In the Catholic Church, a religious institute is "a society in which members, according to proper law, pronounce public vows, either perpetual or temporary which are to be renewed, however, when the period of time has elapsed, and lead a life of brothers or sisters in common."
A religious institute is one of the two types of institutes of consecrated life; the other is the secular institute, where its members are "living in the world". Religious institutes come under the jurisdiction of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.
Description A member of a religious institute lives in community with other members of the institute and observes the three evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience, which they bind themselves to observe by public vows.
Classification
Since every religious institute has its own unique charism, it adheres to a particular way of religious living whether contemplative or apostolic. Thus, the nuns of some contemplative orders are subject to papal enclosure.
Other religious institutes have apostolates that wherein their members interact with the secular world, such as in teaching, healthcare, social work, while maintaining their distinctiveness in communal living. Several founders required members of their institute not only to profess the three evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience, but also to vow or promise enclosure or loyalty.
Religious orders are discerned as: monastic made up of monks, some of whom may be clerics, or nuns who are bound to live and work at their monastery and celebrate the Liturgy of the Hours in common mendicant made up of friars, some of whom may be clerics, who, while living and praying in common, may have a more active apostolate, and depend on alms for their support canons regular made up of canons (clerics) and canonesses regular, who sing the liturgy in choir and may run parish-like apostolates clerics regular made up of priests who are also vowed religious and who usually have a more active apostolate
In each instance, the term "regular" means those following a rule; either a pre-existing one such as the Rule of Saint Augustine or the Rule of St Basil, etc. or one composed by the founder, which generally incorporates aspects of earlier, traditional rules such as those mentioned or the Rule of Saint Benedict.
Terminology Traditionally, institutes for men are referred to as the "first orders". Those of women as the second orders. Some religious orders, for example the Franciscans or the Dominicans, have third orders. Associated members who live in community and follow a rule are called third order religious. Various religious congregations are tertiaries. Members who, without living in formal community, have made a private vow or promise, such as of perseverance in pious life. They are often called third order secular.
In common parlance, all members of male religious institutes are often termed monks and those of female religious institutes nuns, although in an accurate sense, a monk is one who lives in a monastery under a monastic rule such as that of Saint Benedict. The term friar properly refers to a male member of a mendicant order.
The term nun was in the 1917 Code of Canon Law reserved for members of a women's religious institute of solemn vows, and is sometimes applied only to those who devote themselves wholly to the contemplative life and belong to one of the enclosed religious orders living and working within the and reciting the Liturgy of the Hours in community.
Historically, what are now called religious institutes were distinguished as either religious orders, whose members make solemn vows, or religious congregations, whose members make simple vows. Since the 1983 Code of Canon Law, only the term religious institute is used, while the distinction between solemn and simple vows is still maintained.
Admission and religious vows
Admittance to a religious institute is regulated by the requirements canon law states. Religious profession can be temporary or perpetual: "Temporary profession is to be made for the period defined by the institute's own law. This period may not be less than three years nor longer than six years."
Broadly speaking, after a period spanning postulancy, and novitiate and while in temporary vows to test their vocation with a particular institute, members wishing to be admitted permanently are required to make public and perpetual vows.
A vow is classified as public if a legitimate superior accepts it in the name of the church, as happens when one joins a religious institute. In making their religious profession, the members are "incorporated into the institute, with the rights and duties defined by law", and "through the ministry of the Church they are consecrated to God."
Typically, members of religious institutes either take vows of evangelical chastity, poverty, and obedience (the "Evangelical Counsels") to lead a life in imitation of Christ Jesus, or, those following the Rule of Saint Benedict, the vows of obedience, stability (that is, to remain with this particular community until death and not seek to move to another), and "conversion of life" which implicitly includes the counsels of chastity and evangelical poverty. Some institutes take additional vows (a "fourth vow" is typical), specifying some particular work or defining condition of their way of life. E.g., the Jesuit vow to undertake any mission upon which they are sent by the pope; the Missionaries of Charity vow to serve always the poorest of the poor.
The traditional distinction between simple and solemn vows no longer has any juridical effect. Solemn vows once meant those taken in what was called a religious order. "Today, in order to know when a vow is solemn it will be necessary to refer to the proper law of the institutes of consecrated life."
Should the members want to leave the institute after perpetual vows, they would have to seek a papal indult of dispensation. The benefits of the profession are of a spiritual nature.Dom Columba Marmion, Christ the Ideal of the Monk, Ch. VI.
Daily living in religious institutes is regulated by canon law as well as the particular rule they have adopted and their own constitutions and customs. Their respective timetables ("horarium") allocate due time to communal prayer, private prayer, spiritual reading, work, meals, communal recreation, sleep, and fixes any hours during which stricter silence is to be observed, in accordance with their own institute's charism.
Religious rules, constitutions and statutes
Religious institutes generally follow one of the four great religious rules: Rule of St Basil, Rule of Saint Benedict, Rule of Saint Augustine, and the Rule of Saint Francis. The Rule of St Basil, one of the earliest rules for Christian religious life, is followed primarily by monastic communities of Byzantine tradition. Western monastics (Benedictines, Trappists, Cistercians, etc.) observe the Rule of Saint Benedict, a collection of precepts for what is called contemplative religious life. The Rule of Saint Augustine stresses self-denial, moderation, and care for those in need. Many canons regular follow the Rule of Saint Augustine.
Carmelites follow the Rule of Saint Albert, which was written specifically for them in the early 1200s by Albert of Vercelli and approved in slightly revised form by Pope Innocent IV. Jesuits follow what is called not a rule, but the constitutions composed by Saint Ignatius of Loyola, which laid aside traditional practices such as chanting the liturgy in favour of greater adaptability and mobility.
Some institutes combine a rule with constitutions that give more precise indications for the life of the members. Thus the Capuchin Constitutions of 1536 are added to the Rule of Saint Francis. In addition to the more fundamental provisions of the rule or constitutions, religious institutes have statutes that are more easily subject to change.
Foundation and approval
Religious institutes normally begin as an association formed, with the consent of the diocesan bishop, for the purpose of becoming a religious institute. After time has provided proof of the rectitude, seriousness and durability of the new association, the bishop, having obtained permission of the Holy See, may formally set it up as a religious institute under his own jurisdiction. Later, when it has grown in numbers, perhaps extending also into other dioceses, and further proved its worth, the Holy See may grant it formal approval, bringing it under the Holy See's responsibility, rather than that of the bishops of the dioceses where it is present.
For the good of such institutes and to provide for the needs of their apostolate, the Holy See may exempt them from the governance of the local bishops, bringing them entirely under the authority of the Holy See itself or of someone else. In some respects, for example public liturgical practice, they always remain under the local bishop's supervision.
History
First millennium
Roots in Egypt and Syriac- and Greek-speaking East From the earliest times there were probably individual hermits who lived a life in isolation in imitation of Jesus' 40 days in the desert. They have left no confirmed archaeological traces and only hints in the written record. Communities of virgins who had consecrated themselves to Christ are found at least as far back as the 2nd century. There were also individual ascetics, known as the "devout", who usually lived not in the deserts but on the edge of inhabited places, still remaining in the world but practicing asceticism and striving for union with God, although extreme ascetism such as encratism was regarded as suspect by the Church.
Paul of Thebes (fl. 3rd century), commemorated in the writings of St Jerome, is regarded as the first Christian hermit in Egypt, his withdrawal into the desert apparently having been prompted by the persecution of the Christians at the time. Saint Anthony was the first to leave the world to live in the desert for specifically spiritual reasons; St Athanasius speaks of him as an anchorite. In upper Egypt, sometime around 323, Saint Pachomius the Great decided to organize his disciples into a form of community in which they lived in individual huts or rooms (cellula in Latin), but worked, ate, and worshipped in shared space.
Guidelines for daily life were drawn up (a monastic 'rule'), and several monasteries were founded, nine for men and two for women. This method of monastic organization is called cenobitic or "community-based". Toward the end of his life Saint Pachomius was therefore not only the abbot of a monastery but also the head of a whole group of monasteries.
The Greeks (e.g. St Basil the Great of Cappadocian Caesarea) and the Syriac-speaking east had their own monastic traditions (e.g. St Ephrem of Nisibis and Edessa).
Gaul The earliest forms of monasticism in Western Europe involved figures such as Martin of Tours, who established a hermitage near Milan. He then moved on to Poitiers, where a community gathered around his hermitage. In 372 he was called to become Bishop of Tours, and established a monastery at Marmoutiers on the opposite bank of the Loire River. His monastery was laid out as a colony of hermits rather than as a single integrated community.
John Cassian began his monastic career at a monastery in Palestine around 385 to study monastic practice there. In Egypt he had been attracted to the isolated life of hermits, which he considered the highest form of monasticism, yet the monasteries he founded were all organized monastic communities. About 410 he established two monasteries near Marseille, one for men, one for women. In time these attracted a total of 5,000 monks and nuns.