This year marks the 70th anniversary of the
proclamation Provida Mater Ecclesia by
Pius XII confirming Secular Institutes
as a new form of Consecrated Life within the Church. The website for the World Conference of Secular Institutes
has a section on Basic Texts – foundational and magisterial. They are well
worth reading. Herewith some reflections on Secular Institutes.
Secular, not Religious
In canonically defining Secular
Institutes in Provida Mater Ecclesia,
Pius XII indicated one of the distinguishing characteristics of Religious
Institutes was their common life.[1]
Secular Institutes, not being bound to live a common life, were therefore freed
from many of the requirements that mark the manner of living consecrated life
in its religious form.[2]
It was this common life “apart” that rendered consecrated religious Life as a
separate “state” within the Church, though not of a different order, for consecrated
life itself – in any form – does not pertain to the hierarchical structure of
the Church.[3] In
the Revised Code of Canon Law,[4]
Secular Institutes are to retain their secularity and not become water-downed
religious.[5]
Magisterial documents, while acknowledging two forms of Secular Institutes,
those who “collaborate” in some work and those whose way is one of “presence
and penetration”,[6]
repeatedly stress the secular nature of these Institutes as one of their
defining hallmarks. However, while they are not “Religious Communities”,
they carry with them in the world a profession of
the evangelical counsels which is genuine and complete, … This profession
confers a consecration on men and women, laity and clergy, who reside in the world.
For this reason they should chiefly strive for total self‑dedication to God,
one inspired by perfect charity. These Institutes should preserve their proper
and particular character, a secular one.[7]
What do we mean by “lay”?
Scholars write volumes on the what is meant by “laity”. One paragraph
hardly suffices. However, what differs between 1947 and now is the complexity
of the term “lay”. In the early Church the term ‘lay’ was used to represent the
non-clerical members of the Christian community, and it still carries this
meaning in the hierarchical structuring of the Church. However, often the term
“lay” is used interchangeably with the term ‘secular’, specifically in contexts
relating to the charismatic structure of the Church articulating different
“states” of life. Thus depending on context, ‘lay’ and ‘secular’ are not always
the same. Religious who are not ordained are lay within the hierarchical
structuring of the Church, but the canonical configuration of their lives does
not deem them to be also ‘secular’ within the charismatic structuring of the
Church. Some members of Secular Institutes are ordained. So one can be both
‘lay’ and ‘secular’, both ‘lay’ and ‘religious’, both ‘clerical’ and ‘secular’, both ‘religious’ and ‘clerical’; but one
cannot be both ‘religious’ and ‘secular’. Lumen
gentium stated clearly that “what specifically characterizes the laity is
their secular nature”[8].
Addressing the First International Congress of Secular Institutes, Cardinal
Antoniutti stated:
Whereas men and women,
cleric or lay, who become Religious change their canonical status and their
official and social relationships within the Church, becoming subject to the
Canons concerning Religious, with all the rights and duties there to attached,
those who enter a Secular Institute make
no such change: the lay person remains a lay person, …there is no question of
their ever being officially called or considered Religious.[9]
The First Secular Institute – a dynamic towards the world rather than away from it
St Angela Merici is credited as founding the first Secular Institute in
the Church in 1540, known as the Company of St Ursula.[10]
In her rule for the Company, Merici spoke of “sacred virginity.”[11]
For her this meant being irresistibly drawn to God and His Kingdom and nothing
will satisfy except to shape the whole of one’s life around this. It was a
theologically spousal relationship. Thus virginity, for her was a response to
love. It was what we call, in the language of today, “consecrated celibacy”. It
was sacred, as in consecrated – set aside for God, a gift of self in response
to the gift of love itself, the gift of self in totality.
However,
whereas the dynamic of this overwhelming attraction to the person of Christ for
many centuries for Religious engaged a “fuga
mundi – both flight from a contaminating world and space for divine
action”, [12]
the dynamic for Merici was a movement into the world to share the empowerment
for transformation that comes from relationship to Christ.[13]
For Merici and her companions, it was their shared gift that established a koinonia in Christ through the Spirit, a
participation in the communion of the Triune God, something that could not be
protected by monastic enclosure, but rather had to be a lived response of love
incarnated in the midst of the world, shared beyond the community, for the
transformation of the world.[14]
More than a conjunction of the vertical and horizontal in life
Historically,
while formal recognition by the Church of Secular Institutes with Provida Mater Ecclesia is relatively recent,
Merici’s original forerunner of this vocation occurred at a time when lay
holiness was to the fore. In a climate of much needed reform in the Church, the
early sixteenth century had a number of lay associations and paths for lay
holiness. The originality of Merici’s Company, was not the conjunction of
vertical and horizontal, nor a claim to provide a path for lay holiness that
did not otherwise exist. Ranson suggests that Secular Institutes have given way
to Ecclesial Movements, their purpose of establishing a conjunction between
secularity and baptismal consecration, or the vertical and horizontal, having
been achieved and their juridical confinement no longer required.[15]
But this was
not the purpose of the original intuition of this vocation. Rather, it was the claim, that total
dedication of one’s life to Christ in a theological spousal relationship, could
be lived in the secular domain, and this at a time when there were only two
options for women – marriage or the monastery. The originality lay not merely
in a claim that this consecration could be lived in the secular domain, but
also in the belief that living such consecration in the secular domain had a
missionary effect. It sprang up in a simultaneous embrace of the world and a
spousal commitment to Christ as a single reality, an interior alchemy.
Relationship to the world
The
conjunction of consecration and secularity in Secular Institutes witnesses to
the fundamental relationship of Church and world, and is a particular
affirmation of the world. It’s interior orientation and wide ranging
professional engagement differentiates it from Apostolic Religious Congregations,
while its consecration in an abiding stance of hope gives a particular witness
to that eschatology that is an arriving determination, a future that is already
unfolding in the present, a future that subsumes the present into itself, and a
past that is being healed and reconciled. Outwardly the same as all the lay
faithful, interiorly the alchemy of Consecration and Secularity gives this
vocation its specificity:
Consecrated Secularity. Your specific vocation, dear friends, is
collocated precisely in this fundamental Church world relationship, in this
missionary insertion of the Church in the history of mankind. Because the whole
Church is missionary, albeit not in the same way; the whole Church is
prophetic, but not at the same level; the whole Church is incarnated in the
world, but not in the same manner. Your manner is irreplaceable, original and
unique, lived with generosity and joy as a special gift of the Spirit.[16]
Hope is a theological
gift. It is constituted first and foremost by a way of being, a way of being
open to a future, rather than the pursuit of a specific object. It lives in the
absurdity of the cross, the promise affirmed and to be fulfilled in the
Resurrection, the maturity of surrendering to an uncontrollable future and the
incomprehensibility of God, trusting absolutely in the infinite goodness and
boundless love of God. Hope beckons one away from the comfort zone of the
buffered self and controlled world. It stretches one’s being towards the
infinite horizon of God, drawing one ever more deeply into Trinitarian
communion. Focused in this way, the consecrated secular lives an obedience that
is the obedience of the cross, the obedience of surrender to an uncontrollable
future, a constant dialectic and discernment between one’s own will and
participation in the transformative promise that draws us forward. Their
poverty seeks out and affirms that which is of perennial value, and testifies
to the beauty and aesthetics, the goodness, generosity and welcome of an ever-loving
God:
You are not called to
establish special forms of living, of apostolic commitment or social
intervention, but rather, forms that can come into being through personal
relations, a source of prophetic riches. May your lives be like the yeast that
leavens all the dough (cf. Mt 13: 33), sometimes silent and hidden, but always
with a positive and encouraging outreach capable of generating hope. [17]
Conclusion
Repeatedly,
Magisterial documents affirm for consecrated seculars that “there is no
question of their ever being officially called or considered Religious.[18]
And yet at the same time it likewise affirms over and over again their full and
complete consecration, the same as that of Religious. To Secular Institutes the
Church says:
With Christ the Saviour for foundation and model, you fulfil, in your
own distinctive way, an important ecclesial mission. But the Church itself is
also, in its own way, like Christ, a plenitude too rich for anyone, or any
institution, to comprehend or fully express. Nor could we, who are members of
it, ever explore it completely because its life is Christ, and he is God. So
the Church and its mission can in real terms only be fully expressed in the
multiplicity of its members. It is the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ,
the doctrine of gifts and charisms of the Holy Spirit.[19]
Nevertheless, the very hidden nature
of this charism of Consecrated Secular life continues to be overlooked with its
lack of visibility and numbers leading people to assert that it has been
eclipsed by Ecclesial Movements or that this vocation formally recognized by Provida Mater Ecclesia has failed to blossom. But the transcendent immanence that
characterizes this vocation cannot be subjected to such ready judgments. Its
very hidden nature and particular transcendent and immanent reality demands that
it not be judged according to scientific criteria of numbers or visibility, for
after all: “Even if those who find room for it in their hearts are few, that is
enough for a leaven, part of God's providence, preserving and propagating his
gift to men.[20]
Often Secular
Institutes struggle to be understood, sometimes being met with incomprehension,
obstacles, outright opposition, and ignorance of their existence. Such
obstacles and opposition can be as subtle as allowing persistent ignorance to
endure, or visible representation in vocational flyers, banners and websites
imaging only one form of Consecrated Life.[21]
More than an issue of justice for those
discerning their life vocation having a right to know of all possibilities, it
is a matter of bringing to the fore the primary discernment for all the
baptized of their relationship to Christ and how they are called in that
relationship to grow to maturity in love. Giving priority to modality over consecration
fails to witness to the diffentiating
unity of the gifts of the Spirit:
Each state in the Church, while having a specificity of its own, also
includes the others. Each state is in
its self-giving to God (the
“Non-Other”: Non-Aliud) and to the
other in the Church and in the world. Thanks to this self-giving, the one,
Catholic Church lives in the wonder
of divine Love.[22]
In their secularity
Secular Institutes fully identity with the world. In their Consecration, they
carry the inner yearning of the world for its eschatological fulfillment,
living in continuous discernment and dialogue. And in the conjunction of their
Secularity and Consecration they embody that hope that pivots on the border
between immanence and transcendence. Consecrated Secularity is a reality, a
possibility, albeit a hidden one by nature. Life at the margins, life at the
edge and definitely not for the feint-hearted – Consecrated Life in Secular
Institutes incarnates in the temporal sphere, as an abiding determination, the
full depth and mystery of our eschatological hope in Christ through the Spirit.
[1]
Pius XII, Provida Mater Ecclesia
Apostolic Constitution (February 2, 1947),15, 20. http://www.cmis-int.org/en/documents-2/basic-texts/ Accessed 6 April, 2015. See also Thomas E. Molloy “Secular
Institutes Canons 710-730” in Religious
Institutes, Secular Institutes, Societies of Apostolic Life, A Handbook on
Canons 573-746 eds. Jordan Hite T.O.R., Sharon Holland I.H.M., and Daniel
Ward O.S.B. (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1985), 276. Molloy
notes that Canon 711 affirms that “members of secular institutes do not change
their canonical condition in the Church by reason of membership. Lay members
remain lay people… It follows then that in the new understanding of consecrated
life in the revised Code that religious having special canonical condition in
the Church is not by virtue of their consecration, but rather because of their
common life which is a specific character and which puts them apart from other Christian
people.”
[2]
Pius XII, Provida Mater Ecclesia Art.II
#1.
[3]
Molloy “Secular Institutes Canons 710-730”, 277. Commenting on Canon 711 Molloy
highlights that “Consecrated life does not pertain to the hierarchical
structure of the church, but rather to its life and its holiness. Consecrated
life, likewise, is by its nature neither clerical nor lay, but arises from
among both groups, as a special gift of the Holy Spirit to the People of God.”
See also Lumen Gentium 43 in The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter
M Abbott (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1966), 74 .
[4] prepared by The Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland, The Code of Canon Law in English Translation,
ed. The Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Irelan in association with The
Canon Law Society of Australia and New Zealand and The Canadian Canon Law
Society, 1983 ed. (London: Collins, 1983).
[5]
Molloy “Secular Institutes Canons 710-730”, 278. Molloy interprets Canon 712 as
an affirmation of the value of secular institutes as a distinct form of
consecrated life.
[6]
Jean Beyer “Religious Life or Secular Institute”, The Way 7 (1969), 116. See also Paul VI, "A Presence and an Action Which Will Transform the World
from Within," in On the 25th
Anniversary of the Apostolic Constitution Provida Mater Ecclesia (Rome:
1972).
http://www.cmis-int.org/en/documents-2/basic-texts/ Accessed 6 April, 2015. In article 16 he notes that there is a
pluralism of forms of life available to Secular Institutes to meet their
various needs.
[7] Perfectae
Caritatis 11 in The Documents of
Vatican II, ed. Walter M Abbott (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1966), 473-474. Likewise, see Sacred Congregation for
Religious, Instruction “Cum Sanctissimus”,
7.10. http://www.cmis-int.org/en/documents-2/basic-texts/ Accessed 6 April, 2015.
[8] Lumen gentium 31. 57.
[9] Card.
Ildebrando Antoniutti, “A New Form of Consecration Life Stablished [Sic] by
PME.” To First International Congress of
Secular Institutes (Rome, 1970), 22.
http://www.cmis-int.org/en/documents-2/basic-texts/
Accessed 6 April, 2015.
[10] Although
the canonical form of the Secular Institute was not recognized officially until
1947, St Angela Merici’s rule for her Company was approved by the diocesan
Ordinary in 1536 and confirmed by Pope Paul III in 1544 with the Papal Bull
“Regimini Universalis Ecclesiae”. The decree recognising the current Federation
of Companies of St Ursula as a Secular Institute acknowledges the Company of St
Ursula so founded in 1535 as the forerunner of the vocation of the Secular
Institute. Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of
Apostolic Life. Prot.n.I.s.4189/93.
See also Antoniutti A new form of
consecration life stabilised [sic] by PME, #14-17. Antoniutti suggests that
Secular Institutes are as old as the Church, having always existed in various
forms (#14-15), with Provida Mater
Ecclesia merely consecrating what was and always has been present in the
Church. However history also came to engender confusion in this field and “To
restore clarity to the situation came the work of St Angela Merici…”
(#17). Although the later development of
Religious Institutes of Ursulines overshadowed the Companies of St Ursula by
strength of numbers and monastic visibility, both forms have coexisted since
the foundation in 1535. Many of the Companies were suppressed and dispersed
under Napoleon and later refounded, but the Company of St Ursula in Bologna was
never dispersed or scattered. There has been historical continuity of the
Company of St Ursula since foundation. See Luciana Mariani osu, Elisa Tarolli,
and Marie Seynaeve osu, Angela Merici.
Contributions towards a Biography (Milano: Ancora, 1986), 508.
[11]
St Angela Merici, Rule of the Company of
Saint Ursula IX, 40, translated from the manuscript in the Trivulzian
Library, Milan http://www.ursulines-ur.org/phocadownload/userupload/Resources/Rule_Proc.pdf
Accessed 6 April, 2015.
[12] M.R. MacGinley, A
Dynamic of Hope: Institutes of Women Religious in Australia (Sydney:
Crossing Press for the institute of Religious Studies, 1996), 333.
[13] Card.
Eduardo F. Pironio, “Ecclesial Sense and Joy for the Secular Consacration
[Sic],” to Assembly of Directors General
(Rome:1976), 32. http://www.cmis-int.org/en/documents-2/basic-texts/ Accessed 6 April, 2015.: “You
have to live both of them with the same intensity and fullness, inseparably
united, like two essential elements of the self same reality: your consecrated
secularity. As far as you are concerned, the only way of living your
consecration is that of dedicating yourself to the radicality of the Gospel
from within the world, starting from the world, remaining indissolubly faithful
to your temporal tasks and to the interior needs of the Spirit as privileged
witnesses of the kingdom (cfr. G.S.43). And the only way of realising fully
your secular vocation right now because the Lord has entered mysteriously into
your lives and has called you in a special manner to follow him radically is to
live with a daily renewed joy your fidelity to God in the fecundity of
contemplation, in the serenity of the cross, in the generous practice of the
evangelical counsels.”
[14]
See Mary-Cabrini Durkin, Angela Merici’s
Journey of the Heart, the Rule, the Way (WovenWord Press, 2005), 97-105.
[15]
David Ranson, “From Secular Institute to Ecclesial Movement: Conjunctions of
the Sacred and the Secular in the Twentieth Century” in The Australia Catholic Record 89 No 2 (April 2012), 137. Ranson
interprets Provida Mater Ecclesia giving
recognition to new forms of association in which there is a synthesis of the
vertical and the horizontal. He asserts that with the rise of Ecclesial
Movements, the juridical confines of secular institutes are relieved for
“Religious Profession uncompromisingly belonged within a Religious Order”.
Accordingly, Ranson works with a conjunction of baptismal consecration and
secularity, whereas the intention of Provida
Mater Ecclesia 15 was a conjunction of a further theological consecration
with secularity, for it stated “they profess the evangelical counsels” and
addressed those who were already living as such and sought recognition of this
consecration within their secular life. See also Provida Mater Ecclesia 17 and ART
III no.2. Profession of the evangelical counsels for Secular Institutes is
likewise confirmed in Vita Consecrata 2. See
also Beyer, “Religious Life or Secular Institute”, 116 where Beyer observes
that Lumen Gentium came as a bitter
disappointment for some with the expression in the text arising out of
theologians cast in the monastic mould and “who conceived the religious
vocation as a consecrated life fully separated from the world, wholly concerned
with personal holiness, with eschatological sign and ecclesial witness.” The
assumption behind the oblique reference to other sacred bonds as “that the
narrower the religious engagement, the profounder the gift of God; which once
more casts doubt on the totality of the consecration to God and man in secular
Institutes.”
[16]
Pironio, “Ecclesial Sense and Joy for the Secular Consacration [Sic],” 28.2.
[17] Benedict
XVI “The Church Needs you to fulfil its mission” 2007. Address to Participants
in the International Symposium of Secular Institutes,” (2007), http://www.cmis-int.org/en/documents-2/basic-texts/
Accessed 6 April, 2015.
[18]
Antoniutti, “A new form of consecration life stabilised [sic] by PME,” 22. See also Sacred Congregation for
Religious, Cum Sanctimus 12.
[19]
Paul VI, “A New and Original Form of Consacration [Sic],” 7.
[20]
Antoniutti, “A new form of consecration life stabilised [sic] by PME,” 24.
[21]
Antoniutti, “A new form of consecration
life stabilised [sic] by PME,” 44,
46-47.
[22]
Sara, “Secular Institutes According to Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 311.
