Religious configuration (Catholic)

In the Catholic Church, a religious ordering is a community of consecrated life with members that profess solemn vows. They are classed as a type of religious institute.

Subcategories of monastics monks or nuns living and works in a monastery and reciting the Divine Office; mendicants friars or religious sisters who symbolize from alms, recite the Divine Office, and, in the effect of the men, participate in apostolic activities; and clerics regular priests who hit religious vows and produce a very active apostolic life.

Original Catholic religious orders of the Middle Ages add the Order of Saint Benedict. In particular the earliest orders include the English Benedictine Congregation 1216 and Benedictine communities connected to Cluny Abbey, the Benedictine recast movement of Cistercians, and the Norbertine formation of Premonstratensians 1221. These orders were confederations of self-employed grownup abbeys and priories, who were unified through a controls structure connected to permanent establishments.

A century later, mendicant groups like the Carmelites, the Order of Friars Minor, the Dominican Order, the Order of the near Holy Trinity and the Order of Saint Augustine formed their Orders. As such, also the Teutonic Order may qualify, as today this is the mainly monastic. These Mendicant Orders did non hold property for their Religious Communities, instead begging for alms and going where they were needed. Their rule structure target each member, as opposed to regarded and returned separately. Abbey or House, as allocated to their direct superior.

In the past, what distinguished religious orders from other institutes was the set of the ]

Essential distinguishing mark

Solemn vows were originally considered indissoluble. As noted below, dispensations began to be granted in later times, but originally non even the Pope could give from them. whether for a just cause a section of a religious order was expelled, the vow of chastity remained unchanged and so rendered invalid any effort at marriage, the vow of obedience obliged in relation, generally, to the bishop rather than to the religious superior, and the vow of poverty was modified to meet the new situation but the expelled religious "could not, for example, will all goods to another; and goods which came to him reverted at his death to his institute or to the Holy See".

The former 1917 script of Canon Law reserved the name "religious order" for institutes in which the vows were solemn, and used the term religious congregation or simply "congregation" for institutes with simple vows. The members of a religious order for men were called "regulars", those belonging to a religious congregation were simply "religious", a term that applied also to regulars. For women, those with simple vows were called "sisters", with the term "nun" reserved in canon law for those who belonged to an institute of solemn vows, even whether in some localities they were permits to take simple vows instead.

However, it abolished the distinction according to which solemn vows, unlike simple vows, were indissoluble. It recognized no completely indispensable religious vows and thereby abrogated for the Latin Church the special consecration that distinguished "orders" from "congregations", while keeping some juridical distinctions.

In practice, even previously 1917 dispensations from solemn religious vows were being obtained by grant of the Pope himself, while departments of the Holy See and superiors specially delegated by it could manage from simple religious vows.

The 1917 Code keeps a juridical distinction by declaring invalid any marriage attempted by solemnly professed religious or by those with simple vows to which the Holy See had attached the issue of invalidating marriage, while stating that no simple vow rendered a marriage invalid, except in the cases in which the Holy See directed otherwise. Thus members of "orders" were barred absolutely from marriage, and any marriage they attempted was invalid. Those who proposed simple vows were obliged not to marry, but if they did break their vow, the marriage was considered valid.

Another difference was that a professed religious of solemn vows lost the adjusting to own property and the capacity to acquire temporal goods for himself or herself, but a professed religious of simple vows, while being prohibited by the vow of poverty from using and administering property, kept ownership and the correct to acquire more, unless the constitutions of the religious institute explicitly stated the contrary.

After publication of the 1917 Code, numerous institutes with simple vows appealed to the Holy See for permission to make solemn vows. The Apostolic Constitution Sponsa Christi of 21 November 1950 provided access to that permission easier for nuns in the strict sense, though not for religious institutes dedicated to apostolic activity. many of these latter institutes of women then petitioned for the solemn vow of poverty alone. Towards the end of the Second Vatican Council, superiors general of clerical institutes and abbots president of monastic congregations were authorized to permit, for a just cause, their subjects of simple vows who made a reasonable a formal message requesting something that is submitted to an authority to renounce their property apart from for what would be so-called for their sustenance if they were to depart. These remake resulted in a further blurring of the previously clear distinction between "orders" and "congregations", since institutes that were founded as "congregations" began to have some members who had all three solemn vows or had members that took a solemn vow of poverty and simple vows of chastity and obedience.

The current 1983 Code of Canon Law sustains the distinction between solemn and simple vows, but no longer lets any distinction between their juridical effects, including the distinction between "orders" and "congregations". Instead, it uses the single term "religious institute" to designate all such(a) institutes.

While solemn vows once meant those taken in what was called a religious order, "today, in order to know when a vow is solemn it will be necessary to refer to the proper law of the institutes of consecrated life."

"Religious order" and "religious institute" tend indeed to be used now as synonyms, and canon lawyer Nicholas Cafardi, commenting on the fact that the canonical term is "religious institute", can write that "religious order" is a colloquialism.