Private Vows in The Laity/Spirituality

[BarbTherese]

Barb, the SVDP is an amesome group.  We have a conference at my parish.  

Thank you for your post, Eowyn and I agree.  St Vinnies do much needed work in a community and parish -  with SVP spirituality as formation and support.  In our parish, we could really do with some younger members - all of us now are quite long in the tooth and while there is a wealth of experience, physical ability starts to break down with advanced age. 

[BarbTherese]

Just to keep things re private vows to the lay celibate state in one place, here is a post I posted into VS.  I hope the post comes out ok as we cannot preview our posts and test links posted:

http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/topic/136988-common-questions-about-religious-or-consecrated-life/?do=findComment&comment=2720918

 

[oremus1]

Barbara have you considered making a blog, and moving all your posts there? you have done a ton of research into private vows as a vocation, but there is so little out there on it. there is only one blog, mulier fortis. it would be great if you could make a blog all about your vocation for discerners. a bit like the sponsa Christi blog for CVs. there is only one blog about provate vows, mulier fortis, but it was more that she could not get to be a CV rather than she felt called to it, and she renews the vows every year in a special mass. it does not have much info about private vows. yet so many women aroun the world would love to learn about this rare vocation, it is mentioned in vita consecrata and (I thnk ) christifideles laici. you could upload all your thoughts and interesting things you have read, and your ideas on the vocation. many widows and men  could be called to it, since only in some areas of Europe and Asia are there consecrated widows.

how did you discern this, as opposed to secular institutes, or CVs?
God bless you

[BarbTherese]

Barbara have you considered making a blog, and moving all your posts there? you have done a ton of research into private vows as a vocation, but there is so little out there on it. there is only one blog, mulier fortis. it would be great if you could make a blog all about your vocation for discerners. a bit like the sponsa Christi blog for CVs. there is only one blog about provate vows, mulier fortis, but it was more that she could not get to be a CV rather than she felt called to it, and she renews the vows every year in a special mass. it does not have much info about private vows. yet so many women aroun the world would love to learn about this rare vocation, it is mentioned in vita consecrata and (I thnk ) christifideles laici. you could upload all your thoughts and interesting things you have read, and your ideas on the vocation. many widows and men  could be called to it, since only in some areas of Europe and Asia are there consecrated widows.

how did you discern this, as opposed to secular institutes, or CVs?
God bless you

​Thank you for the suggestions, affirmation and questions, oremus1.

1.  I probably wont be making a blog as much as I would like to do so - they are too complex for me and therefore time consuming .  But I am taking your suggestion on board and will look into it again.  Also, I will speak to my SD about it.  The investigations I have made seems to me to indicate that a blog would be sufficiently time consuming to take me away from other things and I am not convinced that that is the road to travel.  My thoughts have been that if dUSt decides to lock this thread (I am the main contributor and often the only one) then I am put into a position where I might possibly want to consider a blog but prior to such a move, I need to be convinced it is the way I should travel.

2.  How did I discern a vocation to the lay celibate state with private vows?  It was in stages over years until finally I felt a very strong call to quite deliberately choose to remain in the lay celibate state with private vows (and why) and this was affirmed by my SD at the time.  Decision and conviction was not a happening, it was a journey and it is a journey that continues to unfold. My SD was a theologian lecturing and living in our seminary and a priest religious.  My current SD is a priest religious.  It is all too long a story to go into it just now - it is buried somewhere in this thread I think.  I will come back to your question at a time when I have more time and address it, but I really do fear it is too long a story to sit down and write about, since I am far too long winded.  In brief, I had been living what my SD called a type of religious life (35yrs ago or so) and a specific way of life I called simply "Bethany".  I did not 'create' the way of life, it just unfolded in my path - a series of 'happenings' that became stable in my way of life.  After a bit of a read back and reflection, I am laughing - truth is probably that I don't really know how it all happened.  It just did! 

Why did I call this way of life "Bethany". That was accidental too.  A friend of mine had taken up calligraphy and wanted to make a sign for my residence back then - hence I had to pick a name and I picked Bethany since I knew it figured in the NT and in the life of Jesus.  Years later having been given a computer, I researched the name and realised just how it really did summarise my way of life.  But between being given a computer and understanding the wonders of Google was a journey too.

[BarbTherese]

Incidentally, I would not qualify for CV since I was married and have two sons (one my foster son).  My marriage is many years annulled and I do remain very close to my two sons.  As for some form of consecrated life - they are institutions and institutions that were entirely reluctant even adverse to considering me due to Bipolar - I was very ill  indeed for 20 years......stability and sanity (whatever it is indeed) unexpectedly returned 10 yrs ago roughly.  I still take medication and have regular contact with my psychiatrist.

I did enter monastic life in my early forties (now almost 70yrs) but rather quickly realised that I did not have a vocation to the life and was very much a square peg desiring to fit into the proverbial round hole, as much as I admired the life and still do.  Strangely, I just now realise, sanity probably returned around about the same time as an absolute conviction settled in that I was called by God to lay celibacy under private vows and why. I am lousy with dates and memory is appalling. Retelling my story can be difficult since I can state something and then later realise that I had got the sequence wrong.

[BarbTherese]

While I still will raise the matter with my SD, I have prayerfully and reflectively decided at this point that as long as dUSt leaves this thread open, I wont be starting a blog for all the reasons I have already mentioned.  If my SD nudges me in the direction of a blog, then I will give prayerful thought to the matter then although I will be telling him that personally I certainly am not drawn in that direction in the slightest.  This hasn't been a difficult decision for me, I have merely revisited decisions already made.

Again, I thank you for your Post and comments, oremus1

 

Edited April 7, 2015 by BarbaraTherese

[AccountDeleted]

While I still will raise the matter with my SD, I have prayerfully and reflectively decided at this point that as long as dUSt leaves this thread open, I wont be starting a blog for all the reasons I have already mentioned.  If my SD nudges me in the direction of a blog, then I will give prayerful thought to the matter then although I will be telling him that personally I certainly am not drawn in that direction in the slightest.  This hasn't been a difficult decision for me, I have merely revisited decisions already made.

Again, I thank you for your Post and comments, oremus1

 

​Barb, I don't read blogs very much so I for one am glad you post here. Thanks for keeping us updated on what's happening with you, and for doing such thorough research into the lay celibate life of private vows. I can't be bothered reading all the Vatican documents anymore (I used to read them a lot but now I read more for pleasure - lazy me) so it is nice that you take the time to research and post here. Cheers.  

[oremus1]

​Barb, I don't read blogs very much so I for one am glad you post here. Thanks for keeping us updated on what's happening with you, and for doing such thorough research into the lay celibate life of private vows. I can't be bothered reading all the Vatican documents anymore (I used to read them a lot but now I read more for pleasure - lazy me) so it is nice that you take the time to research and post here. Cheers.

​
Yes but you are a regular on phat, and do not come here just for Barbs thread of only for info on private vows. if I remember rightly, you are much older than most people and already found a vocation.

Whereas my point was that people who are specifically looking for info on private vows vocations find it very hard to find anything this detailed, so a blog would open it to a wider audience.

Obviously up to you Barb

EDIT: Just to add, nunsense is now on my ignore list as she keeps following me about the boards and being horrible to me. So I will not reply to any more of her posts. sorry if the thread is disjointed as a result. keep it kind peeps

Edited April 7, 2015 by oremus1

[AccountDeleted]

​Yes but you are a regular on phat, and do not come here just for Barbs thread of only for info on private vows. if I remember rightly, you are in your 60s and married.

Whereas my point was that people who are specifically looking for info on private vows vocations find it very hard to find anything this detailed, so a blog would open it to a wider audience.

Obviously up to you Barb

​I don't get your argument here. Yes, I come to phatmass for many reasons and have done so for over 8 years. I love reading Barb's posts on this topic and would miss them if she weren't posting them here.

But you don't know me, and your assumptions are in error. You have only been here for just over a year while Barb and I are veterans of phatmass and know each other through personal emails.  We have emailed each other specifically about things like writing blogs or books etc so I know how Barb feels about this.So if she doesn't want to post on a blog, I respect her choice.

By the way, I am NOT married and in fact, I spent many years in convents, Carmelite ones mainly but also Benedictine ones and hermit lauras. I have been in private vows since 2007. So please don't post things about my private life, especially since you don't know anything about it. Thank you.

And by the way, your post about this came across as just a little unwelcoming, so that is why I responded. You sort of sounded like you were saying that she shouldn't post this here. But she has already respected the VS focus on priesthood and religious life by posting this in the Open Mic. So I don't see any problem with the thread at all. And as she has said over and over again, she will respect whatever decision dUSt makes about it.  If there are others who want to know more about the lay celibate vocation in private vows, they will no doubt find their way here eventually. The rest of us have. done so. And we are the richer for all her research. If I misunderstood your reason for asking her to start a blog, I apologize. But we want her here.  

Edited April 7, 2015 by nunsense

[BarbTherese]

I thank you both for your comments. 

I am really grateful when other members chime in and post with any and all comments or questions.  Please feel free to jump in and have a say, make comments - ask questions. In fact, I was really hoping initially that that would be the way the thread would unfold.

I do keep a tally of the number of views and since 25.2.15 there have been 901 views, an average of 20 views per day if my maths is ok and so it seems to me there is some interest anyway in the thread and I am not just raving on to myself.  I never intended this thread to go on and on - I intended that it cover the period from permission being received for the Home Mass and then the Home Mass itself and that would be the end of things. 

I don't feel at all that I should not post into this thread.  My feelings are that we have an Administrator and also moderators - and this thread is their problem as to whether it stays open or is closed. 

 I do think that a blog would be a really good idea - I just don't have the computer know-how to be confident about what I am doing...........also, I am often far too long winded and I do suspect that a blog might become obsessional with me and eat up far too much time and direct focus in that direction almost solely.  I am not confident I could detach myself from such an exercise.  Personally, I have warning bells about a blog.

 

Edited April 7, 2015 by BarbaraTherese

[BarbTherese]

There probably is a wealth of research in this thread.  I made private vows initially some 30 years ago or more - and it has been a hair raising, distressing, challenging and often confusing yet Joyful type of journey, since I was not only journeying with private vows, but with bipolar disorder as well and so I had to bring all things into perspective not as 'the world' viewed it all, but as The Lord would do so.  "The world' did not embrace me, but I knew for sure that The Lord did. I had to detach myself totally from cultural influences and invest totally and absolutely in the spiritual and without loosing a sense of the funny and absurd in life - including in myself.  This of itself was quite a journey. This necessitated not only research into private vows, but also moral and spiritual theology........as well as mental illness.   I needed to find my place, who I was, in the scheme of things and in the total lack of anything (in The Church) concise and readily available on private vows and mental illness back then some 30 years or more ago.  Thirty years ago, private vows were unheard of in The Church (Catholic cultural consciousness) while the potential to make private vows existed in The Church (Theology).   As I journeyed I did begin to sight the very real tension, even opposition, between our Catholic cultural consciousness and our Theology.  Thirty years ago, mental illness was viewed quite negatively by both the general community and my then Church community.  I was a complete outcast, a 20th century leper as it were.  I had been stripped of everything, including my sanity at times.  I became very much aware that I was not alone and that amongst mental illness sufferers there were very many terribly far worse off than I was and with terrible stories to relate - stories that were ongoing with no human hope ahead of any sort of relief on any level.

"All is Grace" (St Therese of Lisieux)

 

Edited April 7, 2015 by BarbaraTherese

[oremus1]

I love this thread!

More questions if you don't mind

1) do you find it hard to get spiritual direction for your vocation? because most priests I met had never come across anyone making private vows when I made mine ( I was in my early 20s and wanting to become a CV)

2) how will you celebrate your anniversaries? another home mass? renewal of vows?

3) did your friends and family understand what you were doing? private vows as opposed to remaining single without vows?

4) do your parish know and understand what you did?

5) Mulier Fortis has a special annual missa cantata in her parish and she renews her vows with the priest in front of everyone then the parish puts on a special brunch. it is a big celebration. would you ever have this?

6) do you ever read things about CV spirituality? it might be nourishing. like Marmion Sponsa Verbi http://www.liturgialatina.org/benedictine/sponsa.htm

7) if you could be a 'consecrated celibate' similar to a CV, would you do that?

[oremus1]

I think this is a beautiful story!!!

[BarbTherese]

I love this thread!

More questions if you don't mind

1) do you find it hard to get spiritual direction for your vocation? because most priests I met had never come across anyone making private vows when I made mine ( I was in my early 20s and wanting to become a CV)

Hi again Oremus 1!  I do not mind at all, not one little bit, re any questions.  I rejoice!  Ask away and I will do my best to answer.

  I went 20 years without being able to find a spiritual director after my first SD (priest religious and theologian) died of cancer.  There was an understandable, I feel, reluctance to direct a person who suffered a mental illness and who had made private vows.  Not only was there a lack of education re mental illness, there was also a lack of education re private vows.   I tend to think not much has changed really in a general sense. 

2) how will you celebrate your anniversaries? another home mass? renewal of vows?  For me, private vows are intrinsically and truly a hidden way of life and so I very much doubt that I will 'loudly' mark in any way any anniversaries.  My Home Mass was actually a renewal of my life private vows.  I did not instigate the whole process, I only raised the subject with my SD and before I knew what was what he had spoken to our Vicar General who spoke to our Archbishop and eventually I had permission.  I was overjoyed.  My SD asked me to prepare a certificate, which he signed as well as my two brothers as witnesses.  Father also made for me a certificate for the blessing of Bethany (residence).  It really was all quite overpowering for me.

3) did your friends and family understand what you were doing? private vows as opposed to remaining single without vows?  At first, some of my family thought I was going off the rails again with a bipolar episode.  I did not dispute this - I felt that as time passed with me remaining well, they might re-look at their attitudes.  I felt that only time could bring about change.   Certainly, they all knew I had been deeply religious and I suspect they probably felt that this was due to the presence of mental illness, although not an overt presence (psychosis) until I was 28yrs of age.  A neighbour, suspecting that my committed Catholicism was mainly due to mental illness (the rate of sufferers of MI who are religious is quite high) asked my mother (she is now dec'd) "How long has Barbara been religious?" Mum replied "I think Barbara was religious from the first moment she opened her eyes and that her first word was "God" ".  Now all that is poetic licence and even gross exaggeration on the part of a loving mother - but certainly I have had a relationship with The Lord since my earliest memories.

One of my brothers did quite surprise me at the Home Mass stating that this was something I had always wanted. The presence of two Carmelite nuns, one a prioress, did add credibility and they have known me for near on 35 years it must be.  I recall my first SD (priest religious and theologian) saying to me one day: "Strive to be credible"......I replied "And if I don't, Father, will I be incredible?"  He was not amused!  Never a man to suffer fools gladly.......(I was his penance )

4) do your parish know and understand what you did?  No, not at all.

5) Mulier Fortis has a special annual missa cantata in her parish and she renews her vows with the priest in front of everyone then the parish puts on a special brunch. it is a big celebration. would you ever have this? No, not at all.

6) do you ever read things about CV spirituality? it might be nourishing. like Marmion Sponsa Verbi http://www.liturgialatina.org/benedictine/sponsa.htm

Probably from time to time I read a lot about each of the consecrated states and the related spirituality, way of life.  I have never particularly focused on Consecrated Virginity, while I have read much on  the subject.

7) if you could be a 'consecrated celibate' similar to a CV, would you do that?  I am unsure on this point.  Consecrated Life is a great honour as well as a great responsibility and accountability, although I am not fussed re the latter two.  I really do think that our Baptism is the greatest honour and that any further call and vocation is simply how to live out our Baptism. Baptism does involve great responsibility and accountability.  "To whom more is given, more will be expected".   Because there is so little available about private vows, I think that those called to lay celibacy under private vows need to do their own researching wherever it might be available and make decisions about how they are going to live out the vows in the day to day.  My SD asked me to write my own rule of life and in the writing I did the defining - although the rule was simply written words enshrining and defining how I had been trying to live for 30 years or so.

There was a move, I know, amongst theologians and Rome to give thought to a consecrated state for those living under private vows and this would, it was felt, be along the lines of a secular institute.  I have heard nothing more than that really.

God's Will unfolding in the days, minutes and hours and so I am quite open to change anywhere.

​

[BarbTherese]

I think this is a beautiful story!!!

​Thank you very much - this is very kind of you.