by Therese Ivers, JCL

Is online dating a legitimate tool for one’s vocational discernment?  I believe it is.  Here are some reflections on the online dating process.

1.  The pool for a potential spouse can be too small if you are in a small town with a handful (or less) of eligibles.  The pool can likewise be small in our current pattern of sequestered living in larger towns or cities.  Out of those thousands or millions of people in a city, how will you connect when you go to work (or school), come home, maybe participate in a group activity or two, and go to bed?  Your church only has a minuscule sliver of potentials, and ditto for most people’s workplace or campus (you work in a particular department and you go to class with a certain number of students).  You can be an island in the middle of large city particularly when your network is small or self restricted.  Online dating can open your horizons even in the same city.  Maybe that person is two churches down in the city.  Or maybe you will find someone who looks promising half the country away.

2.  Finding someone online is one thing.  Knowing how to prudently pursue or drop the online relationship is another skill to learn.  Dating in one’s own town poses certain risks and certain benefits.  Dating someone you’ve only met online also poses its own set of risks and benefits.  The prudent discerner will take the necessary precautions to minimize safety risks, and other risks associated with long distance courtship.

3.  Online dating is a tool.  It gives you the opportunity to initially connect with a potential spouse.  It is appropriate to use the tool as long as you realize that marriage requires extensive interaction that goes way beyond the virtual world of emailing, texting, skyping, and telephoning.  At some point, you have to have the one on one physical interactions of courtship to really know whether this is a relationship that should continue.

4.  What is said above applies to not only potential spouses, but dioceses, religious communities, secular institutes, and societies of apostolic life.  Most people flirt online with checking out diocesan vocations websites, websites hosted by secular institutes or religious communities, and may even have a digital relationship with the vocation director or members.  This is great, but this is only the first step.  Don’t waste your time or theirs when it’s time to take the plunge and see for yourself whether they are the right match for you. When you have exhausted the usefulness of virtual communications, or feel impelled to check the person or community further,  it’s time to make a decision- do I pursue this face to face or do I drop this and move on.  To do otherwise is an abuse of the process.

5.  Yes, there are risks involved in taking the plunge to go face to face.  That’s why this process is a process of discernment.  Good luck with your journey and God bless you.

(c) 2011 by Therese Ivers, JCL

www.DoIHaveAVocation.com

by Therese Ivers, JCL

St. Therese of Lisieux is my patron saint.  I celebrate her feast day as my name day every October 1st.

The Little Flower has been an inspiration to me in many ways.  This devout, pious laywoman lived in a convent from the age of 15 to 24, where she died of TB.  Life in the convent was very hard.  Her fellow sisters, also very devout laywomen, with their own gifts and personality quirks, did not always understand her very well and the saint suffered as a result.  St. Therese loved her vocation.  She loved being a pious laywoman who recited the Divine Office, prayed and lived in common with the other sisters, and she kept her religious vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience with assiduous care.  The Lord guided her on the path to holiness in the midst of her humble occupations within the convent.  Prior to her death, she wrote an autobiography which has transformed the world.  Eventually, this work and its influence helped her become the 33rd Doctor of the Universal Church, a great honor for this religious laywoman.

I hope that people reading the above paragraph reacted in dismay because I called the Little Flower a pious laywoman even though she was a religious nun with solemn vows.  Why did I call her a pious laywoman?  I called her a laywoman for the exact same reason that people call consecrated virgins laywomen, which is because in a sense she was a lay person (non-ordained so she was not in the hierarchy).  There are, as I have mentioned before, two ways of looking at the Church.  One is dividing the Church according to hierarchy (lay vs. ordained).

Now we know that religious men and women (publicly vowed members of diocesan right or pontifical right institutes of consecrated life) are in the consecrated state.  This is because the other way of dividing the Church is by doing so into vocational states (lay vs. hierarchy vs. consecrated).  “In itself, the state of consecrated life is neither clerical nor lay (canon 588).”  St. Therese was in the consecrated state.  In this view, then, she was neither clerical nor lay.  She was in the consecrated life. Therefore, it is not entirely correct to write that she was a “pious laywoman” when describing the time she was in the convent, because in the strict charismatic sense in the Church, she was in a state that was different from the laity’s.

That being said, I’d like to draw your attention to this sentence, which I found describing consecrated virgins, “Single lay people have chosen to be consecrated virgins and have made private vows in the presence of the local bishop as they lived out their vocation in various walks of life.”  Consecrated virgins are not laywomen.  They are not “single lay people”.  Yes, they were single lay women before their consecration, just as the Little Flower was a single lay woman before she professed her vows in Carmel.  Once consecrated by her bishop, the consecrated virgin is no more a pious laywoman than the Little Flower.  Also, just as a reminder, consecrated virgins do not make private vows in the presence of the local bishop, they are consecrated brides of Christ through the ministry of the Bishop.  They do not make vows of any kind.

Men and women who are members of a diocesan or pontifical right institute of consecrated life (religious) are in the consecrated state.  Female virgins who have received the consecration of virgins (whether in the world or as nuns) from their bishop are in the consecrated state.  Diocesan hermits who have professed poverty, chastity, and obedience in the hands of their bishop are in the consecrated state.  Members of other forms of life are NOT in the consecrated state.  They are, therefore, either lay or ordained.

There is only one form of “consecrated laity”.  Consecrated laypersons are non ordained men and women members of Secular Institutes who take vows or promises of poverty, chastity and obedience.  All other lay persons in other groups and organizations remain lay, without consecration.  Some groups label their men or women members who have commitments to living out poverty, chastity, and obedience, as “consecrated” members.  This is incorrect.  They are no more consecrated than any other lay person if they are not religious, diocesan hermit, consecrated virgin, or member of a secular institute.

Anyone trying to say that members of an organization that is not a diocesan right or pontifical right religious community (who belong to the consecrated state) or of the only way of life that is “consecrated laity” (secular institutes who have semi-public vows but the non-ordained members remain lay), is incorrect.  I have recently read a convoluted argument from a pious group which is facing a Vatican investigation that claims that they are “consecrated” even though they are a collection of lay persons.  In a nutshell, because they are not a diocesan/pontifical right institute of religious life nor a secular institute, they have no right to collectively call their members with promises, “consecrated”.

(c) 2010 by Therese Ivers, JCL

www.DoIHaveAVocation.com

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By Therese Ivers, JCL

The other day I was pondering on the vocation of secular institutes as they provide such a great path of holiness for people who are clerics or laypersons.   A priestly member of a secular institute who immediately came to mind was a classmate of mine, Fr. Vincent Nguyen.  We would talk about our vocations, and would travel once a week with a couple of other priests to our Latin class at the Beda College in Rome near St. Paul outside the walls.  Fr. Vincent spoke about his secular institute, and how it helped cultivate prayerfulness, a sense of community, and fellowship for him and other diocesan priests.   I was impressed with his love for his secular institute, and enjoyed hearing how it fit in his life, and actually wanted to get in touch with him to get more details on it.  However, the news just broke out- the priest I saw day in and day out in the classroom at the Angelicum is to receive the fullness of holy orders.  He will be ordained an auxiliary bishop in the near future in Toronto, Ontario.  Congratulations, Fr. Vincent!

by Therese Ivers, JCL

Way back in September, I was asked to help with an upcoming retreat for women discerning their vocations and who feel like they’re beating their heads on the wall “discerning to death”.  This topic really resonated with me, and as I continue to prepare for this weekend’s retreat, I am seeing more and more how although there is plenty of literature giving pieces of information about the discernment process, there is hardly anything out there that talks about how to bring it to a peaceful conclusion.  The goal of discernment is to figure out God’s will in one’s life, most particularly whether God is calling one to assume a lifelong commitment by virtue of ordination, vow, or consecration.  In theory figuring out one’s vocation sounds pretty straightforward, but plenty of folks agonize over it, and some have never reached a practical conclusion as to whether there is a state in life they should pursue.  How exactly does a person go from the beginning to the middle and then reach the end of vocational discernment?

Vocations and the Fairy Tale

Good fairy tales touch upon the deep desires of human beings.  Some are about wealth as the reward of virtue and valor, a concept that even Our Lord uses in speaking about the reward of eternal life.  Others talk about longevity and an absence from the ordinary woes of life (think immortality and the properties of risen bodies).  The majority, however, are about romantic love in which after trial, the princess and the prince happily live together ever after.  Again, this reflects the eternal betrothal between Christ and His Church…

Yet, it never ceases to amaze me when I am judging marriage annulment cases and we get someone under oath testifying that they thought that once they got married, everything would turn out great (despite the fact their spouse was abusively beating them daily during their courtship, they were both high on drugs most of the time, that they had two or three children before they decided to get officially hitched…) simply and solely because getting married in the Church was somehow going to magically make things different!  It gets worse when they blame people in the Church for their failed marriage (why didn’t the priest stop us?)!  How is it that the fairy tale of living happily ever after gets drummed into people’s minds when it comes to vocational choices?  I will be forever happy if I marry that person…  I will automatically be holy if I become a priest…  As soon as I slip on that habit or religious life emblem, I’m gonna be floating around in prayer…  It seems to me that good discernment starts with understanding that fairy tales are just that.  Fairy tales.

The process of discerning a vocation starts with the realization that the process usually takes knowledge, dedication, and work.  Knowledge is necessary to make informed choices.  How much do you as a discerner know about the vocations open to you in the Church?  It takes dedication to following the will of God.  It also takes effort, or work.

One can say that the time of courtship, discernment for the seminary, convent, or other form of consecrated life, is normally a time of mutual discovery.  It takes work, both on the part of the person making the decision to pursue a particular path or narrow it down to a path, and of the person(s) who admit that person into vows (think marriage, religious life, diocesan hermit life, and secular institutes), consecration (consecrated virgins) and ordination (diaconate, priesthood, and episcopacy).  One who is discerning should work not only at improving knowledge about vocations, but self-knowledge so that obstacles and fears may be evaluated and addressed.

The Goal

The final goal of vocational discernment is to make vows, be consecrated or be ordained if this should be the Lord’s will.  Yet, the immediate goal of the discerner should be to do what it takes to determine which path (if any) to which one seems to have a genuine call and make a decision to pursue it in a prudent fashion. That way, one can peacefully but purposefully pursue a possible call and offer oneself to a concrete person, diocese, order, or institute if one prudently and prayerfully determines they could be a fit.  Of course a person should be “open” in that the other person, diocese, order, or institute may determine that it is not their vocation to be united with you in their particular path to holiness.

(c) 2009 by Therese Ivers, JCL and www.DoIHaveAVocation.com.

]]> http://doihaveavocation.com/blog/archives/119/feed 0 http://doihaveavocation.com/blog/archives/90 http://doihaveavocation.com/blog/archives/90#comments Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:05:52 +0000 Therese Ivers, JCL http://doihaveavocation.com/blog/archives/90 by Therese Ivers The first secular institute with whom I came in contact were the Father Kolbe Missionaries. Not many people respond to a call to a vocation to a secular institute and in part, I believe it is because … Continue reading →]]>

by Therese Ivers

The first secular institute with whom I came in contact were the Father Kolbe Missionaries. Not many people respond to a call to a vocation to a secular institute and in part, I believe it is because few people even know about their existence.

What is a secular institute? A secular institute is an organization which helps the faithful strive to mirror Christ more faithfully in their daily lives by following the evangelical counsels. Priests and laity may join a secular institute and it is a good vocation. However, the public consecration of vows or promises does not change the canonical status of the individual. Thus, those of the laity who profess the evangelical counsels in the form of vows do not enter the consecrated state but remain in the world and in the lay state in the Church.

Each secular institute has a different charism. The Father Kolbe Missionaries, the secular institute I am most familiar with, has a Marian charism. Their apostolate is to promote devotion to Our Lady as a way of assisting people to grow in holiness of life. Other secular institutes will have different apostolates and charisms.

Religious institutes emphasize communal life. Secular institutes, on the other hand, are usually composed of members who live separately. While some consecrated members might live in small groups as brothers or sisters, the vast majority of members live on their own. They support themselves and contribute to their secular institute. The idea is that a member of a secular institute is to live as leaven in the world. They are to be a good example to others in the daily routine of normal living.

It is because the members of secular institutes are not within the consecrated state but are dedicated to Christ’s service in either the priesthood or lay state that they do not wear a habit or uniform. The members blend in society and bear witness to Christ.

Members of secular institutes profess vows or sacred bonds of poverty, chastity, and obedience. These vows are understood according to the rules of the institute. Poverty is not a renunciation of ownership of goods. Chastity means celibacy for the sake of the kingdom.  And obedience will be defined in the rules.

A few months ago, I discussed the three elements of religious life. The elements of a secular institute, are different in that they seem to be that of the evangelical counsels, life as leaven in the world, and the apostolate. It is to follow Christ more thoroughly in the world “secular manner” that people choose to embrace the evangelical counsels in the context of a non-religious institute lifestyle.

(c) 2008 by Therese Ivers and www.doihaveavocation.com

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by Therese Ivers

For centuries people have been embracing the evangelical counsels and binding themselves to observe them by the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.  The most common example we have of persons making these vows are the men and women who make their profession of vows as religious.  These religious make what is known as public vows.   Not all people, however, are called to make public vows, but instead elect to follow the evangelical counsels through private vows.

There is one primary difference between a public vow of poverty, chastity, or obedience and a private vow of poverty, chastity, or obedience.  Public vows are made in a religious profession, or profession in the hands of the bishop of a diocesan hermit and have the effect of placing the individual in the consecrated state in the Church.  Private vows are made outside of this context of Ecclesiastical acceptance and they do not change the canonical status of the individual making them within the Church.

Concretely, this means that if Mark would like to dedicate his life to Christ but does not feel called to enter religious life, join a secular institute (by making semi-public vows),  become a diocesan hermit, or receive Holy Orders, he may consider whether he is called to make private vows.  Making private vows, especially those of the evangelical counsels, is not something to undertake lightly and ought to be done only after careful consideration, prayer, and consultation with a spiritual director.

Vows made by members of Secular Institutes are what some people term “semi-public” vows.  That means that they are not public vows which would place them in the consecrated state, but they are not totally private vows either because the Church recognizes these vows.  Vowed members of Secular Institutes remain lay if they were lay and ordained if ordained, but they are in the world and are not in the consecrated state.  You could call the lay members the true “consecrated lay people” of our Church.

One final thought.  Vows can remain private even when made in a Church ceremony.  An example of this can be when a priest receives private vows of an individual during Mass.  Vows are also private (meaning they don’t put you in the consecrated state) if they are made in a Public Association of the Faithful, or a Society of Apostolic Life.  The mere fact that a vow is made in front of other people does not make it public in the eyes of the Church.  Members of any group that is not recognized in the Church as a religious institute who make vows in a ceremony or Mass in their community are not to consider themselves in the consecrated state because their vows are essentially private.  Hence to call themselves consecrated men or women is misleading as they are not officially recognized in the Church as belonging to the consecrated state.

by Therese Ivers

We know that God has given each and every one of us a personal vocation, a unique path in this world. For many, the view that the “only” vocations in the Church are to marriage, the consecrated life, and to the priesthood is disturbing. After all, there are plenty of persons out there who are not called to any of these three major vocations. The question then becomes whether God calls people specifically to the single life.

Sr. Stephania of La Crosse, WI, graciously agreed to be interviewed on various vocations topics in a teleseminar interview with Therese Ivers. The first part of the interview is now available online in the members area of this website. If you are not already a member, simply register HERE and navigate to the audio section to listen to this interview.

God bless!

A sample clip is also available below for you to listen to in order to get an idea of what the interview was like.

(c) 2007 by Therese Ivers and DoIHaveAVocation.com.

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