When journalists refer to “the Jesuit order” or to “Mother Teresa’s nuns”, they often give the impression that they are talking about the same thing. In the press, after all, terms such as order, congregation, institute and society are almost always used interchangeably, as though they were synonyms.
In ordinary language, that may be so. In the law of the Church, however, they are not. The distinction is not a pedantic one: behind each of these terms lie different rules, precise identities and more than fifteen centuries of the history of consecrated life.
Consecrated life
Everything begins with a choice which the Church calls the profession of the evangelical counsels: chastity, poverty and obedience. Those who make that profession do not receive a sacrament — one does not become consecrated in the same way as one becomes a priest — but take on, through a sacred bond recognised by the Church, a stable form of life which the Code of Canon Law describes as a “more intimate consecration” to God (can. 573).
The 1983 Code brings all these realities together under one broad category: institutes of consecrated life, governed by canons 573 to 730, alongside societies of apostolic life (cann. 731–746). This is the technical term now used to encompass everything: from Benedictines to sisters who run schools, from Franciscan sisters to enclosed Carmelite nuns. Within that category, however, the differences remain. And they are substantial.
The religious institute: public vows and common life
Canon 607 §2 defines a religious institute as a society whose members “pronounce public vows” and “lead a life as brothers or sisters in common”. Two elements, therefore, must both be present: vows — public, in the sense that they are formally received by the Church — and common life. A religious is not a free agent in matters of faith: he or she lives with others, under a rule and under a superior.
This is where the distinction between order and congregation arises. The current Code has superseded it in juridical terms, but tradition — and the Annuario Pontificio — still retain it.
Religious orders are institutes of ancient foundation in which at least some members make solemn vows: Benedictines, Augustinians, Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites and Jesuits. Their members are known as regulars because they live under a regula, a rule, while the women who belong to such orders are, properly speaking, nuns. The Jesuits have no female branch. In the tradition, solemn vows had radical consequences: they involved, for example, the definitive renunciation of property itself, not merely of its use.
Religious congregations, by contrast, are historically those institutes founded chiefly between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, whose members make simple vows: the Salesians, the Redemptorists — originally with their own distinct character — and the countless female congregations devoted to schools, hospitals and missions. Congregations flourished particularly in the nineteenth century, when religious life moved beyond the cloister and into active works.
The 1983 Code did not erase that distinction — canon 1192 §2 retains it: a vow “is solemn if it is recognised as such by the Church; otherwise, it is simple” — but it ceased to build the whole discipline around it, bringing everything under the single heading of “religious institute”. The difference remains, however, and it is more than symbolic.
Its clearest consequence concerns poverty. Those who make solemn profession in institutes which, by their nature, require total renunciation of goods lose the very capacity to acquire and possess them, and acts contrary to the vow are invalid (can. 668 §§4–5). A religious under simple vows, by contrast, retains ownership of his or her property — surrendering its administration and use, but remaining its owner.
In matters of marriage, however, the current Code makes no distinction: every public perpetual vow of chastity in a religious institute, whether simple or solemn, is now a diriment impediment to marriage (can. 1088). In 1917, matters were different: only a solemn vow rendered marriage invalid (can. 1073 CIC 1917), while a simple vow merely rendered it unlawful, as a prohibitive impediment (can. 1058 CIC 1917) — except for the well-known privilege whereby the simple vows of scholastics in the Society of Jesus were diriment by pontifical concession. In any event, the term “order” is properly used only for institutes of ancient foundation with solemn vows: technically, calling the Missionaries of Charity an order is an error.
Monk, friar, priest: three words, three worlds
Here we come to the most widespread confusion.
The monk, from the Greek monachos, meaning solitary, belongs to the earliest great period of consecrated life. He lives permanently in a monastery, bound to it by a vow of stability, and his day is ordered around liturgical prayer and work. Benedictines, Cistercians, Trappists and Carthusians are monks. The monastery is his world: a monk belongs to his abbey even before he belongs to his order.
The friar, from frater, brother, emerged in the thirteenth century with the mendicant orders: Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites and Augustinians. Unlike the monk, the friar is not tied to a particular place: he is itinerant, preaches in towns and lives on alms — at least in origin. The term itself encapsulates the programme: no longer dom — “lord”, the title given to a monk — but a brother among brothers.
A priest, finally, is not in himself a form of consecrated life: he is an ordained minister who has received the sacrament of Holy Orders. A priest may be diocesan — or “secular” — incardinated in a diocese under a bishop and without vows; or he may be religious, if he belongs to one of the realities described above. A Franciscan may be a priest or not: St Francis himself was never ordained to the priesthood, but only to the diaconate. Conversely, the overwhelming majority of consecrated persons in the world — women religious — have not been ordained at all. Canon 588 puts it in stark terms: the state of consecrated life, by its nature, “is neither clerical nor lay”.
Secular institutes: consecrated in plain clothes
In 1947, with the Apostolic Constitution Provida Mater Ecclesia, Pius XII recognised a new form: secular institutes, now governed by canons 710–730. Their members profess the evangelical counsels, but without common life and without a religious habit. They remain in the world — in the secular sphere, as the term itself suggests — pursuing their own work and, at times, living within their family of origin. Their consecration may even remain private.
Canon 711 specifies that a member of a secular institute does not change his or her canonical status: a layperson remains a layperson, while a priest remains a diocesan priest. It is the most discreet, and perhaps the least known, form of consecrated life.
Societies of apostolic life: together, but without vows
The final category, often overlooked, is that of societies of apostolic life (cann. 731–746). Their members lead a fraternal life in common and pursue an apostolic purpose, but without religious vows. The model emerged in seventeenth-century France: the Priests of the Mission founded by St Vincent de Paul, known as the Lazarists; the Daughters of Charity; and the Sulpicians. Formally, they are not religious, although to the naked eye few would notice the difference.
Who governs all this
In terms of governance, every institute is either of pontifical right — erected or approved by the Holy See and directly subject to it — or of diocesan right, under the care of the bishop (can. 589). In Rome, responsibility for consecrated life worldwide lies with the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, which approves constitutions, oversees discipline and supports the institutes.
The figures themselves require such a structure: according to the Annuario Pontificio, religious men and women around the world still number in the hundreds of thousands, although their numbers are in sharp decline in Europe. But consecrated life is not a phenomenon of the past: it lies at the very heart of the Church’s life.