Matters Arising: Non-Catholic Religious Vows

Rev. Fr. Nicholas Mary, CSSR

Members of the schismatic Orthodox churches of the East and even some Anglicans sometimes consecrate themselves to God by the three vows of religion: poverty, chastity and obedience. If these non-Catholics are received into the Church, are their vows considered valid?

The Code of Canon Law lays down the principles that apply here:

“A vow, that is, a deliberate and free promise made to God about a possible and better good, must be fulfilled by reason of the virtue of religion. Unless they are prohibited by law, all who possess suitable use of reason are capable of making a vow. A vow made out of grave and unjust fear or malice is null by the law itself. A vow is public if a legitimate superior accepts it in the name of the Church; otherwise, it is private.”1 

Vows made by non-Catholics abiding by these conditions are certainly vows, and do bind them inasmuch as they contain nothing contrary to God’s law (vows, for example, to rob a bank, to exact revenge, or never to become a Catholic obviously have no binding force). On becoming Catholic, however, those who have already made the vows of religion are considered to have made them privately, and not publicly, as their vows were not been accepted in the name of the Church by a legitimate superior. These are then to be observed or dispensed from accordingly. Here is what Canon Edward J. Mahoney († 1958) wrote on the matter:

“All baptized persons are subject to the laws of the Church, unless they are exempted, and the obligations of a convert bound by vows before conversion are determined exactly in the same way as those of a convert who had received the sacrament of matrimony before conversion. Non-Catholics, for example, are exempted from observing the form of marriage and it usually follows that their marriages contracted in heresy are valid. It is not possible for vows made in a non-Catholic religious community to be public, in the canonical sense of the word; the conditions for valid religious profession are absent. The vows are therefore private, and the person who made them is in exactly the same position as any Catholic who has privately vowed something to God. Assuming that sufficient knowledge and freedoms were present, the vows are valid and must be observed until the person is released, for example, by the lapse of time in the case of a temporary vow, or until he is dispensed by ecclesiastical authority.”2

Most commonly those who have made these vows as non-Catholics will seek to enter a Catholic religious community on entering the Church, in which case they will duly make public vows in that institute. A famous example of this concerning almost an entire community of non-Catholic religious took place in 1913, when the Anglican Benedictines of Caldey Island in Wales were received into the Catholic Church, and then permitted to constitute themselves as a Benedictine monastery, take the habit of St. Benedict, perform their canonical novitiates, and then eventually make the vows of religion (and take Holy Orders in the case of those called to that state), all with the warm encouragement of Pope St. Pius X and Bl. Columba Marmion. The latter’s biographer writes:

“The ceremony of the erection took place on June 29th, the feast of SS. Peter and Paul. On arriving at Caldey, Dom Marmion celebrated Mass in presence of Mgr. Mostyn [the Catholic Bishop of Menevia]; then, at the end of the Holy Sacrifice, the bishop gave the Benedictine habit to the convert monks and canonically established the house as a monastery of St. Benedict. The communities of Caldey and [the Anglican sisters] of St Bride’s already received into the Church, thus entered by the true door opened by the only one who holds the keys, into that Benedictine family of which they had until then borne the name and habit without being its living branches. The Divine Gardener now engrafted them on the old monastic stock.”3 † 


Notes

1. Canons 1191 and 1192 §1 of the 1983 code here echo canons 1307 and 1308 §1 of  the 1917 code exactly.

2. Canon E. J. Mahoney, Questions and Answers II — Precepts (Burns, Oates & Washbourne, London, 1953) p 247.

3. Dom Raymond Thibaut, OSB, Abbot Columba Marmion: A Master of the Spiritual Life: 1858–1923 (Sands & Co. London, 1942), p 180. In 1928 the Benedictines left the Isle of Caldey to establish themselves at Prinknash in Gloucestershire, and were replaced by Cistercians.


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