The Process of Integrating the Monastic Phenomenon into the Forms of Institutional Organization of the Church and the Implications of its Recognition as its Third Constituent Element.
The Process of Integrating the Monastic Phenomenon into the Forms of Institutional Organization of the Church and the Implications of its Recognition as its Third Constituent Element.

Ecclesiological-Canonical Consequences

Summary/Abstract: In the late nineteenth century, monasticism was subjected to the same type of analysis applied to the Bible and early Christian texts in general. Although there are enough studies that explain the motivations of the emergence of monasticism and its historical manifestation, there are a few studies that highlight its role and status for the life of the Church from the ecclesiological and canonical point of view. Monasticism is nothing more than a state of the laity with a life consecrated to God through volunteering, without special invitation from the Church for consecration by ordination as in the case of clergy. It represents a particular calling and vocation to members of the church, to whom they willingly respond and not from a specific necessity. Basically, monasticism is a charismatic movement inside the church through which the Holy Spirit continues the work of the Prophets, apostles, Martyrs, and Charismatic Christian missionaries from the first Christian centuries. This specific manifestation of the church, present in its consciousness since its origins, has received legal recognition as belonging to the body of the church for the first time through the 4th Canon of the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Calcedon (453). Thus, monasticism becomes the third constituent element of the church.

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