Perpetual Religious Profession

Perpetual profession is the religious's definitive public vow of chastity, poverty, and obedience according to the institute's constitutions. The Church receives the profession, consecrates the member through her ministry, and incorporates the person permanently into the religious family. The act belongs to the Church's public life even when celebrated simply within a small community.^[1]

The profession is not a sacrament and does not add a degree of holy orders. A lay brother or sister remains lay in the clerical sense; a priest remains ordained. Religious consecration gives a stable canonical state and a particular form of baptismal discipleship ordered by the institute's charism.

Besides the conditions of free admission, freedom from force or deceit, express profession, and reception by the lawful superior, perpetual profession requires completion of at least the twenty-first year and at least three prior years of temporary profession in the Latin Church. For a just cause it can be anticipated by no more than three months. Proper law can require a longer period and other suitable conditions.

Admission is a serious act of governance. The competent superiors consider the member's fidelity, maturity, health, capacity for community, apostolic suitability, and genuine assimilation of the institute's spirit. Neither vocational anxiety nor institutional need for personnel justifies bypassing law or pressuring a member into a lifelong bond.

Perpetual profession creates the rights and obligations established by universal and proper law, including common life, governance, temporal-goods discipline, apostolate, and formation. Depending on the institute and the solemn or simple character of vows, civil property and testamentary consequences differ. The member remains a person with rights, and authority remains bounded by law.^[2]

A perpetual vow does not become dissoluble by private choice. An indult of departure can dispense from vows and obligations when granted by competent authority and lawfully notified; dismissal requires a canonical cause and procedure. A cleric's departure also requires lawful provision for incardination or prohibition from exercising orders until his status is settled.^[3]