Santa Clara University

Scholar Commons
Jesuit School of Theology

1977

A Contemporary Theology of the Vows

Sandra Marie Schneiders
Jesuit School of Theology/Graduate Theological Union, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation
Schneiders, Sandra Marie “A Contemporary Theology of the Vows.” In Journeying Resources, 14-27. Washington, DC: Leadership
Conference of Women Religious, 1977.

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 A CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY OF THE VOWS

by Sandra M. Schneiders IHM

Jesuit School of Theology
at Berkeley

This article is entitled "~ theology of the vows" in order to call

attention at the outset to the difference between the Gospel reality of
religious life and the human effort, called theology, by which we seek
to understand and articulate that reality. There will never be a totally
adequate theology of religious life (or of the vows), but the inadequacy,
and at times even the falsity, of our understanding and articulation can
not destroy or diminish religious life as a gift of Jesus Christ to the
Church. Nevertheless, the efforts we make to understand religious life
and to make it understandable to our contemporaries profoundly affect
the human experience and expression of this gift in the Church and in
the world. The glory of theology is its ministerial relationship to
the ultimate truth of Revelation; and poverty of theology is its never
to be overcome inadequacy and relativity in relation to the truth which
it seeks to serve. The present theological effort, therefore, is noth-
ing more than an effort to re-articulate the meaning of the vows for our
own time.

Introduction

The history of religious life clearly reveals two impo~tant facts

regardinf the vows: that religious have always made public profession
of vows; that the specific vows professed have not always been the same
ones2 and that the meaning of the individual vows has varied in different
religious families, periods, and places.3 This suggests that it is not
only permissable to re-examine the meaning of the vows as they are being
professed and lived by twentieth century American religious, but really
necessary to do so if we are to remain faithful to the tradition of re-
ligious life in the Church.

No one who experienced Catholic life prior to Vatican II would deny

that the ecclesial context of contemporary religious life is massively
different from that of pre-conciliar times. The single factor in the
conciliar reform and renewal which has most profoundly affected religious
life would seem to be the position taken by the Council on the relation-
ship between the Church and the world. The pastoral constitution Gaudium
et Spes (The Church in the Modern World) represents a real change and
development of doctrine which is complex and which should not be treated
with naivete. But it would not be inaccurate to say that in Vatican II
the Church abandoned an essentially defensive and antagonistic attitude
toward the world and assumed a stance of acceptance, involvement, and
solidarity.

The Council 1 s joyful affirmation of the reality and significance

of the Incarnation for the Church was profoundly evangelical, but it
-14-
 placed religious life under the necessity of completely reformulating
itself. Religious life, at least since the fourth century, has under-
stood itself almost as an institutionalization of the world- transcend-
ing dimension of Christiantiy.4 The first expression of this world-
transcendence · (which so easily and so often became world-denial) was
·. the flight from the city to the desert . Later, flight was transmuted
into the separation effected by cloister . Still later, when physical
cloister gave way under the pressure of the apostolate a subtle but
effective substitution replaced grills and walls with a total subculture
that made religious simply unassimilable in any ordinary human situation
except those in which they were officially representing the hierarchical
and institutional Church to the laity.

The Church, by expressing its slowly matured and radically new con-
viction that the world is not the enemy but the raw material of the Reign
of God and that, therefore, the Church is and should be in, with, and
for the world, participating in its struggles for the transformation of
humankind, has made an institutionalization of world-transcendence (to
say nothing of world-denial) not only useless but illegitimate. Reli-
gious, whether they like it or not, must be in, with, and for the world
as the Church now recognizes itself to be. This has enormous implica-
tions in the practical and in the theoretical domains. The practical
implications are becoming evident in the life-style and ministry of re-
ligious. But the gap is widening between an official theory of religious
life that is still largely pre-conciliarS and a practice which is based
more on Gaudium et Spes· than on Perfectae Carita tis.

One of the major results for religious of the Council's launching

of the Church into the world is the crumbling of the institutional
structures which have enabled religious life to function as a "closed
system," running on an independent, if not ·contradictory, track from
"the world." Within their own communities and institutions religious
could define reality as they wished and the definitions were unquestioned.
Religious couldsay, for example, that poverty means dependence by permis-
sion and is perfectly compatible with corporate wealth and personal com-
fort, or that true freedom is found in abdication of one's personal will
to that of a superior who, even when wrong, speaks with the voice of God,
and no one questioned the truth of these positions. Religious could
decide which apostolic works they were going to do and no one challenged
these priorities.

The crumbling of the structures which effectively separated religious

from the world has made it virtually impossible to maintain the closed
system. The subculture of religious life is disintegrating. What religious
do and say is no longer safe from telling criticism by the larger society.
The criticism makes sense to many religious who, themselves, can no longer
take seriously the 1950's definitions of the vows or accept unquestioningly
the priority of ghetto-serving and institution-preserving corporate com-
mitments.

Furthermore, it is clear to anyone who looks fairly at the situation

that the efforts being made by non-religious and even by non-Christians

-15-
to create a better world are often at least as evangelical in goal,
content, and methods as the efforts of religious. Religious are not
the only people interested in the salvation of the world, and often
their long history of world-denial has made them less capable of grasp-
ing the world-transforming vision of Vatican II and less adept at im-
plementing that vision than people who have participated all their lives
in the world process that most religious renounced at an early age.

The closed system is dissolving and religious are more and more
caught up in the main stream of society and culture. Two results of
this situation condition any contemporary consideration of the vows:
1) to make sense to themselves religious have to make sense to their
contemporaries in the world (which is not the same thing, necessarily,
as being approved of by the world); 2) to survive as religious in the
main stream it is imperative that religious articulate a new relation-
ship to the world which is neither simply absorption nor the continuation
of an adversary stance.

The Context: A Theology of Profession

As we have already noted, religious life has always involved profes-

sion, but the vows professed have varied. Consequently, the question
of the meaning of the vows should be set in the context of the more basic
question of the meaning of religious profession. Whatever vows are made
and whatever their content and meaning is seen to be in any period, place,
or congregation, they are and must be the specific expression of the gen-
eral intentionality of the act of profession.

Profession is the act by which a person dedicates her/himself to God

in Christ by permanent commitment in religious life. By this dedication
the person is consecrated to God in a particular way. Giving to one's
life the particular structure that is religious life means two things:
1) leaving behind or aside other possible structures (the "negative"
dimension); 2) freely tending toward growth and maturity in the way cho -
sen (the "positive" dimension). The classical expression of these two
dimensions has been "leaving the world" and "tending to perfection".
The first meant renunciation of the world and the second meant attending
to one's personal sanctification and to the salvation of souls through
the apostolic work of the congregation .

Obviously, "leaving the world" and, to some extent at least, an indi-

vidualistic and/or institutional "pursuit of perfection" are difficult
to harmonize with a Conciliar understanding of what Christian life is all
about. This raises a perfectly legitimate question which will not un-
settle anyone who is somewhat familiar with the long and varied history
of religious life. The question is simply, how can religious profession
be understood and explained today in terms which are faithful both to the
basic meaning of profession as commitment to Christ in religious life and
to the contemporary spiritual experience of both the dimensions of that
commi~ment?

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 What stance toward the world does one take by entering religious
life today? Clearly, by refusing to "build oneself into" the familial,
economic, and political structures of the surrounding society the person
has· taken an independent stance. It is not one of "flight" or of "sepa-
ration." But it is also not one of simply belonging. It is, ideally,
one'. of prophetic presence. Some people have referred to it as a "coun-
ter-culture" stance. I once called it a stance of "creative disengage-
ment."6 Whatever we choose to call it, we mean that religious try to
maintain a certain personal and corporate liberty in regard to the basic
structures and dynamisms of the world, a liberty which will enable them
to bring to bear upon its forms and activities the evangelical values
which must transform the world. The specific relationship between the
individual religious and/or congregation and the particular structures
and activities in their sector of the world may be one of the condemning
outright evil, criticizing the inadequate, clarifying the ambiguous, co-
operating with the good, or some combination of these. The important
thing is that religious attempt to structure their lives in such a way
that they have the necessary liberty to relate prophetically to the world.
Prophetic presence requires contemplative insight and courageous action.
These, it might be argued, are the contemporary analogue of flight or
separation from the world.

To what do religious positively commit themselves by entering reli-

gious life today? Perhaps we could say they commit themselves to the
great work of transformation that began with the Incarnation and which
takes its meaning and structure from that central salvific event. Per-
sonal transformation in Christ is certainly integral to this commitment
but in the experience of the contemporary religious the transformation
of the world and all its people is equally integral and in no sense a
"secondary end." This entire process of transformation in Christ is seen
as essentially communal, and "community" cannot be defined as institution-
al togetherness nor as exclusively congregational. On the contrary, the
contemporary religious demands both a more authentic community life with-
in the congregation and a deeper community involvement with those who are
not members of the congregation.

In summary, religious profession today is essentially what it has

always been, a dedication of the person to God in Christ within religious
life. It continues to involve the adoption of a particular stance toward
the world which is not simply one of belonging to the world on its own
terms, and a commitment to a particular positive seeking of life in Christ.
What has changed is the understanding of both dimensions. The adversary
stance toward the world has given way to a prophetic stance. The com-
mitment to seeking personal perfection and the salvation of souls has
become a commitment to the transformation of all things and people (in-
cluding oneself) in Christ. It is in the context of the meaning of con-
temporary religious profession as the initiating act of religious life
that we can raise the question about the contemporary meaning of the vows.

The Specification: A Theology of the Vows

Most religious today profess the traditional vows of poverty, chas-

tity or celibacy, and obedience. By means of these vows both dimensions
-17-
of religious profession, the stance toward the world and the commitment
to the transformation of the world in Christ, are specified. The tra-
ditional three vows locate this specification in the attitude and be-
havior of the religious in the areas of the three major dimensions of
human life (possession, affectivity, and power) which are simultaneously
the three major areas of human interaction . which structure the world
(economics, social life, and politics). Traditional theology of the
vows has already attended to the first aspect, the capacity of the vows
to direct one's personal energies toward God. But it is only contempo-
rary reflection which has highlighted the potential of the vows for en-
abling the religious to play a significant role in the transformation of
the very structures of the world through an evangelical contribution to
the major areas of human interaction. Furthermore, the more one reflects
on this latter aspect the clearer it becomes that the two aspects, while
distinct, are not separate, anymore than the prophetic stance toward the
world and the commitment to the transformation of all things in Christ
are separate. This awareness of the integration of the religious pro-
ject is perhaps one of the contributions of contemporary experience to
the understanding of religious life.

Poverty

\~en the twentieth century American over the age of forty tries to
think about material goods s/he has to be aware of the kaleidoscopic
transformations in the economy that have taken place in a generation and
a half. From an economy of scarcity which reached agonizing proportions
in the depression era through an economy of abundance that the post-war
generation incarnated in a throw-away culture we have come to a realistic
understanding of an economy of finitude.

Material resources are not infinite and we will either use them re-
sponsibly or we and/or our children will not have the means to live at
all on this planet. This realization has changed our attitudes toward
material goods. Goods are resources and that means they are to be used
for and not just used ~· Furthermore, not all of the projects which
resources can serve are equally worthwhile and since the resources are
not infinite choices have to be made.

Religious were not the first, much less the only, people to realize
that, as a cosmic community, we must undergo a conversion in the area of
attitude and behavior toward material goods, from an attitude of mindless
exploitation to one of responsible stewardship. Not far behind this re-
alization came the conviction that the inequity of distribution of mate-
rial goods and the resultant domination of the poor by the rich is an in-
tolerable source of the edge-of-doom situation in which we live. In other
words, the human race is beginning to see that the establishment of a sane
and healthy relationship between finite material resources and the quality
of life for all people is crucial to the survival of the race and of the
planet. How to establish such a relationship, given the obvious headstart
of selfishness, exploitation, crass irresponsibility, domination, and the
structures which institutionalize them, is a staggering problem.

-18-
 If the religious vow of poverty is going to make sense today,
even to religious themselves, to say nothing of other people, it can-
not continue to be understood as a private reality operating in the
closed system that the religious subculture once created. It has to
relat~ the religious enterprise to the enormous human project of orga-
nizing material resources for the creation of a geniunely human world.
Religious poverty has to clearly cast the weight of Christianity into
the balance on the side of responsible stewardship, institutional re-
form, and the liberation of the poor. But even more importantly it
should help to surface and explicitate the potentially evangelical
values in this world struggle for a human economy and contribute an
evangelical dimension where none yet exists.

To build the evangelical dimension into the contemporary economic

struggle does not mean simply to baptize with piety what is already
going on. It means to contribute to the effort not only by cooperation,
criticism, or condemnation but by a mode of behavior which arises direct-
ly from a Gospel poverty of spirit, itself the fruit of a profound ex-
perience of God's gift to us in Jesus. The contemporary religious who
experiences all as gift will transcend not only the excess of having but
perhaps also the facility of giving and find a Gospel mode of sharing.
To be preoccupied with having means to dispossess others. Outright giv-
ing, in our society, often places the receiver in the position of a
grateful subordinate. To share means to enter into relationship with
the other on the basis of recognition that the other has a right to par-
ticipate in the gift of God to his people, that we have no right to more
than we need when another is in want. Sharing is more than the equitable
distribution of goods. It is a recognition of our common life as children
of the same God and a concrete living of that common life . ·

It is not easy to work out what the vow of poverty means in today's
world. In principle it means to participate prophetically in the human
effort to convert the race from exploitation to responsible stewardship,
to liberate the poor by an equitable distribution of goods, to create
the economic structures which will effectively relate finite resources
to human ends. But it also means to model a sharing of life through a
sharing of goods that expresses a Christian experience of poverty of
spirit. In the concrete it probably means a re-evaluation of holdings
and life-styles and an abandonment of the privatized exclusivity of the
religious subculture. To work out the details of such an approach will
not be easy. But a poverty of this kind which renounces both the child-
ish irrelevance of an artificial dependence and the romanticism of a use-
less and unreal imitation of the destitute and concentrates on alleviat-
ing misery while building the structures of human solidarity can make
sense to the religious who vows poverty today. And, although the world
will undoubtedly not always like what religious are doing in this area it
will at least have to take it seriously.

Celibacy

The vow of celibacy was once the least ambiguous of the three. It
regulated affectivity by almost total denial, if not outright repression,

-19-
and its obligations were perfectly clear. It was relatively simple to
maintain this situation as long as religious life remained a closed
system. But today celibacy has to be thought about in the context of
the affective revolution that characterizes our time. This revolution
includes not only run-away eroticism aod .its negative corollaries but
also a valid liberation of both women and men from sexually stereotyped
roles and life styles, the movement for the rights of sexual minorities,
the struggle for the liberation and equal rights of women. We are mid-
stream in a major cultural conversion from a basically one-sex, male-
dominated society (and Church) to a two-sex society characterized by
responsible mutuality. The person who vows celibacy for evangelical
reasons is in a unique position to contribute to this positive trans-
formation of society.

It has already become relatively clear that celibate women, espe-

cially when organized in religious communities, are in an extraordinarily
good position to challenge male domination and to foster the emergence of
women as equal collaborators in every sphere of life and work. Despite
the long history of sacramental subjugation and ministerial exploitation
of religious women within the Church it is a fact that, both individually
and as groups, religious women constitute an educated, disciplined, prq-
ductive, and relatively independent force which is exercising a genuinely
prophetic role in the Church and in society. Unmarried women generally
have both more opportunities for developing competitive competencies and
more affective and social freedom to experiment and take risks in achiev-
ing personal and corporate effectiveness. Religious have the added ad-
vantage of corporate resources and outlets for maximizing such possibili-
ties .

A parallel phenomenon is observable among religious men . Despite

the locker-room ethos that all-male living tends to create and the "ma-
chismo" chauvinism that was systematically bred into many male religious
as a protection, on the one hand, against sexual delinquency, and, on
the other hand, of male supremacy and the status quo in the Church, reli-
gious men are rapidly emerging as a major force in the struggle for a new,
sexually balanced Church and world . They have more opportunity than most
of their married colleagues to meet and work with talented women and more
psychological space to come to grips with their own problems in the area
of relationships with women.

Although religious are playing a genuinely prophetic role in the

affective transformation of society, many men and women celibates find
it much more difficult to tackle their own personal affective transfor-
mation. Intimacy, with people of their own or the other sex, is unfamil-
iar territory for many religious. Much of the affective energy which was
sublimated into compulsive work for many years is hard to tap for the de-
velopment of loving relationships with other individuals and within com-
munity. A long indoctrination in avoidance of deep relationships with
those outside the community has made it unusually difficult for many re-
ligious to enter freely into close friendships with non-members. Lack
of experience with their own affective response causes upsetting reactions

-20-
when religious who have allowed themselves virtually no affective ex-
pression since early adolescence find themselves suddenly in a two-sex
world. Vocational disasters have been frequent enough in the last few
years to give even the non-scrupulous some pause. Nevertheless, one .
senses a general commitment among women and men religious to their own '
sexual and affective maturation and to the creation of loving communi~
ties which bodes well for the future of religious life.

Again, it must be remarked that religious are latecomers to the

affective revolution that is underway in our society . Religious celi-
bates are being called to participation and cooperation in a positive
dynamism which is at work in our culture. But if the participation of
religious is to be evangelically prophetic it must be based on a deep
religious experience of being loved by God in Jesus and an experienced
personal fulfillment in returning that love. The Gospel purity of
heart which religious can bring to the affective transformation of the
world and the Church is more than just the expression of a well developed
personality. It is the expression in interpersonal and community rela-
tionships of an affectivity that has been radically healed, purified,
and liberated in the intimacy of a profound personal and communal prayer
life.

In the area of celibacy, as in that of poverty, the vow will make

sense to the contemporary religious if it leads the person toward per-
sonal transformation in love and allows the person to participate mean-
ingfully in the emergence of a new, whole, and loving world characterized
by responsible intimacy, equality, and mutuality. What this means in the
concrete is less easy to determine. The renewal of community life has
been underway for some time and seems to be the first expression of a
new understanding of celibacy. It would seem that re-evaluation of total-
ly one-sex formation programs and apostolates is also necessary as well
as some experimentation with less isolated living patterns for adult re-
ligious. Individual and corporate efforts to break down patterns of male
dominance and to establish patterns of equality and collaboration would
seem to be an integral part of what vowed celibacy today is all about.

If celibacy comes to mean not simply sexual denial but a total com-
mitment to the creation of a genuine world community and, within that
global enterprise, a commitment to becoming an ever more loving human
being it will not cease to be baffling to a world largely structured by
selfishness, or offensive to the proponents of unrestrained eroticism,
but it will have to be taken seriously as a significant human venture.

Obedience
/
It has become almost a cliche to speak of the crisis of authority
and obedience, not only in religious life but in the Church and society
at large. This is the context of any contemporary discussion of the vow
of obedience. The crisis is much deeper than some proponents of a res-
toration of the ancien regime would like to think. It is not simply that
those in authority are exercising authority badly or that those who should
-21-
be obeying lack faith, humility, or some other virtue (alth~ugh both
are sometimes true) . It is that the principle of hierarchy, which is
traditionally the nerve of both secular and religious obedience, is
being radically questioned and the principle of participation is sup-
planting it in more and more sectors of life. Because it has traditional-
ly been thought that the Church is hierarchical by divine institution and
that nothing can or will ever really change this, many people simply do
not attend to the real nature and seriousness of this changing perception
of the nature of human relationships.7

A hierarchical organization of a society is one in which some mem-

bers are thought to be really, intrinsically, personally, and relatively
permanently superior to the others . However the person came to be in
the superior position, whether by conquest, birth, appointment, election,
or something else, his/her authority is thought to be a participation in
divine authority, to be divinely sanctioned. The basic principle is that
all legitimate authority comes from God and thus that obedience is a sac-
red duty. In religious communities the sacralizing of authority has been
carried to its extreme in the concept of the superior literally holding
the place of Christ, speaking in the name of God, and communicating the
will of God for the subject, even when the superior's command is objec-
tively wrong.

A participative organization of a society is one in which all members

are considered to be intrinsically equal. If, for the good of all, some-
one is given a position of superiority, it is provisional, temporary,
limited in scope, functional, and above all "secular" in the sense of non-
sacralized. The person is first among equals in a particular domain of
community life but not the representative of God to the others. Obedience
in such a context is not submission but cooperation, which might be every
bit as demanding as submission if it is taken seriously. The members of
the group never abdicate personal responsibility either for themselves
and their own actions or for the group as a whole.

It is important to realize that the distinction being drawn here is

not between monarchy and democracy, as some seem to conclude as soon as
the traditional model is questioned. Both monarchy and democra~y can be
hierarchical, and both can be participative. The real difference is not
in the form of government selected but in the belief regarding the nature,
source, and location of authority. If the authority is thought to be some-
how God's authority communicated directly to and exercised by the superior
in regard to those who do not share in God's authority but submit to it,
the system is hierarchical. If the authority is thought to be the com-
munity's authority (divine or ht~n in its source) which the community
chooses to exercise through one of its members, the system is essentially
participative. In the former case the terminology of "supericr" and "sub-
ject" is completely accurate. In the latter there is a real and fundamen-
tal equality among the members which is not negated by the appointment of
someone to an office and which makes the use of superior/subject tar~nology
both offensive and inaccurate.

-22-
 To an ever greater degree societies are rejecting the hierarchical
principle as a valid way of organizing social and political life. It
is part of the rejection of domination and of the espousal of liberation
and self-determination. It is the fruit not simply of the desire of peo-
ple to control their own lives and destinies but also of a fundamental
conviction regarding the intrinsic equality of all persons and of a
growing sense of the inalienability of personal responsibility .

Members of the Church and religious are not immune from these cur-
rents of contemporary e xperience. In many ways the efforts to under-
stand and practice collegiality constitute a move away at least from the
monarchical understanding of hierarchy and toward a more participative
practice. Many religious communities of women, and some of men, have
largely abandoned, in practice if not in theory, the hierarchical under-
standing of religious life. This process is being intensified by the
alignment of religious as individuals and as groups, with the liberation
efforts going on about them. They are absorbing the theory and practice
of liberation theology and adjusting it to the North American scene . The
implications for the organization of the local and universal Church, as
well as religious life, are difficult to ignore .

Obe dience is certainly the vow which presents the greatest challenge
for the development of a contemporary theology of religious life. It ·
seems to run counter to the most important and positive social movements
of our times. If, however, the fundamental intentionality of obedience
can be reappropriated by contemporary religious it is not inconceivable
that obedience will make a prophetic contribution to the struggl e for
liberation. Religious have always made a vow of obedience as the best
way to promote their own true freedom. They have been convinced that in
God's will is true peace, within ourselves and among ourselves . Rel igious
obedience is a dedication to freedom, not to subjection or servitude. It
is as true today as it has ever been that true freedom is to be found in
the carrying out of the will of God, even if religious, along with the
rest of the human race, are coming gradually to see that obedience to God
cannot be handled as simply as a traditional theology of obedience would
suggest.

What religious can bring to the worldwide struggle against domination

is a deep hunger and thirst for justice based on their own spiritual ex-
perience of liberation in Jesus Christ. Religious are people who know
that justice and holiness are finally identical, and that justice is not
simply the way humans can and should relate to one another. It is, first
of all, a capacity to re l ate to each other as brothers and sisters which
is given to us by the God who created and redeemed us all .

It might be suggested that religious should be on the cutting edge

in the development of new forms of community life and organization struc-
tured by and for justice. Here if anywhere it makes sense for the members
to trust one another and thus to be able to abandon all forms of domina-
tion, coercion, intolerance, and forced conformity. Religious communities
are social groups in which the equality recognized among the members is

-23-
explicitly seen to be equality not only as human beings but as creatures
and children of the same God redeemed by the same Christ. They should
be a prophetic witness that it is possible for a group of po~ple to live
together in love and justice celebrating their own freedom and equality
in the very act of. celebrating God's abso1ute and respectful dominion
in their lives. Their community life and organization should explici-
tate the relationship between seeking God's will and experiencing human
freedom (which has always been the real meaning of religious obedience),
between accepting responsibility for oneself and putting one's life at
the service of the other and of the common good (which is the Gospel
meaning of maturity).

If to vow obedience meant to commit oneself to a personal quest

for freedom and holiness in a community context and to involve oneself
in the broader human quest for the liberation of all people both by a
prophetic challenge to structures of domination and by a constructive
participation in the evolution of new models of community the vow would
make sense not only to religious but to their contemporaries.

The practical implications of such an understanding are already

being worked out by some communities. The quest for personal freedom
demands a different kind of initial formation in which choice situations
are multiplied rather than suppressed, in which responsibility is height-
ened rather than diminished, and in which subsequent evaluation is in-
dividualized and intensified. It requires a much deeper personal prayer
life, different and better forms of spiritual direction, and a commitment
to lifelong formation.

Participation in the wider human quest for liberation will demand,

first of all, a serious re-evaluation of community structures . It calls
for the abandonment of all forms of domination and oppression within
communities, a reduction of appeal to coercion and use of power to induce
conformity, the development of freedom of assembly and discussion, the
abolition of prior censorship, and the establishment of due process. In
other words, as the 1971 Synod of Bishops candidly recognized in regard
to the Church, our witness to justice and the quest of human liberation
will not be credible until injustice and the last vestiges of totalitarian-
ism have been rooted out of our communities.

The institutions which religious own, direct, or serve also raise the
challenge of justice and freedom. The justice of hiring policies, the
recognition and protection of the rights of employees and clients, the
integrity of investment policies are among the justice concerns which
touch the religious community directly. But the concern for justice and
liberation cannot stop with the community or its insitutitions. The
financial and p~rsonnel commitments of religious congregations must ex-
press the priority assigned to the quest for justice. As the Synod of
Bishops put it, "Action on behalf of justice and participation in the
transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimen-
sion of the preaching of the Gospel .. .. " (/16). Religious obedience has

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a lways been understood as a quest for true freedom and as the way in
which the individual religious was integrated into the congregation's
apostolate of preaching the Gospel. It would seem that, at the deepest
level, this is still what it means. What has changed most, perhaps, is
our understanding of freedom and of what it means to preach the Gospel.
As religious interiorize new understandings in these areas and incor-
porate them into their understanding and practice of the vow of obedience
t he vow itself can become intelligible to our contemporaries and more
significant to religious themselves.

Conclusion

It would seem useful, at this point, to summarize this rather lengthy

article which has tried to argue that it is possible to reinterpret the
traditional religious vows in a wa~ which would be, on the one hand, con-
sistent with the tradition and, on the other hand, more in touch with con-
temporary experience. The crisis regarding the vows arises in large part
from the fact that religious life, like the life of the Church itself, has
been resituated by Vatican II in, with, and for the world. One result of
this resituation is that religious life is no longer a closed system
operating in isolation from or in opposition to an alien and even hostile
world. Religious life in general, and the vows in particular, can no
longer make sense to religious themselves if they are seen as totally
irrelevant to the world and to the process of transformation that the
world is undergoing.

Traditionally, profession of vows, as the act initiating religious

life, has meant assuming a particular prophetic stance toward the world,
namely renunciation, and committing oneself in some way to one's own
sal vation and that of the neighbor. Profession today seems to have
basically the same meaning. By this act of self-dedication the reli-
gious assumes a certain prophetic stance toward the world, a critical
but involved one, and commits him/herself to the transformation of the
world, including him or herself.

The vows, as we have tried to show, can be seen as ways not only
of giving prophetic witness against the chief perversions of the basic
human energies of possession, affectivity, and power, but also of com-
mitting oneself to fostering the most positive forces of transformation
at work in the world. They can be ways of integrating the evangelical
dimension into the struggle to convert society and to transform the
world into a human and ultimately holy habitation for human beings. They
can constitute concrete modes of fostering the movements from exploitation
of material resources to responsible stewardship in a finite universe;
from a male-dominated and selfish society to one structured by mutuality
and orientated toward responsible intimacy; from a social order charac-
terized by domination and coercion of the weak by the strong to one in
which people participatively and cooperatively seek the maximum of free-
dom and justice for every person.

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 Practically, this selective cooperation of religious with the
major positive dynamisms in our society will demand a re-evaluation
of traditional commitments and a redirection of personnel and material
resources. Religious will be less frequently operating and staffing
parallel institutions and more frequently cooperating in ventures
t hey do not control but must influence in virtue of competence rather
than their ownership.

Even more importantly, it will demand a different type of formation

and professional preparation of candidates. Twentieth century religious
will not have the advantages or support of the sociology of knowledge
and conviction that living in the total institution provided in the past,
and they will be able to influence the larger society only to the extent
that they have something to offer, personally and professionally.

Finally, contemporary religious life demands a new type of leader-

ship which sees itself as enabling rather than dominative and which
knows that genuine authority is coextensive with competence and not to
be confused with jurisdiction.

Religious life is at the crossroads. Many are asking if it will

survive or disappear. Whether it retreats into the ghetto and attracts
rigid, frightened, and structure-seeking dependency types, or moves
forward to meet the challenge of prophetic presence and creative in-
volvement in the world and attracts freedom-seeking, radical types, it
will probably survive . In fact, one might hypothesize that there are
more weak than strong people in any society and that, if survival is
the ques tion, the chances for quantitative increase of the ghetto con-
gregations is actually better . But the question is not simply one of
survival in the sense of duration. It is a question of meaning. Will
religious life continue to be a significant evangelical force in the
world? The answer to that question is much less certain.

***

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 Footnotes

1The first unambiguous reference to a public promise of celibacy occurs

jn Clement of Alexandria (C. 150- c .215), Stromiat»um III. However,
the reference in the First Apology ~f Justin Marty (c. 150AD), to
"men and women, disciples of Christ since their childhood, (who) have
remained virgins to the age of sixty or seventy'' suggests that some
public profession of celibacy was made even in the first century. For
full references and more complete analyses of these and other early
texts on religious profession see my article, "Non-marriage for the Sake
of the Kingdom." \Udening the Dialogue ("Vita Evangelica" Series - No. 6)
(Ottawa/Washington, D. C.: CRC and LCWR, 1974) 125-197.
2
The Rule of St". Benedict, for example, specifies that the monk is to
make vows of stability, conversion of manners, and obedience. Most
religious congregations today profess poverty, chastity, and obedience
and some have a fourth vow.
3rt suffices to compare Benedict's notion of obedience essentially
qualified by stability, with Ignatius' notion of obedience as readiness
to be sent anywhere on mission to see how differently the same vow
could be understood.
4rt is important to realize, however, that the earliest consecrated virgins
and celibates did not separate themselves from the community by any of the
means later adopted by desert monasticism. And, despite fairly consistent
official opposition, religious life has been steadily moving since the
1500's back from the desert to the city.
5
The frequently reiterated position of the Sacred Congregation for
Religious as well as most papal statements (e.g. Evangelica Testificatio)
on religious life since the Council bear continuous witness to the fact
that the official theory of religious life is far behind both the Council's
ecclesiology and the practical aggiornomento that has taken place in
religious life.
6
S.M. Schneiders, HIM, "Celibacy--Creative Disengagement," Sisters Today
(Dec. 1969) 191-200.
7The Theological question of whether the Church really is hierarchical
by divine institution or in what sense this might be so needs to be seriously
addressed . Simply repeating the propos ition does not illumine the present
situation very much especially when the people repeating it think of
hierarchy as meaning substantially the kind of organization which now
obtains in the Church.
8
see "Justice in the World," the Document published by The World Synod
of Bishops (Nov. 30, 1971).

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