Question About Vows

[krissylou]

Final vows: from my understanding most communities re-affirm their vows every year.

 

This is true for the Daughters of Charity.  They only ever make one-year vows and keep renewing them each year as they expire.  (And if a Daughter of Charity chose not to renew her vows she would be free to leave at that point.)

 

There may be others that do that but I've only heard of the Daughters of Charity.  (They have some unusual set-ups because St. Francis de Paul was bending over backwards to try to create an active women's congregation when women religious were all required to be cloistered.  So in order to have women out and about doing stuff he had to create some new categories.)

 

Most communities, once you take final vows you're set for life.

 

Now plenty of other communities will *devotionally* renew their vows on a regular basis.  Maybe annually on their major feast day, maybe as part of jubilee celebrations.  This is fine and lovely.  But it doesn't actually DO anything.  And if, say, you have a splitting migraine on Vow Renewal Day and are flat on your back in the infirmary rather than in the chapel, well that's a bummer that you missed it but you are not then out of vows.

 

It's similar to a married couple "renewing their wedding vows" on a major wedding anniversary.  That's nice.  Nothing wrong with it whatsoever.  But it's not as if their vows have expired!

[Chiquitunga]

the Daughters of Charity are not or never were specifically Religious to my understanding, http://doihaveavocation.com/blog/archives/1051  I think Religious will always profess perpetual vows eventually.

 

 

[Sponsa-Christi]

Echoing the point made here...all religious eventually make life-long vows. Permanent, public vows are one of the things that define religious life properly so-called. Communities that don't make life-long public vows are often classified as Societies of Apostolic Life, which is what the Daughters of Charity are.

 

Another Society of Apostolic Life are the Oratorians of St Philip Neri. Technically, they actually don't make any kind of legally binding commitment to their community, because St. Philip Neri wanted his brothers to make the daily choice to life their life, with this choice coming from a place of total freedom. However, after their initial formation, they do publicly state their intention to remain in the community for life. An Oratorian friend of mine said that they call this their "solemn I-think-so"!

[Catherine Therese]

Distinction to be made on the usage of the word "novitiate".

Many (perhaps most) orders are referring to the Canonical Novice Year when using the term "Novitiate". This comes after the postulancy and always BEFORE vows are made.

By "Canonical Novice Year" I am referring to that minimum year stipulated by canon law of cloistered discernment and formation prior to professing first vows. Some communities take longer than the minimum year required and it is not uncommon to hear of two-year long Novitiates (where the word is used in the sense described above).

OTHER orders (for example, the one to which I used to belong) use the term novitiate in a broader sense, encompassing a process of formation where the sister lives separation from those sisters in the house that have professed final vows (with the obvious exception of their formators and perhaps a few other specific exceptions). This process of formation often includes the postulancy, the Canonical Novice Year and the first year or two of temporary vows. I used to belong to an order that had a four-year novitiate (Postulancy, Novice Year, First Year of Vows, Second Year of Vows. The sister then moves into the professed part of the house and lives separation from the sisters still living their novitiate. Something to note is that my old congregation was quite a large one, which allowed for this kind of structure. I suspect things are quite different in small communities.

Perhaps this distinction helps clear up the confusion in the thread above?

Neither usage of the word is WRONG. It IS important to understand the particular approach taken by a community in which you might be interested in order to avoid equivocating your head into a twist!!