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Question Corner: Why do male religious get to final vows more quickly than female religious?


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OSV News Filed Under: Commentary, Question Corner

Q: Why do male religious get to final vows in about five years from date of entry while females take seven years or more before they may solemnly profess? (Flushing, NY)

A: The short answer is that differences in timelines for formation — the years-long period when an aspiring or new religious prepares for their definitive commitment in final vows — have to do with different choices individual communities make for themselves, and sometimes about the specific kind of religious community, and for the most part isn’t actually attributable to a gender difference per se. Still, there are some possible reasons for the general pattern of male communities tending to require a shorter period of initial formation.

For some background, in this specific column I’m talking about “religious life” in a limited technical sense, and not about “consecrated life” in general. “Consecrated life” is a broad category describing many different kinds of vocations, and “religious life” properly so-called is just one of these. Different forms of consecrated life have their own timetables for formation that aren’t necessarily exact parallels to religious life.

While there are some broad Orders or “families” of religious life that encompass both genders (for example, the Dominican Order of Preachers as a whole includes male friars, cloistered female nuns and female religious Sisters dedicated to an active life of good works) individual structured religious communities or “institutes” will always be either male or female.

As a general principle, the Church’s law does not make a fundamental distinction between men’s and women’s communities. So when the Code of Canon Law describes the required timelines for religious formation, it does not set out one standard for women and another one for men.

However, even within the universally set framework, there is a lot of room for an individual religious community to decide for themselves how long formation in their institute will take. A religious community makes these decisions in what is called their “proper law.”

For example, Canon 648 tells us that the time of novitiate (a period of very focused lived experience and discernment prior to making any kind of vow) must be at least 12 months at minimum, but can last up to two years. Similarly, Canon 655 states: “temporary profession [of vows] is to be made for the period defined by the institute’s own law. This period may not be less than three years nor longer than six years.”

As such, one religious community might decide on a one-year novitiate and only three years of temporary vows; while another community might require a pre-novitiate time of “postulancy,” two years as a novice and six years of temporary vows. In theory, a women’s community is free to have a minimal four-year timeline, just as a men’s community could require seven full years.

But looking at real-life patterns, male communities often do tend to have shorter periods of specifically religious formation.

I suspect that one explanation for this might be because in many men’s communities, many or most of the members are also ordained as priests. Seminary formation for priesthood is different from religious formation, and often a male religious will be studying for the priesthood even years after making his final religious vows. The shorter formation timeline in male religious life might be accounting for the “extra” formation time in seminary.

Additionally, a 2018 document from Rome titled “Cor Orans” set out and required a longer formation timeline for cloistered nuns, who are always female. Unlike religious in general, a would-be cloistered nun now needs at least one year of discernment called “aspirancy,” a full year as a postulant, two years as a novice and at least five years of temporary profession before she can make final vows.

Yet my sense is that these additional requirements are not due to the fact that nuns are women, but rather reflect the unique and unusual demands of a life of intense prayer and strict separation from the world.

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