SECULAR INSTITUTES. - These are the name given to new forms of religious life without the obligation of common life, as this is juridically conceived in religious orders and in societies without public vows.
The order of evangelical perfection, when it was juridically recognized by the Church, gave rise to the religious state already outlined 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 fine sense of opportunity and adaptation to the times and to persons. Thus there follow one another in admirable emulation the ancient Orders of Canons Regular, the Monks, the Mendicants, the Clerics Regular, the Congregations with simple vows.
Still other religious societies developed which, while imitating the life of the Congregations, do not emit the usual vows. Of these too the variety is great. Perfectly tested by long experience, they received in the CIC their own special canonical recognition and fundamental laws (cann. 673-81).
While 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 dedicate themselves, in the midst of the world, to works of the apostolate, without the general and necessary obligation of common life in the canonical sense. On 11 Aug. 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 and, although it showed itself opposed to recognizing in them a formal religious character, it gave to understand that it was substantially favorable to them. In the codification, it seems, the question of the new forms was raised, discussed and wisely passed over in silence - no trace of it in the CIC - so as not to mortgage the future of these institutes with a solution not yet mature.
Nevertheless the new forms of the life of perfection advanced in 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, p. 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], p. 35 ff.), with characteristics every day clearer and more definitive: their internal and extra-diocesan organization, the complete dedication of their members to the appointed end, the integral profession of the evangelical counsels even without public vows, the absence of common life understood in the sense of the canons.
The Church has never ignored these noble souls, but, on the contrary, has encouraged them, and on 2 Feb. 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, making it a juridical state of perfection.
The Provida Mater Ecclesia (art. III) sets forth the essential elements of the s. i.: a full and total dedication of the members to the acquisition of evangelical perfection in the observance of poverty, chastity and obedience, made stable by a moral and juridical bond, binding in the eyes of God and of the Church, obtained by the vow and by the promise of obedience and poverty; by the vow, or the promise, or the consecration of perfect chastity in celibacy. Although the new juridical state presupposes a moral body in which it is to be realized through a stable, reciprocal and full bond - there is therefore excluded the faithful person who individually proposes the same ideal - nevertheless the members do not have the obligation of common life, as this is juridically conceived for the "religions" and the societies without public vows. Until today the status perfectionis adquirendae was considered as synonymous with the religious state: here instead there appears a new complete state of perfection, with the existence of a "peculiar vocation of God," in which none of its members is a religious (ibid., art. II § 1).
The members of the s. i. are therefore, in the face of canon law, clerics or laypersons, according to the character they have in the institute; their total consecration to the Lord does not make them leave the limits of their corresponding canonical personality (cf. CIC, can. 107; Provida Mater Ecclesia, art. II § 1; motu proprio Primo feliciter, artt. II and III, 12 March 1948; AAS, 40 [1948], pp. 293-97).
This last document insists on the proper notes of the s. i. that distinguish them from the common associations of laypersons, that is, on the state of complete perfection (cf. also the instruction Cum Sanctissimus; AAS, 40 [1948], pp. 283-86).
Developing this idea logically, the Holy Father recommends with fatherly spirit to the directors and assistants of Catholic Action and of the other associations of the faithful, in whose maternal bosom they are educated in a Christian manner and initiated into the exercise of the apostolate, to promote generously the holy vocations of so many numerous and chosen young people who are called by divine vocation to reach higher goals either in religious Orders and Congregations, or in these truly providential s. i. (art. VI). He further wishes that Catholic Action and the other pious associations not only accept, but also seek out and ask for their own apostolate members of these s. i. (art. VI).
In order that a nascent association may call itself a s. i., it is not enough that it in fact have the requisites that the constitution Provida Mater Ecclesia requires of these s. i.; there is required in addition a prior special manuum of the Holy See.
No association may therefore use the name of s. i., if it has not obtained from the bishop the canonical erection according to the procedure provided by art. V of the constitution, which imposes on the Ordinaries, as a conditio sine qua non for proceeding to the erection, the duty of turning to the competent dicastery to obtain the same nihil obstat that the CIC requires for the religions and societies of common life.
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Alvaro del Portillo