POSTULANCY AND POSTULANT. - In the strict sense, p. is the period of time during which the aspirant to a religious order is considered such for legal purposes. In the broad sense, it is the period of time and of probation that the aspirant to a religious order spends from his entry until his admission to the novitiate.
I. HISTORY
The beginnings of the postulancy in the strict, or canonical, sense can be found in the provisions of the Rules of monastic life of the early centuries, where it is prescribed that one who wishes to become a monk must be tested for a longer or shorter period. From the monks, the institution and practice of the postulancy passed to all subsequent forms of religious life (Canons Regular, Mendicants, etc.). The Clerics Regular, such as the Society of Jesus (Constitutions, p. 1, ch. 4), the Piarists (Constitutions, part 1, ch. 3), the Clerics Regular of St. Paul (Constitutions, book I, ch. 2) and the ancient congregations with simple vows, such as the Redemptorists (Rule, part 3, ch. 2), the Passionists (Constitutions, ch. 6), followed, more or less, until the 18th century, the prescription of monasticism, instructing and testing for some time the individual aspirants to the society. From the time when Clement VIII, in 1603, with the decree Cum ad regularem, exhorted superiors to instruct all aspirants, including the conversi, before admitting them to the religious habit, about the vows and obligations of religious life (Fontes, CIC, I, 189), the postulancy in the strict sense became a common obligation for many male religious orders. The Sacred Congregation of Religious, on 11 January 1911, imposed by the decree Sacrosancta Dei Ecclesia a true postulancy of six months for the lay brothers of the regular Orders (AAS,
3 [1911], p. 26). For nuns, the traditions of the male Orders were followed: each monastery had in its legislation a determined period of trial, without this, however, being a constant practice.
It was only with the decree Quo propositum of 15 August 1912 that the Sacred Congregation of Religious imposed this obligation on aspirants to the monastic life (AAS, 4 [1912], p. 565).
With the female congregations with simple vows, the postulancy entered, as an obligation, into the particular constitutions. The Sacred Congregation of Religious, with its corrections to the constitutions, before approving them, gradually created the whole doctrine of the postulancy, as it was later set out in the Norms of 1901, at articles 63-65, without however making it an absolute obligation.
The postulancy in the broad sense began around the 18th century, when Louis XV, king of France, forbade the making of profession in the Orders before the age of 21. In order to maintain and cultivate the vocation of aspirants to the religious life, they began to be received some years before their twenty-first year, instructing them in virtue and in knowledge. From these first attempts, the transition was easy to pre-novitiates, aspirantates, seminaries, etc., ever more organized. In the lay religious institutes, the period of postulancy in the broad sense, prior to the novitiate, is already found among the Brothers of the Christian Schools from the beginnings of the foundation in the year 1680 (Règle du gouvernement de l'Institut des Frères des Ecoles chrétiennes). From the Brothers the postulancy in the broad sense was then borrowed by the other lay congregations.
II. CURRENT LAW
The p. in the strict sense is obligatory for all female religious orders with perpetual vows, and for the coadjutor brothers of male regular Orders. It must last at least six months. In religious orders with temporary vows, the provisions of the constitutions must be observed, a norm that also applies to religious orders not mentioned by the CIC (can. 539). The p. must be made in the same house of the novitiate or in another house, under the supervision of a suitable religious (can. 540 § 1). Postulants may receive a habit different from that of the novices (can. 540 § 2); postulants of monasteries are bound by the rules of enclosure (can. 540 § 2). The p. is not required for the validity of the novitiate. The purposes of the p. are easily discernible from history and from current canon law: the obligation, on the one hand, of religious orders to ascertain the intentions, suitability and freedom of the postulant, who for his part has the moral obligation to examine his own decision and to test the life he intends to embrace. During this time superiors have the obligation to request testimonial letters (v. LETTERE ECCLESIASTICHE, VII). The p. in the broad sense has no specific prescriptions in current canon law, which are therefore left to the individual constitutions of the religious orders.
In clerical religious orders, over the last fifty years, the institution of Apostolic Schools has been developed, which are, in substance, true and proper minor seminaries for aspirants to the priesthood in a religious order. For these there is no true and complete legislation, but there are at least three types: apostolic schools, organized like any ordinary college, without discrimination among students aspiring to the priestly, religious or lay life; schools with students chosen as having a generic vocation to the clerical-religious life; and finally true and proper small seminaries of aspirants to a religious order with a vocation, at least in germ, already precise. Recently, female religious societies have also established Apostolic Schools for young women inclined to the religious life. Setting aside canonical norms, undoubtedly, on the moral plane, it must be emphasized that in all these types of institutions the principle of the freedom and conscience of vocation to the religious life must be safeguarded in an absolute manner.
Bibliography3 works
Giulio Mandelli