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See Renovationis Causam
The purpose of the Instruction is to facilitate the adaptation of the
formation of Religious to the needs of our time. It provides the basis
for a spiritual rebirth of the religious state, which is an essential
element in the renewal of the entire Church envisaged by the Council.
Its great importance lies in this fact.
It is necessary, therefore, to point out clearly the principles on
which it intends to do this and how it means to reorganize the training
of religious so that they may be better equipped for all the demands of
their vocation.
I - IMPORTANCE OF THE DOCUMENT:
The Second Vatican Council, as is known, has strongly insisted on the
traditional doctrine of the universal call to holiness of all the
members of the Church (Lumen Gentium, Chap. V). It has tried to
show that all the faithful of Jesus Christ can and must in all
circumstances strive towards the perfection of charity. In this way it
has made it clear that the spiritual renewal of the faithful is its
principal aim, through which its other aims would also be achieved,
namely: the extension of God's kingdom (Ad Gentes, n. 23), the
unity of all Christians (Unitas redintegratio, n. 7), the
Apostolate of the Laity (Apostolicam actuositatem, n. 3),
the efficacious presence of Christians in the world (Gaudium et Spes,
n. 43).
In this spiritual renewal of the Church, religious are called upon to
play an irreplaceable role: "The profession of the evangelical
counsels", as Lumen Gentium (n. 44) teaches, "is a sign
which can and ought to attract all the members of the Church to an
effective and prompt fulfilment of the duties of their Christian
vocation".
The renewal of religious life is, therefore, highly important if the
aims proposed by the Council are to be achieved. But as the Decree, Perfectae
Caritatis (n. 18) points out, "the appropriate renewal of
religious communities depends very largely on the training of their
members". It is to this training that the Instruction Renovationis
Causam is dedicated.
The supreme authority of the Church has given general norms which can
be followed in adapting the formation of religious to the needs of our
time and to the specific aims of each religious family. The evangelical
counsels form part of the deposit of Revelation. Consequently,
"Church authority, has the duty, under the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit, of interpreting these evangelical counsels and of regulating
their practice" (Lumen Gentium, n. 43).
The Church has accomplished this task by the co-ordination of rules
which have been presented to her by members of her faithful who were
highly esteemed. Assisted by the Holy Spirit, the Church has given her
approval to them, and the assurance that these rules are suitable for
guiding the faithful towards perfection. She has never ceased her
vigilance in seeing that the religious families remain faithful to these
norms of perfection.
The Church has proceeded in exactly the same way in the present case.
She has awaited the development of a great movement which began after
the Ecumenical Council of revising of rules and constitutions, and the
work of General Chapters following wide consultations of all their
religious. With regard to formation, it has become clear to all the
major superiors that in its present framework of rules, it does not
correspond fully with the new requirements of the various religious
families. They have, therefore, sent different petitions to the
Congregation of Religious and Secular Institutes. These have undergone
prolonged examination
In view of the many different forms of religious life today scattered
throughout the entire world—composed of people different in so many
ways, the Church does not wish to impose on all a uniform rule, but has
given freedom to each institute to adapt the training of its own
religious to the conditions of the place in which it is located, and to
suit its own specific aims.
On the other hand, in a world that is constantly changing, it was not
possible to determine "a priori" what the best solutions might
be. Consequently the Church considered it best to grant to religious
institutes a period for wider experimentation to help them to find such
solutions.
To safeguard essential values
Above all, it is to be kept in mind that the primary intention of the
Instruction is to safeguard the essential values of religious life. At
the present time religious life is threatened by the so-called movement
of "secularization", the aim of which is to substitute
fraternal love and occupation with temporal affairs for one's
relationship with and worship of God. As well as that, the needs of the
Apostolate are regarded as being more important and urgent. As a result,
some religious tend to think that these needs require the abandonment of
conventual life for greater involvement in the world.
Aware of such dangerous lines of thought, the Instruction again
restates the essential principle which must determine the choice of
apostolate for religious; that the forms of the apostolate for religious
must be compatible with their vocation of witnessing Christ, of being
men who are consecrated to God. Apostolic activity in our day demands
the collaboration of all, but it requires that each one be dedicated in
his own vocation. How many actual difficulties there are affecting
priests and religious, to which solutions could be found in the
judicious application of this principle!
For this reason the Instruction insists on the primacy of the
interior life of the religious apostle. It re-echoes the appeals of Pope
Paul VI in his discourse to a group of major superiors on May 23rd, 1964
(A.A.S. LVI, 1964, pp. 569-570): "In the renewal of your institutes
you must be careful always to give first thought to the spiritual life
of your religious. We certainly do not wish that, among your religious
devoted to the external works of the Apostolate, an opinion should
prevail that it is necessary to be concerned firstly about external
activity and afterwards only to interior perfection, as if this were the
great need of our time and this the Church's answer to modern problems.
Ardent activity and serious application to the spiritual life, far from
being in opposition, are so closely connected that there is no hope of
progress unless they go hand-in-hand. To activity must also be added the
application to fervent prayer, concern for purity of conscience,
perseverance in adversity, an active charity and eager zeal for the
salvation of souls. If these virtues are overlooked, the labours of the
Apostolate will lack true fruitfulness. The soul that has become tepid
will not succeed for long in escaping the dangers that are to be found
in carrying out the sacred ministry".
All this is but re-echoing the teaching of the Ecumenical. Council,
which stated that for institutions given to apostolic works "the
entire religious life of the members should be penetrated by an
apostolic spirit, as their entire apostolic activity should be animated
by a religious spirit. Therefore, in order that members may above all
respond to their vocation of following Christ and of serving Christ
Himself in His members, their apostolic activity should result from
intimate union with Him" (Perfectae Caritatis, n. 8).
II – FUNCTION OF THE DOCUMENT
To determine what the training of religious should be today, the
Instruction counsels that formation be entirely orientated towards the
profession of perpetual vows, the meaning of which it also explains. So
as never to lose sight of this it stresses the actual requirements in
the training of religious. The period of training must be extended, and
the training itself must be more progressive and better adapted to the
particular aims of each institute.
1) Nature of perpetual profession of the vows
Religious profession through which a religious publicly pledges
himself by taking vows to practise the evangelical counsels is
essentially a total consecration by which he is committed to the service
of God. Its very nature implies the necessity of its being perpetual.
Already, through Baptism, the Christian is incorporated in Jesus
Christ. By virtue of this incorporation his human nature is enriched by
the gifts of divine grace and is dedicated to the worship of God. He is
destined to continue the teaching, redeeming and sanctifying mission of
Christ of whom he is a member. By religious profession the follower of
Christ removes all the obstacles which might hinder him in realizing his
Christian vocation.
Charity orientates the life of the religious toward the same end for
which Christ came amongst us, the worship of God and the teaching,
redemption and sanctification of all men. This is the Church's mission
in the world. The Church receives in God's name the public vows of a
religious and consecrates him to the service of her own mission on
earth: "thence arises his duty to be discharged to the extent of
his capacities and in keeping with the form of his proper vocation. The
chosen means may be prayer or active undertakings in order to implant
and strengthen the Kingdom of Christ in souls and to extend that Kingdom
to every land" (Lumen Gentium, n. 44).
Religious consecration is not, therefore, directed solely to the good
of the individual religious but also to the common good of the Church,
and to the fulfilling of the very essence of religious life. In order to
do this external apostolic activities are not indispensable.
Contemplatives, through the example of their lives, through the
sacrifice of praise that they ceaselessly offer to God, through their
constant intercession, and through their union with the sacrifice of
Jesus Christ, accomplish in an eminent manner the apostolic function of
their religious vocation (cf. Perfectae Caritatis, n. 7).
Such total consecration to God by its very nature cannot be otherwise
than perpetual.
The love, in fact, that inspires this consecration is such that it
leads the religious never even to question the totality or finality of
his gift. The detachment required for such a consecration does not give
any grounds to the religious who, having offered himself totally to the
service of God might later wish to withhold a part of his affections,
his. thoughts or his activities. Doubtless, in exceptional cases the
Church can dispense a religious who through his own fault, or for other
reasons is no longer able to live up to what he has promised. But these
exceptional dispensations do not make religious consecration any less
total or definitive.
Such an important and decisive act cannot be made unless the
candidate for religious life has reached sufficient human and spiritual
maturity, which alone makes him capable of assuming in full knowledge an
undertaking "until death". He must clearly know the special
nature of the life of the institute in which he will have to live out
his consecration to God.
2. Long preparation, gradual and corresponding to the character of
each institute
The preparation for religious profession is comprised of two
essential phases; the novitiate and the trial period during which the
members are bound by temporary vows or other commitments (Special
norms, 10, 1) which separates the end of the novitiate from final
profession.
The religious life begins with the novitiate. The novitiate is the
primary initiation.
However, because of age, or of having lived up to then in a
non-Christian environment, or of having insufficient knowledge the
candidate for religious life may not be ready for this first stage. The
superiors can demand of him a period of trial and formation of longer
duration. This does not mean that the aims of the novitiate are any
different from those proper to the formation of a candidate for
religious life: "whatever may, be the special aim of the institute,
the principle purpose of the novitiate is to initiate the novice into
the essential and primary requirements of the religious life, and also
in view of greater charity, to implement its evangelical counsels of
chastity, poverty and obedience (Special norms, 13, 1).
Nevertheless it is well to recall that the conditions under which
religious are called to live out their spiritual lives differ greatly
according to whether they enter purely contemplative institutes, or
institutes devoted to apostolic activities or charitable works.
Hitherto, life in the novitiates was substantially the same for
all candidates to the religious life. The novice living in strict
separation from the world, without any external activity, devoted his
time to interior formation and learned the needs of the life of a
religious through meditation, prayer and reading. It would appear then
that in institutes dedicated to the apostolate, the novitiate should be
begun in a manner better suited to the life of the religious of that
particular institute. It is very important, in fact, that from the
beginning of his religious life the novice should be confronted with the
fundamental problem of the kind of life he is facing, namely, the
uniting of contemplation with apostolic activity. In order to ensure
this, during the course of his novitiate his superiors may set aside
special periods—to be spent even outside the novitiate—during which
the novice will make this difficult apprenticeship. Such periods can
also serve in completing their personal formation and in giving them a
better knowledge of the environment and society that they must one day
evangelize (Perfectae Caritatis, n; 2-d). But it is necessary
that they do not overlook their essential aim: formation for a life of
union with God in work, and so continue in themselves the purpose and
aims of the novitiate which consist in providing an adequate formation
for the religious life of their particular institute. Superiors must
strictly respect the purpose of "experiments". Those who are
surprised at these periods to be spent outside of the novitiate should
call to mind that St. Ignatius predicted them: pilgrimages, assisting in
hospitals and various other forms of the sacred ministry.
Formation must continue
After the novitiate, the formation must be continued until the taking
of final vows for a period of at least three years and not more than
nine years.
The problem arises concerning the nature of the temporary
commitments. Since the Pontificate of Pius IX, in the last century,
these bonds were constituted temporary vows. They had the advantage of
establishing the candidate in religious life. And it is lawful for
institutes to keep them. But some are likely to meet difficulties with
temporary vows. While they only oblige temporarily, the intention of
those who make them is directed
towards perpetual vows. Moreover, the facility with which they can be
dispensed from such vows does not add to the prestige of temporary vows.
For this reason some have considered eliminating temporary vows and of
putting in their place some other kind of bond, such as a simple
promise, an oath, etc. To prepare for final profession, the object of
this temporary bond must be the practice of the evangelical counsels
aiming always towards the perfection of charity.
The superior is given the faculty of allowing leave of absence in
particular cases, so that they may test their vocation and resolve any
difficulties about which they might be hesitant at the moment of their
definite promise.
In short, no effort has been spared in the Instruction to give the
candidate for the religious life the possibility of preparing himself,
with full knowledge and responsibility, for the definite decision he
must make at final profession.
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