Talk:Consecrated virgin

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[edit] Date

There is conflicting information concerning the reinstatement of the rite. According to this article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15172758/, it was Pope Paul VI in 1970. However this source: The papal encyclical Sacra Virginitas, would suggest it was Pope Pius XII in 1954. Please help reconcile these dates. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.92.10.221 (talk • contribs)

No. The information is not conflicting. The encyclical Sacra Virginitas is concerned with the consecrated virginity of priests and those in religious life. The only reference to lay persons is here

...[virginity] also flourishes among many who are lay people in the full sense: men and women who are not constituted in a public state of perfection and yet by private promise or vow completely abstain from marriage and sexual pleasures, in order to serve their neighbor more freely and to be united with God more easily and more closely."

It is clear that Vatican II in writing in Sacrosanctum Concilium "The rite of the Consecration of Virgins contained in the Roman Pontifical is to be revised (80)" was referring to something that had been in disuse for centuries and refers to a public promise witnessed by Church authority. patsw 01:35, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not only lay

Perhaps consecrated virgins are customarily lay, but apparently they are not exclusively so, unless one considers the nun Wendy Beckett to be lay. I have edited the article accordingly. — J M Rice 14:17, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Consecrated Virgins and Sister Wendy Beckett are of course members of the Laity. For according to Canon Law the place among the People of God of the members of all the various forms of Consecrated Life is among the Laity; they belong to the Hierarchy only if they are also Priests (the so-called Priest-Monks), and this owing solely to their sacerdotal ordination, not their religious state. Canon Law however also accepts that their religious vow sets them apart from other members of the Laity, and in the case of Priest-Monks also the Clergy. 00:56, 1 December 2007 (UTC)