A Visible Sign of Christ: Vatican II on the Religious Life

The Second Vatican Council’s teaching on the universal call to holiness, in Chapter 5 of Lumen Gentium, was a landmark in the Church’s awareness of the vocation possessed by all the baptized. However, what did the Council say about those Christians who live what has been traditionally known as “the state of perfection,” that is, those who have the vocation to the religious life? The topic is the subject of Chapter 6 of the dogmatic constitution on the Church.

During the preparation of the Council, the future Council Fathers made some 700 separate suggestions, touching on a wide variety of themes related to the religious life. In light of these, the Theological Commission, one of the principal bodies involved in the preparation of the Council, produced the draft for a chapter “On the States of Acquiring Evangelical Perfection.” This text that was an initial basis for the chapter on religious that would later become Lumen Gentium, but was also intended to serve as a doctrinal foundation for the separate document specifically dedicated to religious life, which would later become the decree Perfectae Caritatis.

With this text, the commission desired to answer the various voices that were questioning the value of religious life in the modern world. It also wanted to offer a new articulation of the theological foundation for this charism, so essential for the Church’s life.

In particular, the draft put special emphasis on the religious life as a path to conformity with Christ. The text opens by stating that Christ not only endowed his Church with saving precepts, but also provided “the most holy counsels” to those who are willing, so as to make the way of living charity “easier” and “safer.” Against the idea that this dedication to God might somehow impede the development of one’s human personality, the commission recalled the model of Christ and his most perfect human dimension to explain how the religious life benefits this aspect of the person. The final text of Lumen Gentium would incorporate this teaching.

The draft proposed a solemn teaching that the religious life is of divine origin and an essential element of the Church’s holiness. At the same time, the focus on the religious life as the “state of evangelical perfection” could give the sense that only those in the consecrated life are called to holiness.

A Council speech in the fall of 1963 by the archbishop of Montreal, Cardinal Paul-Émile Léger, recalled the historical background behind the topic. Monastic holiness, he commented, had long prevailed in the Church as if it were the sole model for holiness to which all Christians needed to conform. While recognizing the many benefits arising from such attention to the consecrated life, Cardinal Léger noted that such a perspective could make it seem that holiness was basically inaccessible for laypersons.

In light of this heightened awareness that holiness is for all the faithful, various Council Fathers also sought to give adequate appreciation for the religious life. Bishop Carl Leiprecht, speaking in the name of the German-speaking bishops, recognized that there was a need for religious to articulate their identity in a new way in the changed conditions of the world. He proposed a set of truths that might guide the Council in this regard. His words likely bear the influence of his adviser, Hans Küng, at the time a hugely popular theologian and enthusiastic supporter of Pope John XXIII’s call to reform and ecumenism. Only later would Küng become known for advocating for this reform in a manner incompatible with Catholic teaching.

While Bishop Leiprecht noted that all the faithful are called to holiness and obliged to live the spirit of the Gospel, including the spirit of the evangelical counsels, he also stated that the religious make this spirit visible. He asserted that their special state, including their virginity, makes them “qualified witnesses” of the kingdom of the God and of the heavenly Jerusalem. Religious institutes, he said in conclusion, are more necessary at the present time than ever.

Pope Paul VI would make a similar theme in an important speech he gave to a group of religious superiors on May 23, 1964, a time when the exact place of religious life within the future Lumen Gentium was still unclear.

The Pontiff began his discourse with the acknowledgement that the universal call to holiness had taken much greater prominence in modern times, and he reaffirmed the importance of this teaching. However, the Pope also desired for the Church to be vigilant lest, in giving attention to the universal call to holiness, “the true notion of religious life, as it has traditionally flourished in the Church, should become obscured.”

In light of such possible confusion, especially for young people considering their choice of state in life, the Bishop of Rome desired to recall “the priceless importance and necessary function of religious life.” This state, he continued, defined by the profession of the evangelical vows, “is a perfect way of living according to the example and teaching of Jesus Christ,” with a particular orientation to charity distinct from other ways of life.

The Pope’s speech, along with many other commentaries by the Council Fathers, would find echo in the final text of the chapter. After extensive deliberation, the Council Fathers would vote, by more than a two-thirds majority, to dedicate a chapter specifically to religious, distinct from the chapter on the more general call to holiness.

In response to many requests, the Council articulated more precisely the nature of the religious vocation, drawing in particular from the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas. The defining element of this vocation, as Lumen Gentium states, are the vows, or sacred bonds similar to vows, by which the faithful bind themselves to the practice of the three evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience. Through such a profession, the person takes on a new state. As the text says, the consecrated person “is ordained to the honor and service of God under a new and special title.”

Here, the Council also desired to recognize that, by baptism, all the faithful are consecrated to God. However, through the religious vow a person makes himself capable of deriving “more abundant fruit” from the grace of baptism and is freed from obstacles to charity.

Lumen Gentium further highlights how this unique dedication to God leads the religious to be specially united to the Church and its mystery.

 The Council stressed that those who profess the religious life, while a minority, are a source of inspiration to all in the Church and also for mankind. Their dedication “appears as a sign which can and ought to attract all the members of the Church to an effective and prompt fulfillment of the duties of their Christian vocation.” The chapter also notes the duty of the Church hierarchy to regulate the religious life, while also expressing the hierarchy’s desire to respect the particular charism present in each religious order.

With this brief yet rich chapter, the Council offered an illuminating response to those who were uncertain about the role of the religious life in the modern world. The Council came to a deeper understanding that the changed conditions of the time, and the greater awareness of the call to holiness among all the baptized, did not diminish the identity of this special vocation in the Church. Such factors, indeed, make it all the more urgent for religious to persevere in their specific calling, as the Council urged them to do at the close of the chapter, “for the increased holiness of the Church” and “for the greater glory of the one and undivided Trinity …

Father Joseph Thomas