SECULAR INSTITUTES. — This is the name given to new forms of religious life without the obligation of common life, as it is juridically conceived in religious institutes and societies without public vows.
The order of evangelical perfection, when it was juridically recognized by the Church, gave rise to the religious state already delineated by the first anchorites. Yet this religious state, one and perpetual in its substantial element, “holiness and apostolate,” constantly evolves in its other formal and extrinsic elements, which the Church continually disciplines and perfects, with a keen sense of appropriateness and adaptation to the times and to persons. Thus, in admirable emulation, there followed one another the ancient Orders of Regular Canons, the Monks, the Mendicants, the Regular Clerics, and the Congregations with simple vows.
Other religious societies also developed which, while imitating the life of the Congregations, did not make the usual vows. Their variety too is considerable. Perfectly tested by long experience, they received in the CIC special canonical recognition and fundamental laws (canons 673–81).
When work was being done on the codification of canon law, new states of perfection arose which proposed to put the evangelical counsels into practice in the world and to devote themselves, amid the world, to works of apostolate, without the general and necessary obligation of common life in the canonical sense. On 11 August 1889, the S. Congregation of Bishops and Regulars published the decree Ecclesia catholica (cf. Acta Sanctae Sedis, 22 [1889], p. 634), in which it dealt with these associations; although it showed itself opposed to recognizing in them a formal religious character, it made clear that it was substantially favorable toward them. During the codification, it seems, the question of the new forms was raised, discussed, and wisely passed over in silence—there is no trace of it in the CIC—in order not to mortgage the future of these institutes with a solution that was not yet mature.
Nevertheless, the new forms of the life of perfection continued their upward progress (cf. Cardinal V. La Puma, Evoluzione del diritto dei religiosi da Pio IX a Pio XI, in Acta Congressus iuridici internationalis, IV, Roma 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 prescribed purpose, the integral profession of the evangelical counsels even without public vows, and the absence of common life understood in the sense of the canons.
The Church never ignored these noble souls; on the contrary, she encouraged them and, on 2 February 1947, through 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, making it a juridical state of perfection.
Provida Mater Ecclesia (art. III) establishes the essential elements of the s. i.: the members’ full and total dedication to the attainment of evangelical perfection through the observance of poverty, chastity, and obedience, rendered stable by a moral and juridical bond binding in the sight of God and of the Church, obtained by means of the vow and promise of obedience and poverty, and by the 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, reciprocal, and complete bond—and consequently excludes the member of the faithful who individually proposes the same ideal—its members nevertheless do not have the obligation of common life, as it is juridically conceived for “religious institutes” and societies without public vows. Until now, the status perfectionis adquirendae had been considered synonymous with the religious state; here, instead, a new complete state of perfection appears, with the existence of a “peculiar vocation from God,” in which none of its members is a religious (ibid., art. II § 1).
The members of the s. i. are therefore, before canon law, clerics or laypersons, according to the character they have within the institute; their total consecration to the Lord does not take them beyond the limits of their corresponding canonical status (cf. CIC, can. 107; Provida Mater Ecclesia, art. II § 1; motu proprio Primo feliciter, arts. II and III, 12 March 1948; AAS, 40 [1948], pp. 293–97).
The latter document insists on the distinctive features of the s. i. that set them apart from ordinary associations of laypersons, namely, their complete state of perfection (cf. also the instruction Cum Sanctissimus; AAS, 40 [1948], pp. 283–86).
Developing this idea logically, the Supreme Pontiff recommends, with paternal concern, to the directors and assistants of Catholic Action and of the other associations of the faithful, in whose maternal womb so many are educated as Christians and initiated into the exercise of the apostolate, that they generously promote the holy vocations of the many numerous and select young people who are called by divine vocation to attain higher goals, whether in religious Orders and Congregations or in these truly providential s. i. (art. VI). He also wishes Catholic Action and the other pious associations not merely to accept, but also to seek and request for their apostolate, members of these s. i. (art. VI).
For a nascent association to be called a s. i., it is not enough that it in fact possess the requirements that the constitution Provida Mater Ecclesia demands of these s. i.; in addition, a prior special intervention of the Holy See is required.
No association may therefore use the name s. i. unless it has obtained from the bishop canonical erection according to the procedure provided for in art. V of the constitution, which requires Ordinaries, as a conditio sine qua non for proceeding with erection, to address the competent dicastery in order to obtain the same nihil obstat that the CIC requires for religious institutes and societies of common life.