Ok, I am winging it a bit here, I skipped this class when I did my Catholic Theology degree because it was taught by a Balthasarian. I would not be surprised to hear that the terminological distinctions I want to make here are no good because the Magisterium has picked different ones (or even that they are just no good) but here goes…
I have the feeling that there is a lot of unhelpful and equivocal use of terms on this whole ‘vocation’ and ‘state of life’ discussion. I think it is very significant that St Thomas does not even bother to discuss the idea that the Priesthood, Marriage or the Religious Life require any kind of special Divine call. I think the fact that this idea seems to have developed during the Baroque period tainted by Nominalism (I’m just reciting Pinckaers’s line here) is a bad sign. I am not sure Marriage or even Priesthood are vocations in the same sense as consecration or in a sense different in kind from Carpenter or Godmother (except that they enjoy the dignity of a sacrament). I think there are probably two proper senses of ‘vocation’ the first has four aspects the second is quite simple. I suspect only marriage and consecration are authentic ‘states of life’ a concept not to be confused with ‘vocation’.
What is a ‘vocation’. In a vocation we are called. It thus contains the idea of a summons to a different life from that which is the norm. In this primary sense vocation refers to (1) the elevation of man to a supernatural end and (2) the efficacious grace by which some men are infallibly conducted to that end. It also refers (3) to the mode of life created by the three evangelical counsels which is reflective of supernatural confidence in God’s promised aid to attain the supernatural end and which ought to be characteristic of all Christians. It refers finally (4) to the state of life (consecration) of those who permanently repudiate all those goods that are not intrinsically necessary for the attainment of the supernatural end.
At least in terms of generic category, that’s it. However, there is also the question of the way in which vocation in these four senses is to be realised. This is partly a matter of reason but everyone who is in a state of grace is also equipped with the seven gifts of the Spirit precisely because the resources of reason, even reinforced by the infused virtues, are morally inadequate to efficaciously cooperate with providence to attain to the supernatural end. Thus the supernatural notion of vocation also applies to each individual’s life decisions. Thus in this second sense each individual has a separate vocation.
All of this seems to have got mixed up with the question of a state of life. There are only really two stable states of life marriage and consecration. It is a misfortune not to attain to either of them and if to the latter to do so without vows. There is no point being coy about this an adopting a silly late twentieth century ‘all must have prizes’ attitude. However, this does not mean God could not have willed (and not just by his permissive will) a given individual to live a life which per accidens does not entail entering into one of these two stable (and so objectively superior) states of life. Marriage is also a sacrament but in this sense it is a ‘vocation’ through being a part of the individual’s specific vocation. It is not ‘a vocation’ in the first sense because it is just doing what comes naturally in a Christian way. It is the Sacramentum Magnum because it has been constituted as a natural symbol of all four aspects of vocation in the first sense (i.e. of the union of Christ and the Church). This is why consecration exceeds marriage as the reality exceeds the sign. Ordination is a vocation qua life task (sense two) but not in the first sense and it is compatible with both or neither state of life. A cleric can be married (good) consecrated (better) or neither (a misfortune) so ordination is not really a state of life but is only a ‘vocation’ though being a part of the individual’s specific vocation in this second sense. That is to say, by being part of that task for which God has made each individual hypothetically necessary.
This second sense of ‘vocation’ is the one Newman famously describes…
God was all-complete, all-blessed in Himself, but it was His will to create a world for His glory. He is Almighty, and might have done all things Himself, but it has been His will to bring about His purposes by the beings He has created. We are all created to His glory–we are created to do His will. I am created to do something or to be something for which no one else is created; I have a place in God’s counsels, in God’s world, which no one else has; whether I be rich or poor, despised or esteemed by man, God knows me and calls me by my name.
God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission–I never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. Somehow I am necessary for His purposes, as necessary in my place as an Archangel in his–if indeed, I fail, He can raise another, as He could make the stones children of Abraham. Yet I have a part in this great work: I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do His work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling.
Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life, He may shorten it; He knows what He is about. He may take my friends, He may throw me among strangers, He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me–still He knows what He is about.
O my God, I give myself to Thee. I trust Thee wholly. Thou art wiser than I–more loving to me than I myself. Deign to fulfill Thy high purposes in me whatever they be; work in and through me. I am born to serve Thee, to be Thine, to be Thy instrument. Let me be Thy blind instrument. I ask not to see, I ask not to know–I ask simply to be used.
Laodicea 
October 3, 2007 at 2:43 am
P.S. Seraphic, (if you are around) as I said I’m not really sure about this and I would welcome your pulling this to bits if it deserves it.
October 3, 2007 at 6:38 am
Just had a look, and keeping in mind it’s just after midnight and I’ve come home from a jazz club, it looks sound to me. It is certainly food for thought, and I imagine you will shake people up by pointing out that the secular priesthood is not a form of the consecrated life. I did like your Thomas exposition that you offered earlier today. Yes, Thomas very much believed that consecrated life was the “more perfect” way of life, and so did we all until forty years ago or so. (Some married people now vigorously reject that, and I’ve felt rather put out when they’ve told me that there is no spiritual value to celibacy. I was hurt, since celibacy was what I got.)
What I like most about the above is your assertion of the freedom of God. The problem with a lot of “common sense” language is it treats “states of life” or “vocations” as if they are OUR CHOICE. It’s rather like in the USA, where after high school you CHOOSE a job, college or the military. If you don’t, you’re a slacker. However, vocation, as I understand it, implies (voco, vocare) a call, and as Alisha wrote on my site, God calls us in baptism.
For some, the issue is that if they are not married, consecrated or ordained, there is something wrong with them or with the cruel world that has prevented their marriage, consecration or ordination. (We see too many women who go on like this about the last mentioned item.) They believe themselves (or other singles) the slackers of the spiritual life. Sin prevents them from plunging into marriage with a suitable man or woman they are not necessarily crazy about or joining any order that will take them. I cannot help but feel that this view is masochistic or self-pitying. That said, I am sorry that current fashions do blind many to perfectly nice and suitable partners, and that many religious orders are no longer so attractive to men and women who might have joined before the 1960s gutted their traditions.
Certainly being unmarried and unconsecrated features an “absence of a good”, if that is what you mean by “a misfortune.” As far as I am concerned (from tradition to the personal here!), I bound myself to service to Christ and His Church with my confirmation vows. I’m not going to crash the marriage party or the avowed religious party without God’s invitation. God’s invitation is not, I believe, theoretical, or merely something we surmize by guesswork. I believe it is to a certain extent experiential.
No more thought..must sleep.
October 3, 2007 at 6:41 am
Oh, about the CHOICE thing. Yes, we choose to answer God’s call, but the first impulse comes from God. To assert that we must make the first move, pulling our lazy selves up by our bootstraps, is to slide headlong into Pelagianism.
Incidentally, I am not arguing with any one individual in particular. I don’t argue with individuals, but with ideas.
October 3, 2007 at 6:42 am
And your Newman quote is wonderful.
October 3, 2007 at 12:16 pm
“…Thomas very much believed that consecrated life was the ‘more perfect’ way of life, and so did we all until forty years ago or so. (Some married people now vigorously reject that…”
The denial that the state of virginity or celibacy is superior to the married state is a heresy solemnly condemned by the Council of Trent. So said married persons can get lost (or recant).
“If anyone says that the married state is to be preferred to the state of virginity or celibacy, and that it is not better and happier to remain in virginity or celibacy than to be united in matrimony (Matt. 19:11 f.;1 Cor. 7:25 f.;28-40): let him be anathema.” D980
I do think the call element is important but I also think it is important that the counsels are a new norm for Christians and the call to them is in a certain sense universal. The particularisation to consecration comes through the Divine gift of the graces necessary to bind oneself to the perfect state of the counsels irrevocably. Certainly, this should not be attempted unless one discerns the presence of that gift, but I suspect it is better to go looking for it than to decide that one will keep to one’s own plans unless there is a loud knock at the door. On the other hand, one should not attempt to bind oneself with vows if one does not have the strong impression that one has been given the power to fulfil them. Of course God will give one the power to avoid sin and attain some degree of perfection in any state of life (once one finds oneself in it), but He is generally un-amused by people throwing themselves from the Temple parapet.
October 3, 2007 at 1:48 pm
As far as historical circumstances go, a generation of women who might have flourished in religious life were out of luck, at least in my country. After the upheavals of Vatican 2 (which ought not to have been upheavals, but here people took the “change” idea and ran with it), many if not most women’s religious orders abandoned their traditions, to hare after their “roots” which strangely enough appeared to many as Feminism Lite. Every time I have made tentative approaches to the orders around me, buzzers have sounded in my brain and lights flashed “red alert, red alert!” To join a group of disappointed women stuck perpetually in one of the shallowest eras we have known (I speak of the 1970s) instead of the sweep of (salvation) history seems to me to be throwing oneself off the parapet indeed. Those younger than I have, I believe, a good chance. The Sign of the Times, which the 1970s crowd has gone on about, seems to be, in our time, a renewal and an appropriation of what we have almost lost.
Out of interest, what do you make of St. Paul’s teachings privileging the Single Life over Marriage? I suppose one could say that St. Paul’s words looked towards consecrated life, but did Paul know that?
October 3, 2007 at 1:53 pm
“One’s own plans.” I do think we need to differentiate between those who are having too good a time being swinging singles to contemplate marriage/consecrated life and those singles who are striving to live a life of Christian virtue and are too ill/poor/crazy/ill-favoured (add other adjectives)to marry or be found attractive by a religious community.
October 3, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Yes, the Hecatomb of the Female Religious orders on the altar of aggiornamento is not a very edifying sight. It is ‘the state of virginity or celibacy’ which is happier or more blessed according to Trent. St Paul is blunter ‘he who marries does well he who does not marry does better’. However, I think St Paul must be interpreted to mean that the condition of virginity or celibacy is better when consciously adopted rather than adventitious (given the context). Obviously it is psychologically easier to make this adoption conscious and free if there are other options! If St Thomas is right that it is better to be vowed to ‘the state of virginity or celibacy’ rather than not, and that only thus does it count as the ‘state of perfection’ then it would seem there is something lacking to the provisional adoption of this state (pending a worse offer!). That seems quite obvious really. But then if one honestly (and not through any lack of willingness or generosity) doesn’t think God is offering the graces for a vowed state then its probably best not to jump… I suppose that is what one needs a good confessor for, but there aren’t too many of them around.
October 4, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Vows may be a better way than mere way than the mere practice of a virtue but they still ill with modern people.
First of all, the zeitgeist of modern western life places freedom of choice high on the list of virtues, including the freedom though changing partners or to renounce the religious life. For that reason fewer people are getting married or taking the tonsure/veil.
Secondly, for a conscientious catholic the very irrevocability of vows creates its on problems. Consider the following situations:
A married B at 25 but by 35 has divorced him for unreasonable behaviour and desertion. Unless A can get an annulment A is condemned in the church’s eyes to choose between the sacraments and celibacy. In the real world A will find this a very hard choice an may well chose to marry another at some later date but will then be forbidden not just from the Eucharist but also from confession and hence is almost inevitably condemned to die in a state of mortal sin.
Contrast that situation with C who lives with D and then separates for the same reasons as A at 35. After confession and absolution C is considered a full member of the church.
Then what of E who lived a life of complete debauchery peppered with visits to her confessor. She is not debarred from the sacraments.
But is A really so much more sinful than C or E? It is odd that A might only ever have had two partners and brought up her children well but dies condemned whilst C and E might have many more partners, and perhaps even had abortions, yet they still have at least the possibility of dying in a state of grace.
Given the unpredictable nature of relationships I believe many Catholics would prefer to have extra martial relations – of which they can always repent and receive absolution – and die in a state of grace – from the all or nothing risk which is matrimony.
October 4, 2007 at 10:58 pm
“the Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone. For respectable people, the Anglican Church will do.” – Oscar Wilde
October 4, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Yes, but the bit one has to remember is thatone would also have to repent of the deliberation with which the sin was committed.
Wickedness aside,this is so bloody thick. (I assume you are just describing this position!)
A is having extra-marital relations, and t A can likewise repent and receive absolution. C is living in sin as much as A is, particularly if it’s not through vauge crapness but a (mis-)calculated risk-reduciton exercise. Neither you nor they know that A won’t repent before dying, and that C or E won’t choke to death on parlsey without repenting.
The thing to ask oneself is – if I’m not sorry that I am sinning now, indeed if I am choosing deliberately to sin now, how can I be sure I’ll be sorry before I die? If I am choosing to sin now, and that not in a way influenced by anger or lust and/or alcohol, but in full use of my faculties, then I am deliberately setting myself against God. I will have to be sorry not only for the sin, the adultery or fornication, but also for the choice of my plan for my salvation over the way explained by God.
October 4, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Sorry, that was flippant. But I don’t think we should assume that persons who sin with the deliberate intention of subsequently going to confession are capable of making a valid confession. Nor should we assume that God owes us a good time. Nor should we think that His giving us a hard time reflects a lack of favour. It may be our only chance. We should not underestimate how few individuals will actually be saved. We do not suffer in this life retributively in accordance with our deserts (else we would all be in Hell already) but remedially for the sake of our conversion. Many are called and few are chosen. “Do not hold back discipline from the child, Although you strike him with the rod, he will not die. You shall strike him with the rod And rescue his soul from Sheol. ” Proverbs 23:13-14
October 5, 2007 at 6:16 pm
There are several points I trying to make here, perhaps not very well. The first is that marriage is a risk, a big risk, for a catholic because of the teaching of the church that a valid consummated marriage my not be dissolved. But as, by definition, a marriage is between two persons what if the other person acts in a way that it would be unreasonable for the innocent partner to continue living with them: e.g. physical or mental abuse adult, conversion to a non Christian religion, desertion? In such cases the innocent partner often wants to be free to remarry but whether they can or not depends on the technically of annulment. If there was some defect in the contraction of the marriage then the church courts may annul the marriage but what if they don not? Take the example of Seraphic. According to her blog she thanks God for both liberal divorce law and annulment in allowing her to escape an abusive husband. Now it is good news for Seraphic that she was able to obtain an annulment but that is a not the reason she wished to end the marriage. She wished to end the marriage because her husband was abusive. Is it really reasonable to expect a “battered Spouse” to be denied the chance of remarriage? I presume Laodicea is a blog manned by the effortlessly chaste and permanently celibate and so do not see the need why divorced persons might want to remarry but many ordinary Catholics do not find the prospect of long term celibacy appealing or perhaps even feasible.
As to Bernike’s remarks I will try and deal with each point in my own ill informed way. I’ll put I before my replies.
B: Yes, but the bit one has to remember is that one would also have to repent of the deliberation with which the sin was committed. I: Is this not true of most sins? Moreover cannot not all sins, up to and including murder be absolved? Also many sins, especially carnal ones, are repetitive despite the best intentions of the repentant sinner whilst in the confessional.
B: Wickedness aside,this is so bloody thick. (I assume you are just describing this position!) I: Sorry for being so obtuse but the examples I give are though hypothetical to me are I believe are not uncommon in real life.
B: A is having extra-marital relations, and t A can likewise repent and receive absolution.
I: In real life A may have had a child with her new “husband” and so it is unrealistic and contrary to natural law to expect her to desert the father of he children B: C is living in sin as much as A is, particularly if it’s not through vauge crapness but a (mis-)calculated risk-reduction exercise. I: Based on a random cross section of modern twenty something Catholics I have known “living in sin” is now the norm but at least if the relationship fails they will not find themselves permanently denied the sacraments like those who remarry do if, as is likely and annilment is not an option.
B:Neither you nor they know that A won’t repent before dying, and that C or E won’t choke to death on parsley without repenting. I: True but for practical reasons it is easier for C or E to obtain absolution.
B: The thing to ask oneself is – if I’m not sorry that I am sinning now, indeed if I am choosing deliberately to sin now, how can I be sure I’ll be sorry before I die? I: The fear if death doubtless is a great spur to repentance – though of course the danger of killer parsley is ever present!
B: If I am choosing to sin now, and that not in a way influenced by anger or lust and/or alcohol, but in full use of my faculties, then I am deliberately setting myself against God. I will have to be sorry not only for the sin, the adultery or fornication, but also for the choice of my plan for my salvation over the way explained by God. I: I suspect few sins are committed which are not inspired by anger, lust, alcohol etc. Indeed to take the example of sexual sin it is not clear to me how such a sin could be committed in the absence of lust. All sin is by definition against the way planned by God
October 14, 2007 at 1:24 am
I presume Laodicea is a blog manned by the effortlessly chaste and permanently celibate and so do not see the need why divorced persons might want to remarry but many ordinary Catholics do not find the prospect of long term celibacy appealing or perhaps even feasible.
No one’s saying this department of life isn’t difficult. JP2’s work perhaps makes particularly clear why It Matters and why it is so jolly difficult. But there is nothing intrinsically unfeasible about unchosen ‘long term celibacy’. There’s also (I think) no point making the question bigger than it is on an individual level – as with any other are of virtue or vice, this is about individual choices to do things or not to do things. Being stuck married to someone with whom one cannot reasonably live is no doubt thoroughly horrible, but it is insulting to people in such situations to suggest that they cannot, prompted and aided by grace, choose to cultivate chastity and avoid vice in those circumstances. There are lots of times and places where the right choice is a very, very tough one, which may well only get harder – one thinks of women bearing children rather than aborting them in difficult circumstances, or people who speak out against evil governments. Those who have celibacy thrust upon them are in a difficult position, but that does not affect the objective sinfulness of attempted second marriages etc.. (Also, being able to offer up suffering is good; I know it sounds v ‘pi’ and I am obviously a complete no-hoper toe-rag as have been given no suffering to speak of, but there it is.)
January 18, 2008 at 2:00 am
Oh, hey. I came upon this several months late. I would like to make it clear that I didn’t initially want to leave my husband because he was abusive.(It took me a while to twig, actually, for reasons I won’t go into for fear of emo-blogging.) He turned out to have had no intention of allowing me to raise our children as Roman Catholics, as I had sworn to do. There was also tremendous pressure on me to disobey Church teaching and even to apostatize. After eight months or so of marriage, I wondered if this one could possibly be sacramental!
Meanwhile, I didn’t apply for an annulment so that I could get married again. I applied for an annulment because I was dead certain (well, as dead certain as I could be) that this marriage was invalid. And so ruled the Tribunal within a year of my application, so I was right.
And that’s all I’m going to say about that. Well, I will say one thing more: be very very very careful about marrying someone outside of the Faith. Grace and peace to all readers!
January 18, 2008 at 2:04 am
(Should probably mention that there were no children. It seems a bit sad that the choice was (in part) between confused resentful half-Catholic children and no children at all, but there it was.)
March 26, 2009 at 4:49 pm
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