SEcular Institutes. — These are new forms of religious life without the obligation of living in community, as juridically conceived in religious orders and societies without public vows.
When the order of evangelical perfection was juridically recognized by the Church, it gave rise to the religious state already outlined by the first anchorites. However, this religious state, which is perpetual in its substantial element—“holiness and apostolate”—is constantly evolving in its other formal and extrinsic elements, which the Church regulates and perfects continually with a keen sense of appropriateness and adaptation to the times and to persons. Thus, in admirable emulation, there succeeded one another the ancient Orders of Canons Regular, monks, mendicants, regular clerics, and congregations with simple vows.
Other religious societies also developed, which, while imitating the life of congregations, do not emit the usual vows. These too are highly varied. Having been thoroughly tested by long experience, they received in the Code of Canon Law their own special canonical recognition and fundamental laws (can. 673-81).
When work was being done on the codification of canon law, new states of perfection emerged that proposed to put the evangelical counsels into practice in the world and to consecrate themselves, in the midst of the world, to works of apostolate, without the general and necessary obligation of living in community in the canonical sense. On 2 February 1889, the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars published the decree *Ecclesia catholica* (cf. *Acta Sanctae Sedis*, 22 [1889], p. 634), in which it addressed these associations and, while showing itself opposed to recognizing in them a formal religious character, made it clear that it was substantially favorable to them. In the codification, it seems, the question of these new forms was raised, discussed, and wisely passed over in silence—no trace in the CIC—in order not to mortgage the future of these institutes with a solution not yet mature.
Nevertheless, the new forms of life of perfection continued their upward march (cf. Card. V. La Puma, *Evoluzione del diritto dei religiosi da Pio IX a Pio XI*, in *Acta Congressus iuridici internationalis*, IV, Rome 1937, pp. 202 ff.; A. Gemelli, *Le Associazioni dei laici consacrati a Dio nel mondo* [pro manuscripto], Assisi 1939; Ch. Canals Navarrete, *Los Institutos seculares de perfección y apostolado*, in *Revista española de derecho canonico*, 3 [1947], pp. 35 ff.), with characteristics that became clearer and more definitive each day: their internal and extra-diocesan organization, the complete dedication of their members to the proposed end, the full profession of the evangelical counsels even without public vows, and the absence of life in community as understood in the canons.
The Church has never ignored these noble souls but, on the contrary, has encouraged them, and on 2 February 1947, with the constitution *Provida Mater Ecclesia* (*De statibus canonicis institutisque saecularibus christianae perfectionis adquirendae*) (cf. *AAS*, 39 [1947], pp. 114-21), providentially and wisely sanctioned their particular state of life, rendering it a juridical state of perfection.
The *Provida Mater Ecclesia* (art. III) sets forth the essential elements of secular institutes: a full and total dedication of members to the acquisition of evangelical perfection through the observance of poverty, chastity, and obedience, made stable by a moral and juridical bond that is binding before God and the Church, obtained through vow and the promise of obedience and poverty; through vow, promise, or consecration of perfect chastity in celibacy. Although the new juridical state presupposes a moral body in which it is realized through a stable, mutual, and full bond—thus excluding the individual faithful who may propose the same ideal for himself—nevertheless, members do not have the obligation of living in community, as juridically understood for “religious” and societies without public vows. Until now, the status perfectionis adquirendae was considered synonymous with the religious state: now, however, a new and complete state of perfection appears, with the existence of a “particular vocation from God,” in which none of its members is a religious (ibid., art. II § 1).
The members of secular institutes are, therefore, in the eyes of canon law, clerics or laity, according to the character they have in the institute; their total consecration to the Lord does not remove them from the limits of their corresponding canonical status (cf. CIC, can. 107; *Provida Mater Ecclesia*, art. II § 1; motu proprio *Primo feliciter*, art. II and III, 12 March 1948; *AAS*, 40 [1948], pp. 293-97).
This last document emphasizes the proper notes of secular institutes that distinguish them from common associations of the laity, namely, their complete state of perfection (cf. also the instruction *Cum Sanctissimus*; *AAS*, 40 [1948], pp. 283-86).
Developing this idea logically, the Holy Father, with fatherly solicitude, exhorts the leaders and assistants of Catholic Action and other associations of the faithful, in whose maternal bosom Christians are educated and initiated into the exercise of apostolate, to generously promote the holy vocations of so many numerous and select young people who are called by divine vocation to higher goals, whether in religious Orders and Congregations or in these truly providential secular institutes (art. VI). He also wishes that Catholic Action and other pious associations not only accept but also seek and request members of these secular institutes for their own apostolate (art. VI).
For an emerging association to be called a secular institute, it is not enough that it in fact possess the requisites that the constitution *Provida Mater Ecclesia* demands of these institutes: it must also receive a prior specific mandate from the Holy See.
No association may therefore use the name of secular institute unless it has obtained from the bishop the canonical erection according to the procedure prescribed by art. V of the constitution, which imposes on Ordinaries, as a conditio sine qua non for proceeding to erection, the obligation to seek from the competent authority the same nihil obstat that the CIC requires for religious and societies of common life.