The Second Vatican Council and Religious Life

Abstract

The Second Vatican Council dedicated an intense attention to the Religious Life and its adaptation and renewal. The dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium placed the religious state in the context of the universal vocation for all members of the Church to sanctity, being its specific characteristic of it the practice of the evangelical counsels in a state especially recognized and regulated by the Church. The conciliar decree Perfectae caritatis formulated the basic principles and criteria to which the adaptation and renewal of the Religious life, required by the Council, had to be adjusted. The «Motu proprio» Ecclesiae Sanctae, by Paul VI, gave practical norms to apply this decree, and to review the Constitutions and all the other normative documents of each Institute. All that keeps a permanent value, in order to orientate the ongoing development of Religious Life, beyond the conciliar and postconciliar context.