Vocational Liberty as Catholic Social Teaching: Historical Context and Doctrinal Development

An online talk by Christopher J. Lane, PhD, Association Professor of History, Christendom College. Response by James Bergida, Junior Research Fellow, Blackfriars Hall.

This talk contextualizes the long-term development of Catholic law, doctrine, and practice in support of individual freedom to choose a state of life, especially with respect to the vows of marriage and of religion. By contextualizing the development of teachings and laws on vocational liberty, we can see that they are rightly considered as part of Catholic social teaching. The choice of a state of life and the taking of vows are not acts of isolated individuals, but they always concern man’s life with others. Historically, reformers’ efforts to ensure vocational liberty have often arisen precisely because these principles conflicted with both the legal and cultural structures of patriarchal Catholic societies. Among the contexts of doctrinal development considered in the talk will be the following: the high medieval shift toward free consent to marital and religious vows, Tridentine enhancements to the enforcement of vocational liberty, the efforts of the early modern French state to police choices of marriage and of religion, and the role of liberty in rigorist seventeenth-century vocational discernment culture.

Christopher J. Lane, PhD is a historian of early modern Europe, especially French Catholicism, and serves as Associate Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Christendom College in Front Royal, Va. His teaching and writing engages questions such as the individual in society, family and state authority, lived religious experience, the long-term construction of religious and secular cultures, and the variegated character of modernity. His book, Callings and Consequences: The Making of Catholic Vocational Culture in Early Modern France (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021) analyzes the origins, growth, and influence of a culture of vocation that became a central component of the Catholic Reformation and its legacy in France. It argues that reformers’ new vision of the choice of a state of life was marked by four characteristics: urgency (the claim that one’s soul was at stake), inclusiveness (the belief that everyone, including lay people, was called by God), method (the use of proven discernment practices), and liberty (the belief that this choice must be free from coercion, especially by parents). These vocational reforms engendered enduring beliefs and practices within the repertoire of global Catholic modernity, even to the present day.

Free and open for all. Registration is required.

Contact:
Las Casas Institute
lascasas@bfriars.ox.ac.uk