Incorporation into a Secular Institute is the canonical bond by which a person, after initial probation, assumes the institute's sacred bonds and becomes a member temporarily and later definitively while ordinarily remaining in secular conditions of life.
Consecration in secular conditions
A secular institute is an institute of consecrated life whose members strive for perfection of charity and the sanctification of the world especially from within secular conditions. Incorporation is the juridic bond joining a member to that institute through the sacred bonds defined in its constitutions. It is not enrollment in a devotional association, ordinary employment, or entrance into a religious house.
Members may be lay or clerical and normally arrange life, residence, profession, and apostolate according to the institute's secular character. The sacred bonds can be vows, oaths, promises, or other bonds determined by the constitutions. Although the Code does not call every such act religious profession, it constitutes consecrated life recognized by the Church.
First and definitive incorporation
After an initial probation of at least two years, a suitable candidate assumes the institute's three evangelical counsels or corresponding sacred bonds and is incorporated temporarily. Temporary incorporation lasts at least five years under canon 723. The constitutions regulate renewal and may require a longer period of preparation before definitive incorporation.
Definitive incorporation follows when the member is judged suitable and freely assumes perpetual bonds, or bonds that are always renewed without further juridic probation according to the constitutions. A perpetually renewed promise is not necessarily temporary merely because it is expressed at intervals; canon law looks to the definitive juridic status that the approved constitutions confer.
Formation after incorporation
Formation continues after the first bonds. It integrates spiritual life, doctrine, apostolic competence, and the capacity to live consecration amid ordinary social conditions. The institute must provide accompaniment suited to members who may live alone, with family, or in a fraternity rather than in a religious community.
Admission and impediments
Valid admission requires the age and freedom set by law and freedom from an existing sacred bond in another institute of consecrated life or society of apostolic life. Proper law can add requirements, but screening must respect dignity, confidentiality, and the candidate's right to a genuinely free decision.
Effects and distinction from religious profession
Incorporation creates reciprocal rights and duties: fidelity to the constitutions and sacred bonds, participation in formation and governance as proper law provides, and care by the institute. It does not ordinarily create the common life, public habit, separation from secular affairs, or community property regime characteristic of many religious institutes.
Transfer, departure, and dismissal must follow the canons for secular institutes rather than being borrowed casually from religious life. A definitively incorporated member who seeks to leave needs the competent indult, and passage to another institute follows prescribed authority. Precise language preserves the equal reality of consecration while respecting the distinct canonical form in which it is lived.[1][2]
References
- 1.Code of Canon Law, canons 710–730 — The nature, formation, incorporation, governance, departure, and dismissal of secular institutes
- 2.Code of Canon Law, canons 607–709 — Religious houses, major superiors, enclosure, absence, transfer, exclaustration, departure, and dismissal