Thus
in the question of virginity, the apostle's counsels
are manifestly inspired by the desire to belong wholly
to the Lord without other cares.
1
It seems probable that the affairs of the Lord were
interpreted broadly as service of the whole Christian com
munity. In the book just cited Lebreton suggests that the
deaconesses were recruited from among the virgins and
1
Jules Lebreton and Jacques Zeiler, The Emergence
of the Church (New York, 1962), p. 27.
8
widows; they devoted themselves to the care of the sick and
the unfortunate, and to the education of children.
2
In
volvement with the works of mercy, and hence with the
social usefulness of the virgins to the Church, takes on a
great significance in view of the post-eremitical develop
ment of the whole concept of celibacy and perfection.
In the first century of the Church's development
there is no hint of cutting off the dedicated person from
involvement with the Christian community, just as there is
nothing of rejection of the secular order on the part of
the Christian community. So integrated into their society
were the Christians of the second century that Tertullian
could call their ordinariness and usefulness as witness
against those who criticized them as parasites.
3
Not only
were Christians integrated into society, but they were
there in a specifically Christian way by bringing a new
dimension to the human task. Thus Clement points out that
2
Lebreton, The Emergence of the Church, p. 12.
3
Apology 42, 1-3, quoted in L. Hertling, The Roman
Catacombs and Their Martyrs (Milwaukee, 1956), p. 146. In
Deaconesses in Europe, J. Bancroft further suggests that
the order of deaconesses did not disappear until Constantine
put the care of the sick under state control--until, that
is, social work was secularized (New York, 1890, pp. 32-33).
9
"the gift of communion with God brings with it not only a
reinforcement of heavenly virtues, but also a transfigura
tion of the common task.
114
By the time of Ambrose consecration took two forms,
both of them public, as Gustav Schnurer points out: "While
the members of one group united into monastic communities,
the others remained as consecrated virgins in the world,
constituting, however, a distinct state in the Church,
since they placed their vows in the hands of the bishop and
received from him the consecration or blessing.
115
Moreover
those who had decided to live a celibate life and carry
out various kinds of renunciation soon obtained a
special position in the Church, even when they did not
enter the ranks of the clergy. They were given a
special name, the ascetics, ... in Latin continentes.
The life they were leading, though still with their
families, was a prelude to that of the monks who became
an institution in the Church from the fourth century .
• . • There were continentes of each sex, and the
virgins .•. were esteemed no less than the male
continentes.
6
4
R. Newton Flew, The Idea of Perfection in Chris
tian Theology (Oxford, 1934), p. 139.
5
church and Culture in the Middle Ages, Vol. I
(Paterson, 1956), p. 47.
6
Jules Lebreton and Jacques Zeiler, The Triumph of
Christianity (New York, 1962), p. 222.
10
During this period also the virgins' essential con
cern with the works of mercy was emphasized by Salvian, in
his second "Book to the Church." He interprets the parable
of the ten virgins to mean that the virgins must have with
them the oil of alms, if they are to be ready to greet the
Lord; to him alms, among other things, meant the giving of
their goods to the poor. Religious, he says, "follow the
paths of the Savior and purchase the Lord Jesus Christ, not
in holiness only, but in poverty."
7
Poverty for Salvian
meant sharing and not destitution. He fulminates against
parents who fail to provide in their wills for their
children in religion on the pretext that, because the chil
dren are supposed to be poor they do not need an inheri
tance, and who thereby deprive their children of a
legitimate means by which they might do good.
Bishops like Augustine took the vows of the virgins
and widows with the utmost seriousness; since the vows were
considered oblations to the Lord, they were to be kept so
8
that God might not be defrauded. Salvian is even more
explicit:
7
salvian, Writings (New York, 1947), p. 297.
8
Excellence in Widowhood, in Treatises on Various
Subjects (New York, 1952), ch. 11.
11
Religion is the knowledge of God. Therefore every
religious by the very fact that he follows the reli
gious profession, testifies that he knows the will of
God. Accordingly, the profession of religion does not
take away but increases the debt, because the assump
tion of the religious name is the pledge of devotion.
Therefore, each one owes as much by his action as he
promised by profession ... : "It is better not to
vow than after a vow not to perform the thing
promised."
9
Thus the first four centuries witnessed the rise of
a definite state in the Church of those consecrated to God
by some form of a vow of continence. The conduct of their
life was to be a witness to the Christian community of the
Christian desire for union with Christ. Given the duty of
bearing such a witness, the virgins, celibates, and widows
were expected to show forth in their lives the effect of
their union with God--holiness, poverty, and works of
mercy. Those living with superiors were obliged also to
obey those to whom they had promised obedience, out of
reverence for God to whom they had made the vow. Thus in
the earliest days the general structure of a life of
chastity, poverty, and obedience emerged clearly. To a
great extent such religious profession was seen as compat
ible with ordinary secular occupations.
9
Salvian, Writings, p. 308.
12
The wealth of patristic and apocryphal writings
shows clearly that virginity was highly respected in the
early Church. Too often, however, especially in the
apocryphal writings, it was extolled at the price of an
almost Manichean despising of marriage. In their despising
of the corrupt flesh and in their consequent withdrawal
into the desert the early hermits were very often caught
in the double trap of Manicheanism and Gnosticism. Though
their purpose was the commendable desire to free their
souls from earthly things in order to unite them to God,
their world view made any association with the world
impossible. That they identified the Christian community
with the world is an indication both of the limitations of
their own faith in the Church and of the considerable cool
ing of devotion for the affairs of the Lord within the
Christian community. Most radically, however, their prob
lem lay in their relationship to the secular and in their
refusal to accept anything earthly as actually or poten
tially sacramental: only contemplation was able to reach
God directly, they thought; good works directed toward men
reached God only indirectly.
1
° Fortunately for the
10
Flew, The Idea of Perfection, p. 164.
13
development of the Church and the religious state, neither
the dualism nor the extreme rigor of the life of these
hermits was accepted as a Christian norm by the western
Church, even though virginity and continence were always
encouraged as the vocation of the few, so that ordinary
Christians would be encouraged to strive for the things of
the spirit.
But the circumstances of the fourth century that
led to a mass exodus of idealists into the desert, severely
altered this early orientation toward the religious life,
for the hermits went into the deserts seeking God much more
self-consciously and self-centeredly than seems the case
earlier. With the spread of the eremitical life, the
religious life and the search for perfection entered into
a second phase.
These desert fathers were above all ascetics.
Their purpose was to flee a life which was corruptive of
what they considered the Christian ideal of moral perfec
tion: "Asceticis~ aims only at freeing the soul and
enabling it to unite itself to God. That is what a Chris
tian seeks by observing virginity, withdrawing from the
world, sacrificing as much as possible the goods of
14
11
fortune, despising human glory.'' Their way of life con-
sisted of almost unbelievable austerities, which, well
intentioned as they undoubtedly were, still were not
psychologically very sound. If these hermits intended to
disregard the body while uniting themselves in prayer with
God, they chose such inhuman means to bring the flesh under
control that they succeeded, by and large, simply in fixing
their attention on what they were presumably trying to rise
above--hence their constant and violent temptations. How
ever, some made up in fortitude what they lacked in pru
dence and, at their best, came near to their contemplative
ideal, tainted though it often was with Manicheanism,
G t
. . d St . .
12
nos 1c1sm, an 01c1sm.
Monasticism: Seeking God in Community
The very excesses of some of these hermits led
others to realize more and more clearly the need for mutual
support and direction in their way of life; hence in the
fourth century in Egypt there gathered around Pachomius
about three thousand men, living by manual labor and coming
11
Lebreton, Triumph, p. 57.
12
Herbert Workman, The Evolution of the Monastic
Ideal (Boston, 1962), pp. 37-38.
15
together for common prayer and exhortation. Anthony
expresses the ideal: "The Scriptures are enough for our
instruction. Yet it is well that we should encourage each
other in the faith, and stimulate each other with words.
1113
Or again, "Having made a beginning, and set out on the way
of virtue, let us stretch out yet more to reach the things
that are before us.
1114
Under Pachomius, the ideal of
brotherly love, which is the primary expression of Chris
tianity, was formally integrated into the monks' lives.
Their concern spread also to the Christian community out
side the desert: they welcomed and gave spiritual advice
to laymen who sought them out, and "could see even in those
days of retreat and solitude that God could be found in
. '' 15
service.
Pachomius inaugurated the second major change in
religious life, monasticism properly so called. In the
fourth century, St. Basil wrote a new eremitic-cenobitic
rule in which he repressed individual excesses in
13
st. Athanasius, Life of Anthony, in Readings in
Church History, Vol. I, ed. C. Barry (Westminster, 1960),
p. 155.
14
h · · f f h 156 At anasius, Lie o Antony, p. .
15
Flew, Idea, p. 178.
16
austerities: this rule became the standard throughout the
East. So popular was the cenobitic movement that by the
beginning of the fifth century every Christian region had
groups of men and women cenobites, whose perfection lay in
being "dedicated exclusively to God, leading a life of
asceticism and prayer, according to the principles of a
more or less definite rule.
1116
In Egypt alone the original
three thousand Pachomian monks had grown to fifty thousand.
In the West, the ideals of eastern monasticism were
adopted by the monastery of Lerin and were supported by
Cassian, who thus summarized the ideal of monastic life:
the whole scope of the Monastic Life, and its highest
perfection tends to a constant and uninterrupted
perseverance in prayer, as much as human frailty will
permit, and aims at an unshaken tranquility of mind,
and a perpetual purity of heart.
17
He adds that all of this can be achieved only by a combi
nation of physical labor and compunction of spirit. Lerin,
of course, was the fountainhead of Irish monasticism;
popular as it was in Ireland, it did not really fit the
Latin temper. It remained for Benedict's more moderate
16 . . .
Henri Daniel-Raps, The Church in the Dark Ages
(London, 1959), p. 84.
17
conference IX on Prayer, in Readings, ed. Barry,
p. 435.
17
form of monasticism to point the direction of the develop
ment of the religious life in the West.
Learning from the successes and failures of his
predecessors, Benedict rethought the monastic ideal and
brought to it an emphasis that was specifically western.
From the time of the hermits to Benedict the emphasis had
been on union with God by self-conquest at whatever cost.
Benedict, however, put the emphasis on the much earlier
ideal of self-surrender to God. It was to achieve this
self-surrender that celibacy, obedience, and the whole
structure of the common life were undertaken.
18
However,
in the monastic tradition, Benedict did not concern himself
with the world. He worked only for the reform of the con
verted within the monastery.
19
The Benedictine ideal was one of simplicity and
service of those who came to the monastery, whether to the
schools or to the guest house, as well as of those who
lived in the monastery. Thus St. Radegund writes to
Gregory the Great:
18
Workman, Evolution, p. 150.
19
Lina Eckenstein, Woman under Monasticism (Cam
bridge, 1896), p. 50.
18
I have willingly chosen the life of religion at the
direction of Christ; turning my thoughts and powers
towards helping others, the Lord assisting me that my
good intentions toward them may be turned to their
weai.
20
True, the monasteries were as far removed from societv as
-
their founders could place them. But when society came
after the monks, it was not turned away. Thus even in the
Carolingian epoch, the abbeys ceased to be colonies of
ascetics working for their own spiritual advancement and
became lively spiritual and economic centers. Since this
development was soon seen as a lapse from their original
ideal, many abbeys were subject to a great deal of tension
in reform. Nevertheless, insofar as this development
represented a positive orientation to the world, it pointed
to the future development of religious life. As Flew says,
"the future of monasticism depended on finding the way of
escape from this contradiction of the ideal of Christian
21
love." At this point, however, the only relationship
with the secular in fact represented a compromise with
materialism and a loss of the religious ideal of devotion
to God alone. When it came in the eleventh century, the
20 k . 52
Ee enstein, Woman, p. .
21
Flew, Idea, p. 177.
19
reaction, represented by the Camaldolese hermits and the
Carthusians, took the form again of flight from the world.
The Church seemed to be returned to the same kind of
dichotomies as had prevailed in the fourth century.
However, there was a most important parallel move
ment outside monasticism to combine the monastic ideal
with a life of service: the Canons Regular were estab
lished. These men, all clerics attached to the cathedrals,
organized their lives around their ministry, while
renouncing private property, living in community, and taking
monastic vows. In their inception they were not monks, but
priests living in cities, working directly with the bishops,
in whatever ·capacity they were needed. The canons saw two
facts of religious life very clearly: first that the
essence of the life of religion lay in the traditional
religious vows and in brotherhood, and secondly that
neither their rule nor the organization of their life had
to be rigid or particularly stringent in order to be
sanctifying. They were unique in their combination of a
life of definitely committed service of the Church with
what was most traditional in the religious life. Thus they
represent a recovery of a socially-engaged (and therefore
20
non-monastic) group of rel i gious with a direct commitment
to the priestly ministry.
The Break with Monasticism: The Turning
toward the World
The thirteenth century brought about the greatest
change in the concept of the religious life since the early
hermits forsook the Chri stian community to save their souls
. 1· d 22
in so itu e. W i th the c omi ng of the friars, both
Franciscan and Dominican , the religious life and the con
cept of perfection entered the phase o f which secular
institutes are t he most recent development. The friars led
a life of the evangelical counsels--chastity, obedience,
and poverty--but did n o t choose t o withdraw from the world.
Both orders based t heir service o f God prec i sely in service
of the world to which they fel t t hemselves called by God.
Because both founders saw clearly t hat the monastic struc
ture did not suit their specific ministries, they actually
forbade their followers even to enter monasteries.
Both orders were founded with definite needs of the
Church in mind. The Dominicans, a clerical community, were
a direct outgrowth of the Canons Regular, except that they
22
workman, Evolution, p. 272.
21
were not bound to any diocese. Otherwise they were the
incorporation of the ideal of the Canons into the structure
of a religious order properly so called.
The Franciscans, who were laymen, took up the more
secular task of working with the poor. They reintroduced
the practice of working for their living, often in those
secular fields in which the poor of the earth were making
their way. St. Francis expressed his ideal in the first
rule:
The friars, wherever they may be serving or working
for others, are not to be chamberlains or cellarers or
in any way to have charge of the houses of those they
serve; nor are they to accept any position that may
beget scandal or bring harm to their soul ....
Instead they are to be underlings (minores) and subject
to all who are in the same house. And the friars who
are skilled at work are to labor at the trade they know,
as long as it is not against the salvation of their
souls and they can do it uprightly .... And for their
work, they may receive whatever is necessary for them,
except money.
23
His living of life in the world was for Francis the essence
of his commission to "preach"; "For him it [work] was an
important aspect of the Franciscan apostolate, which pri
marily consists in giving to the world an example of a
wholly Christian and Christlike life, living among men and
23
cajetan Esser, The Order of St. Francis (Chicago,
1959), p. 16.
working with them, but completely in the spirit of the
24
Gospel."
22
The popular appeal of the Franciscans was very
strong. So great, in fact, was their enthusiasm that lay
men wanted to follow the friars in droves. The inexpediency
of a mass desertion of ordinary social obligations led to
Francis' establishing of the Third Order for the laity.
Though such an organization was not original to Francis
(the Benedictines had oblates and the Premonstratensians
had lay followers), the response to his ideal had such far
reaching effects in regard to the religious life that it
must be mentioned more fully.
Francis' aim in admitting people to the Order of
Penance was the reform of the individual along lines of
evangelicdl perfection--a life of poverty, penance, simpli-
city, love of neighbor: "It is needless to emphasize that
the love of our neighbor, springing from the love of God,
was one of the most prominent traits in the character of
St. Francis ... the love of our neighbor shows itself
chiefly in the practical compassion for the pains and wants
24
Esser, The Order of St. Francis, p. 18.
23
25
of others." His message proved greatly attractive, and
the Third Order grew so that "Europe was filled with a host
of earnest laymen, bound together in social service and
church work, most of whom earned their own living.
the labour of their hands.
1126
• •
By the end of the first half of the thirteenth
by
century there were fraternities of tertiaries established
in every city where the friars had worked. By the end of
the fourteenth century there were probably about fifteen
hundred local fraternities.
27
Where the fraternities
undertook permanent social works such as hospitals and
schools, there was a tendency for groups of tertiaries to
form themselves into communities, in some cases taking the
vows of religion, in other cases simply living together
without vows. In such groups of totally dedicated terti
aries, in socially-conscious groups such as the Beghards
and Beguines, or even in those trade guilds who affiliated
themselves with the Third Order, we mark the beginning of
25
Father Oswald, The Third Order of St. Francis
(New York, 1930), pp. 73-75.
26
Workman, Evolution, p. 299.
27
Oswald, The Third Order, p. 45.
24
what later developed into the modern religious congrega
tions, founded for a specific social work and living
according to the spirit of Christ as reflected in the
ideals of St. Francis or Dominic or Benedict or the other
great religious founders, whose enthusiasm could channel in
new ways the fundamental Christian urge to belong wholly to
the Lord.
With the passage of time the traditions of monasti
cism proved too strong for the mendicants, and little by
little the new orders and communities partially adopted
monastic ideals and forms of living. For this reason, most
historians agree that the founding of the Jesuits in the
sixteenth century marks the beginning of modern religious
l
.f 28
i e. Like Francis, Ignatius Loyola began as a layman
with the specific apostolic aim of teaching people to pray
and meditate. This work, undertaken as a result of his own
spiritual experience without any hierarchical commission,
resulted in his being denounced to the inquisition. There
fore Ignatius decided that if he was going to be able to do
the work to which he felt called, he would have to learn
28
cf. Gabriel Reidy, Secular Institutes (New York,
1961), p. 50, and Jean Canu, The Religious Orders of Men
(London, 1960), p. 89.
25
theology and take orders. Only later, when a group of men
joined him, did the idea of founding a religious order of
clerics occur to him. The new society bound themselves by
vows--originally poverty, chastity, and a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem
29
--and lived by their very simple rule consisting
of only a few spiritual exercises and a love of obedience.
They were formed to work for the glory of God in the
service of the Church. Ignatius' placing of the society at
the disposal of the Pope was a simple expression of this
desire for service:
to place at the disposal of the Holy See a group of
apostles thoroughly formed by the tests in their train
ing, provided with sound learning and accustomed to
deal with men, always ready to be off at a simple sign
to wherever authority designates a more urgent, more
painful, more difficult and delicate work to be
accomplished.
3
0
Though taking the vows of religion, the Jesuits
never adopted any of the monastic structures. They wanted
to be as flexible as possible both in the direct aposto
late of the Church and in areas of service that would
conduce to the spread of the kingdom of God, conceived of
29
James Broderick, The Origin of the Jesuits (Gar
den City, 1960), p. 44.
3
o h d · h . h. S . ·t 1
Josep e Guibert, Te Jesuits, T eir piri ua
Doctrine and Practice (Chicago, 1964), p. 150.
26
as firmly rooted in the whole creation. For the first time
since the infancy of the Church, the religious life did not
represent a flight from the world. And in fact, the world
was no longer conceived of either as essentially evil or as
serving only to tempt men. Moreover, almost for the first
time since the first centuries perfection was thought of as
a response to God--in Ignatius' case the response of active
service of the Church, in which service the whole world
was to be used. This orientation is expressed in Ignatius'
Exercises, in the First Principle and Foundation:
Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our
Lord, and by this means to save his soul.
The other things on the face of the earth are created
for man to help him in attaining the end for which he
is created.
Hence man is to make use of them in as far as they help
him in the attainment of his end, and he must rid him
self of them in as far as they prove a hindrance to
him.
Therefore, we must make ourselves indifferent to all
created things, as far as we are allowed free choice
and are not under any prohibition. Consequently, as
far as we are concerned, we should not prefer riches
to poverty, honor to dishonor, a long life to a short
life. The same holds for all other things.
Our one desire and choice should be what is more con
ducive to the end for which we are created.
31
31
Ignatius Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises of
St. Ignatius {Westminster, 1962), p. 12.
27
Ignatius, then, introduced a radical change in the
direction of the religious life. Although he was not the
only influence in the development of modern religious con
gregations, his influence was immeasurable, particularly
because the spirituality underlying the Spiritual Exercises
began to exert a strong influence on the spiritual orien
tation of the laity in general, an orientation that was
carried into emerging religious congregations.
As has already been noted, these congregations were
founded to meet specific social needs. In the seventeenth
century, as progressive urbanization (and industrialization)
changed social structures, creating a morass of social
problems, but also allowing women a greater freedom of
operation, innumerable congregations of laymen arose to
meet the needs. Their primary purpose was social action,
which at this time was not conceived of as separable from
the life of total dedication.
32
When, however, the move
toward social engagement encountered a cautious hierarchy
and a canon law which did not cover such situations, con-
flict inevitably arose.
32
d. ·t s· t v · · w t
Pro Muni Vi a: is er ocations in es ern
Europe (Brussels, 1967), p. 25.
28
From the point of view of the hierarchy there was a
double problem. The first was the canonical problem of the
status of the emerging groups. Before canon law was
codified, the only people classified as religious were the
33
members of the religious orders, who took solemn vows.
The permission granted to the Jesuits to be a religious
order with only simple vows represented a major departure
from ecclesiastical practice. As the new congregations
arose they did not want the status of religious, primarily
because such status carried with it the obligation of
enclosure, which would make their work impossible. There
fore their dedication took the form of simple vowb, which
did not make them officially religious or make them subject
to the canon law for religious. Actually Pius V had for-
34
bidden such groups, but the requirements of the times
gradually led to some degree of permissiveness on the part
both of individual bishops and of Rome. Until 1900 these
groups either did not have the legal status of religious or
they became religious at the cost of their work.
33
Salvador Canals, Secular Institutes and the State
of Perfection (Dublin, 1959), p. 42.
34
Canals, Secular Institutes, p. 43 ff.
29
Generally, the tendency of the hierarchy was to
impose monastic forms on the emerging groups. Thus Angela
Merici's attempt to set up a group of women educators with
out the "safeguards" of community life and distinctive
dress was quickly restricted by the bishop's making an
enclosed order of nuns out of the group. The same thing
happened with Francis de Sales' and Jane Frances de
Chantal's Visitandines. Originally conceived of as a group
of contemplatives who would go on errands of mercy into
the homes of the poor, they were forced by the bishop of
Lyons to become a religious order, with enclosure. In
this case the founders did not feel that their essential
35
aim was really destroyed. In the case of St. Vincent de
Paul's Daughters of Charity, however, hierarchical pressure
was firmly resisted. Vincent de Paul never intended this
group to be religious and fought the tendency to be con
sidered religious as pernicious:
He, along with everybody else of his time held to the
principle Qui dit religieuse dit un cloitre. So he
kept telling them that they were not nuns and must
never allow their organization to be so classified.
"Your monasteries," he told them in often-quoted words,
"are the houses of the sick; your cell is a hired room;
35
Elisabeth Stopp, Madam de Chantal (Westminster,
1963), p. 147.
30
your chapel, the parish church; your cloister, the
streets of the city; your enclosure, obedience; y~ur
grille, the fear of God; your veil, holy modesty.
6
He finally succeeded in forestalling further hierarchical
pressure by allowing the group to make vows only for one
37
year --so that the perpetual and therefore potentially
solemn vows would never be possible.
These early movements toward a social involvement
in a secular (non-monastic) mode were perhaps too far ahead
of their times. Nevertheless they indicated the direction
in which the religious life was to move and the future form
of some of the secular institutes.
By and large, in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and
early twentieth centuries emerging religious communities
followed this pattern. In each age there were a few
founders who wanted the life of the evangelical counsels
plus a freedom to function effectively within the secular
social order. In such cases, when action was considered
the primary end of the group, those founders most alert to
the needs of the time tended to be extremely flexible in
36
Theodore Maynard, Apostle of Charity (New York,
1939), p. 155.
37
Henri Daniel-Raps, Monsieur Vincent (New York,
1961), p. 76.
31
the manner of adapting monastic structures. William Joseph
Charninade, for example, who founded a whole series of
groups of laymen, some of whom took vows but all of whom
lived the life of evangelical perfection in the world, did
not require vows of all of his members.
38
Nor were his
"religious" required to live together. Although Chaminade's
state was practically identical with modern secular insti
tutes, he himself considered the groups simply adaptations
of the religious life to the needs of an apostolate to the
world (his "continuous mission"). Those groups of his to
survive, like the Society of Mary (for men), gradually
moved toward common life and institutionalization of their
work--the fate of many groups during this period.
What was really needed was a psychological break to
force experimentation with new structures. The French
Revolution provided the inciting force.
The Genesis of Secular Institutes:
The Return to the World
What happened in the French Revolution was that the
religious orders--more or less monastic--were simply
• • •
38
cyril G. Middendorf, "A Continuous Mission .•. "
(Washington, 1960), p. 60.
32
destroyed. The life of the evangelical counsels, as it had
been understood till then, became impossible. With the
suppression of the Jesuits and all the religious orders in
France two courses of action remained for individual
Jesuits--to remain in France and try to pick up the pieces
or to transfer their ministry to America. Rev. Pierre
Joseph Picot de Cloriviere decided to stay in France and
establish a society of priests who, though living in their
parishes under their individual bishops, would be truly
religious, forming their lives by a rule based on that of
the universally suppressed Society of Jesus; thus the
Society of the Heart of Jesus came into existence in 1791.
At the same time he worked with Adelaide de Cice,
who wished to embrace the life of the counsels, yet live
in the secular way which the political condition of France
required. In her Plan for a Pious Society she thus
expressed her ideal:
A few persons will band together taking the simple vows
of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience. They will have a
superior, and will follow Constitutions which unite the
active and contemplative life. The vow of poverty will
leave them in possession of their goods, but the use
thereof will depend on the permission of superiors.
They will give themselves up to prayer and such good
works as present themselves. They will offer them
selves to God by the Hands of the Blessed Virgin, in
order to fulfill His will entirely, proposing to
33
themselves nothing in particular except the s~iritual
and temporal good of the neighbor. A.M.D.G.
3
This group, which also began in 1791, was called the
Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary.
Both of these groups represented an attempt to
adapt religious life to the changed conditions of the
world; they differed from all other religious institutes in
that they had no communal living arrangements, uniformity
of dress, or any distinguishing badge that would mark them
1
. . 4 0
as re 1.g1.ous. Moreover, since they were carefully not
directed toward any specific work, the members of the
institute were free to take up whatever works showed them
selves to be necessary: "Action should not be limited to
this or that particular apostolate, but should be extended
to all activities of whatever character."
41
When a steady growth over a period of one hundred
years proved that the Society of the Daughters of the
Heart of Mary was both effective of its purpose and stable,
39
M. R., Religious Life in the Society
{New York, 1949), p. 4.
• • •
40
Jean Beyer, Les Instituts Seculiers (Bruges, 1954)
p. 38.
41
M. R., Religious Life, p. 29.
34
Rome granted it, in 1890, definitive approval as a pious
42
association of simple vows. In approving this society,
the Church also opened the way for other institutes which,
while religious in substance, would not be bound to monastic
forms. Once the precedent was set, all that was necessary
for the rise of secular institutes proper was that groups
of Christians begin to respond to the secular realities of
their life--that concern for the world became an integral
part of Christian spirituality. The result has been what
Pius XII describes as the result of the outpouring of the
1 S
. ·t h 1 . .
43
Hoy piri, t e secu ar institutes.
Naturally the secular institutes did not arise out
of a vacuum. By and large they were one manifestation of
the ferment among the laity during the late nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, a ferment caused by what has been
called the emergence of the Catholic layman, but may more
42
· h' · d f th .
During tis perio none o e emerging congrega-
tions were officially religious, since canon law restricted
the term to the orders of solemn vows. In 1900, Leo XIII's
Constitution Conditae a Christo formally incorporated all
the simple-vow congregations into the religious state.
Cf. Canals, Secular Institutes, p. 45, for legal distinc
tions in the status of various groups in the Church.
43
Prirno Feliciter (A.A.S. 40), introduction.
35
accurately be called his awakening.
44
All over Europe
small groups began to form themselves, having in common a
concern for the mission of the Church in the world. The
specific nature of these groups varied widely, however,
since they were experimenting with new approaches to prob
lems which no one had as yet dealt with.
45
Some of them
devoted themselves to the hierarchical apostolate: an
example of such an apostolate is the work of the Jocistes
in France or the Christological center set up in Assisi by
Pro Civitate Dei. Other groups devoted themselves as a
group to social action: of these some embraced the evan
gelical counsels (e.g., secular institutes and missionary
44
A study of the papal documents on this movement
indicates that the movement was referred to generally as
Catholic Action (which, however, soon became not only asso
ciated with the hierarchical apostolate, but absolutely
identified with it). Not until recent times has the term
"lay apostolate" replaced "Catholic Action" as describing
the function of the layman in the work of the Church. Cf.
Benedictine Monks, ed., The Lay Apostolate: Papal Teachings
(Boston, 1961), p. 642 passim, and Vatican II, Decree on
the Apostolate of the Laity, passim.
45
It is true, however, that some of the groups
represented specializations within other groups. For in
stance, the Missionaries of the Kingship of Christ rose out
of the Franciscan secular third order and remained part of
the third order fraternities, even though forming a distinct
society and dedicating itself to the Franciscan ideal by
means not required of the ordinary member--i.e., the vows
of the evangelical counsels.
36
groups such as the International Catholic Auxiliaries) and
some did not embrace the counsels (e.g., the Grail). Other
groups moved out to individual apostolates:
.
again some
embraced the counsels (e.g., secular institutes and some
members of Opus Dei)--and some did not (e.g., other members
of Opus Dei).
Out of all these experimental groups there gradual
ly emerged a recognizable pattern of a definitive commit
ment to the evangelical counsels coupled with a desire to
work for the Christianization of the world from within.
From this basic pattern secular institutes as described by
. 1 bl" h d . "d" 11
46
Pius XII were ater esta is e Juri ica y. Once they
became aware of each other's existence, the leaders began
to meet. After a series of meetings in Salzburg, it was
decided (1932) to call a congress of all secular institutes
in order to discuss mutual problems. The congress was held
at Saint-Gall in 1938 under papal auspices. From this
meeting came the studies that resulted in 1947 in the giving
of juridical status to the institutes--their formal incor
poration into the juridical states of perfection along
with the religious orders.
46
Provida Mater Ecclesia (A.A.S. 37).
37
Institutes differ not only in their basic spiritu
ality but also in how they emphasize differing tendencies
in religious life in general. For the sake of simplicity
they can be described in two large categories: (1) those
engaged in the hierarchical apostolate and (2) those
engaged in a secular apostolate.
Institutes engaged in the hierarchical apostolate
can be divided into two types: priests' institutes and
institutes of laymen. Of the priests' institutes little
will be said, since a discussion of the priestly ministry
is outside the scope of this paper. Some of the institutes
of laymen, however, have associated themselves with the
hierarchical apostolate. For example, the Daughters of the
Most Holy and Immaculate Heart of Mary (founded 1870,
revived 1942) is a group of women with Claretian spiritual
ity. Although this group states that its apostolate is
47
universal "as to the means, places, and persons," never-
theless as a matter of fact they are closely associated
with the apostolic work of the Claretian Fathers. They
must be able to make their living, but their primary field
47
Thomas P. McCarthy, Total Dedication for the
Laity (Boston, 1964), p. 26.
38
1
. . . h k f h . .
48
of aposto ic action is t e wor o t e institute. The
primary field of apostolate in this institute is a common
work of the hierarchical apostolate, and therefore their
field of work is not really the secular order, even though
the form of their life may be secular.
Institutes with a truly secular field of apostolate
can be divided into three types: (1) institutes with close
and highly structured community life and a comma~ work;
(2) institutes with close, non-monastic community structure
and an individual apostolate; (3) institutes with no com
munity structure and an individual apostolate.
Institutes with close and highly structured commu-
nity life and a common work. One of the earliest insti-
tutes, the Teresian Institute (1911), is a good example of
this type of secular institute. The institute is composed
of women following a Carmelite spirituality who are dedi
cated to the task of Christian education on all levels.
All members are either teachers, researchers, or writers.
Although the members are all in the same profession, they
do not all work together; in fact, their aim is to reach
48
McCarthy, Total Dedication, p. 27.
39
as Christians into the secular educational system.
49
In
the organization of their life, however, they have retained
a certain monastic structure--at least to the extent that
they live together and organize their lives around commu
nity activities such as prayer, meals, and recreation. At
first glance they would seem to be very much like what the
modern religious congregations are seeking to be; they
differ radically from religious, however, in that community
witness is not an integral part of their specific Christian
witness. The distinction is a theological one, and will
be taken up later.
Institutes with close, non-monastic community
structure and an individual apostolate. An example of this
type of institute is the Society of Our Lady of the Way
(1936), a society of women following Ignatian spirituality.
The apostolic purpose of this institute is to be "apostolic
50
witnesses of the faith in the midst of the world." The
field of apostolate is the profession of each member in its
precisely secular reality; therefore this institute
49
McCarthy, Total Dedication, p. 44.
50
society of Our Lady of the Way, Constitutions
[n. p. , n. d. ] , p. 8.
40
conceives of its task as an attempt to express the Chris
tian mystery in secular terms. Although this institute has
no monastic orientation in its way of living, there is an
attempt to create a strong fraternal bond among the members
through frequent and close contact, so that the individual
members will have sufficient psychological support in their
lives of total dedication.
Institutes with no community structure and an
individual apostolate. Such institutes are exemplified by
the Dominican women's institute, Caritas Christi. As is
the case with the institutes in the preceding group, the
apostolate is an individual one within the secular order.
This group, however, has not chosen any close community
structure, which it considers unessential. Its aim is to
51
form a spiritual community of love, but it leaves its
members in isolation from each other. Except for a monthly
meeting for spiritual direction the members have no contact
with each other.
The very variety in these institutes poses some
problems in drawing theological conclusions. All of them
51 . . h . .
J.M. Perrin, Caritas C r1st1: A Secular Insti-
-------------------
tu t e (River Forest, 1961}, p. 4.
41
are approved institutes, yet they differ greatly in struc
ture. That one can understand how the structures developed
does not constitute a full understanding of the total
reality, which extends far beyond the sociological facts
into the realm of faith and theology. Basic questions then
arise as to the possible identity between secular insti
tutes and religious orders, as to the theological justifi
cation for considering them as specifically distinct from
religious, as to the precise nature of their relation to
the secular order. The discussion up to now has taken
quite a synthetic view of the constitutive elements of the
secular institutes. It is now necessary to analyze the
institutes in depth.
CHAPTER II
SECULAR INSTITUTES: COMMUNITIES OF
ESCHATOLOGICAL FAITH
Introduction
In attempting to describe secular institutes the
ologically one recognizes that they will have to be compared
with the other states of perfection,
1
whether religious
congregations or societies of common life, even though
satisfactory t heologies have not yet been worked out for
these. Much of the confusion surrounding discussion of
these states comes, on the one hand, from using the term
"state of perfection" in more than one sense indiscrimi-
nately. The term may refer to the individual's formal,
stable, and community-oriented commitment which all agree
1
This term is used because of its historical
importance. Most theologians and canonists prefer either
"states of total dedication" or "states of the evangelical
counsels" as indicating more clearly the essence of the
charism.
42
43
is the essence of the state of perfection.
2
The term may
also refer to the specific forms which this commitment has
taken: religious orders, societies of common life, secular
institutes. In order that the discussion of secular insti-
tutes may be kept as unambiguous as possible, the term will
be used in the second sense.
Officially to approve any group, the Church must
see it as in some significant way expressive of her life
and mission. The Church is, first of all, "the Catholic,
all-embracing community of salvation and love.
113
So
inseparable are the concepts of community and salvation
that they turn out to be one and the same thing. Since the
Christian's union with Christ is his salvation, Edward
Schillebeeckx can say of the Church:
It becomes, consequently, a clear theme of a mankind
redeemed with the purpose of an ecclesial brotherhood,
a communal Church with its own initiation, its own cult,
especially the sharing of the eucharistic table, a
community guided and accompanied by a ministering
office •... the communio of believers gathered about
its bishop (in communion with the Rock)--this is
2
cf. Jean Beyer, "Nature canonique des Instituts
seculiers: Lignes essentielles et Questions disputees," in
.,
Etudes sur les Instituts seculiers, ed. Jean Beyer (Bruges,
1963), p. 165.
3
Bernard Haering, The Law of Christ, I (Westmin-
ster, 1963), pp. 440-41.
44
salvation, the Church of Christ. Precisely in this
koinonia must the Father's absolute self-communication
through the Son in the Holy Spirit find that histori
cally visible realization, which is the true sign of
all mankind's vocation.
4
Thus Christ has left the Church in the world to be the
sacrament of salvation for all men.
The Church is first of all a community "established
by Christ as a communion of life, charity and truth.
115
The communion of the people of God is achieved by the
power of the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of life and love
and truth. Thus the Holy Spirit informs the Church, making
her the living, mystical body of Christ. From her iden
tity with Christ flows her whole mission and her funda
mental thrust, a thrust to the whole of mankind without
exception. Though her primary work is the service of God,
she expresses this service through her concern for the
total good of men: all things are Christ's; therefore all
have to share in her salvific work:
Christianity is universal not only in the sense that
all men have their Saviour in Jesus Christ, but also
in the sense that the whole man finds salvation in Hirn.
411
The Church and Mankind," in The Church and Man
kind, ed. Edward H. Schillebeeckx (Glen Rock, 1965), p. 78.
5
vatican II, Constitution on the Church, art. 9.
45
But all the destinies of Christianity are in the hands
of the Church; and the Church is thus also Catholic in
the sense that nothing human can be outside her
concern.
6
The primary question to be asked concerns the pre
cise nature of the salvation of which the Church is to be
the sacrament. The Church is the bearer of the communion
among men, thus satisfying man's basic need for human
solidarity in real depth. More important, she is the
sacrament--the revelation--of man's union with God achieved
by incorporation into Christ's mystical body. By her
humanity she protects men from the dangers of all forms of
Gnosticism, "by the very fact of her existence, from the
illusions of a spiritual vocation conceived as solitary
and dis-embodied.
117
She puts men into contact with
Christ's sacramental, salvific actions, making the whole of
the redemption present to each man:
The properly ecclesial milieu is where the word of
God's forgiveness is heard, where baptism is adminis
tered and the eucharist is celebrated, where there is
faith that nothing can separate us from the Lord and
6
Henri de Lubac, The Splendour of the Church (Glen
Rock, 1956), p. 117
7
De Lubac, Splendour, pp. 107-108.
46
that for men there is no absolute solitude because God
is with us.
8
She introduces men to the mystery of the cross. Finally
she extends salvation to the secular milieu by being in tle
9
world as the light of the world, the salt of the earth.
The Church as a body is both charismatically and
organizationally complex. The primary division in the
organizational structure of the Church lies between the
laity and the hierarchy, the hierarchy ministering to the
body of the faithful, and the two of them together wit
nessing to the essentially hierarchic nature of the
Church.lo
A discussion of the function of the hierarchy is
outside the immediate scope of this paper; however in order
to understand secular institutes it is necessary to under
stand the function of the laity in the Church. First of
all the laity must "make the Church present and operative
in those places and circumstances where only through them
8
schillebeeckx, "The Church and Mankind," p. 89.
9
· · · h h h 9
Vatican II, Constitution on t e C urc, art •.
10
Beyer, "Nature canonigue," pp. 176-77.
47
can it [the Church] become the salt of the earth.
1111
But the Church has a complex witness, one which
neither the hierarchy alone, nor the laity alone is able to
bear. In order that the essential centrality of God may
not be lost sight of by either clergy or laity, the Church
has raised up a third group composed of both clerics and
laymen, those in the states of perfection.
There are two elements which characterize the
states of perfection: the witness that they give to the
Church's mission in the world and the means by which this
witness is channeled, the practice of the evangelical
counsels within a community.
The religious state will provide the simplest basis
for discussion. The ideal of the religious state has
always been to live totally for the Lord, so that at its
simplest and deepest level perfection was equated with
union with God. For this reason religious life was seen
as a substitute for martyrdom, a witness-by-life to the
reality of God--the witness to the living reality of the
holy. Perfection is therefore to be equated with holiness
and holiness with union with God.
11 . . . 33
Vatican II, Constitution on the Church, art. .
48
The means to union characteristic of the religious
life are (1) the practice of the evangelical counsels, with
or without vows, and (2) living in the community to which
the members are called by God. The Church has seen in this
embracing of the counsels a true expression of her own
desire to be with the Lord and "a splendid sign of the
heavenly kingdom.
1112
As an eschatological mystery the
Church is living in the last days when the Lord is in fact
"everything to everyone'' (1 Car. 15:28), though as long
as she remains a Church of sinners her true desire for the
Lord is weakened and her search for the vision of God is
more or less subverted. For this reason the Church holds
up the religious as witnesses to the fact that the grace
of Christ abounds in the Church and that sin, the rejection
of the demands of God's holiness in man's life, has been
overcome.
For this reason the Church welcomes those who,
following God's call, wish to assume the burden of holiness
with all that such holiness demands by way of the renun
ciation inherent in Christ's demand that his followers
12
vatican II, Decree on the Adaptation and Renewal
of the Religious Life, art. 1.
49
"be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt.
5:48). Christ's commands and counsels of renunciation are
symbolized by the traditional three evangelical counsels:
poverty, chastity, and obedience. Religious poverty-
simplicity and generosity in the use of materialities for
others--bears witness not only to the Church's fundamental
dependence on the Father but also to her realization that
no materiality can be equated with God, who is alone enough
to satisfy human longing: "The Lord is my chosen portion
and my cup" (Ps. 15:15). In her poor religious the Church
looks forward to the time which God will be everything for
every one of her members. Religious chastity (celibacy)-
seen broadly as a total direction of a personal love to
Christ and to the Church--bears witness to the Church's
perfect love of and fidelity to Christ. Religious obedience
--the free donation of one's self-determination--bears
witness to the unshakeable union of spirit between Christ
and his Church and Christ and the Father; it bears witness
to Christ's gift of his own Spirit to the Church, so that
religious superiors can command in the name of the Church
and of Christ himself.
The second distinguishing mark of the religious
state is life in common. The community is formed prag-
50
matically because man cannot live humanly in isolation.
Theologically, this community of charity is the Church in
miniature: "a true family gathered together in the name
of the Lord by God's love which has flooded the hearts of
its members through the Holy Spirit.
• • •
[This family]
rejoices because He is present among them.
1113
Thus the
religious community witnesses to the community of love and
life in God himself as well as to Christ's identity with
the Father: "I in them and thou in me that they may become
perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast
sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me"
(Jn. 17:23). Finally, the community, as Vatican II points
out, "is a visible pledge that Christ will return.
1114
The
religious state, therefore, witnesses publicly the Church's
essential end--the communal sanctification of all men in an
abiding and multi-faceted union with God.
Though there is no denial of the values in se, the
renunciations inherent in the religious life do represent
a retrenchment from many fundamental human values. As a
13
vatican II, Decree on ... the Religious Life,
art. 15.
14
oecree on ..• the Religious Life, art. 15.
51
canonical state the religious state reoresents a separation
from the world. Its emphasis on the eschatological aspects
of the Church's life, even though the theological position
is rooted in history, has resulted in the physical separa
tion from the world traditionally, and now canonically,
expected of religious--separation symbolized by cloister,
by uniform dress, and by communal living arrangements.
Although Vatican II h a s in s i s ted upon prudent adaptation o f
the externals of this separat ion both to the conditions of
modern life and, in the case of those congregations founded
for a specific socia l purpose , to the demands of their
specific apostolic task ,
15
nevertheless in a real sense the
physical and material organization of the religious life
is intended to be a visibl e witness to the rest of the
Church of the Church's concern f or t he divin e , whi c h is
not identical with anything merely human . With this
special witness of the religious in mind, t he Church direct
ly forbids them to engage in those works which are by their
f b
. 16
very nature secular: works o mercy, yes; usiness, no.
15
Decree on ... the Religious Life, art. 16-18.
16
The present turmoil in religious orders is partly
caused by the fact that the order's concentration on the
building of large institutions--schools, hospitals, etc.--
52
The sanctification of the secular order is specifically
the task of the laity. Religious serve to remind laymen of
the fact that the world cannot be served or perfected for
its own sake, but only for the sake of the Lord, and that,
therefore, the layman's task is to make every aspect of
human life an incarnation of the holy.
Ecclesial Witness
The Church has a double purpose--to reveal the
mystery of God and to transform the world so that it can
share in this mystery. The two aspects of this purpose are
more or less divided by the tasks of religious and laity.
Since religious witness to the eschatological mission of
the Church and laymen engage in the transformation of the
secular order, it would seem that the heavenly and secular
has in reality, if not legally, secularized their work. To
the extent that secularization has taken place, the orders
are not fulfilling their essential mandate from the Church.
Whether or not a non-secular witness ought to have been
imposed on these active congregations is another quite
serious question. In their charismatic inception many of
them were definitely world-oriented and therefore much like
the contemporary secular institutes. However the basic
distinction remains: religious are ecclesially "out" of
the world. Whether some of the congregations will retain
this separation is the question which they are now discuss
ing. Those that reject the separation will end up substan
tially secular institutes.
53
aspects of the Church are sufficiently represented. If
the division of labor is well done, then what is the func
tion of secular institutes in the apostolate? As a matter
of fact they are difficult to justify unless their nature
be understood very clearly. By way of introduction I
would say that the task of the secular institutes is to
combine the witness of both religious and laity: to be
eschatological witnesses and yet to transform the secular
order. This section will concern itself with the insti
tutes as eschatological witnesses. The third chapter will
take up the problem of the relationship between eschatolog
ical witness and the secular task.
The secular institutes have been established as one
of the juridical states of perfection. From the Church's
point of view the secular institutes are official, charis
matic bodies--i.e., they have risen as a response to the
grace of God given not primarily for the good of the
individual members of the institutes but for the common
good of the whole Church. The apostolic constitution
Provida Mater Ecclesia had as its purpose to make juridical
bodies and therefore, in a real sense, public bodies out
of already-existing private groups--''Clerical or lay Asso
ciations whose members, in order to attain to Christian
54
perfection, and the full exercise of the apostolate, make
profession of practicing the evangelical counsels in the
17
world." From the public nature of the 5tate flows the
public nature of activity within the state. Jean Beyer
summarizes thus the opinion of W. Bertrams: Since the
constitutions of secular institutes are public,
the acts by which the laws are kept and its require
ments are fulfilled are public ... Thus joining the
institute is a juridical public act, because it is
directly ordained to the good of the institute ...
If there is an engagement by vow, that vow is public;
in effect "a vow is public if it is received by the
legitimate superior in the name of the Church."
18
In the canonical description of secular institutes
there is contained the basic elements of their nature:
17
Art. I.
18
"Nature canonique des Instituts seculiers,"
p. 188. He is referring the reader to W. Bertrams, "De
publicitate juridica statum perfectionis Ecclesiae" (Peri
odica, 1958, pp. 115-65). The controversy over whether or
not secular institute vows are public stems from the fact
that institutes with public vows are bound ipso facto
by canon law for religious. In order to free secular
institutes from canonical restrictions, the law establish
ing secular institutes says quite definitely that their
vows are not public (cf. Provida Mater Ecclesia, art. II).
The statement is obviously a stop-gap statement until canon
law can be revised to fit actual phenomena, but it has
been the source of a great deal of confused thinking on
the nature of secular institutes. The current compromise
statement is that vows in secular institutes are semi
public.
55
(1) they are communities (associations), (2) they strive
for Christian perfection, (3) they are engaged in the
apostolate, (4) their characteristic means of both perfec
tion and apostolic action is the profession of the evan
gelical counsels in the world. This chapter will take up
three of these elements: their quest for perfection,
their profession of the counsels, their community struc
tures. Their apostolate will be discussed in the following
chapter.
Christian Perfection and the Witness
to the Holy
The basic element of the religious state, namely,
that the members strive for perfection, is also the basic
element of the secular institute life; Christian perfection
is the purpose of all the states of total dedication and of
all Christian life.
The only perfection is the perfection of union with
God, or holiness. In this desire for union with God and
in the means chosen by the secular institutes--the evan
gelical counsels--secular institutes are identical with
h 1
. . d 19
t ere igious or ers. Karl Rahner says the same thing
19
Beyer, "Nature canonique," pp. 162-63.
when he shows why secular institutes cannot be called
simply lay associations:
56
Of course, every Christian is bound to have the spirit
of Christ, of his cross, and hence of the evangelical
counsels; to have it and to keep acquiring it more and
mora, until, in death, he dies to the world and thus
receives the consecration of eternal life; but in the
laity this spirit is not realized in an ecclesiologi
cally tangible and representative way, as discernible,
that is, in the direct demands of the evangelical
counsels, which aim at the means, not only at the
spirit, of the love of the Crucified which overcame the
world. It is basically this difference which distin
guishes the states from each other, and because of this
a person vowed to the counsels in a secular institute
is ranged with the members of religious orders over
against the real laity.
20
In view of the sensitivity of some of the secular
institutes about being identified with religious orders and
therefore of the juridical care to separate the states of
perfection, a brief statement from Pius XII ought to be
examined:
Nothing of the full profession of Christian perfection,
solidly based on the evangelical counsels and truly
religious as to its substance, will be withdrawn, but
this perfection is to be exercised and professed in the
worla.
21
2011
The Layman and the Religious Life: On the
Theology of Secular Institutes," in Theology for Renewal:
Bishops, Priests, Laity (New York, 1964), p. 174.
21
Primo Feliciter, art. 2, first italics added.
57
Though it is quite clear that secular institutes are not
religious in the canonical sense of the term (i.e., bound
to the forms of religious life), they are religious in the
theolo~ical sense of the term (dedicated by a stable
commitment to the service of God).
Religious received their name originally not from
their legal status but as a description of their nature-
religious are those who practice the v i rtue of r eligion i n
all its fullness, whose total manner of life conduces to a
constant openness to God . As a Christian virtue , religion
must be rooted in the theological virtues-- f ith , hope ,
charity--but it is istinguished from them in that its
object is not God himself but th giving to God of hat is
due him; not God directly , but the organization of human
life and orienta t ion of human faculties . The main acts of
religion are distinguished by the human faculty primar ily
involved: adoration (the body), prayer (the mind), devo
tion (the will), sacrifice (the social being). The living
of the counsels and engaging in the apostolate are funda
mentally manifestations of devotion
22
rising out of a life
22
Th1.·s term 1.·s d t · a· t t · the use o 1.n 1.ca e promp ness 1.n
service of God, not an emotional response to things
religious.
58
of prayer.
Within the framework of the states of perfection it
is the stable dedication of one's own person--expressed in
the promise of a total and lifelong devotion to be chan
nelled through poverty, chastity, and obedience--that makes
one a religious person, a person whose profession is reli
gious, whose whole life and activity is at the service of
the social body (in this case the Church) as a testimony
to the absolute demands of God over human life. In this
respect members of secular institutes are as truly religious
as are members of religious institutes .
Religion as rofession is a way of life, an on
going process. It is subject to all the laws of human
development; hence holiness can never be absolute, can
never be achieved, in the sense of achieving a static state
of being. Religious profession in this sense, therefore,
is identical with spirituality.
The spirituality of members of secular institutes
must be rooted in the evangelical counsels, and this basic
orientation distinguishes it from any spirituality of the
layman properly so called. However, because of the secular
nature of the secular institutes, because the religious
profession must be lived within the restrictions which the
59
secular city imposes on its members, the particular forms
of worship, association, and study must be compatible with
the institutes' secularity. Thus it may happen that the
specific forms of worship may be identical with the forms
chosen by any Catholic layman serious about an interior
life: daily Mass, mental prayer, spiritual reading, regu
lar confession and retreats. The difference lies only in
the orientation and in the fact that members of secular
institutes are committed to special forms which must lead
to and express real and constant union with God. For the
member of a secular institute, as for the religious, failure
constantly to intensify the union in all the circumstanc s
of his life is a direct failure to be what he professes to
be and what the Church has given him the mandate to be.
Because the religious profession is so very serious, most
of the institutes specify either forms of prayer or times
for prayer, or both, in order to assure their members the
opportunity to direct all their attention regularly to God
himself, so that the dynamism of love and faith will be
able to enter into the activity of the whole day, which will
then be lived in conspectu Dei.
Writers on secular institutes insist that the
prayer of a member of a secular institute must be
60
apostolically oriented prayer. Now since the content of
prayer simply cannot be pre-determined and since the object
of one's prayer is God, one must discover in what sense a
spirituality can require an apostolically oriented prayer.
It cannot mean that one would be constantly petitioning for
one's own or others' needs, or contemplative prayer, pro
perly so called,
23
would not be possible. Therefore it
seems that apostolic orientation means primarily that one's
relationship with God is seen not as a relationship between
two distinct and relatively independent persons, but as
a relationship of the human person as Christian (and there
fore necessarily related to Christ and to the Church) with
God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Apostolically
oriented prayer is prayer to God from within the Christian
community (God-Christ-Church) for the purpose of intensify
ing the unity of the community (God-Christ-Church). Within
this Christian orientation there is room for all types of
prayer in all stages of development.
Without a deepened Christian vision, Christian
witness degenerates into activism:
23
rn Christian Perfection and Contemplation (St.
Louis, 1949), R. Garrigou-Lagrange defines contemplation
broadly as "a simple and loving knowledge of God and of His
works which is the fruit of ... grace." Cf. pp. 222-23.
61
On the spiritual plane, the most visible symptom of
this deviation [confusing man's plans with God's
designs] is the inevitable damage done the contempla
tive dimension of the Christian mystery; this becomes
devitalized at the root by the conviction that it is
really nothing but a useless, although beautiful
aberration of the soui.
24
Therefore a life of prayer is essential to Christianity:
But in revealed religion, silence with God has a value
in itself and for its own sake, just because God is
God. Failure to recognize the value of mere being with
God, as the Beloved, without doing anything, is to
gouge the heart out of Christianity.25
It is only because contemplation has aligned him with the
mind and the will of Christ that the member of a secular
institute will be prepared to take the next steps--to
realign all his activity, his whole moral life, with his
faith, and to approach every task that he has to do from
the point of view of Christ. Without this shift in his
standards, whatever the member of a secular institute does
will be, considered from a Christian point of view, only
sterile agitation. His whole task in the world is to show
the world how to escape its agitation. Therefore
2 4 ..
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Laicat et pleine Apos-
tolat (Paris, 1949), p. 30.
25
Albert-Marie Besnard, "Tendencies of Contemporary
Spirituality," in Spirituality in Church and World, ed.
Christian Duquoc (Glen Rock, 1965), p. 32.
62
interiority is essential.
If his prayer radically identifies the member of a
secular institute with Christ, then all his activity will
flow from this union and intensify it:
Action nourishes when it becomes loving communion with
the soul of Christ and his intentions, a close colla
boration with his efforts; when in charity it brings
us nearer to our brother and causes us to bear his
burdens.
26
Thus there is no intrinsic incompatibility between a life
of prayer and apostolic work. Tension arises only because
the meagerness of one's contemplation blinds one to the
total mystery of Christ in the world. One fails to make
the necessary relationships between the Christian mystery
and the existential secular situation. When it is the
result of lack of seriousness or of generosity in seeking
God, this lack of vision (faith, really) is probably the
most serious sin of members of secular institutes--simply
because it is the most limiting to the grace of God to
others. If he does not recognize Christ in the concrete
situation, the member of a secular institute is useless as
a bearer of the holy.
26
J. M. Perrin, Secular Institutes (New York,
1961), p. 59.
63
It is faith that gives the vision that sees the
whole world as intrinsically God's, as implicitly Christian,
in Schillebeeckx' term:
In that context, this is what is meant by implicit
Christianity; it is the human, earthly and profane
reality assumed in its secularity into the God-related
life which it proceeds to express objectively, even
when that God-related life remains anonymous and
irnplicit.
27
Faith goes on to see the Christianity of the world as
central to its being: "From the Christian point of view
the synthesis of God and world, and the concrete integra
tion of the world on its way to God always lie in Christ"
--and only in Christ.
28
From contemplation flows the act of sacrifice, of
offering to the Father the world thus seen clearly as
Christ's. If the member of a secular institute takes
seriously his calling
to be leaven in the dough extending in the world the
sanctifying action of the Incarnation, which little by
little consecrates the world to God until it is a
single oblation of Christ's to the Father,
29
2711
church and Mankind," p. 85.
28
Hans von Balthasar, "The Gospel as the Norm," in
Spirituality in Church and World, ed. Christian Duquoc
(New York, 1965), pp. 17-18.
29
Jean Beyer, "L'Avenir des Instituts seculiers,"
Gregorianurn, XLVI (1965), p. 575.
64
then all his activity and the world in which he acts
become sacrificial, an offering to God of what is rightly
God's own. It is in their work that the priesthood of the
members of secular institutes, exercised in their daily
Mass, is extended into that wider sphere, so that no aspect
of creation is left out of the total gift of the Church in
the Eucharist. It is apparent that in the life of a member
of a secular institute the Euchar ist mus t be centr al . I t
is in the Eucharist that communion with God and the Chris -
tian community is celebrated and that the secular order,
more Christian because of the presence of a itnessing
Church, is solemnl off r to h ah r:
It is ever through him [Jesus] th t 11th se goo
gi f t s created by you, Lord, are b yous nctifi d,
endowed with ife, blessed, and b stowed u on us.
Through him, and ith him, and in him, you, God al
mighty Father , in the unity of the Holy Spirit, have
all honor and glory . Arnen.30
The Evangelical Counsels
The fourth element consti tuti ng the nature o f
secular institutes, the living of the evangelical counsels,
is the essential constitutive of all the states of
30 h h .
Te Canon oft e Latin Mass.
65
f
. 31
per ection. Christian holiness is radically expressive
of the relationship of Christ to God and of Christ to the
world. Therefore if the counsels are to be means to Chris
tian holiness they must also express these relationships.
The relationship between Christ and God is the dependence
of a communicated being on the cornrnunicating--sonship,
existentially expressed in the Holy Spirit, or love. The
counsels' expression o f Trinitarian life has already been
mentioned above. The relationship between Christ and th .
world is expressed in two central mysteries, the incarna-
tion and the redemption . The relationship betwe secular
institutes and the incarnation ill be discussed in the
next chapter. Therefore , there remains to be sen th
extent to which the counsels witness to th redemption-
to both cross and resurrection .
Seeing the counsels only as signs of eschatological
fulfillment would be failing to see them in their totality.
The counsels are renunciatory signs and therefore are
31
It has been noted that the Church sees the coun-
sels as means to the apostolate as well as to perfection.
Since it is impossible to discuss the counsels as reli
gious phenomena apart from the total Christian context
(hence in their apostolic effects) there will be some
unavoidable overlapping of ideas.
66
concerned with a following of Christ which is willing to
take up one's cross.
The first question to be asked is why renunciation
is necessary. That a man should renounce sin is an under
standable thing. But where the counsels are concerned
Christ is not asking for a conversion from sin, which is
presupposed, but fo r a r enunciation of what i s good and
valuable. The a nswers to the question as to why material
goods, marriage , and self-determination must be renounced ,
generally fall into o categories: the pragmatists point
to the f r eedom from car such renunciation entails~ th
rigoris t s point tom n's intrinsic sinfuln ss and to the
necessity o f s lf- disci line . Both categories of ans rs
are inadequate , since both, being self-centered , fail to
express any aspect of the Christian mystery , whether of the
Trinity, of Christ , or of the Church . After all , Christ ' s
concern was not to be f r ee from worry , not t o keep himself
sinless--and yet he suffered and died.
To understand suffering, one must understand death.
Christ's death represented his full return of his own
person to the Father: "Father, into thy hands I commit my
spirit" (Luke 23:46). But his death was simply the last of
a long series of returns, the culmination of a life of
67
loving submission to the will of his Father. The embracing
of the counsels and, therefore, renunciation--provided, of
course, that God has called one to the renunciation--are
an expression of the desire for total submission to God.
Since in practice the counsels do cut across human self
seeking in every area of one's personality, they provide
the opportunity for the act of submission to take place in
every facet of one ' s persona l ity . Basical ly the counse l s
are renunciatory because love is renunciatory in that its
fundamental t hrust is not self- aggrandizing, but opening
oneself to s e r ve .
For t his r ason
a spirit of faith caus s
li ing o th counsels b gun in
i h to gro , so ha th ill
of Christ and o f the Father will actually be sen in all
the material circumstances of life (poverty) , in all the
people to be served (chastity), and in s ocial s t ructure
{obedience). Experience has shown that defections from
Christ do not usually come from theoretical problems but
from the inability to see God operating in material crea
tion--in limited and limiting things, persons, and events.
Living the counsels stimulates one to believe--existen
tially--in the incarnation and in the consequent ability
of the created to be the sacrament of God. The radical
68
renunciation symbolized by the traditional three vows is
simply a faith-and-love-inspired self-donation to God;
consequently all that tends to make oneself the focus of
one's own activity must be retrenched from. For this
reason Rahner, speaking of secular institutes says:
It is moreover clearly stated in the papal documents
that it would be false to suppose that in the outward
form of their lives the members are not prohibited, by
their vows, from anything whatsoever, so long as it
would not be a sin for other lay people living in the
world (this is quite apart from what the vows directly
renounce) ... that what they are bound to goes beyond
what even the optimi fideles are bound to, and this not
only in the apostolate, but also in striving for per
fection; nor is this meant to refer to the vows as such
themselves, but the further consequences resulting from
them.
32
If the crucifixion says nothing else, it does say
that God's will for man has priority over every other
value:
It [the effort to communicate God] is not a simple
natural progression, a human victory, nor a question of
a pure intention and generous fraternal collaboration.
The world will not be consecrated unless it enters into
the redemption of Christ. Taken up by other men who
live this mystery and accept the cross in their life
as the only sign and unique means of salvation. For
man and for creation there is no other way possible to
God, so much so that the world is called to transcend
32
Karl Rahner, "The Layman and the Religious Life,"
note, pp. 168-69.
69
its order to be able to enter into the order estab
lished by Jesus Christ.
33
The counsels are "meant to be crucifying
1134
--so that the
redemption will become a reality. Some kind of suffering
comes into every man's life. Those who profess to be
crucified with Christ {all Christians, but especially
members of secular institutes and religious) must conse
quently show existentially how the love of Christ brings
joy into the act of suffering.
With the counsels, however--without losing s i ght of
the cross--the secular institutes do embrace the third
aspect of the mystery of redemption, the resurrection.
If the living of the counsels means anything, it
means that the members of the secular institutes are taking
seriously Paul's words:
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the
things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the
right hand of God .... For you have died and your
life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is
our life appears, then you will also appear with him
in glory. {Col. 3:1:-4)
33
Beyer, "L'Avenir," p. 568, italics added.
34
Charles Schleck, Theology of Vocations (Milwaukee,
1963), p. 121.
70
Accepting the counsels means accepting the responsibility
of living the resurrected life, the life in God. The pre
liminary to the resurrected life (a psychological prelimi
nary, which is concomitant with the other) is the death,
broadly conceived, to sin and to self that is effected
sacramentally by baptism and morally by suffering, a death
to which the counsels under their renunciatory aspects are
a means. Basically the logic of the counsels is that same
logic by which the early virgins and continentes operated-
that by renouncing "all" they could belong wholly to the
Lord. Hence the member of a secular institute must radiate
his union with God, the union that is effected by his con
secration to the Lord.
How, precisely, is this holiness made visible in
the Church? Christ laid down the norm--its fruits: the
actions that proceed from holiness. And the norm of
Christian action is love. Love is made visible by joy and
by
.
service. Love is willing to serve others:
If then, I your Lord and Teacher have washed your feet,
you ought also to wash another's feet. For if I have
given you an example, that you also should do as I
have done to you. (Jn. 13:14 f.}
As Salvador Canals says: "The life of perfection supposes
in the subject a permanent disposition because of which he
works prompter, faciliter et constanter as much as charity
71
requires
1135
--and love does not call a halt. Schillebeeckx
says,
The Church, therefore, will appear as a sign among men,
actually drawing and enriching them, only when the
love of her members for humankind becomes concretely
and historically visible here and now.
36
The second sign of the love of God is joy, the response to
the possession of him who is loved. Both are necessary,
for service apart from joy in the presence of God is at
best humanitarianism--and do not the pagans do as much-
and a joy that does not lead to service is illusory Chris
tianity. The counsels, therefore, serving as they do the
union between the individual and God-Christ-C urch, should
conduce positively to joy and service.
Joy is the fundamental fruit of the spirit of
faith. To be able to see God the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ in every circumstance of life and to accede to his
demands in the circumstance is what is meant by a living
faith. To the extent that the counsels are lived in this
spirit, in the faith that one is already living in the
time of eschatological fulfillment, they give rise to joy.
35
secular Institutes (Dublin, 1959), p. 24.
36
"The Church and Mankind," p. 98.
72
To the extent that faith is eschatologically oriented,
the sense that the kingdom of God is seen as a present
.
in
reality and not as "pie in the sky," then the perfection of
the world, of humanity--including both people and human
values--becomes the total concern of the members of secular
institutes. The vow of celibacy opens one to the rest of
humanity; the vow of poverty opens one to the values of
material creation; the vow of obedience opens one to the
deepest value of social order. From a loving recognition
of value flows service. ow the service of one who pro-
fesses union with God must go beyond humanitarianism; it
must be transfus d ith the abilit to see in the created
the things that ar above . To communicate this vision in
service is what is meant by the apostolate .
37
Community
The discussion of the profession of perfection and
of the counsels has cleared the way for a discussion of the
generic element in secular institutes, that they are asso
ciations. The basic problem is to determine whether these
37 h 'f'
Te spec1. 1.c
the concrete living of
the next chapter.
area of apostolate and how it affects
the counsels will be discussed in
73
associations are real communities or simply aggregates.
That they are true juridical communities is indicated by
the fact that the individual commits himself totally to the
institute:
3. With regard to the incorporation of members in
their own Institute and the bond arising therefrom:
The bond by which a Secular Institute and its
members, properly so called, should be mutually
joined together must be:
(a) Stable (stabile), in accordance with the norm
of the particular Constitutions, either for
life or for a set period, in which latter case
it must be renewed on expiry (c.488,I);
(b) Mutual and comprehensive (mutuum ac plenum), so
that, in accordance with the norm of the par
ticular Constitutions, the member hands himself
wholly over to the Institute, and the Institute
takes care of and is responsible for him.
38
When such a total commitment is made to any association,
that association becomes a true community, with a corporate
existence outside of which the individual cannot operate.
Juridically entrance into this kind of community estab
lishes one in a state. Entrance into a secular institute
(or a religious order) is thus clearly comparable to enter
ing into marriage, in which the relationship contracted
subsumes the individual qua individual.
38 . . 1 ·
Provida Mater Ecclesia III.3. Trans ation
Salvador Canals, Secular Institutes and the State of
fection ... (Dublin, 1959), pp. 148-49.
.
in
Per-
74
An understanding of the nature of the secular insti
tute community is extremely important during this period of
generalized turmoil within the Church, a period when not
only the writers on secular institutes but also members of
religious orders are confused.
To begin with, secular institutes should be exam
ined first within the community of the Church so that one
may see in what sense secular institute s corporate l y b ear
witness to the Church as a c ommunity o f salvatio n . They d o
so as the religious institutes do , simply by the bonds of
charity, unity o f purpose and ideal which led to the asso ciation of people to whom the same charism has been given--
the single s piri t which move all the members . ow this
spirit is a complex one , since it must be based , as Vatican
II says, on the s ources of all Christian life , on the
spirit and aim of t he f ounders o f the institutes , as we l l
as on the needs of mode r n t i me s.
39
But to conceive of any human association solely in
terms of spirit and aim and to ignore or object to external
organization is to approach the problem simplistically.
Many of the objections to an institutional Church or
39
Decree on ... the Religious Life, art. II.
75
religious community are the result of ignorance of the
fundamental findings of behavioral scientists. What sociol
ogists have discovered is that organization is present even
in the most rudimentary society, that institutions are
present in all human associations, though they may differ
from group to group. Therefore, it is pointless to call
into question the necessity of organization. W hat must be
seen is what kind of organization is necessary in the kind
of community represented by secular institutes.
Because o f their commitment to secular forms of
life and work secular institutes do not and ought not have
the same kind of monastically organized community as reli
gious have. Practically, the problem is to strike a balance
between the canonical common life currently required of
religious, highly undesirable in secular institutes , and
an isolation so extreme that community consists of nothing
more or less than regular correspondence or a monthly
meeting.
40
Either extreme will destroy secular institutes
as true and distinctive families in the Church--the first
by transforming secular institutes into religious
40
That such institutes are in existence
mean that they have really faced this problem.
institutes are still in experimental stages.
does not
All the
76
congregations and the second by making impossible any real
psychological primary bond between the individual member
and the community. Without a common spirit it seems use
less to speak of real communities within the Christian
community or to differentiate one secular institute from
another. Most institutes avoid the first danger; a few of
them are succumbing to the second. Nowhere do the docu
ments establishing secular institutes even suggest that
the institutes are simply aggregates of people pursuing
their individual perfection and isolated apostolates. The
Thebaid represented such an aggregate--and it resulted too
often in psychological ruin and apostolic irrelevance.
The purpose of juridical erection of secular institutes was
to take the movement out of the realm of the purely indi
vidual and to insure that the bonds between the individual
and his institute would be stable enough to constitute him
. l 41
in area state.
41
For this reason, Pius XII seriously required that
secular institutes assume their proper status: "Societies
•.. which seem beyond doubt to come within the require
ments laid down in the Apostolic Constitution Provida Mater
Ecclesia neither ought to nor may, on whatever pretext, be
arbitrarily left among the ordinary Associations of the
faithful (cc. 684-725), but must of necessity be conformed
to and raised to the state and form of Secular Institutes,
which adequately corresponds to their character and needs."
(Primo Feliciter, I.)
77
As communities, then, secular institutes must some
how reflect the community of the Church. The institutions
by means of which the community is shown can be highly
diversified, as can be seen within all the Christian commu
nions and certainly within the religious orders. The
organization of the institute wi ll necessarily be deter
mined by its specific spirit and purpose. The essential
Christian community is the community of love--Christian to
Christ and the Church, and Christ, Church and Christian to
the world. It is in this second sense that secular insti
tutes are reflections of the community of the Church,
ecclesiola turned toward the world. Although their commu
nity is not visible in the way that the religious community
is, nevertheless the bonds are real and the redemptive task
is the task of the whole group. The witness of the insti
tutes is public insofar as the Church has officially
approved the secular institutes' anonymous apostolic wit
ness within the secular order. Although the institutes as
associations are invisible within the secular order and the
Church does not ask them to work as a group, nevertheless
the individual member cannot b~ invisible. The invisible
Christian is ipso facto failing to bear witness to the
radical demands of the holy:
78
If you were of the world, the world would love what is
its own. But because you are not of the world, but I
have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world
hates you. (Jn.15:19)
From the point of view of the individual, what
practical motive is there for forming an association, when
the counsels might be lived without formal structure?
A priori the answer to this question ought to be reflected
in the type of associations which did grow up, associations
which were consequently approved by the Church.
No man is self-sufficient. Since man i s not by
nature a hermit and since the Church today is rediscovering
her "communion in Christ and in the Spirit, on all levels
where its mystery is manifest,"
42
it is not surprising that
the Church has approved secular institutes as associations,
in order to establish them as ecclesial communities; she
judges them to be adequate reflections of her own communal
being. Inasmuch as members of secular institutes serve
this common good, they are lifted out of a purely private
sphere. Members of secular institutes are thus called more
urgently than the ordinary laity,
as living members, to expend their energy for the growth
of the Church and its continuous sanctification, since
42
Besnard, "Tendencies," p. 41.
79
this very energy is a gift of the Creator and a bless
ing of the Redeemer.
43
But this is to be done, as Vatican II adds, "in keeping
. th th t f h · ·
11
4 4
wi e proper ype o t eir own vocation. And, by
nature, the secular institute vocation is not to any form
of isolation.
Any group is formed for a purpose, either to
accomplish some work or to reinforce common ideals. To the
extent that the group is concentrating on forming atti
tudes, proposing ideals on a person-to-person basis, and
supporting the individual in his pursuit of a common goal ,
such a group is a primary group. Groups formed simply to
accomplish some external task are secondary groups . If
secular institutes were founded simply to accomplish some
work, like establishing a retreat house of a Christological
center, the original members would have done better to have
formed a non-profit corporation. But the secular insti
tutes-in-formation did not see their primary thrust thus.
They banded together because all felt the same call to
total dedication in the world and because they felt that
they could not follow the call alone:
43
· · · h h h 33
Vatican II, Constitution on t e C urc, art. .
44
· · · h h h 44
Vatican II, Constitution on t e C urc, art. .
80
In seeking a spiritual life, Christians will often
firmly refuse to pursue solitary paths. They are all
eager to find or to form a group whose ambiance and
45
objectives correspond to their aspirations and needs.
Thus from the beginning members of secular institutes have
felt the urge toward a community in the spirit, which,
because men are not spirits but human beings, means a
community in the strict sense of a group of people who
share common ideals and who live in person-to-person
relationship with eac h other .
The Church approves of a secular institute only
insofar as it is like her . Since the Church as the comrnu-
nity in the Spirit of Christ is an organic whole , the
secular institutes must be true communities and not simply
organizations of working people . embers of secular insti -
tutes are persons bound into a whole by the Spirit of
Christ, who is himself a person , and therefore their style
of living must have a personal quality- -a high degree of
personal relationship . As a spiritual communi t y membe rs
of secular institutes must live the life of the Spirit
together, according to their rules and their spiritualities,
"in the fullness of Charity.
1146
45
Besnard, "Tendencies," p. 39.
46
Vatican II, Decree on •.. Religious Life, art. 11.
81
Thus whether one sees secular institutes as primary
groups (spiritual families in the likeness of the Church)
or as Gemeinschaften (groups broader than natural families
but bound by close personal ties), the practical implica
tions are the same: the individual selfhood of each member
of a secular institute is indissolubly linked in God's
eyes and in the eyes of the Church with the existential
reality of his institute, to the extent that his salvation
and sanctification are tied to the salvation and sancti
fication of the rest of the community.
As one must be reborn in baptism in the Church to
be a Christian, so one must become incorporated into an
institute to receive the good that the institute offers
its members. And the bond with the institute, though
expressed juridically, is identical with the bond uniting
a member of a secular institute to the Church--the Holy
Spirit himself, who, having brought the individual to the
institute, then fits his grace to each person as a member
of the institute. As a charismatic body, the community
will rise or fall together, and therefore members of secu
lar institutes must take it upon themselves to see to it
that the community is providing for all members concrete
means to union with God, that the "institutional institute"
82
serves - the "charismatic institute."
Though isolation is sometimes unavoidable, to the
extent that the member of a secular institute is isolated
from his community he will lack the strength and support
of the group. The effect of isolation is deprivation of a
basic psychological need, and therefore isolation ought not
to be extolled, as some writers have extolled it, as an
essential and valuable element in the vocation to a secular
institute. As one writer on women's institutes has said:
Just because of potential loneliness, the importance
of a spiritual community, of close sisterly bonds, or
deep though unsentimental affection and caring for one
another's need cannot be overestimated.
47
Needless to say, the institutional institute must
not organize its members' lives on a monastic pattern.
Each institute has to find those institutions proper to
its spirit and work, so that a sense of a community of
holiness will catalyze the members' whole spirituality.
If the institutes do not find psychologically and socio
logically valid means to such a community, then they will
be useless to the individual members. At present
47
Andree Emery, "Teaching and Living the Rule and
Constitution in Secular Life," in Leaven in the Mass, ed.
Conference of the Life of Total Dedication in the World
(Washington, 1961), p. 49.
83
over-institutionalization does not represent the danger to
secular institutes that it does to religious orders. To
justify the status they have been given by the Church,
their primary internal concern must be to strive for the
community of holiness.
CHAPTER III
SECULAR INSTITUTES: ESCHATOLOGICAL WITNESS
IN A SECULAR MODE
The Church and the Secular
Secularity, though constantly under discussion,
remains largely an undefined concept. When it becomes
necessary to describe the relationship obtaining between
the Church and the secular then definition becomes essen
tial. To equate the secular with the profane, i.e., with
everything lying outside the precincts of the temple (the
ecclesiastical) represents a failure to make sufficient
distinctions--for the Church (and therefore the sacred
which she bears) is not spatially limited to church-owned
places or church-sponsored institutions. Nor is it enough
to equate the secular with a natural whose only value lies
in its service of the supernatural order, which is con
sidered the only real value. Any failure to give sufficient
acknowledgment to the value of the secular is rightly sus
pect, and therefore a definition of the secular must take
into account secularity in se. However, because of the
84
85
deeply rooted though unexplained distinction obtaining
between the secular and the sacred, the definition must
also take such a view into account. Therefore in this
paper the secular order (or the world) will be conceived of
as the whole human milieu centered in and serving mankind-
the human race in its biological, psychological, cultural,
and historical reality.
In its concern for the revelation of the mystery of
God Christianity has historically depreciated the secular
sometimes actually as evil but at least as of secondary
concern to the Christian. Contemporary assertions of the
secular as a value often take the form, therefore, of a
violent reaction against what seems to be Christian nega
tivism. In some modern thinking the world is seen not only
as intrinsically good but as getting better and better.
Thus we are faced with the myth first of human progress and
then of human progress as an unfolding of the mystery of
God--a sacrarnentality of the universe.
That the secular has its own validity no one would
deny. As a form of reality the secular order has its
proper mode of being and becoming; if this mode is not
respected, then one operates in unreality. It is this
failure to ground Christian operation in the real world
86
that contemporary thinkers are so opposed to. However the
solution to the problem does not lie in the direction of
total optimism regarding evolutionary progress. This is
not to deny that evolution is occurring. What I would
deny, however, is that evolution is ipso facto progress.
The term "progress" implies a movement toward perfection.
Therefore to term any event progress is to make a value
judgment. Such a judgment, however, must be based in
reality. If one's criterion for human perfection is com
plexity--biological, technical and sociological--then the
world is progressing with fantastic rapidity.
But the question which ought to be asked is whether
"progress"--in whatever way understood--furthers the
actualization of those human potentialities which conduce
to the happiness of the individual and the common good of
society. Progress, therefore, should include much more
than complexity and technological development. Man's moral
development must be taken into consideration. Western
culture is not conspicuously concerned about truthfulness,
self-respect, integrity, interiority, chastity, beauty,
justice, community responsibility--or almost any value
beyond material security or pleasure. The fact is that as
a race man has not learned from past errors but continues
87
along a primitive path of individual and group egoism,
waste of natural resources, lack of concern for social
ills, and war. Technological advancement is made to serve
as a reinforcement of these attitudes which are so destruc
tive of the humanity of man.
Thus I would say that the secular order, as one
form of reality, has a real claim on the love and concern
of man. But I would also say that the secular order has
shown no real signs of progress, which is dependent on
man's moral choices and on the ends for which he operates
and causes his world to operate. At no point in history
has man been able to break out of a self-absorbed pattern
of activity. At most he has extended the self to include
his family or his nation. The "progress" of his own advan
tage, however, has been--and still is--considered an end in
itself. As inventive as mankind has been, it has never
theless hit a moral dead end. By and large the secular
order has no idea of where it is going. Since technology
is more and more divorced from human goodness, human inven
tiveness has remained the channel of destruction of mankind.
Since the secular order did not per se lead to the
progress of mankind it demanded an eschatological event to
break the existing pattern of evil--the incarnation event.
88
The aim of the redemption brought by Christ was first of
all to break the pattern of egoism and alienation by giving
men a potentiality for sharing in divine activity and by
actualizing this potentiality. As a matter of fact the
redemption brought by Christ brought to the secular order
a purpose which it had previously lacked and thereby
radically changed the face of the secular--for its final
cause is taken out of the secular order and transferred to
the whole mystery of salvation of the world. Materially,
human institutions remain human; formally, humanity has
been taken up into Christ and reveals him; finally, the
secular has ceased to exist. In the person of Christ, the
divine has intervened in the secular; the revelation of God
has occurred in human form and therefore in secular form.
The incarnation has made it impossible validly to remove
God from any aspect of the human milieu, for the human
nature which the Son assumed was not that of a superman
isolated against the realities and limitations of human
existence, but a humanity contingent on the racial, cul
tural, historical fact of post-exilic Judaism. Jesus
absorbed and lived in his culture with no apologies for the
resultant limitations on his person or activity and with no
attempt to escape them:
89
human existence taken concretely--not in the abstract-
was for him precisely in his human condition steeped
as it was in the mystery, the objective expression of
his communion with the Father in the Dynarnis_ of t~e
Holy Spirit and for the benefit of his fellowmen.
The action of the incarnation was essentially the revela
tion of the relationship between creation and the Trinity,
the Son's joining all things to himself in the power of the
love of the Holy Spirit. The implications of Christ's
actions are clear. If man is to be redeemed (returned to
the Father), then all of human culture and human history
will have to be included in this redemption.
Christ has drawn all things to himself; therefore
all things are his and potentially revelatory of him. The
consequences of this fact on his followers are immeasurable,
for the world then becomes as much an object of Christian
faith as the incarnation itself. As Schillebeeckx contin-
ues: "The acceptance of real human existence, concretely
taken with all its responsibilities, is in truth an act of
God-centered faith.
112
The world is first of all seen for-
rnally as the redeemed and redemptive kingdom of Christ.
1
Edward Schillebeeckx, "The Church and Mankind,"
The Church and Mankind, ed. Edward Schillebeeckx (Glen
Rock, 1965), p. 83.
211
The Church and Mankind," p. 83.
.
in
90
Secondly the world is loved and served as an extension of
Christ in history. The faith of the modern Christian no
longer allows him to look for God anywhere but in the
world.
Christ entered the world as it really was in order
to return it to the Father, for "redeemed" has the basic
meaning of seeking out what has been lost actually if not
ontologically by the fall from friendship with God, with its
burden of guilt and with the sum total of its resultant
evils. Christ's first purpose was to redeem all men from
sin, to destroy in men sin and the effects of this aliena
tion from God. Experience has shown that the most radical
alienation is expressed most often not by actively pro
secuted hatred of God but by indifference to anyone but
oneself, that is, not as a result of direct rejection but
as a result of a self-fascinated self-interest. To redeem
man from this radical alienation, Christ had first to
destroy human self-isolation and open men to total reality;
therefore he founded his Church. The direct corollary to
faith in the incarnation and redemption, then, is faith in
the eschatological reality of the Church. If egoism is the
radical
.
sin, then Christ's redeeming action must somehow
make possible the overcoming of egoism. He must somehow
91
set the redeemed into communion with others: with himself
first of all, by faith; with his Spirit, by the community
of life in the Spirit; with the Father, by the communica
tion of his own sonship to his followers.
To enter into Christ's relationship with the Father
and the Spirit, the communion between men must be expressed
humanly, must in a sense be incarnated. If, as in the
incarnation, the human and d i v i n e nature s and a ction a r e
really inseparable , s o that mankind can reach the godhead
precisely and only through the humanity of Christ , then men
must be able to reach the community of God himself through
the human community established by Christ . The Church ,
like Christ, is the sacrament of the triune God . The
Church is the holy people of God , bearing the Trinitarian
community in her ve r y humanity ,
3
in all those human insti tutions by, within, and f or whi c h her humanity f un ctions.
It seems obvious that the Church is not simp l y an ins t itu
tion like any other institution within a culture. She
3
rn Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God
(New York, 1963), Edward Schillebeeckx thus puts the matter:
"This means that the Church in its institutional existence
as a society manifests not only Christ in himself but also
its own communion of grace and life with Christ. As earth
ly representative of Christ, the Church too is the 'child
of the Father'; being supreme worship of the Father, and
92
gathers all men together and, by the radical act of incor
poration with Christ represented by baptism, makes impos
sible essential selfishness in a believer. Then, like
leaven, the Church permeates and transforms the whole
world.
Although the Church's task will be accomplished
definitively only at the parousia, Vatican II is careful
to point out that the Church is already present in the
world as an eschatological reality.
4
Ultimately the Church
expresses the full implications of the incarnation: that
the one who sums up in himself all reality and all signifi
cance is actually present in the world through his Church,
and therefore that all things have already found their
ultimate significance in him.
It is only in the actual work of transformation
that the redemption of Christ becomes operative. Ontologi
cal sanctity--sanctifying grace--is invisible. Therefore
if the Church is to bear witness to her union with Christ
also the one who at Pentecost was 'established in power,'
the Church bestows the Spirit whom it has itself received
in prayer from Christ'' (p. 51).
4
The Decree on the Church in the Modern World,
art. 40.
93
and the Father, she must be a redeemed community, actually
and not just potentially. If the reality of grace is not
made visible in the concrete, secular involvement of the
Church then she will simply be failing in her task of wit
nessing either to the redemption or to its perfection, the
.
parousia.
According to Vatican II the Church has a double pur-
pose in the world: to reveal the mystery of God and to
1 h f h
. . 5
revea to men t e mystery o t eir existence. The Coun-
cil's decrees on the lay apostolate and on the Church in
the modern world make quite clear that the whole Church is
to concern herself with the secular city. Because of the
complexity of the task, the different members of the Church
take up different aspects of the task:
Now the gifts of the Spirit are diverse. He calls
some to give clear witness to the desire for a heavenly
home and to keep that desire green among the human
family. He summons others to dedicate themselves to
the earthly service of men and to make ready the mater
ial of the celestial realm by this ministry of theirs.
Yet he frees all of them so that by putting aside love
of self, and bringing all earthly resources into the
service of human life they can devote themselves to
that future when humanity itself will become an offer
ing accepted by God.
6
5
The Church in the Modern World, art. 41.
6
The Church in the Modern World, art. 38.
94
The task that each Christian assumes, therefore, repre
sents a specific and direct vocation from God to assume a
part of the total mission of the Church.
The task of renewing the secular order belongs pri-
7
marily to the layman, whose activity takes the forms of
both service of men and perfection of material things.
Within canonical bounds the service fields have always been
open to the active religious congregations, and the Church
is not trying to remove religious from these fields.
Nevertheless the production and service fields are secular
fields and are the proper sphere of the laity--and of the
secular institutes. The Church sees the task of the Chris
tian layman as that of a true witness of the mystery of the
redemption; therefore he must not only reveal God, but he
must show how a redeemed humanity operates today under
modern conditions for the redemption of the whole world.
It is the task of the layman to approach the world with
that faith which makes the whole secular order with which
he is involved the bearer of grace to him and to all with
whom he associates. His task is primarily to reveal to
7
vatican II, Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity,
art. 7.
95
others the fact of and the concrete meaning of the incarna
tion and redemption. It must be carefully observed that
the function of each layman is to make present the mission
of the Church, not that of the hierarchy. Although he may
cooperate in the hiera.rchical apostolate, as in so-called
Catholic Action,
8
such cooperation is not his ordinary
function. Vatican II describes the layman's task thus:
But the laity, by their very vocation, seek the kingdom
of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering
them according to the plan of God .... They are called
there by God that by exercising their proper function
and led by the spirit of the Gospel they may work for
the sanctification of the world from within as a leaven
.•. it is their special task to order and to throw
light upon these affairs in such a way that they may
come into being and then continually increase according
to Christ to the praise of the Creator and Redeemer.
9
Properly speaking, the task of the laity is to engage in
the secular order, respecting and making operative the
values of that order because human values reflect the good
ness of God, their source:
business efficiency, expertise and scientific knowledge,
a sense of responsibility for the organization of life
in the world, all that the concrete task in temporal
affairs essentially demands of us, must be absorbed
into this God-centered "good intention." ... Only in
8
cf., Vatican II, Decree on the Apostolate of the
Laity , art. 2 0 •
9
constitution on the Church, art. 31.
96
this fashion can the values of the material world be
respected within the act of faith in divine creation.
10
Vatican II also stresses the necessity of competence: "by
their competence in secular training and by their activity,
elevated from within by the grace of Christ, let them
vigorously contribute their efforts that created goods may
11
be perfected by human labor."
The function of the laity is to incarnate in the
world the redemptive work of Christ, to be the light of the
world and the salt of the earth.
On the other hand the eschatological witness has
been entrusted in a special way to the religious, whose
manner of life must speak clearly of the heavenly kingdom.
Religious, especially the active congregations, are cer
tainly not unconcerned about human values, and in fact
their very real concern is the source of much of the con
temporary turmoil within their institutes. There seem to
be three divergent approaches to the apostolate of active
religious evolving from the religious' questioning: one
group sees the purpose of active religious congregations
lOEdward Schillebeeckx, The Layman in the Church and
Other Essays (Staten Island, 1963), p. 48.
11
constitution on the Church, art. 36.
97
less as social service and more as direct evangelization,
i.e., as more closely linked to the hierarchical ministry;
the second group is more directly concerned with the social
problems of modern life; the third group, implicitly or
explicitly denying the relevance of eschatological witness,
sees the Church's task as identical with that of a secular
order considered as an end in itself.
It seems to me that the third group, which is cer
tainly the more secular in its concerns, is no longer
really religious. Nor, in the view of Vatican II, is i ts
view basically Chris t ian. For although the Church embraces
secular values in se and directs her members to work for
the perfecting of human institutions, she is careful to
remind Christians that the secular is not an ultimate
value, that its perfection is a dispositive means to the
coming of the kingdom of God, which is, however, divine in
its substance. Earthly perfection is not identical with
the coming of the kingdom of God.
12
The Church is to
sanctify the secular.
12
Pro Mundi Vita: Sister-Vocations in Western
Europe (Brussels, 1967), pp. 27-28.
98
The second group, however, poses the most signifi
cant problem, for it is this group that more and more tends
to the organizational forms of the secular institutes in
order to make themselves as flexible as possible to the
apostolic task. Almost more than any other trend in reli
gious congregations does this concern with the secular
prove the charismatic relevance of the secular institutes.
What the secular institutes were groping toward thirty or
forty years ago, and are today, has become the apostolic
ideal of such contemporary religious.
The Apostolic Witness of Secular Institutes
From the middle ages, the principle governing the
rise of new societies of the evangelical counsels has been
that a group wishing to dedicate their lives to God by the
counsels wished also to serve men wherever there was a
specific need. In our time the area of greatest need, both
because it concerns the greatest number of people and
because it represents the terminus of centuries of complex
social and political development, is the whole existential
secular order. If God's revelation of himself has been
totally eclipsed by the progressive unfolding of the
potentialities of the world itself, then it is time for the
99
Church to bear witness to his presence and his saving power
within the world itself. For this reason the Church has
d h 1
. k h . .
13
d h
encourage t e aity to ta e up t eir witness an as
welcomed the secular institutes which, while basing their
lives eschatologically, are so aware of the potentialities
for salvation in the world that the charism of their evan-
gelical dedication is refracted through the prism of the
secular. Their witness to the wo r l d , t he r efore , l ies i n
their making known t hat the world is a holy place , the
bearer of the mystery of Christ--to him who has faith . To
a world without faith the vocation of a member of a secular
institute is to provide men with the basis for belief (the
witness of his own experience) and to be the instrument of
the redemptive g r a c e of Christ , through his own union with
Christ.
In this task the s e cular institute s a r e s imp l y
carrying out the prophetic and priestly t ask which Christ
14
gave the Church. This task is his primarily by his
13
Vatican II, Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity.
14
Karl Rahner mars his otherwise excellent dis-
cussion of secular institutes by failing to conceive broad
ly enough of the apostolate of the laity; he concludes that
the apostolate of secular institutes is hierarchical rather
than simply ecclesial. (Cf., "The Layman and the Religious
100
baptism but more intensively by his commitment to the life
of the counsels.
Vatican II says that the vocation of the laity is
to glorify God in the secular order:
The apostolate is carried out in faith, hope, and
charity which the Holy Spirit pours out in the hearts
of all members of the Church. Indeed, by the precept
of charity, which is the Lord's greatest commandment,
all the faithful are impelled to promote the glory of
God through the corning of His kingdom and to obtain
eternal life for all rnen--that they may know the only
true God and Hirn whom He sent, Jesus Christ .... On
all Christians, therefore, is placed the noble duty of
collaboration to make the divine message of salvati~g
known and accepted by all men throughout the world.
The task of the laity is to redeem the secular order while
perfecting it: "Christ's work of redemption, while essen
tially concerned with the salvation of men, includes also
16
the renewal of the whole temporal order." In this task
the secular institutes are indistinguishable from the
laity. Christ sends them into the world as he has sent all
Life," in Theology for Renewal (New York, 1964), p. 170.)
Since Rabner fails to make the distinction between the lay
apostolate and Catholic Action (a distinction made by
Vatican II in the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity,
art. 20), he makes of the secular institutes organs of
Catholic Action, which most are certainly not. The apos
tolate of secular institutes is basically the same as that
of the laity--and this apostolate is an ecclesial task.
15
Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, art. 3.
16
Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, art. 5.
101
Christians, in order that
they may be the ever-fresh salt of an earth which has
lost its savour and is shrouded in darkness--a world to
which they do not belong and in which by the divine
Will they must nevertheless remain--a salt which,
renewed by the riches of vocation, does not become
savourless; that they may be the light which shines
amid the darkness of that world and is not extinguished,
and a modest but effective leaven which, working
always and everywhere and dispersed among all classes
of people from the lowest to the highest, strives by
word, by example and in every way to reach out to and
permeate all and each, until it so pervades the entire
mass that the whole is leavened in Christ.
17
In their responsibility for the world secular
institutes are like the laity. They are also lay, says
Karl Rahner, "In the sense that they follow a secular call
ing in a way that religious and clergy, as recognized
hitherto by canon law, do not in practice have and are not
supposed to have, and that they do not live in a monastic
community.
1118
The institutes' relation to the secular order is
what specifically distinguishes secular institutes from
17
Pius XII, Primo Feliciter (A.A.S., 40), intro
duction. Translation from Salvador Canals, Secular
Institutes and the State of Perfection (Dublin, 1959),
pp. 156-57.
1811
The Layman and the Religious Life," pp. 155-56.
He goes on to argue strongly the ecclesial and theological
reasons that the members of secular institutes cannot be
considered laymen. Seep. 171.
102
religious institutes. The secular institutes are commanded
to remain in that same world from which religious have been
canonically removed. In Primo Feliciter Pius XII says:
It must always be borne in mind that the proper and
peculiar character of such institutes, namely that they
are secular--and in this lies the whole reason for
existence of such Institutes--must stand out clearly in
everything. Nothing of the full profession of Chris
tian perfection, solidly based on the evangelical
counsels and truly religious as to its substance, will
be withdrawn, but this perfection is to be exercised
and professed in the world; and consequently, it must
be adapted to secular life in all such things as are
lawful and not opposed to its duties and exercises.
19
The pope is stating juridically what the institutes desire
to do charismatically: to remain involved in the world,
to enter into human institutions in order to orient them to
the ultimate perfection of mankind. It is to this partic
ular aspect of the Christian mission that the members of
secular institutes are charismatically called: "It is a
matter of the authentically and really secular. The apos
tolate is not one of a score of more or less important
exercises carried out by a person consecrated to God, but
20
it is an apostolate lived out in one's everyday work."
19
Art. II.
20
Joseph-Marie Perrin, "Vocation et Mission dans les
Instituts seculiers," in Etudes sur les Instituts seculiers,
ed. J. Beyer (Bruges, 1963), p. 70. See also, in the same
work, Joseph Creusen, "Les Instituts seculiers," p. 26.
103
Andre Hayen puts it rather more concretely:
On the contrary, from all the grace of his proper
commitment, the member of the secular institute--teach
er, astronomer, shoemaker, locomotive engineer, or
simple laborer--would answer ... : "not to become a
catechist, but to remain as long as possible, all my
life, teacher, scholar, artisan, skilled or unskilled
laborer, because it is there that Go~ has called me by
my vocation to a secular institute."
1
Any secular institute which fails to concern itself with
its distinctively secular apostolate is failing to carry
t
. . f. h . d . k
22
ou its speci ic prop etic-re emptive tas .
21.. . ~ .
Perfection et Etat de Perfection dans les Insti-
tuts seculiers," in Etudes, ed. Beyer, p. 90.
22
bl . d.
Two pro ems are imrne iately apparent. The first
is the problem of how the priests' institutes are related
to this general mandate, a rather difficult problem to
solve. On the one hand, as priests the members have the
ministry as their primary task; therefore their type of
work is not secular, although their milieu is. Their task
is to carry out the priestly ministry in the world, whereas
the task of the religious priest would 3eern to be to carry
out his ministry as a member of his religious community
and primarily within his religious community. The theo
logical problems herewith raised cannot be solved in this
paper. They greatly need study, however. The second
problem perhaps indicates the basis on which future dis
tinction of the various forms of the life of total dedica
tion will be based: (1) the monastic orders will remain,
(2) some religious will be devoted to the hierarchical
apostolate, (3) the rest will take the form of present
secular institutes. Secular institutes now engaged in the
hierarchical apostolate will perhaps join ranks with the
religious of the second group.
104
In this orientation to the secular the member of a
secular institute is indistinguishable from the ordinary
layman, whose task Edward Schillebeeckx describes clearly
This orientation toward secular affairs, what I may
briefly call "secular involvement" ( ... "secularity"),
is the foundation on which rests the specific character
of lay spirituality and of the lay apostolate in the
Church. It implies that the layman also sanctifies
himself precisely in this secular involvement ....
In this sense the grace given as a layman is "lay"
grace, just as it has female characteristics for women,
and male for men; for it is from within his personal
situation that each stands in personal relationship to
God.
23
By Schillebeeckx' own argument, however, one cannot really
speak of the spirituality of members of secular institutes
as lay spirituality, for their profession of the evangelical
counsels is a response to a definite charism that radically
distinguishes them from all laymen to whom this charism has
not been given. Therefore, although activity may appear
indistinguishable, nevertheless in reality before God it is
specifically different.
Secular involvement first of all means accepting
secular values as values and then "transfusing them with
the grace of God."
24
If secular values are despised and
art. 39.
2311
The Layman in the Church," p. 45.
24
Vatican II, The Church in the Modern World,
105
Christianity is forced to substitute for them, then secular
institutes are useless as leaven. Christianity will not
be able to speak to the world at all.
In a very real sense, therefore, members of secular
institutes must recognize in faith and make their own
those values which the evolution of the world shows as more
and more important to human good (happiness). To be in
tune with the times is, therefore, an obligation of every
member of a secular institute. The gravity of this obliga
tion must be emphasized, for it will dictate the content
of his asceticism and the form of his witness. The prac
tical problem he must struggle with is to maintain in
himself the faith that sees the secular order in the light
f h
. t· 25
o t e 1ncarna ion. Unless the members of secular insti-
tutes can incarnate Christ in the world as it is, that
.
l.S'
in a form that the world as it is can understand, then the
shape of the kingdom of God will be despised--and rightly--
as irrelevant.
The members of secular institutes have received the
charism to be witness to the secular order of the total
25 1 . 1 . .
Jacques Lee ercq, quoted by N1.cho as Maestr1.n1.,
in "Lay Sanctity through Dedicated Apostles," in Apostolic
Sanctity in the World, ed. J. Haley (Notre Dame, 1957),
p. 52.
106
redemptive mystery, a witness they can bear because they
have died and risen with Christ:
The world will not be consecrated unless it enters into
the redemption of Christ, taken up by men who live this
mystery and accept the cross in their life as the only
sign and unique means of salvation. There is no other
way possible to God for man and for creation, to such
a degree that the world is called to transcend its
order to enter into the order established by Jesus
Christ.
26
This mission has a double thrust--the concern with
God "alone" implicit in the counsels and the concern with
all things of God, which are in this case the milieu of
each member of a secular institute. It is because of his
love for God that the member of a secular institute moves
out towards others; "The response to the love of God-
loving him and making him loved--is at once the basis and
essence of the vocation of the rnembers."
27
Beyer's state
ment concerns only one aspect of the problem, however, for
charity also goes out to men directly: "it brings us nearer
our brother and causes us to bear his burden.
1128
Vatican II
26
Jean Beyer, "L'Avenir des Instituts seculiers,"
Gregorianum XLVI (1965), p. 568.
27
J. Beyer, "L 'Avenir," p. 559.
28
J. M. Perrin, Secular Institutes: Consecration
to God and Life in the World (London, 1961), p. 59.
•
107
says that the function of all Christians (and therefore how
much more of the members of secular institutes) is to con-
cern themselves with the "earthly city": "In this way the
building up of the earthly city may have its foundation in
the Lord and may tend toward Hirn, lest perhaps those who
29
build this city shall have labored in vain." Like Christ,
the member of a secular institute is in the world directly
for men and for their salvation.
Since human life is complex, there is no area of
life that can be ignored in working for men and for salva
tion. Love for men will show itself, as Frederick Crosson
points out, as "the application of natural techniques to
the solution of natural problems, but under the light of
30
revealed truth and motivated by supernatural love."
Therefore every area of secular life is open to members of
secular institutes. Industry, bureaucratic structures,
professions, social services are all waiting to be trans
formed by the spirit of Christ. In our day when public
agencies are taking over great segments of the sphere of
29 t. .
Cons 1.tut1.on on the Church, art. 46.
30
"Sanctity in the World," in Apostolic Sanctity,
ed. Haley, p. 7. By "natural" he means what this paper
refers to as secular.
108
works of mercy, the members of secular institutes will
often be found in such agencies. Since, however, Augus-
tine's statement still has validity: "You give bx-ead to
those who hunger, but it would be much better if no one
31
was hungry, and you gave to no one," members of secular
institutes have the obligation to work directly and in
directly for the curing of social ills and for the advance
ment of both human culture and technology.
In his task of direct witness to Christ, the member
of a secular institute goes out into the highways and by-
ways, where other men are: "And this in a sense is the
very heart of the dedicated apostle's life: to delight
32
with the children of man, in the working among them."
"How can I love my brother," Perrin asks, "without desiring
to share in common with him what forms my whole joy and my
life •..• to love one's brother means 'to desire that he
should be in God.
11133
If the member of a secular institute
sees the apostolate as an attempt to bring his neighbor
31
Quoted by F. Crosson, "Sanctity in the World,"
p. 6.
32
Francis Wendell, "Spirituality of a Dedicated
Apostle in the World," in Apostolic Sanctity, p. 72.
33 .
4 Secular Institutes, p. 5 .
109
whom he loves as Christ to Christ and to the Father, then
there are two things radically presupposed in him: that he
himself knows Christ by faith and that his love for God
is the force that drives him toward men. But where are
this vision and love to be acquired? In his case, because
of his co~~itment, in the union with God expressed by his
full living of the evangelical counsels, that is, by the
fact of his fundamental eschatological orientation.
Implicit in a secular apostolate is a secular man
ner of operation. For Catholics one of the greatest dangers
to the secular apostol ate is a tendency to withdraw from
the truly secular and to live and work parallel to the
world within an organ of Catholic Action or in institutions
directly controlled by the hierarchy. Failure to shake
oneself out of such historically based patterns of thinking,
in a milieu that seems to have less and less need of such
institutions, constitutes a failure in truly secular opera
tion and is an implicit denial of the validity of the
secular in se. The secular should be respected. The
operation of human institutions should be respected insofar
as it does not conflict with the kingdom of God, perfected
until it will serve the kingdom of God but not superseded
by the ecclesiastical.
110
Following from the embracing of human values
properly so called is the whole .question of professional
competence:
To be fruitful, this apostolate [that of Christian
existence] presupposes real personal influence and
serious professional competence which enable members of
secular institutes to give witness to a life of perfec
tion in the world, as is rightly expected of them.
34
That such competence is necessary would seem obvious,
though the tradition of the incompatibility of secularity
and religious life is still strong enough to allow Karl
Rahner to deny in effect the necessity of competence by not
demanding it of members of secular institutes:
A man who has received this religious vocation from God
as a member of a secular institute has no need to be
ashamed of his vocation. It is a higher one. This
focussing of a worldly profession on a more sublime
goal, involves no devaluation of the profession itself,
even though perhaps in the majority of cases the level
of achievement in the professional field as such may
not be very high, since this is not on the whole to be
expected.
35
34
Jean Beyer, "Nature canonique des Instituts
~
seculiers," in Beyer, Etudes, pp. 148-49.
35
"The Layman and the Religious Life," p. 180. The
only excuse one might make for his position is that he is
assuming that superior talent is not a requisite disposi
tory factor in the secular institute vocation and that
therefore members of secular institutes do not have to be
natural leaders in their occupations. His concern is
understandable in view of some institutes' concern to
accept only extraordinarily talented people; however, at
111
Excellence of motivation, however, cannot replace good
36
work. One purpose of secular institutes is to show that
the way to serve God is by making the most out of the
reality for which God has made him responsible. For the
member of a secular institute the parable of the talents
can be interpreted quite concretely. Only a dualistic age
would have to give the parable a primarily "mystical"
.
meaning.
Since all of this activity is also the task of the
ordinary Christian layman, t t1e distinctive mark of the
activity of the members of secular institutes is that
secular activity does not rest in the secular order but
serves rather to. make Christ and his kingdom visible.
Ecclesially the only justification for secular institutes
is that the relationship between God and man signified by
the living of the counsels needs to be witnessed to in
modern times, under contemporary conditions, and in specif
ically secular ways. The values of our era are both
secularistic and materialistic. It is to this world, whose
this stage of theological development it is dangerous to
appear to make an ideal of mediocrity.
36
G. G. Lazzati, "Secularite et Instituts seculi-
~
ars," in Etudes, ed. Beyer, p. 213.
112
value system is often in direct conflict with Christ's that
the members of secular institutes are sent. In the contem-
porary situation the Christian must either choose Christ
(the total Chx~stian mystery, including death and resur
rection) or effect some kind of compromise with the spirit
of the world in alienation from Christ and therefore ulti
mately destructive of true humanity. To choose Christ
requires faith; loss of faith results in activity without
eschatological purpose.
What the Church, then, expects of members of secu
lar institutes is that they bear contemporary witness to
the ultimate meaning of secular life and activity, that
their lives show clearly that the secular is valuable, but
that a proper valuation of the secular does not negate the
validity of the Christian realization either that the
merely human is not enough or that, in the face of the
demands of God on the human person, the merely human may
have to be retrenched from. No Christian belongs entirely
to the world; in fact, the state of the Christian in the
. 37
world is fundamentally the state of tension. Many
Christians falter; many give up the struggle; many live
37
Bonhoeffer, Ethics (New York, 1965), pp. 255-56.
113
without real hope that Christ's redemption can actually
penetrate the world. For this reason the Church has blessed
and encouraged the secular institutes, whom she asks to
bear the same secular witness as the laity should, but to
bear witness radically to the total and present demands of
God (the eschatological fact). Secular institutes are the
Church's existential statement that total and eschatolog
ically oriented Christianity is possible under the ordinary
circumstances of modern life and that Christian presence
within the world is continuing the redemption and bringing
into being, in the existential now, a new heaven and a new
earth.
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114
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Asset Metadata

Creator Cowgill, Carol Lee (author)

Core Title Toward a theology of secular institutes : non-clerical secular institutes in theological perspective.

School Maclay College of Theology

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Religion

Degree Conferral Date 1968-01

Publication Date 01/01/1968

Defense Date 01/01/1968

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag OAI-PMH Harvest,Secular institutes -- Theology

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Digitized in 2022 (provenance), First published in Salesian Studies, v.5 (), no.3, no.4 & v.6, no.1. (provenance)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC112719248

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Identifier R '68 C874 (call number),etd-CowgillCarol-1968.pdf (filename)

Legacy Identifier etd-CowgillCarol-1968

Document Type Thesis

Format theses (aat)

Rights Cowgill, Carol Lee

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Source 20230127-usctheses-microfilm-box6a (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

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