I prefer the term, “Celibate Communities,” rather than “Consecrated Life” (for every baptized person is consecrated to God) or “religious life” (God alone knows who is more religious or less so), or “vowed life” (for married people too make a vow). What distinguishes me from my parents or married relatives and friends, is celibacy, lived in community with other adults of the same gender. Celibacy and same gender community evidently distinguish us from lay persons. I do not claim to be more “religious” than my married siblings, nor more “consecrated” than they, who received the same Baptism that I did. Both they and I have vows to keep.
Relevance and Necessity Unclear
How relevant and meaningful is this way of today? Should we propose it to today’s young women and men? For what? Does it have a future? Or, is it largely an outdated and somewhat irrelevant form of life which may have served a purpose in earlier times, but is irrelevant today—as many seem to think?
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Fr Joe Mannath SDB
