“Year for Consecrated Life”
The Pope has named 2015 the “Year for Consecrated Life”. Those who follow the “consecrated life”, in Roman Catholic parlance, include monks and nuns who have taken vows of chastity, poverty and obedience.
These vows illustrate Rome’s focus on outward religious observance at the expense of what is inward. Instead of recognising marriage as a state within which even those who are set apart to the ministry may live chaste lives, Rome is guilty of “forbidding to marry” (1 Tim 4:3) and so puts itself in the category of those who “shall depart from the faith” (1 Tim 4:1). In many cases those who may be poor as individuals have lived in an institution possessing great riches, which makes their vow of poverty meaningless. And obedience is to the Church, a body with numerous regulations purely of human invention; the obedience is to human authority, not to the Scriptures.
One assumes that the “Year for Consecrated Life” is intended, at least in part, to boost declining numbers of monks and nuns. The National Catholic Reporter reports that, between 2008 and 2012, the Vatican “issued 11 805 dispensations, releasing men and women from their [permanent] religious vows”. Potentially others have left without seeking an official dispensation.
True consecration to God (not necessarily in the ministry) is to be found only in those who have been born again by the Spirit of God and who therefore seek to serve God in doing His will continually in every part of their lives. This includes public and private worship, faithfulness in marriage and being conscientious in employment.