Recent Church Teaching on Religious Profession: Temporary or Perpetual?

RECENT CHURCH TEACHING ON RELIGIOUS PROFESSION: TEMPORARY OR PERPETUAL? THE PROCESS OF renewal of religious life has been vigorously promoted in the Church since the time of Pius XII, but it acquired a greater momentum with the celebration of Vatican Council II. However, this renewal has raised various kinds of problems, and so there is taking place what normally occurs in human affairs: some are disoriented when confronted with the problem, and they perhaps will never again be able to reorganize the different elements of their religious profession into a vital synthesis; others, faced with the same problem, are penetrating the depths of the contents of their profession and the grounds which sustain it. As a result, they are achieving a better knowledge and an increased appreciation of what religious life means for those who embrace it and also for the Church as a whole today. The movement of renewal as promoted by the Church is adopting the latter attitude. It is a movement of interiorization , a deepening, a returning to the sources, above all to "a following of Christ as proposed by the gospel," 1 so that by means of religious the world might receive a new manifestation of the same Christ adapted to the "changed conditions of the times." 2 Vatican II not only clearly points up this approach but also supplies the radical reason: Since the religious life is intended above all else to lead those who embrace it to an imitation of Christ and to union with God through the profession of the evangelical counsels, the fact must be honestly faced that even the most desirable changes made on behalf of contemporary needs will fail of their purpose unless a 1 Perfectae Caritatis (Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of the Religious Life), n. ~. 2 Ibid. 584 RECENT CHURCH TEACHING ON RELIGIOUS PROFESSION 585 renewal of spirit gives life to them. Indeed such an interior renewal must always be accorded the leading role even in the promotion of exterior works.3 The Chief Problem Religious life rests entirely on the basis of divine vocation; if this foundation is lacking, the whole edifice comes down." The Council repeatedly confirmed the existence of this special divine vocation 5 whereby God calls certain Christians "so that they may enjoy this particular gift in the life of the Church." 6 If everything in religious life rests on the basis of divine vocation , then two things are easily understandable: 1) that everything concemed with this vocation is of paramount importance; ~) that the movement of renewal of religious life must pay particular attention to the vocation which is its foundation. Circumstances affecting religious life today have brought to the fore the problem of the duration of divine vocation. Many attempts are being made to establish a doctrine of religious vocation as a divine calling for a limited period of time. Such a vocation cannot beget in the person called more than a commitment of temporary duration. When the time for which God granted the vocation comes to an end, the individual is freed of the previous commitments and can choose another form of life. Temporary duration of religious vocation starts off by being proposed as a possibility. But at times, in order to explain such a possibility, certain reasons are alleged that logically lead to a denial of perpetual vocation. The attempt to search out a possible way for temporary vocation is transformed into an undertaking to attack perpetual vocation. Controversy is understandably engendered. And, on the basis of polemics, it is not easy to reach calm conclusions which provide a new and more profound clarification of the problem we are con3 Ibid. 4 Pius XII, Apostolic Constitution Sedes Sapientiae (AAS 48 [1956], 357). 5 Perjectae Caritatis, nn. l, 5, 25. 6 Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church), n. 43. 586 ARMANDO BANDERA cerned with or to approach in a fruitful manner the teachings on this question which the recent Magisterium of the Church, especially Vatican II, offers. Our task here will be to present such a body of teaching, letting the texts themselves, with their calm and exciting objectivity, explain a point which is so important in the divine plan regarding...