The Vatican has caused alarm by saying consecrated virgins need not be virgins
Since 1970, when the Rite of Consecration of Virgins was reintroduced, numbers have steadily grown, and are projected to reach 5,000 by 2020. Consecrated virgins are women who take a vow of celibacy, but live in the world in a great variety of jobs and apostolates.
It’s a success story – but the story now features a major public controversy, thanks to a single sentence in a Vatican document.
Ecclesiae Sponsae Imago, issued by the Vatican dicastery for consecrated life, includes a sentence which a group representing consecrated virgins in the US has described as “shocking”. The document says that to become a consecrated virgin, a woman need not “have kept her body in perfect continence”. Translated from Vatican-speak, this means that a woman can be a consecrated virgin even if she has had sex.
The novelty of this claim was underlined by the US Association of Consecrated Virgins: “The entire tradition of the Church has firmly upheld that a woman must have received the gift of virginity – that is, both material and formal (physical and spiritual) – in order to receive the consecration of virgins.” It was “disappointing”, the statement said, to see this physical requirement taken away.
The canon lawyer Edward Peters said he could not think of a previous document in Catholic history which agreed with Ecclesiae Sponsae Imago on this point. “If virginity is not being consecrated in a consecrated virgin, what is?” Peters asked.
Loretta Matulich, an American theologian and consecrated virgin, observes over email that the body is “an essential part of the human person, ie, our soul is not just like a snake that can slip out of its skin”. And so to “give oneself”, in marriage or in virginity, is to give everything. “When a virgin gives her entire self in love to Jesus Christ, that means soul, psyche, and body to Christ,” she says. “All are one in a one human being.”
What about penitents, like St Mary Magdalene, and widows? “Both have given themselves to someone else already,” Matulich says, “and thus do not have their integral virginity to give to Jesus Christ”. There is an ancient order of widows, which may be revived; but it is a different state of life.
An “instruction” is not necessarily binding, especially if it conflicts with previous Church law. So there may now be different interpretations from one diocese to the next.
Matulich points out that consecrated life – usually in the form of religious life – has often seen a revival at moments of social crisis. “When society needed a certain type of witness, God provided that in often a new form of consecrated life, eg, in St Francis of Assisi.”
Today, Matulich suggests, “a witness to the integral human being is very necessary in our society today. Perversions of the sexual are all around us.” And this witness is precisely what consecrated virgins can give. But if this controversy develops, consecrated virginity may also now be caught up in the agonised aftermath of the sexual revolution.
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