RELIGIOUS STATE. - In canon law, and in the strict sense, this is the juridical situation of those Christians who, desiring to live a stable life of Christian perfection, embrace the evangelical counsels as particular means of attaining it, making public vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in a society approved by the Church, where they live a common life.
In this sense, the r. s. is synonymous with religion (v.) and represents the complete highest degree of the state of evangelical perfection in its theological and juridical elements. Theologically, the r. s. presupposes a total consecration to God, by which a person undertakes to devote himself completely to his service in order to strive for the attainment 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). This act gathers together in a single offering the whole life of a person, directing all his subsequent works toward God and his glory, in a form different from that of ordinary Christians. Indeed, the life of one who has irrevocably offered himself to God acquires in all its manifestations a latreutic character, that is, one of worship, by virtue of the virtue of religion, through which he has undertaken to live this 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 transient 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 today is belonging to a society approved by the Church, because only the social profession of the life of perfection is admitted and recognized as such, since no juridical character is attached to a fully individual form of religious life.
With regard to the essential theological and juridical elements of the complete state of evangelical perfection, the legislation and jurisprudence of the Holy See have created a veritable scale of the life of perfection comprising various degrees or states, according as one or another of the juridical elements is
more or less determinate. It includes the diocesan associations of priests called Oblates (v.), Secular Institutes (v.), Societies living in common without vows, religious congregations, and 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 asceticism, by emphasizing the various aspects of the state of perfection, facilitated the emergence and concretization of the different forms mentioned above. Thus, in the first centuries, the profession of religious life was understood principally as total consecration to God, to whom many of the faithful offered themselves entirely, becoming servants of God, sacred to God. It was undoubtedly a consecration of the will, but one approved or at least recognized by the Church in the case of the anchorites (v.), ascetics (v. ASCESI), and above all recognized through the consacrata virginum.
Without forgetting the profound aspect of consecration, the centuries following the sixth enriched the theology of the r. s. with the concept of a state involving the 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 were to live a common life in poverty, chastity, and obedience. This was the age of monasticism (v.), during which the r. s. was often compared to a second baptism and to a school of divine service. In the thirteenth to nineteenth centuries, the r. s. was understood increasingly as the perfect imitation of Jesus Christ, not only in his life of complete consecration to the Father and total obedience to his will, both of precept and of counsel, but also in his life wholly devoted to the apostolate of good example and preaching. This was the age of the Canons Regular and the Mendicant Orders. And it was once again the need for an ever greater apostolate in the midst of the world which, together with the evolution of the personal rights of man, increasingly protected by the laws in the exercise of his activities, first gave rise to and then multiplied congregations with simple vows, especially female congregations (v. CONGREGAZIONE MARIANA). 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 people in the world.
For the duties of the r. s.: V. RELIGIONE.