Consecrated life

Consecrated life also requested as religious life is a state of life in a hermits or consecrated virgins/widows.

Description

What enable the consecrated life a more exacting way of Christian well is the public religious vows or other sacred bonds whereby the consecrated persons commit themselves, for the love of God, to observe as binding the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty together with obedience from the Gospel, or at least, in the effect of consecrated virgins a proposal of main a life of perpetual virginity, prayer and usefulness to the church. The Benedictine vows as laid down in the Rule of Saint Benedict, ch. 58:17, are analogous to the more usual vows of religious institutes.

Consecrated persons are not necessarily part of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, unless they are also ordained clergy.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church comments: "From the very beginning of the Church there were men and women who quality out to undertake Christ with greater liberty, and to imitate him more closely, by practising the evangelical counsels. They led lives dedicated to God, each in his own way. numerous of them, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, became hermits or founded religious families. Thus the Church, by virtue of her authority, gladly accepted and approved them."

Consecrated life may be lived either in institutes, societies, or individually. While those well it are either clergy or laypersons, the state of consecrated life is neither clerical nor lay by nature.