Institutes of Consecrated Life - Terms

Terms

Some canonical terms associated with consecrated life are frequently misused in common speech.

• Institutes of consecrated life are canonically erected by competent church authority to enable men or women who publicly profess the evangelical counsels by religious vows or other sacred bonds, "through the charity to which these counsels lead to be joined to the Church and its mystery in a special way" (cf. canon 573 §2 of the Code of Canon Law), without this making them members of the Church hierarchy.

• Although the state of consecrated life is neither clerical nor lay, institutes of consecrated life are clerical if, with recognition from the Church, they are directed by clerics and exercise sacred orders, and they are lay if recognized by the Church as not exercising sacred orders. For instance, the Order of Friars Preachers (O.P.) is a clerical institute of consecrated life, and the Sisters of Charity a lay institute of consecrated life.

• A religious institute is an institute of consecrated life whose members take public vows, lead a life in common and are in some way separated from the world. A secular institute is an institute of consecrated life whose members living in the world, striving for the perfection of charity and seeking to help to sanctify the world, especially from within. The current Code of Canon Law has not maintained the distinction that the earlier Code (1917) made between orders (religious institutes in which the members took solemn vows) and congregations (those in which simple vows were taken).

• A monk (Greek: monachos, Latin: monachus) is a person that leads the "monastic life" in a "monastery". Nowadays it tends to be wrongly assumed that it signifies someone living in community. From early Church times there has been a lively discussion of the meaning of this term (Greek: monos alone), namely whether it denotes someone living alone/away from the rest of society, or someone celibate/focused on God alone. St Benedict understood it as meaning the latter, namely a celibate dedicated to God, as becomes clear from his consideration of a hermit to be a kind of monk (Rule of St Benedict, ch. 1).

• A monastery (Greek: monasterion) is a place where a monk lives and works, and may be home to any number of monks, one or many. Often a monastery of one is, however, called a "hermitage", and the person living there, a "hermit". "Convent" is the generic term for the community house of other religious, male or female. "Friary", "priory" and the like are other terms in use.

• The term "religious" (as in, "he/she is a religious") means a member of a religious institute, a person in religious vows.

• A friar is a male member of a mendicant order, principally, the religious families of Franciscans, Dominicans and Carmelites.

• Priests in vows retain their usual title of "Father", and "Reverend Father". With a few exceptions, all men in vows who are not priests and would therefore not be addressed as "Father" are addressed as "Brother". That is to say, all monks are brothers, but not all brothers are "fathers".

• Women religious are addressed as "Sister". The 1917 Code of Canon Law reserved the term "nun" (Latin: monialis) for women religious who took solemn vows or who, while being allowed in some places to take simple vows, belonged to institutes whose vows were normally solemn. It used the word "sister" (Latin: soror) exclusively for members of institutes for women that it classified as "congregations"; and for "nuns" and "sisters" jointly it used the Latin word religiosae (women religious). The current Code of Canon Law has dropped those distinctions. Some women superiors are properly addressed as "Mother" or "Reverend Mother". Benedictines have traditionally used the form of address "Dom" for men and "Dame" for solemnly professed nuns.