RELIGIOUS STATE. - In canon law, and in the strict sense, it is the juridical situation of those Christians who, desiring to live a stable life of Christian perfection, embrace as particular means of attaining it the evangelical counsels, by emitting the public vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in a society approved by the Church, where they live a common life.
In this sense the religious state is synonymous with religion (v.) and represents the maximum, complete degree of the state of evangelical perfection in its theological and juridical elements. Theologically the religious state presupposes a total consecration to God, by which a person binds himself to dedicate himself completely to His service with the aim of tending toward the acquisition of the perfection of charity (cf. Summ. Theol., 2ª-2ª, q. 184, a. 1), fulfilling not only the commandments of the Lord, but also His counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience (Mt. 29, 21; 19, 14; 8, 20; Lc. 9, 58). Such an act sums up in a single offering the whole life of a person, directing to God and to His glory all subsequent works, in a form different from that of ordinary Christians. The life, in fact, of one who has offered himself irrevocably to God acquires in all its manifestations a latreutic character, that is, of worship, by virtue of the virtue of religion, by which one has bound himself to live such a total consecration (cf. A. Gemelli, Le associazioni dei laici consacrati a Dio nel mondo [pro manuscripto], Assisi 1939, n. 6). Juridically the total consecration of oneself to the service of God must not be a passing act of interior fervor, but must be translated into a constant obligation, assumed through a moral bond recognized by the Church. Another fundamental juridical requirement is, today, belonging to a society approved by the Church, because only the social profession of the life of perfection is admitted and recognized as such, no juridical character being granted to the fully individual form of religious life.
On the essential theological and juridical elements of the complete state of evangelical perfection, the legislation and jurisprudence of the Holy See have created a true spiral of the life of perfection that comprises various degrees or states, according to whether one or another of the juridical elements is more or less determined. Of it are part the diocesan associations of priests called Oblates (v.), the Secular Institutes (v.), the Societies living in common without vows, the religious congregations and the religious Orders. These last two forms constitute the true public canonical religious state, with all the juridical elements contemplated by the CIC such as public vows, public profession, common life, etc.
Historically theology and ascetics, by emphasizing the various aspects of the state of perfection, facilitated the birth and the concretization of the various forms mentioned. Thus in the first centuries the profession of religious life was felt principally as a total consecration to God, to whom many of the faithful made an oblation of their whole selves, becoming servants of God, sacred to God. A consecration, without doubt, of the will, but approved or at least considered by the Church for the anachoretes (v.), the ascetics (v. ASCESI), and above all recognized with the consecrated virginum.
Without forgetting the profound aspect of consecration, the centuries after enriched the theology of the religious state with the concept of the state of complete public profession of evangelical perfection. Those who wished to be religious had to bind themselves to perfection through a stable dedication to a superior of a monastery or religious house, where they had to live a common life, in poverty, chastity and obedience. It is the time of monasticism (v.), during which the religious state is often compared to a second baptism and to a school of divine service. In the 13th-19th centuries the religious state is felt more as a perfect imitation of Jesus Christ not only in His life of entire consecration to the Father, in total obedience to His will, of precept and of counsel, but also in His life devoted entirely to the apostolate of good example and of preaching. It is the time of the Canons Regular and of the Mendicant Orders. And it was again the need for an ever greater apostolate in the midst of the world that, together with the evolution of the personal rights of man, ever more protected by the laws in the exercise of his activities, first caused to be born and then multiplied the congregations with simple vows, especially female (v. CONGREGAZIONI). Finally the Secular Institutes, approved by the apostolic constitution Provida Mater Ecclesia of 2 February 1947, made religious life as a complete state of evangelical perfection compatible with all the professions exercised by man in the world.
For the duties of the religious state: v. RELIGIONE.
Bibliography5 works
Giulio Mandelli