Eschatological or Sacred Secularity: An invitation not to Respond

Therese Ivers has written a couple of posts contending with my arguments that the CV vocation for women living in the world represents a new and important form of secularity, namely an eschatological or sacred secularity the Church and world seriously and urgently needs. They may be found here: Secular Institutes and Sacred Secularity and here: Not Sacred Secularity! She has also asked that I not respond to those posts until she has more time to engage in a discussion of the matter. Fair enough. She is working hard on her dissertation, so I am not going to respond fully at this time; still, I do need to say she has either misunderstood or simply mischaracterized my position in significant ways. For that reason, perhaps it will help if I "outline" what I have already written and make explicit what I mistakenly thought was clear in my posts. 

1. My interest in CV's living in the world stemmed from a sense the vocation lacked substance and I found no one speaking of that substance, if it existed. Upon attending and/or writing about the consecration of friends I was embarrassed that all I could say about this vocation involved what it was not (not a Sister, no vows, no wearing of a habit, bishop is not the legitimate superior of -- you get the idea) and I was searching for better ways to say what this new and ancient vocation was about in the midst of all the things it was not. (By the way, I think the vocation's ancient quality might also be a key to understanding it as a significantly qualified form of secularity, because the early church did not yet neatly divide vocations into religious and secular; they lived in light of a fresh and compelling sense of eschatological secularity as a result in the Incarnation, Passion/Resurrection of the Lord, and resultant New Creation -- the now coming to be New Heaven and New Earth.)
2. I read an article by Sharon Holland, IHM suggesting CV's consecrated under canon 604 (I thought nuns were consecrated in this way under other norms) had a significant vocation which was secular. Because I was doing theology on Christ's transformation of the world in his passion, death and resurrection, and because "secular" has always been a kind of slur or reference to a second or even third-class vocation, the idea that the Church had chosen those living secular lives for consecration as Brides of Christ/CV's was exciting. More, Sister Sharon's article helped make a significant, if paradoxical, sense of a vocation I thought lacked "a job description" as I first put the matter, or a raison d'etre, as I might say today.
3. I also read the Rite of consecration and the homily associated with it and discovered a significant reference about virgins being "apostles in the Church and in the world, in the things of the spirit and the things of the world." (Sharon Holland, IHM had also referred to this significant characterization in her article.) This characterization clearly speaks of a secularity re the vocation (i.e., those CV's living in the world), but one now qualified by consecration. Because it reflects the new creation achieved in the death and resurrection of Jesus, a new creation where heaven has broken into our ordinary world, I called this eschatological secularity. Often I have used an alternative term, "sacred secularity," for this expression. Whichever term I have used, I am convinced of two things in its regard: 1) the CV vocation needs this secularity if it is to make sense and be influential for sake of the Gospel in our contemporary world, and 2) CV's, because they are not religious with the vows of religious, could serve the Church and world as genuine apostles of the Gospel if and only if they whole-heartedly embrace the witness to eschatological secularity our world needs so very urgently. (We don't think of them as instances of religious life-lite; this means they live a secularity but significantly qualified by their consecration.)
4. I have not been concerned with the nuns who receive the consecration of virgins (if they are going to receive this consecration they do so after solemn profession in which the usual prayer of consecration is not said; it is delayed and replaced by the prayer of consecration in the Rite of Consecration of Virgins during this celebration). Rightly, they receive only one form of consecration and of course, it is not to any form of secularity. Since they are essentially irrelevant to my position on eschatological secularity, I have mainly not included them in any reference to CV's or CV's living in the world.
5. I am concerned with understanding and perhaps providing the beginnings of a theology which allows the consecration of a woman living in the world to be a Bride of Christ to be theologically meaningful for the whole Church. I am concerned that without this the vocation will itself be irrelevant, elitist, and have no sense of mission or charism. (Until CV's themselves provide a theological apologia for their vocation which is relevant, prophetic, and truly ministerial or pastoral in some clear way, the consecration of women living in the world as Brides of Christ is a quaint, but anachronistic adaptation of a once-meaningful (!!!) vocation in the early Church.
6. At present there are two forms of the CV vocation, one secular in the significantly qualified way I have been speaking of, and the other religious. (Emphatically, these two forms are not religious and religious-lite!!!) I have generally only been speaking of the first. That is not the same thing as saying the CV vocation per se is secular. Thus, I have tried to be clear I am writing about women living in the world as CV's. Unless I specifically refer to nuns who receive this consecration, I am not including them in any references to sacred or eschatological secularity. (Again, since nuns were receiving the consecration before the Church promulgated c 604, I assumed they were not covered in canon 604 and would be able to be consecrated as CV's even had c 604 only spoken of the significantly qualified secularity I am mainly interested in.)
7. I recognize that the continuing admission of nuns to the consecration of virgins is a problem in several ways and I believe the solution would be to cease admitting nuns to this consecration. It is superfluous, confusing, and to some extent, anachronistic. However, again, my real concern is with the relevance and nature of the CV vocation for women living in the world and that is what I have been writing about. Therese appears to have missed that point, for whatever reason (perhaps I was unclear), and as a consequence, she significantly mischaracterizes my positions or affirmations in her blog posts.

The church has failed to honor secularity and secular vocations for too long but in reintroducing this truly ancient vocation she seems to me to have provided a means or occasion of developing an eschatological view of the world that does justice to the new creation achieved in the life, death, resurrection and ascension and the way heaven interpenetrates created reality. She could do this if CV's living in the world are seen as called to a significantly qualified secularity (though she could do it without them as well). Without CV's embracing and witnessing to this qualified secularity, however, it is the CVs' vocation that will suffer for the eschatological secularity is a new reality established by God in light of the cross. If the Consecrated Virgin living in the world does not witness to this new reality, and do so in particularly focused ways, she has to face a real danger of being irrelevant, powerless in terms of charism or mission, and anachronistic.

Entirely secondary to this is my interest in the question whether all religious women (and men) are brides of Christ or not. It is not a question for me. I know the answer, and my own experience. My Sisters in religion know the answer. (As one said about a month and a half ago, "Until I read your blog I didn't even know it was a question!!") The tradition is clear about this in many ways, and the Rite of Profession of Religious Women is clear about it as well; it leads to the application of the principle, [[As we pray, so do we believe. . .]] in this specific matter. If the promulgation of c 604 and the Rite of Consecration changed that, the Church will need to explicitly announce this, change her Rites of Profession -- at least for Religious Women, and develop a truly compelling apologia on why this shift has occurred and is valid and necessary. Even were she to do this it would be an uphill battle to have this teaching received by the whole church --- and reception would be necessary. 

While I am waiting to read Therese's yet unfinished and thus unpublished dissertation (which she "cautions" me to read in the posts linked below!), I should also note that one dissertation, no matter how compelling or brilliant, will not change the minds and hearts of all the faithful or of most religious women in this matter, nor will it compel the changes I have noted would be necessary (e.g., in the Rite of Profession of Women Religious). So, for the time being, I won't be responding to Therese's posts on this matter. However, since my own interest is in the Church's approach to secularism, and because I do have a concern with the coherence and genuine relevance of the struggling** consecrated virgin vocation for women living in the world, I will continue to answer questions and write about those topics. Recent posts on this matter include:  Are Consecrated Virgins Alone Brides of Christ? and On the Need for Serious Reflection

On my use of the word "struggling":

** I use the word struggling not because of numbers (those are up), but because of the lack of significant work on the vocation being done by CV's do not seem to be able to do much more than thump their breasts while proclaiming, [[I am a Bride of Christ, I am a Bride of Christ!!]] No one, so far as I know, is contending with this, and most of us want to celebrate with them. However, in parishes all over the world the response among clergy and the faithful to these assertions is something like, [[Okay. And. . .?]] or, [[Sure, if you say so. . . YAWN!]] Were such women to write about the witness of consecrated virginity and the paradigmatic womanliness associated with it in a world where sexuality is routinely trivialized and womanhood along with it, for instance, people might start perking up at the idea. Were they to embrace in a really wholehearted way the eschatological secularity CV's living in the world are called to witness to because their vocation effectively shows that heaven and earth now interpenetrate one another, the faithful might become downright excited by the vocation. But, so long as the accent is on proving and praising what sounds like the elitist identity of such women especially because it is thus coupled with depriving others of long established and cherished identifications, the vocation will continue to struggle not only for recognition among Catholics, but for real understanding and esteem.

That said, I believe the work of Therese Ivers (whom, again, I consider a friend --- at least when she is not taking gratuitous potshots at me on her blog!) is more nuanced than this in at least some ways because she builds on the idea that CV's are called to be Mothers of Souls. But again, if this descriptor is used in a way that attempts to deprive religious Sisters who have long mothered children and adults in every way one might think of but one, such a designation will be doomed to failure. Once again, in this matter too it is the eschatological secularity such a vocation would be associated with which would make such Mothering a unique charism or mission of CV's rather than an exclusive possession of the vocation.

A Note on Definitions and Misunderstandings:

(I suspect one thing that might help with misunderstandings is my defining pivotal terms more frequently than every few posts on this topic, particularly the word secular which is the adjectival form of the noun saeculum or age --- thus, for instance novum saeculum originally referred to the new age (and world) which was inaugurated by the Christ Event. I specifically identify an eschatological secularity with witness to this novum saeculum and the way heaven or eternity and our created world now interpenetrate one another. It is related to the at-least-potential sacramentality of our world and to the continuing Incarnation of God in our midst. For this reason, my usage differs in some ways from that which simply identifies the secular with the profane or simply counters secular with religious. But more about this when I also have time to write about this topic again.)

Resisting Sacred or Eschatological Secularity in the Vocation of the Consecrated Virgin

[[ Dear Sister Laurel, thanks for putting the post on Consecrated Virgins up again. Why would one want to argue that Religious Women are not espoused "properly speaking" while Consecrated Virgins are? Is there difficulty accepting the sacred (eschatological) secularity of the vocation?]]

Thanks for your questions. Let me say that the idea that CV's living in the world are truly, properly, betrothed to Christ and are to be called Brides of Christ and icons of the Church herself is right on. But this does not mean we must consider that Religious Women (and perhaps Men too!) are not properly Brides (or spouses) of Christ. 

If the entire point of the consecration of virgins under c 604 is to create women who are Brides of Christ in a way which is entirely unique to them and requires others to be deprived of the designation, then it seems to me this is, at best, a largely irrelevant vocation. But I don't believe that is the entire point of the vocation. When I first began writing about it I may have mentioned that for some time I felt it was sort of a vocation without a "job description"; more, it bothered me that when I wrote about friends being consecrated all I could say was what they were not (not a Religious, not vowed, not called Sister, etc.). So I began to read more about the vocation. Once I had read the Rite more carefully and some work by Sister Sharon Holland, IHM, et. al. I was convinced that the vocation had an important positive content, real substance, that our world needed especially at this time. That content or substance is the qualified (sacred or eschatological) secularity of the vocation.

As I have explained in other posts, the term secularity has often had a pejorative sense to it and in religious vocations there is a sense of "leaving the world" --- though there are both more sophisticated and abjectly simplistic notions of what this means. When religious make vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, their relationship to the world around them, and to "the world" constituted by those who resist or reject Christ, is substantially qualified. They do not live secular vocations. Until c 604 reinstituted the vocation of consecrated virginity for those living in the world, membership in secular institutes was the one vocation that claimed secularity as part of its very nature without the pejorative connotation. Still, more often than not aspirations to religious life were more marked than the secularity of the vocation. Lay standing generally was seen as secular, but this was similarly denigrated. But with c 604 and its revival of this consecration for women living in the world and called to serve [[ in the things of the spirit and of the world]], suddenly secularity takes on a new value, namely the value of the Kingdom of God.

We are living into a new (and ancient because it is Scriptural) notion of what will come to be one day when God is all in all. Our Christian lives are not about "getting to heaven", but rather being citizens of the Kingdom of God and proclaiming with our lives that one day there will be a single reality we recognize as a new heaven and a new earth. In Christ's death and resurrection God embraces the whole of God's creation and makes it part of his own life. God takes even godless death into himself and in the process destroys it forever. Again, one day God will be all in all. That is our hope, and it is a dimension of the Good News of Jesus Christ. So, given this eschatological vision it is critical that the Church clearly recognizes the possibility of consecrating those who live secular lives. That serves as a sign, in fact, a powerful symbol of this new and ancient eschatology.

Regarding your questions:

Thanks for patiently reading to this point but the background was important, both the nod to the history of the Church's approach to secularity and to the way theologians are speaking about eschatology today. It indicates that there is a long history still needing to be shaken off and unfortunately, the CV's who with their very lives and commitments, should symbolize this step forward re both secularity and eschatology, are, in some instances not doing so. The reasons are likely complex and involve both a kind of allergy to the idea of being a secular vocation, and an ignorance of the eschatology I have spoken of above. Some will speak of "secular-lite" to characterize the secularity of their vocation rather than moving toward a truly radical vocation that affirms fully both its consecrated and its secular nature. Others, in seeking to do justice to the radicality of the vocation focus on its consecrated nature alone, that is, to the idea that CV's are Brides of Christ, but without really speaking of the secularity of this espousal. 

In all of this I think you are right. There seems to be a resistance to accepting the secularity of the vocation, so much so that there seems to be a need to deprive women (and men) religious of the sense that they are truly espoused to Christ, but in a religious rather than a secular vocation. I believe that some of this resistance comes from the longstanding sense that secular vocations are 2nd class, but also, it comes from a missing sense of the charism of the vocation --- what I once half-jokingly referred to as the lack of a "job description". The Church clearly stresses that CV's are Brides of Christ, but until CV's fully and wholeheartedly embrace the secularity of this identity, the need to distinguish themselves in other ways will continue to crop up I think. 

Moreover, until the call to an eschatological and sacred secularity is fully and radically embraced by CV's, the division between CV's and religious (to the extent this exists now) will continue and some in the Church will continue to think of the consecrated lives of CV's as "religious life lite" or as evidence of women without the courage to go the whole way and become religious. There is an incredible equality between Religious and CV's, because both are espoused to Christ, consecrated by God, and committed to the coming of the Kingdom of God. They differ in that Religious have a religious vocation which  qualifies and limits the ways they can interact with the secular world and CV's a secular call without the same limitations but having as profound and challenging a set of obligations as are found in Religious life.

My point in all of this is that so long as CV's feel compelled to stress their identities as Brides of Christ or truly espoused while giving short shrift to the eschatological secularity also intrinsic to this form of consecrated life, they will continue to be a mainly irrelevant and dubious vocation. Once they embrace the really radical combination of consecration/espousal AND the transfigured nature of secularity that is the result of the death and presence of the Risen Christ in all of reality, this vocation will gain a relevance and significance that even the identity "Bride of Christ" cannot hold for others who are shut out from such aspirations. The vocation must be a proclamation of the Gospel; simply insisting that one is a Bride of Christ (and, especially, doing so to the exclusion or minimization of the qualified secularity constituting the vocation) is not a proclamation of the Gospel nor will it speak effectively to others of the substance of that Good News.

On Appropriate Perspectives: Loving Chastely vs Protecting One's Virginity

[[Dear Sister, with respect, why would requiring a manifestation of conscience in someone seeking something as important as consecration as a virgin be "problematical" as you put it? If a woman is not physically a virgin or if she has been lustful or involved in immodest activities and things like that, how can she represent this vocation? don't we have a right to know that the persons we admit to consecration really are virgins? Didn't you have to pass some kind of screening to become a hermit? Isn't this just part of the discernment process in determining who is called to this vocation or not?]]

Thanks for your questions. Let me talk about some of the concerns these two related ideas (1. more detailed physicalist definitions or focus (including the more scrupulous definitions of the meaning of the terms "public" and "open") and 2. the requirement that there be a manifestation of conscience in cases of personal doubt) have raised for me with regard to the vocation to consecrated virginity --- especially as these more physicalist definitions seem to me to be linked with larger elitist attitudes or tendencies among some CV's which assert things like "Religious should not be allowed to call themselves brides of Christ" or the notion that "in heaven some who were consecrated will wear the virgin's crown or aureole" while others, because of physical  or biological criterion, will not, and so forth. Perhaps that will help answer your question about why I consider the whole thrust problematical. I will try not to merely repeat what I have already said.

My first concern has to do with the nature of the vocation itself and what we are saying with it. Is it merely the consecration of physical virginity per se, a virginity defined in mainly physicalist terms, or is it the consecration of a person to a life of virginal (single-hearted) and spousal love? While these two things belong together we change the emphasis significantly when our focus is on establishing ever-more-detailed definitions of what it means to be virgin rather than on what instead constitutes violations (especially public violations!) of chastity in the virginal state. Once we cease measuring virginity (within this vocation) primarily in terms of love or the generous, sacrificial, and risky (by which I do not mean reckless) self-giving this entails and instead focus on the necessary avoidance of emotional and physical interactions or activities which might lead to a loss of physical virginity we have made a fateful move. I argue this is especially so given the more detailed ways in which these are being defined and which are confusing folks to the point which may actually require a woman check with her Bishop to see if she has violated them or not. Specifically, it seems to me that in introducing this whole issue we have significantly shifted the mindset with which a woman approaches the vocation, and therefore too, the nature of the vocation itself from one of generous self-gift to one of scrupulous self-protection. Perhaps paradoxically this is true because the canon seems to me to confuse virginity with any serious violation of chastity in the first place. Once that is done the definition of virginity needs to be continually and retroactively continually expanded in the way some are attempting to do now.

Both virginity (including sexual or genital innocence or relative innocence) and a commitment to generous or sacrificial self-gift can be protected and encouraged of course, but the perspective required to do so is different than this practice encourages. What it takes to do this is a perspective which defines (a life of consecrated) virginity in terms of self-gift and singleness of heart, a perspective which sees virginal love as a goal, not as a static or "starting" state one simply preserves; its achievement must be perceived as something which demands a woman engage profoundly with others --- not that she avoid such engagement. If the focus is on loving and singleness of heart, on generous and sacrificial self-gifting in ways which are graced and motivated by Christ and empowered by the Spirit, then one will not need to do detailed examinations of whether this activity or that experience actually violated one's physical virginity. One will generally be successful at preserving this physical state because they are striving for something more transcendent which will also include lesser or more limited  concerns.

However, if one's focus is instead on merely preserving a physical state, then one may very well fail to love --- and to miss opportunities to love while identifying them as "dangerous" or "near occasions of sin" or simply being blind to them altogether. It's a little like riding a bicycle between two posts. If a person looks at the posts, first one then the other, then again, etc., she will invariably crash into the posts. If, on the other hand a person sights along the top of the wheel to gauge its projected  movement along the path or, even better,  focuses as well as one can on the path beyond the posts --- that is, if she looks at where she wishes to go and is actually heading rather than where she does NOT wish to go --- she will pretty much sail through the posts without concern. If I look at what it means to love --- God, myself, and others --- and if I try to do so with greater compassion, sensitivity, generosity, sacrifice, and so forth, I am not likely to violate chastity; if, however, I am constantly concerned with my own chastity it will only be by luck or the sheer grace of God alone that I do not violate it because I have set my sights on violation. (By the way, we ought not tempt the Lord our God in this matter! Grace is necessary but so is the perspective it provides) Meanwhile there is no doubt that I will also fail to grow sufficiently in loving as fully as I am called to because love implies self-forgetfulness and risk while this perspective is not only relatively self-centered but is defined by the words, "Caution" and "Danger!". In this analysis perspective is everything and the approach suggested by some CV's seems to me to foster the wrong perspective.


Another example, this time from the history of Judaism might be better. Consider the commandment to keep holy the Sabbath. This was ordinarily interpreted to mean that one rested from work but it also meant to rest in God as well as to worship him. It allowed the whole of creation to rest on that day. Sabbath rest allowed one to foster an attitude of thanksgiving or gratitude for God and his gifts. It allowed one to foster a mindset in which an instrumental and even exploitative approach to reality (including people) was relinquished along with workaholism and all the ways we measure ourselves in terms of wealth, success, power, etc,  so that one might just be oneself with God and one's loved ones.

This broader and more demanding goal was stated as "keep Holy the Sabbath". Eventually, Judaism developed detailed lists of what was and was not allowed on the Sabbath. Sixty-nine forms of work were delineated as prohibited on the Sabbath. Throughout history, of course, developed even further in response to a changed culture.  In contemporary culture observant Jews had do ask themselves "May I turn on a light switch after the Sabbath has begun?" Drive or ride in a car? Etc, etc. In other words the focus or perspective shifted away from the goal to limited and delimiting notions of the means to that goal. It also fostered the hardening of a sacred/profane dichotomy. Is this what the commandment is about? I don't think so. And yet, this is invariably the direction things move when we are concerned with what we should avoid rather than with exercising the freedom and love of the children of God. (Remember Paul's Conclusions on Law vs Gospel.)

I think the Church herself saw this clearly in creating what seems to me to be a threshold definition of virginity rather than a highly detailed and physicalist one. (Again, it seems to me the canon confuses loss of virginity and violations of chastity since not all violations of chastity --- even if flagrant -- cause one to cease being a virgin; thus, I am instead suggesting the church created a threshold definition here.) While she clearly expects the woman never to have been married or participated in the marital act, in every other way the canon, rite of consecration, formal homily, etc seems to focus on loving others and witnessing to an all-embracing, demanding, challenging spousal love to which all are ultimately called. Again, when we keep our focus on the latter we are almost assured of remaining chaste in whatever state of life to which we are called. When our focus is drawn to the former, the detailed "thou shalt nots" ---- especially if this is linked to a sense of confusion or uncertainty --- we are more apt to fail at the larger task, the true call. In terms of the parable of the foolish virgins we might put it this way:  If attention is drawn away from Christ and his call to love others in the exhaustive way he loves us,  if our attention is drawn away from waiting on him to focus instead or even primarily on preserving physical virginity, if, that is, CV's shift their perspective from the love that gives freedom (and espcially freedom from fear) to an anxious, fearful and protective concern that, in Scriptural terms, brings "death", then CV's are apt to find their lamps are clean and shiny but empty of oil and unable to light the way to the wedding banquet. They may even find they have missed the Bridegroom altogether. Again, at bottom this is paradoxically at least partly a result of conflating any serious violation of chastity with a violation of one's virginity.

Manifestation of Conscience, a dangerous Precedent

The second concern I have is that if we allow (or require) women who are confused about the matter of their personal virginity (not least because of the previously mentioned confusion) and do not know whether they have ALSO violated chastity to make a manifestation of conscience so their bishop can decide matters, then unless the church refuses to consecrate such women or subsequently locks the consecrated virgin up in something equivalent to a medieval anchorhold we will need to require subsequent and regular manifestations of conscience to continue to protect such women's virginity. We will really not be able to adopt this idea of requiring a manifestation of conscience in cases of personal doubt only as a pre-consecration step. There are a couple of reasons for this.

First, if the woman --- whom we presume to be relatively intelligent and at least well-catechised if not theologically well-educated --- is confused or uncertain before consecration it can only be because 1) the definition of virginity is too difficult (or too narrow) for her  to grasp or the list of things which are violations are too complex or too vaguely defined for her to determine things on her own; there is no reason to think this will change after consecration --- especially since cultural and societal changes, physical changes in the woman herself, and the demands of ministry focused on loving engagement with others will assure this detail-oriented definition does not remain static, or 2) the woman is not really suited to the vocation or is really too immature to be admitted to consecration. In either case if such a woman is admitted to consecration there is no reason to think she will not need to be questioned and checked up on regularly.

One alternative, of course, is as you say, to treat the first manifestation of conscience as a screening procedure used in the discernment process alone and then presume the woman will never need this again. But this is inadequate; it is either naive or it sets a double standard. You see, once we set the precedent of having another person determine FOR a woman if she is really a virgin when she herself is doubtful we have taken what I called earlier a fateful step on a slippery slope that can only lead to more of the same. For the moment this women is presumably is a virgin but what about six months from now? A year? Tomorrow? How will she "protect her virginity" if she (and perhaps the church herself) is unclear on what constitutes an irreparable violation of that in the first place? This is, after all, what that confidential pre-consecration "talk" with her Bishop signaled. And how about those CV's who claimed to know what they were committing to? Do they really know what it means to remain chaste or was their focus insufficiently detailed and physicalist originally (as some CV's seem to believe the Church's working requirements for admission to consecration have been for the past 31 years)? Who decides? Best just call them all in regularly for a "confidential chat" with the bishop!

Obviously I am being a bit facetious here, but only a bit. Setting a precedent regarding the manifestation of conscience for a woman who is unsure she is really a virgin in order to consecrate her to a life of virginal, spousal love is a terrible and destructive idea which fosters the wrong perspective for generous, single-hearted, and selfless love. There are a number of other questions raised by you and also by other readers including: what happens to women who are already consecrated but cannot NOW affirm virginity in the face of more stringent (and also less demanding) definitions? How about those who fall into essentially private violations of these definitions? I will leave this here for now until I have more time, but I hope this has been helpful in clarifying some of my concerns.

Denying the Uniqueness of the CV vocation lived in the World??

[[Dear Sister, do you think the vocation to consecrated virginity lived in the world is valid? Do you think it is unique or special? Sometimes I wonder if you do because you seem like you would like to take away the thing which makes it special. CV's are Brides of Christ really, not just symbolically like Religious women. They are married, not just engaged. They are consecrated by God, not by themselves making vows as is true for religious and they are consecrated as individuals not as part of a community. I think their uniqueness in these things is a gift to the Church. It is what makes their vocation valid. You seem to deny all this. . . .[repetitive bits omitted]]]

First, thank you for your questions. I do believe the vocation to consecrated virginity lived in the world is a valid vocation and, like all vocations, I believe it has a special place in the Church. In fact, I am coming to believe that it is one of the most significant vocations existing in the Church today. (All vocations are more or less timely.) However, I also sincerely believe that like every vocation in the Church it is a gift only insofar as it is iconic of something all persons are called to in some way. It is charismatic only to the extent it meets needs which other Christians (and non Christians as well) have and yearn to be fulfilled --- and too, only to the extent that the Holy Spirit uses it to meet these needs in some focused way. Vocations are charismatic because they are gifts of God which people receive with joy as a way to God --- and not for themselves alone, but for others!! Two often when CV's or would-be CV's speak in the terms you have, the sense I have is that canon 604 and the consecration it provides for is a gift to the virgins themselves which they seem to expect folks to set up on a shelf and admire as precious and wonderfully wrapped, but not really useful or relevant to the lives of non CV's.

I remember that one CV once responded to a comment I made about the charism of CV's living in the world by essentially saying she would be quite surprised to find the pastoral need for a strongly secular AND consecrated witness to be present, much less relevant to the vocation. (The sticking point here was secularity.) But the simple fact is that determining whether something is charismatic, that is, whether it is a gift of the Holy Spirit or not involves determining whether there is a pastoral need or not.  What makes icons really iconic is not that they can be gazed at like a work of art, but instead that they are capable of drawing others into the world shared by both the icon and the one reading it and empowering them to serve similarly. For that matter, the really beautiful is only beautiful to the degree it grabs hold of and resonates with something shared by the one experiencing it. CV's are icons of a universal vocation and the identity of the Church herself. It should not surprise CV's then that to serve in this way means they must reflect characteristics all Christians share and are called eschatologically to share perfectly while also empowering others to take hold of this vocation with an ultimate seriousness.


It would be refreshing to see CV's writing about virginity and its place in our world, especially in terms of quality of commitments, trivialization of sex, the fraudulent and distorted nature of so much that passes for love today, etc. It would be wonderful to hear CV's speaking of the universal call to spousal union with God and the way in which their own vocations are iconic of this and complementary to the iconographic nature of marriage in this regard. It would be refreshing to hear CV's writing about the maternal nature of their vocations and how their virginity allows this to be lived out in a world  which is often so desperately in need of real maternal figures --- women who set aside their own needs, ambitions, personal prestige, etc for the sake of the life of others. It would be wonderful; to hear CV's writing about their place in the new theologies of secularity and mission which affect the way we see the Church and live out our Christianity. But, in the main, I do not hear that. Instead, the dominant topic is how CV's are Brides of Christ while others (Religious women and men) are not REALLY that or "only symbolically" that, etc.

On the use of the term Symbol:

Well, let's get a couple of things clear theologically and philosophically. First, it is not accurate to contrast symbolically with really. I know that Catholics are used to doing this in regard to Protestant notions of Eucharist but it has been almost 150 years since theologians articulated clearly that Symbols are the way the really real is made present; symbols participate in the reality they symbolize. Symbols are not merely arbitrarily agreed upon signs. They are living realities which are born, have a life span, and eventually die. They are not created by human beings but are instead recognized in the same way we always recognize participation in the transcendent and mysterious. They take hold of us with their power and we surrender to that. Thus, we do not say that something is "merely a symbol" anymore than we say a women is "partly" or "sort of pregnant." With regard to the Eucharist, saying that the bread and wine symbolize the risen and ascended Christ is not to say the species are not REALLY the Christ. Instead it is to say that this is one of the true and powerful expressions of his presence amongst us; it also suggests that it is capable of grasping everyone with its universality. To suggest one person is "only symbolically espoused" to God in Christ whereas another is "really espoused" is theologically and philosophically naive and wrong.

Secondly, to the degree something is made utterly unique (and thus robbed of its universal or symbolic value), that thing becomes more and more irrelevant and incapable of truly speaking to or empowering people. If the only way CV's consecrated under c 604 can take seriously their own consecration is by denying the very real spousal vocation of every person, the more iconic and eschatological espousal of Religious, and so forth, they ought not be surprised when people respond to the statement, "I am a Bride of Christ" with looks of incomprehension or shrugs amounting to a "so what?" attitude which is an appropriate comment on the irrelevance of the vocation. My own immediate (and entirely tacit) response to most of the writing I see by CV's (I know a couple of CV bloggers whose work is quite fine) is ordinarily a combination of "So what?" and "Oh, get over yourself!" My secondary response is something like, "No wonder people in the Church generally say this vocation makes no sense, is too precious, or simply lacks relevancy!! When will you say something about what this vocation means for the rest of us? For our world in need? For the Church's decision to renew it now when she is recovering a sense of the importance of the secular, the universal call to holiness, and the nature of the Church as missionary?"

Watch out for Assertions Which Absolutize Uniqueness!

I am not denying the need to reflect on the vocation, of course. But part of this reflection means looking carefully and prayerfully at the theological underpinnings of the call and at what the Church and the Holy Spirit are doing in renewing (or reprising) it now. It means adopting a necessary humility in regard to the vocation's specialness and uniqueness and appreciating that these MUST serve others and lead them to understand the similarity of call and dignity which they share. Vocations are never absolutely unique; instead they are like facets on a gem where each is both unique and yet possesses and underscores a similarity to and identity with the others while thus contributing to the overall beauty of the gem. Each facet catches and reflects the light differently at different times and places but they do so without depriving other facets of the same characteristics. In fact, a gem where one facet was utterly unique would be a seriously flawed gem. It might be worth something as a curiosity but not as a work of art with balance, complex inner relatedness, or complementarity and harmony.

I would thus disagree with your assertion that it is the uniqueness of the vocation which makes it valid. It is the Holy Spirit's impulse and the Church's discernment of the vocation's pastoral significance which make it valid. For instance, even with the eremitical vocation it is not enough to have the sense that some few individuals are perhaps inspired to this way of living by the Spirit. There must also be a sense that this call serves the Church and world in some significant pastoral way. Even the Desert Fathers and Mothers reflected a profoundly pastoral sense in withdrawing to the desert. Certainly it served their own personal holiness, but it also had a strongly prophetic quality which said to the Church:"You are too strongly allied with the world. You are called to be counter cultural! Leave this behind!!"

Today, in a world which is often too individualistic the strongly pastoral nature of the eremitical call to "the silence of solitude" and a life "lived for the salvation of others" is undoubted if ironic -- or if paradoxically expressed. I think there is no doubt that hermits say to everyone, "You too are called to this foundational relationship with God; this union or covenant with God is who you are most fundamentally. You too need silence and solitude; you too need less "friending" and a focus on true friendships instead." Consecrated Virgins, especially those living out their consecration in the world and in the things of the world as well as in and of the spirit and things of the spirit, will find the vocation's validity not only in its uniqueness but in its ability to call for its commonalities with others. Most often in Christianity it is the latter quality which makes something really special!

Regarding your other assertions about Religious, the way they are consecrated, supposed engagement vs marriage, etc, I have already responded to these notions several times and refer you to other posts which discuss the nature of religious profession, consecration, and espousal. If those raise questions for you or you disagree in some substantive way, please write again and I will be more than happy to respond.

Consecrated Virgins vs Religious: Which are Espoused to Christ?

[[Dear Sister Laurel, a CV has written that in [in contrast to] the Rite of Religious Profession, consecrated virgins have a spousal mission. She also writes, [[Con-trasted to the mission of the religious to live a religious life according to vowed evangelical counsels and separation from the world, the consecrated virgin's mission is to serve the Church primarily as Virgin, Bride, and Mother]] and then [[It should be noted that the Rite of Profession of Religious emphasizes the evangelical counsels and communal lifestyle and barely touches upon a Bridal or nuptial theme whereas the Rite of Consecration to a life of Virginity does not reference the evangelical counsels at all except virginity and the emphasis is entirely upon the themes of virginal espousals and motherhood.]] Does this support the idea that CV's under c 604 are Brides of Christ but Religious are not? Why would this CV make such an argument?]]

Well, I don't know the conclusions drawn from these comments by the person you are citing, but in and of themselves, these comments do not support that idea, no. Does this writer actually argue this explicitly? The conclusions they do support are part of the position I have put forth before, namely, Religious and CV's are similarly consecrated by God and espoused to Christ but they live this reality out differently in most cases due to differences in context, charism, mission, etc. Most fundamentally, one group lives it out as consecrated religious and the other as consecrated secular persons.  Beyond that, one group (ministerial religious) ordinarily lives it out implicitly while the other group (CV's living in the world) do so, and are meant to do so, explicitly. (Cloistered religious may do so more explicitly and some apostolic religious also legitimately feel called to do so.)

The profession  of evangelical counsels effectively separates persons from or significantly qualifies their relationship to the world in fundamental areas (i.e., those of economics, power, and relationships). These religious may or may not be called to witness primarily to espousal per se; instead they may be called to live out this espousal in ways which make something else more directly the gift they bring to the Church and world. For instance, the Sisters of Mercy are consecrated Religious, espoused to God, etc,  but the charism they specifically bring to Church and world is the gift of ministering Christ's mercy to the poor, marginalized and ignorant with a special vow for that. Espousal to God in Christ in an underlying and foundational reality which is usually left implicit in this as they act as spiritual mothers and sisters to the world of the marginalized and poor. In other words, for ministerial religious, their commitment to others often tends to move espousal per se to the background even as it moves the resulting gifts associated with spiritual motherhood and sisterhood to the fore. The gifts and graces of spiritual motherhood and sisterhood however, stem from their espousal/consecration which is itself a specification of their baptism.

CV's on the other hand are called upon to live out their espousal explicitly in a secular way and context. They are Brides of Christ but not Religious Sisters. They are consecrated women,  icons of the eschatological espousal every person is ultimately called to and they are called to live this out explicitly in the world and in the things of the world right here and right now. At the same time, while they are not vowed to religious poverty, or religious obedience, they, like every Christian, are called to embrace the values of the Gospel; these include the counsels of poverty, obedience, and chastity according to one's state of life. The apparent absence of reference to the evangelical counsels in the Rite of Consecration however, is due to the absence of vows or life in community, and to the vocation's secularity, not to the absence of these values more generally.

Especially, neither does the difference in emphasis of the Rite of Profession of Religious from the Rite of Consecration under c 604 indicate one rite refers to espousal while the other does not. Nor does any difference refer to a different degree of espousal any more than this difference refers to a different degree of consecration. Again, one rite refers to the espousal of Religious who live out their consecration in terms of public vows and (diocesan hermits excepted) life in community, while the other refers to the espousal of virgins living exhaustively consecrated AND secular lives where their identity as Brides of Christ is explicit and the fundamental ecclesial gift they bring to the Church and world.

I think the passage you have cited says as much. What it does not (and cannot honestly) say is that the Bridal imagery or nuptial import is absent in the Rite of Profession/Consecration of Religious, nor that where it is present it is different in kind or degree from that of the Consecration of Virgins living in the world or vice versa. What differs is emphasis and context, charism and mission. Both Rites use Bridal language while the insigniae given in  Religious Profession and the Consecration of Virgins living in the world is the same as has always been the case in any consecration and/or profession. These are nuptial in nature: veils, rings, etc. (Cf, for instance the picture and prayer of the giving of my own ring where the Bishop said, according to the prescribed rite: [[ Sister, receive this ring for you are betrothed to the eternal King: Keep faith with your Bridegroom so that you may come to the wedding feast of Eternal joy.]] So again, in both cases -- Religious and CV's living in the world -- espousal is real and fundamental. Where these two groups differ is in the way they are called by the Church to live this out and symbolize it for others.

Attempts to Deny the Nuptial Reality of Religious Profession

Though what you have cited does not say so, there is indeed a movement afoot (possibly only composed of a minority of CV's) to say that CV's under c 604 have the right to be called Brides of Christ where Religious do not.  One CV actually (and erroneously) wrote that she has the right to ask a Sister calling herself a Bride of Christ to stop doing so! But the Church herself has traditionally understood her own identity as reflective of a spousal bond and vocation and has Traditionally recognized a special expression of that spousal bond and ecclesial identity in the vocations of Religious women and men.  There is absolutely no indication that by reprising the secular vocation of canon 604 the Church wishes to affirm that CV's are Brides of Christ while denying Religious are similarly espoused. The evidence is quite the contrary in fact.

Additionally, some CV's have actually asserted that if Religious Women and Men share in the charism of spousality it weakens or dilutes the charism of CV's! Of course since we (Christians) are ALL ultimately called to this espousal and since the Church herself is the Virgin Bride of Christ, it hardly makes sense to argue that a lack of exclusiveness "dilutes" the CV's charism. ALL vocations, and especially all ecclesial vocations share in and express this universal conjugal love between God and his own. Relative to other vocations Religious and CV's image this universal vocation in a more explicit way even if they differ from one another in degree of explicitness,  just as those called to marriage and the holiness and sacramentality of sexual love image different dimensions of this same universal call.

What remains true is that CV's consecrated under c 604 cannot change almost 2 millennium of Church tradition simply because they are themselves in search of a rationale for their vocations which fails to center on (or, in some instances, fails even to recognize) the foundational secularity qualifying the consecrated nature of the calling. Graces, mission, and even the charism (gift quality) of the vocation may differ from those of others also called to reflect the ecclesial vocation of spousal (all-encompassing and total or conjugal) love; what does not change is the underlying spousal call and bond. (This is equally true for religious who reject the nuptial imagery and trappings associated with their profession and consecration.) Though other things may be at play, the apparent need to argue a difference in the consecration and espousal of Religious in distinction from canon 604 CV's seems to me to stem first of all from an inability to accept the radical secularity of the vocation. Because they do not accept this, they must find something else which makes their vocation truly meaningful and distinct.

Additional Reasons for this Denial:

I think there are a couple of other related reasons as well. First, this minority of CV's seem to be impatient with the Church's (meaning here the whole People of God's) slowness in coming to understand and appreciate this "new" vocation. Admittedly, it is sometimes frustrating to give oneself to a little-understood or appreciated vocation! This leaves the increased hiddenness of the CV's vocation to rankle with some CV's. Instead of allowing time for the Church as a whole to establish and reflect on the unique gift quality of a consecrated vocation lived in the world and the things of the world (and therefore living without distinguishing garb, title, vows, or insigniae beyond the wedding ring each CV wears), there seems to be a need to establish themselves as special and "set apart" in a way which also actually betrays the fundamental secularity and the charism of the vocation. We ought not need to suggest we are special merely in referring to what distinguishes us from other vocations; sometimes we are special because we share a charism with others while our mission in extending or mediating this charism to others is quite different.

Once CV's become more secure in articulating the charism and mission of their vocation as both conse-crated AND secular, I believe and hope the need to redefine the consecration and espousal of Religious will cease. The same is true when CV's living in the world become completely comfortable with the paradox I mention below, namely, that being set apart FOR and BY God in their case does not necessarily mean being set apart FROM others; it does not ordinarily involve distinguishing garb or insignia beyond their ring. For the CV living in the world, being set apart for God as a consecrated person in the church means secular lives, secular dress, etc. Certainly I have spoken with mature examples of this vocation for whom elitism is unacceptable even as they understand and live out both the uniqueness and the universality of their vocation; they give me hope in this matter. What is true, I think, is that only as CV's live out the paradox of their vocations wholeheartedly will the Church as a whole become more accepting of it.

Secondly, it seems to be the case that a number of CV's really desire to be Religious, but for some reason are unable or even unwilling to enter a congregation and move through all the steps and formation required. For that reason there seems to be a movement afoot to take a secular form of consecrated life and transform it instead into a quasi-religious form which simply lacks, "all the bells and whistles." In such cases, where the radical secularity of the vocation is actually denied, the common  and usually misguided question, "Why didn't you go the whole way and become a nun?" actually has some cogency. Related to this is the too-facile distinction of Religious life from secular life in a way which treats secular life as less than truly devout, and certainly as not fitting to one who is consecrated by God. As I have written here before, today the Church is moving to reappropriate a more adequate notion of secularity, an understanding which is to be carefully distinguished from secularism and where, whether consecrated, ordained, or lay, persons can embrace the fact that they are called to live out lives of radical discipleship to Jesus in the world and in the things of the world precisely in order to call others to the same discipleship. CV's will especially call others to recognize that they too share in some way in the vocation of spousal union with God in the midst of secularity.

This means that CV's living in the world have actually been given a significant place in this dimension of the Church's mission. Paradox is often hard for people to appreciate or embrace but here CV's are called to embrace and live the paradox of consecrated or eschatological secularity. The Church seeks to hold these two things together as a piece of its own sacramental character; she consecrates virgins TRULY living in the world so that they might be icons of the Christian paradox where the divine is exhaustively revealed in flesh, the sacred is revealed in the ordinary and all of existence is called to be a living symbol of the reality of God's love which is poured out in the creation of ordinary life.

Can Consecration Ever be Undone?

One piece of recent developments in reflecting on the meaning and significance of c 604 vocations, and a piece which must be relinquished, is the notion that the CV is made Bride of Christ in a way which changes her ontologically. In saying this I do not mean that consecration does not change the person at all --- especially in her capacity to receive the grace of God which is specifically pertinent to her unique vocation.  However, I do mean that the person is not made "Bride of Christ" as though there is some sort of special form of humanity, some unique genus known as "sponsa Christi" into which the CV has been transformed which is unlike what happens to religious during their own consecration.

At her consecration the CV is uniquely graced and made especially capable of receiving the graces associated with bridal, virginal, and maternal love proper to the Kingdom or Reign of God; at the same time she is made legally and morally responsible for receiving and living out these graces as best she can on behalf of others in accordance with Canon Law and the Rite of Consecration --- especially as a consecrated person and icon of the universal calling of the whole Church to be Bride of Christ.  As with Religious who are consecrated by God at perpetual or solemn profession (this does not happen with temporary profession), the consecration per se cannot be undone; even so, what can be relinquished or undone are the legal and moral rights and obligations which attend and mark the CV's entry into the consecrated state of life.

Religious are dispensed from their perpetual vows in order to achieve this relinquishment. When dispensed in this way they do not cease to be consecrated but they are no longer consecrated persons in the Church. Since CV's have no vows they cannot be dispensed from them, but it does happen that CV's leave the legal rights and obligations enjoined on them with consecration and thus too, leave a state of life with its commensurate obligations, responsibilities, and public privileges and expectations. Such a CV does not cease to be consecrated, but she does cease to be a consecrated person (i.e., one in a public state of  consecrated life) in the church. She ceases, in other words, to be an iconic figure in the way CV's living in the world are called to be.

Is Christ the Consecrated Virgin's "Husband"?

Another way of  buying into extravagant and elitist ontological claims is by embracing the notion that Christ becomes the CV's "husband." I admit that I have never been comfortable hearing some use this term and I have become more uncomfortable with it as it is linked with increasingly elitist notions of the CV's consecration. We must always remember the analogical nature of our language when we are speaking of God; when the eschatological reality of the metaphor "spouse" or "Bridegroom" is replaced by the this-worldly legal and social term "husband" we are no longer taking significant care with our language or our theology. Further, we are talking about a change in Christ's own identity which is also exclusionary and I emphatically don't think we can do that.

Those who are espoused, betrothed, or (perhaps less appropriate linguistically) "wedded" to Christ become unique sharers in and witnesses to the CHURCH'S identity as Bride of Christ. We never say Christ is the Church's husband; it is simply not appropriate nor theologically accurate. We refer to him as the Bridegroom because it preserves the dimension of a real marriage which is not yet consummated or marked by home-taking. We do the same with CV's; the Church does so in all traditional, official, or authoritative documents referring to this vocation that I have seen. (See for instance par 18 of Pius XII's "Sacra Virginitas" where Pius carefully and consistently maintains the distinction between Christ as spouse and others as "husbands" --- even going so far as to speak of virgins as espoused to Christ and thus free of husbands!) Neither then do we say the Church (nor individual Sisters, Brothers (!), Friars (!), or CV's) are Christ's wives. Such language strips away the eschatological and ecclesial nature of the identity the CV or any of these others have accepted and makes claims of a spousal bond apparently ridiculous. I believe this usage is theologically naive and harmful to the actual witness the CV is meant to give.

To summarize then, because the vocation is ecclesial and makes the CV an icon of the Church's own identity, as well as because it is a share in an eschatological reality and points to a union which occurs in eternity when neither man nor woman will be given in marriage, it cannot make of Christ a "husband" in a this-wordly sense. Again, in Xtn theology we tend to keep the Scriptural language of espousal (Bridegroom, spouse, Bride) and eschew more common language of wife and husband in speaking of this dimension of consecration precisely to maintain the eschatological nature of the union and identity.  (Again, refer to Pius XII's usage in Sacra Virginitas.) Taking care in this way might also prevent some of the extravagant and elitist claims we are seeing  and hearing from some CV's. After all, I have called this vocation one of eschatological secularity; just as CV's cannot deny or diminish the secularity of it and be true to it, neither can they legitimately deny nor diminish its eschatological nature without betraying the vocation.

Is the CV really a Bride of Christ then? Yes, absolutely, but in a way which is representative, iconic, proleptic, and prophetic, rather than exclusive or elitist. The CV is a Bride of Christ in a sense which says, "I am what you are also called to be eschatologically, and I am this here and now so that you might know you are also called to this!" She is not a Bride of Christ in a sense which says, "I am a Bride of Christ and you consecrated Religious are not!" nor, "I am a Bride of Christ now and will be so in eternity in a way you will never be!"  Instead, the CV consecrated under c 604 lives out the specifically ecclesial identity of  Bride to the eternal Bridegroom in a particularly vivid and coherent way; she does so precisely so others may also do so (and aspire to do so) in the differing ways God calls them to share in this foundational ecclesial identity. The call and mission of CV's consecrated under c 604 is a tremendously significant ecclesial witness which serves the whole Church in reminding us of something fundamental which has been lost sight of, namely, the universal call to spousal love, the call of every person and God's Church as a whole to a union with God through Christ that is best seen as "nuptial."

Though I have focused on the nuptial character of this vocation, I should also say that this call is also profoundly significant in extending and clarifying the Church's new and evolving stances on secularity and mission! This too is part of its charism and a witness and challenge the world needs profoundly. This vocation reflects a form of "set apartness" which itself is only truly expressed when it is lived exhaustively within the culture; it is the "set apartness" proper to the Incarnation of the Word of God and to a Church whose very nature (like that of the God she worships and mediates) is missionary. The CV living in the world ministers and missions, not merely by going out to segments of the world preaching, teaching, healing, and so forth, but by manifesting the Kingdom of God here and now IN secularity --- albeit a wholly transformed secularity, an eschatological secularity proper to the "time" when God will be all in all.

Please also see: On Consecrated Virginity: the Nature of This Espousal

Consecrated Virginity in the Face of a Conciliar Ecclesiology and Missiology

[[Hi Sister, could you respond to this excerpt from a blog I ran across? (It is called Sacramentality [Sacramentality] and is by Shana Smith.) I don't think you have done this even though the post was written 2 years ago. Thanks.]]

[[Though Sr. Laurel has definitely brought up some things for me to process, especially the phrase in the homily for the Rite of Consecration to a Life of Virginity where the bishop says to the virgin (s) that they are "apostles in the Church and in the world, in the things of the spirit and the things of the world." I can see how this can be read as indicating a distinction between the Church or the the things of the spirit "the sacred" and the things of the world "the secular" and a consecrated virgins call to embrace both these dimensions of life, bringing them together. I need to grapple with this in relation to this gut feeling of mine that a consecrated virgin is called to be given over to prayer and work that directly and inherently forwards the Church's charitable and evangelical mission- in the world. 

For an example I can appreciate a difference between being the manager of a Sears store and being a missionary. It seems that a if a consecrated virgin were hypothetically a manager of Sears her evangelizing would have to be done along side her professional work and not directly through it whereas if she were to work as a missionary of sorts to the poor of her diocese that that work would intrinsically be forwarding the mission of the Church in a more direct way and therefore be more fitting to her vocation to a public form of consecrated life. It will take some time for me to work out how I see all these points relating and to test and hold fast to what I come to believe to be good and true.

Another interesting point to add which Sr. Laurel brought up, is in expressing her desire that "Ms. Cooper...address arguments rooted in Christology (for instance, the notion that Christ was paradigmatically secular in the life he lived even as he incarnated God exhaustively and thus witnessed to transcendence at every moment and mood of his life)." I think this is interesting, though what I would like to see is a treatment of how Christ's more secular work as a carpenter related to his following years of ministry and how this could possibly be significant to this discussion.]]

Hi there! You are right. I never really responded to the blog entry from which you excerpted this. Time simply got away from me (as I recall, the original entry is more complicated than this excerpt and had some stuff about sacred vs profane art which I needed to spend greater time on); anyway time and discussions moved on.

I am honestly not sure what specifically you would like me to respond to in this excerpt that I have not already done indirectly in posts on the vocation to consecrated virginity but let me try to say something somewhat new by focusing on Miss Smith's concern with missiology. Recent events in the Church have underscored changes in the Church's approach to missiology which I have noted before, but it is on my mind not only because Shana mentions it but because a friend also spoke of it today during a conversation recalling what Francis is saying and doing regarding VII, the distinction between evangelizing and proselytizing, and so forth.

My own position on the contemporary vocation of Consecrated Virgin Living in the World is this: 1) the Church herself in her Rite of Consecration of CV's living in the World clearly and unambiguously refers to the vocation as both secular (done in the world and in or with the things of the world) and consecrated (given over to and in fact set apart by God for this secularity in a wholehearted and formal way). She calls CV's living in the world to be Apostles and thus too, to bring the Gospel into all of the nooks and crannies of our world as well as in the ways that nuns and priests cannot, and 2) this is PRECISELY the mission of the Church --- as, I think, we see Francis making so abundantly clear to us in every word and gesture. (Some who complain that he ought not be seen to eat and drink with others seem to ascribe to the notion that there is a separation between sacred and profane --- a position with which Francis apparently does not agree.) Further, it is a mission of the Church that has simply not been adequately undertaken and it is therefore important for consecrated persons living  unashamedly secular lives with the special grace of God to demonstrate how this is done.

What I am saying is that there is to be no artifical divide between Church and world, at least insofar as the Church is missioned to serve as leaven in the dough of the world.  Eventually the two are to be transformed into the Kingdom of God. When the dough has risen one cannot presume to cull out the yeast anymore than one can distinguish the bread and wine from the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Similarly the Incarnation destroyed the division between sacred and profane caused by sin but we have not worked hard enough to implicate this victory in our own world and lives. Too often we have strengthened it in the name of "protecting" the sacred from taint by the profane. This shows a profound misunderstanding of the power of holiness which transforms and sanctifies what it touches.

The paradox in all of this is that in being "set apart for God" the consecrated virgin is called to live out to this consecration in a way which is profoundly immersed in the world without being or becoming OF the world just as Jesus did in incarnating the Word exhaustively. Instead the world is itself to become consecrated and OF the Kingdom. She is called to transform the world with her presence --- as humble and apparently unremarkable or even relatively invisible as her presence there is. She is called to trust that her ministry produces profound changes and provides a profound witness precisely because and insofar she is both consecrated AND completely immersed.

You see, in my own vocation people do not always see a life of prayer as possible for them --- though of course it is. Instead they see I live the life of a religious and they still think that certain things they will never have or commit to are therefore necessary to live a life of true prayer and holiness, including vows of poverty, chastity and obedience which make my life something other than secular. While I value my vows and vocation more than I can say, and while I believe my vocation is incredibly important in today's world and church, I also understand that these elements of it represent a limitation on my ability to call people to the fullness of Christian secularity. Too often my standing as a religious is thought to suggest that whole-hearted commitment to Christ or the attainment of genuine holiness requires one BE a religious or otherwise separated from the world of ordinary reality (not, by the way, that anyone is accusing me of holiness of course!). On the other hand, the hiddenness of my vocation has sometimes left me tempted to undertake more visible and clearly-valuable ministries than one of  the silence of solitude. I must trust that God knows precisely what he is doing and precisely what  others need in calling me (or anyone else) to this vocation and because I HAVE trusted that I have come to understand the charism of this vocation in ways I never could have otherwise.

A New and Ancient Ecclesiology and Missiology to Which Consecrated Virgins are called to Witness

The Church, however is moving beyond this more exclusive notion of holiness and perfection. She sees and proclaims clearly now that holiness is the universal call of the WHOLE Church, the entire People of God, and that it is possible and necessary for those living secular lives. Further, she clearly says with canon 604 that one does not need to be a religious or quasi religious nor work for the institutional Church directly to fulfill a vocation to holiness. Secular vocations are not a kind of left-over calling for those without a "higher vocation" or direct employment in the church. They are, instead, a very high calling indeed, a calling to an exhaustive holiness --- so much so that some consecrated women are called to demonstrate and witness to this with their lives. The early Church knew this and the vocation of the consecrated virgin was profoundly counter cultural in the way it called the most marginalized to holiness in Christ. Gradually that sense was lost and, along with the ordained priesthood, Religious life became seen as the privileged way to holiness (a piece of this gradual usurpation included crowding out the vocation of secular consecrated virgins in the 12th Century or so; only CVs who were also solemnly vowed monastics remained).

The Church has recovered the universal call to holiness with Vatican II just as she is recovering the notion of catholicity as yeast within dough --- that is, just as she recovered and reclaimed the Greek rather than the Latin sense of catholicity. (cf Reforms Francis is Calling For) The canon 604 vocation is a piece of this reappropriation. Consecrated Virgins living in the world can actually call their lay brothers and sisters to accept their share in this new vision and mission in ways religious cannot do. In other words, it is a profoundly post-VII vocation which furthers the aims, ecclesiology, and missiology of the Council even while it reprises the earliest Church's experience. What it seems really important for CVs and candidates for this vocation to realize is the the Church's theology of secularity is a developing reality. It began with the recognition of the vocation of the laity and shifts in our sense of the meaning of missiology, but is actually developed and strengthened by the call to consecrated secularity with c 604. CV's living in the world represent an ecclesial vocation, not in the sense  that CV's are called to work directly for the Church as employees, nor even merely in the sense that their vocations are mutually discerned and mediated by the Church,  but also because they are persons whose very lives are the new icons of this Vatican II ecclesiology with its shifting sense of universality and a correlative missiology. They are icons of what it means to be yeast within the dough and evangelizing ecclesia pervasively and effectively present within the world.

One clarification, when I spoke of Jesus' life as profoundly secular (and wholly Divine too!), I was not speaking of his work as a carpenter as though some pieces of his life were secular and others were not or some were more secular than others. Neither am I doing so with CV's living in the world.  My point was simply that Jesus' most profound ministry was undertaken in a secular context (and apart from the specifically religious context of his day). He lived a life of complete union with God as he lived a wholly secular life, eating and drinking with sinners, overseeing the financial and other affairs of his band of disciples, moving from house to house, etc. Except that he routinely went apart to pray and was itinerant, his life was a secular one, that is, one lived in the world subject to all of its rules, etc. We simply cannot say he came down from the mountain occasionally. The opposite is true. We cannot call his carpentry more secular than his preaching and teaching either. Both were profoundly sacred aspects of his life sanctified by his union with the one he called Abba. Thus I am saying that these two dimensions of his life are so intimately intertwined in Jesus as to be wed in him. He is the one who makes all things holy with his presence. I believe CV's as icons of a similar espousal are called to this very thing. 

Another example who might be edifying to consecrated virgins living in the world is Saint Paul --- "the least of the Apostles" as he put it. Remember that he worked as a tent maker everywhere he went. Despite the fact that he was a mystic, an Apostle, a theologian and a founder of local Churches, Paul lived a secular life. He is very clear about this and in fact, it seems clear that he dislikes anyone who tries to divvy things up in artificial ways, whether by Enthusiasts, those expecting the parousia momentarily so that they neither worked nor contributed to the life of the community, or whomever! For Paul there was no conflict between being wholly consecrated to and by God and living an entirely secular existence where authentic mission was ALWAYS a central concern.

Consecrated Virginity and Separation from the World

[[Dear Sr Laurel, Thank you for answering my e-mail in the past. I have read your comments on phatmass about consecration to both hermit and consecration (sic) virgin with interest - especially the possiblity (sic) of a call to both a spousal relationship with Christ and the call to contemplative solitude. Just to take things a little further... do you think it is possible that a vocation to consecrated virginity can include an element of separaton from the world (whilst in the world), living a life with a great degree of solitude and contemplative prayer ?]]

If one is very careful in delimiting how one uses the term "world" (the Johannine usage has three senses and canon law reflects these in c 603 for instance), if one is not attempting to mitigate much less do an end run around the essential secularity of the vocation, and if one is careful not to actually be embracing (or attempting to embrace) eremitical solitude, then yes, I believe one could integrate a secondary "separation" (i.e., not being of the world which is supported by contemplative prayer) with the secular (being in the world) character of one's vocation as well as integrating the contemplative dimension of one's life with one's active and ministerial life. Besides being profoundly Christian this is the only way I can see what you are referring to actually working for a canon 604 CV. For that matter, it is probably also the only way one can genuinely maintain a profoundly eschatological secularity.

You see, while the hermit embraces stricter separation from "the world" primarily in the sense of "that which is resistant to Christ", she ALSO embraces a stricter separation from the things of the world which are more ambiguous (qualified goods and realities which are mixtures of (the) godly and godless) than even other Religious, and thirdly, in her call to remain within her cell living a life of assiduous prayer and penance, she often maintains a stricter separation even from elements of God's good creation per se. (These unqualified goods are often sacrificed in order to maintain custody of the cell, an even greater good for the hermit.) A consecrated virgin, like every other Christian, is called by canon 604 to embrace "separation from the world" in the first sense but in relation to the other senses of the term she is entirely secular. Thus, unlike religious whose relationship with the things of the world are qualified by their vows and hermits who are called to stricter separation from the world than even most religious, the CV under canon 604 will live, work, and minister in the world which is ambiguous and freely relate to the world which is God's good creation. If she negotiates this division in senses of the term "world" and integrates contemplation with a ministerial life in and to the world she will actually be living the very thing which distinguishes secularity from secularism; she will be refusing to allow the secular a place of ultimacy in her life and will, moreover, be modeling an appropriate (eschatological) attitude toward the secular.

What remains primary for the c 604 CV, however,  is the fact that by definition her vocation is a secular one (that is, it is lived out in the world and exercised in the "things of the spirit AND the things of the world"). This does not allow her to opt out of engagement with or ministry to the world and it means her contemplative life serves her secularity. Frankly, many people live (or attempt to live) as lay contemplatives today; they combine responsible secular lives with a strong contemplative prayer life and, apart from the consecration of the virgin per se which they do not share, this actually seems to be what you are describing. Remember that it is the Virgin's consecration under c 604 itself which obligates her to and makes her capable of  an eschatological secularity the world needs very much. However, the moment one's description of the CV's life veers into eremitical or semi-eremitical solitude (for instance with references to "great degrees of solitude") one may actually be speaking of a betrayal of c 604's essential call. Thus, the subject line of your email to me refers to a "hermit element" in the OCV vocation. I would say that description is illegitimate and should never be used with the c 604 CV. Every significant Christian vocation should probably have a contemplative dimension which requires a degree of  physical solitude and silence and contemplative prayer, but these are not "eremitical elements" nor are they specifically eremitical at all. Something more is required to make them eremitical --- which is why I argue that living a pious life alone is, of itself, not essentially eremitical.

You write: [[ I know that the Rite refers to the CV living in the world, but I always thought that this referred to the fact that the CV was not in the monastery and therefore in the world. My reasoning came partly from my understanding that the CV vocation originally was lived in solitude or within the family context, and later CV's started to live in community which led to the formation of monasteries. Therefore, it could be said that the same vocational call to a consecrated spousal relationship with Christ was lived both in the world ( i.e., alone or with family), and in the monastery. ( I would see the main difference being that in the monastery there is the addition of religious vows). ]]

But in this I would argue you are mistaken at several points. First, as I have written several times in response to Jenna Cooper's "secular lite" position, the Rite which was renewed by the Church in c 604 does not merely say "living in the world" as though this merely means "rather than living in a monastery." It says (cf. the homily) that one is called to live in the world and serve one's brothers and sisters "in the things of the Spirit and the things of the world".  As I have said a number of times in posts on this topic there are two forms of consecrated virginity today, one lived in the world (a secular form), and one lived as a religious in a vowed expression of separation from it (a specifically cloistered form). I would argue that Canon 604 very specifically reprises a secular form of the life which existed into the 12th century (until 1169 CE) side by side with the cloistered Religious form and was, unfortunately, eclipsed by it. This is really the charism and more immediate source of canon 604, the form of the life the Church sought specifically to re-establish in a world crying out for witnesses to consecrated or eschatological secularity. 

Even if one seeks to move back behind this fact to the early Church, it is important to remember that in the early Church, worship was done in house churches; it was homes that were the center of ecclesial life and consecrated virgins were a central part of this life. Public and private life interpenetrated one another and their boundaries were blurred. The same is true of lives of prayer; folks lived integrated lives of profound prayer AND profound secularity. The entire Church community described in Acts of the Apostles embraced the values later associated specifically with the evangelical counsels of Religious life. This did not make them monastics or other than secular. When folks decided to embrace solitude and rejected "the world" (as in the desert Fathers and Mothers) they left this more integrated life behind and traveled into the desert. Monastic life grew directly out of this desert/eremitical movement as lauras were transformed into monastic communities per se. Meanwhile religious profession via the vows qualifies one's relationship to the world in at least two and sometimes three senses of the word and creates a form of relative separation from it, especially in the senses of 1) that which is resistant to Christ, and 2) that which is ambiguous, the realm of power, wealth, and so forth. The monastery setting is an appropriate physical way of accommodating this entire pattern of qualified relation to the world as is life in community more generally. It is a symbol of a life which is NOT the original form of consecrated virginity, that is, not secular, and not given over to both the things of the spirit and the things of the world.

[[b) - Also, can it be understood that the main service of a CV could be prayer? ( The Rite distinguishes service and prayer, which suggests a form of service on top of prayer as service - or is that not necessarily the case? ) I wonder, because the Rite does suggest that the lifestyle is adapted to the gifts of a person, which could include a predisposition to a life of contemplative prayer and a degree of solitude) ]]

No, I don't think so. Again CV's are consecrated to serve the church and world in the things of the spirit and the things of the world. They are called to a form of eschatological or consecrated secularity.  While prayer is a central and critical component of the CV's life, it is not the defining characteristic, at least not to the extent where it could be said to detract from or replace service in more direct ways. If a person has the necessary gifts and a predisposition to contemplative prayer, this is wonderful and certainly serves any authentic active ministry, but if you are speaking of the gift and predisposition to a contemplative life and vocation per se then  it is unlikely you are speaking of a vocation to canon 604 for women living in the world; again canon 604 very explicitly articulates a secular life of service in the things of the world as well as of the spirit.

If a woman truly feels called to a contemplative life and even to one of eremitical solitude, then I personally believe she should pursue these in a specific and conscious way, either in a monastery, a semi-eremitical community, or perhaps, in rare cases, as a diocesan hermit. These avenues as well as religious life more generally are open to her in the contemporary Church as is lay contemplative life so, unless her original discernment and formation were completely inadequate or skewed and her consecration premature or ill-advised, I wonder why she would want to formally embrace a specifically secular vocation and then fail to live it (or even seek to redefine it as an essentially contemplative or even semi-eremitical one) because she has now discovered different gifts and a different sense of call. This does raise the question of adequate discernment however, and it argues for consecrating only mature vocations, rather than allowing the consecration of women whose spirituality is not yet well-defined. (Note well that I am not ruling out elderly CV's embracing a life of prayer in their post-work years, but this is a different question I think.)

You also write: [[To explain my question further: c) - My impression is that some if not most of the early virgins lived lives of prayer, lived at home, and were not so involved in apostolic service - which was more the domain of deacons / deaconesses. I don't have ready literature to support this view, it's more of an impression that I have gained with time and general reading, although I would like to follow this up if I have the opportunity.

d) - While I intend to be loyal to the teaching of the Church, and seek to understand it more fully, I wonder how interpretations have developed historically... In the light of Vatican II which encouraged a return to roots of consecrated life, it does seem to me that some of the modern interpretations of CV, (perhaps including the Rite itself ), do not always make room for the expression of the vocation as it was in the early Church. ]]

Unfortunately, from what I have seen and read, there is not a lot of direct evidence regarding the nature of the lives lived by virgins in the early Church supporting this. I have seen nothing that indicates they lived essentially contemplative or eremitical lives, for instance.  Again, I think it goes without saying they were women of both deep prayer and significant service. I say this in part because categories were not so sharply drawn at that time so the lives of deaconesses and virgins probably overlapped, especially given the domestic focus or locus of local churches as well as the sense that virgins dedicated to Christ became "men" in a spiritual sense and that they specifically argued for the opening of ministry in ways that would not have been possible otherwise. What I am also suggesting here is that the evidence of what virgins who had given themselves wholly to Christ did in the face of being barred from certain ministerial roles suggests this limitation was more a function of cultural biases than it was the acceptance of a true charism. Thus, St Perpetua et al argued for their essential "maleness" and struggled to be allowed to minister in all the ways men did. This hardly suggests they saw the original charism of their lives as one of separation from the world or of being given over to contemplative prayer except to the degree this supported direct ministry and witness in and to the world.

However, this seems to me to also be somewhat beside the point in looking at c 604 vocations. As I noted above, in promulgating canon 604 the Church seems very clearly and deliberately to have been recovering the secular form of the life that not only pre-dated but also had developed side by side the cloistered form and, again, which was first subverted by the cloistered form of it (cf Sharon Holland, IHM's essay on Consecrated Virginity today) and then was completely eclipsed by it in a Church which came to value Religious life and devalue the secular. It seems to me that contemporary CV's must be keenly aware of and honor not only these more immediate roots of her vocation, but also the correlative reasons the Church established canon 604 when she did as well as the limitations she imposed by removing references to a habit, living in community, vows of obedience, etc. In particular the contemporary CV under c 604 must be able to see her vocation in light of Vatican II, the emphasis on the new evangelism and missiology, and a growing esteem (and need) for a consecrated secularity which is in necessary contrast to both secularism and to (non-secular) Religious life as it is institutionalized today. It would be nice to see CV's who have read the proceedings leading to the promulgation of canon 604, for instance. If we want to understand the mind of the Church in reprising this life that surely seems to me to be a primary source of understanding the authentic charism of this vocation.

There are a number of posts I would refer you to here which have already covered these points more adequately. One of them is Notes From Stillsong Hermitage: Minimized Secularity, a Legitimate Development? Another is Notes From Stillsong Hermitage: Secular vs Secularism and Consecrated Virginity but others would also be helpful, I think. I hope you will look at these (cf the labels below as well as the links).