The Vows of Religion I—Obedience

Extract

Men and women in religious congregations are traditionally spoken of as occupying a state. By this we mean a permanent status to which they are tied for some fixed period, usually for life. It is by the three vows of religion that they are established in this state. And so the vows tend to be thought of absolutely as what make religious what they are. There is a danger in this way of thinking of them, as if they were something in their own right, for their own sakes. It can be forgotten that the vows are only a means to an end, and have always to do with what is vowed. One comes on queerly used distinctions between, for example, the vow and the virtue of obedience, as if the thing known as religious obedience under vow was something quite different from the virtue of obedience.