The Consecrated Life: A Valentine

By David Myers
Southwest Kansas Register

When I was asked to devote an entire issue to “consecrated life,” I had to first ask myself what the consecrated life really meant. We Catholics are very picky about the names and titles we assign, titles that are not always what they imply.

For example, the first time I heard the name, “Holy See,” I thought it was a body of water near Vatican City.

And then there’s the title, “Ordinary.” In the Church, the title is given to certain Church leaders. But if they’re “ordinary,” doesn’t that preclude them from having a special title? Shouldn’t the people in the pews be termed “ordinary?” In the Church leader’s case, wouldn’t a better title be “Extra-Ordinary,” or even, “Special”?

I’ve often wondered why we call certain things the names we do, such as “pew,” instead of say, “bench” or “seat.” Of course, “pew” would be perfectly acceptable had a little cartoon skunk never come along.

What about the “college” of cardinals? Aren’t they a little old to still be in college? And then there’s the “papal bull,” which has nothing to do with Ferdinand, as I mistakenly thought for so many years. I don’t mean to sound disrespectful, I just think they would be wise to ask me before assigning any more names or titles.

Just last week I wrote in a headline that a new priest was “installed” as a parochial administrator. Only pastors are installed, I quickly learned. But (I respectfully ask), should a term deemed for newly placed pastors be the same as that used for kitchen cabinets, radiators and refrigerators?

Still, I can see why the term was first applied. Like a kitchen cabinet protecting good china, pastors are responsible for something that is also fragile: their parishioners. Like the glass wear, some parishioners are more fragile than others. Some are old, some are young. Some are slightly cracked.
Or the pastor is like the refrigerator that contains perishables; some food is new, some is mol … . Never mind.

Then there’s the term “canon law.” This term was first thought to be taken from Paracelsus who wrote that, “He who hath the cannon doth maketh the law.” This was dismissed by later Church scholars who deemed the statement, “Sillyeth and downright stupideth.”

But what of the consecrated life? I learned that the consecrated life is attributed to those who enter a religious order or congregation either as a religious sister, nun, brother, religious priest, or even as a layperson.  In more common terms, they are known as “religious.” While diocesan priests are not included in this category of “religious,” to say diocesan priests are not religious would be erroneous. They are religious, but not “religious” (the latter being differentiated by quote marks).

Father Rene Guesnier, OSB, a “religious,” lives the “consecrated life” as a member of the Order of St. Benedict. Father Ted Stoecklein (religious but not a “religious”) doesn’t; he lives an ordinary diocesan priest’s life. … Only Father Ted isn’t an ordinary. But if not ordinary, what does that make Father Ted?

Perhaps it’s time we come up with a new term. I know Father Ted, and he’s a cool priest. Hmmmm. Cool…. What’s cool? Let’s see.... I know! The “Fonz!” I’ll contact the pope. Soon, Father Ted and other diocesan priests will be able to say, “No, my son, I’m not the Ordinary, I’m the Fonz.”

The second question I had after being asked to devote the issue to the consecrated life was how I would be able to address in my column both the consecrated life and Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14. I thought about how Valentine’s Day is all about one person caring for another; how it’s about unconditional love -- a person devoting oneself to another; of how that person places themselves in the fragile care of someone else.
And when I consider the term “consecrated life” in its full definition, I realize that it’s about all of those things.

Those who enter the consecrated life enter into a religious community of not just Benedictines, or Dominicans, or Franciscans ..., they enter into a community of a multitude. With their decision to enter such a life, they send a Valentine to humanity; they’ve taken the arrow from that fat little cherub who deems them in love with God and his creation. They place their fragile heart in God’s hands, agreeing to go where God leads them, whether it be to southwest Kansas, South America, or, in the case of several of our local Sisters, Africa.

They may not swim the Holy See, and they certainly aren’t ordinary, but those who live the consecrated life are doing so because of their unconditional devotion to God and to us – you and me. And for that we should be ever so thankful.