ty,

Ch stity and
Obediene
THOUGH the religious or monastic life .always practised Poverty, Chastity and Obedience, they were not explicitly called " the three vows " before the twelfth century.
Somewhat about the middle of the thirteenth century St. Thomas arranged them in the series (1) Poverty, (2) Chastity and (3) Obedience. Moreover he showed their connection with the three "bona": boons or goods (1) external (of fortune), (2) internal (of the body), (3) internal (of the soul). By showing this essential between, on the one hand, the three virtues and vows, and on the other hand the three boons, he arranges the virtues and vows in their essential series, which has been followed since his day.
Incidentally, harm may have come from the very widespread and frequent use of the phrase " the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience." connection Even Catholics have sometimes come to think that the three virtues behind these religious vows were only for religious, whereas the three virtues are binding upon all individuals and, in some measure, upon that grouping of individuals which Plato and the Greeks called the City, which the Romans called the " Respublica," and which we moderns somewhat confusedly call the "State."
Certain plain propositions may be formulated about the matter. _ 1. It need hardly be pointed out that the poverty of work and thrift, the self-control of virginal and conjugal chastity, the obedience to rulers and to law, are of the greatest social need and value. No State could long exist without them. Only by their practice can a multitude of free men be grouped into an efficient unity.
2. It is to the credit of religious men and women that they have never undertaken their common or community life except by the profession of all these three virtues.
3. Indeed, in order to bind themselves still more firmly to these virtues, which are obligatory upon all men and women, they have added the obligation of a vow. In other words, they have made a public official promise to God to keep the poverty, the chastity. the obedience of their professed state.
4. Moreover, as this promise is a contract accepted by the Church (which is the brotherhood of man as man) the religious agrees that the promise cannot be annulled without the consent of the official Church.
5. But the religious men or women who have publicly promised God to keep poverty, chastity, obedience, are not thereby bound to more poverty, more chastity, more obedience than if they had remained as lay-folk in the world.
6. It is clear that a vow to do or give something does not bind us to do more or to give more.
If we owe £50 to a creditor our vow (i.e., our promise) does not increase the debt, say, to £51; but it does increase the obligation. By our vow we arc not bound to more; but we are more bound. Without the vow our refusal to pay the £50 would be injustice; with the vow our refusal to pay the £50 is not only injustice but sacrilege.
7. Perhaps this is most easily seen in the matter of the second virtue and vow. As the world is arranged at present it is quite probable that the majority of adults, because they are unmarried, are like religious men and women, bound to virginal chastity. Religious men and women are not bound to more chastity than are unmarried men and women in the world. Again, unmarried men and women in the world are not bound to less chastity than are religious men and women. Those in religious orders and those outside are bound to equal chastity; but to this equal chastity they are not equally bound because religious, by their own free will have bound themselves to this chastity by vow.
8. This equality of debt and inequality of obligation, easy to see in the matter of chastity, is not altogether easy to see or perhaps not easy to admit in the matter of poverty.
Religious men and women whose vow makes them more bound to poverty are not thereby bound to more poverty than are people living in the world. But as their sin against poverty would be the greater sin, God sees that it receives a greater and often a more recognised punishment.
But both those who do and those who do not make vows of poverty are bound to the poverty of work and thrift which means that they must measure their wants by the needs of their state in life, i.e., by their social position based on their social service.
9. In the matter of vowed and unvowed obedience the inequality is more difficult to state accurately.
To parental and national authority the individual owes a natural as distinct from a contractual obedience.
But many men and women earn their living by a contractual (price or wage) obligation to do what they are asked to do. In all these cases there is one whose will is final; and whose will should be followed by those who have contracted to follow it.
10. Religious have not vowed to obey their parental or national authority. But they have made a contractual obligation to live in a community and keep its rules. Religious obedience, as such is the fulfilling of a bilateral contract by one of the contracting parties.
1. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that " the good citizen," now so demanded by every school or social reconstructionists, is the poor, the chaste, the obedient citizen. The slogan, " from everyone according to his powers—to everyone according to his needs," was not Lenin's invention, but Lenin's rediscovery. It was, at least, as old as the Sermon on the Mount. But as a principle of social value it should not be discredited merely because it was rediscovered by a somewhat ruthless Communist.
12. We are on a more difficult task when we try to point out how poverty, chastity, obedience, which arc so necessary and so valuable for the individual in the State are also so necessary and so valuable for the State itself.
Yet we think it undeniable that no State can last or flourish long if it has not sufficient of the spirit of poverty to measure its lower wants to its higher needs—if it has not suflicient of the spirit of chastity to measure all legislation by its unit, the family—if it has not sufficient of the spirit of obedience to measure all its laws and commands by the laws and commands of God.
13. Experience has brought endless authentications of these fundamental truths. It is a long time since I realised the need of applying to social matters the homely principle: " Dirty water will not wash a floor clean."
For this reason, the younger generation cannot be taught the poverty of thrift by Government Departments, and even education committees that are largely spendthrift.
Yet perhaps the most ominous and disregarded social phenomena of our own country is the reckless growth of (nonproductive) official expenditure. Reliable statistics of official expenditure on administration in 1914 and in 1937 would show an increase not to be equalled in any other section of the national life; and not in any way met by an increase in the national income.
Examples of this reckless increase of administration may be found everywhere. If we take an example from education it is not because our expenditure on education is of unique recklessness.
The most recent education statistics show that since 1914 the number of children under the L.C.C. Education Committee has decreased by about 200,000. Yet not only has the expenditure per child increased; but the gross expenditure has increased.
If a Public Assistance Committee was asked to be liberal towards a family which had reached poverty through these economic methods of the L.C.C. Education Committee the result would be instructive.
Taking the time now spent on teaching singing in the elementary schools, and apportioning the annual outlay on education (close on £100,000,000) we arrive at the astounding result that this country spends some £4,000,000 or £5,000,000 on teaching English boys and girls how to sing.
It might well be questioned whether this vast sum might not be better spent on giving these English boys and girls better homes than better voice production. Irthe poor, i.e., the majority of the nation, had any effective voice in the apportioning of the income of the nation there would be more money spent on housing and less on singing.
But as any expert musician (not in Government or Municipal employment) will tell us, this expenditure of some £4,000.000 or £5,000,000 a year does not influence the national singing to any appreciable way. To the average child the school method of voice-production is " teacher's singing." When the children leave the school for the street the effects of the collossal national expenditure on singing is found to be nil.
How then, can departments and boards of almost reckless expenditure teach the nation's coming generation the fundamental virtue of thrift?
14. The same distressing question must now be put in the matter of chastity; and put with deeper distress of mind.
Catholic thinkers have long been exercised by the fact that there is little of our major legislation that has not somewhat weakened that parental authority and therefore that full family life which is everywhere the best teacher and guardian of chastity.
But with the coming of the Ministry of Health—or rather with the coming of certain individuals who have brought their anti-social opinions to the Ministry of Health—grave sins of unchastity and racesuicide are now being taught in official clinics and at the national expense.
As a result, Catholic doctors and Catholic nurses who are not prepared to instruct English men and women in the race-suicide of contraception will find themselves shut out from some spheres of national medical service.
This reckless and unchaste expenditure for contraceptive advice is all the more indispensible for the plain reason that the makers of contraceptive devices are well qualified to give widespread and efficient instruction in the use of their wares.
15. If in the matter of national poverty and still more in the matter of national chastity the responsible citizens are not keeping obedience to God's laws, the nation's obedience will hardly be at a high level. A disobedient executive cannot well teach obedience. A disobedient legislature will actually spread the septicemia of disobedience; because moral virtues or vices in so far as they arc teachable, are teachable mainly by example. When a nation's legislature or executive either explicitly or implicitly sets aside the law of God it is teaching the young of the nation to set aside obedience to any authority.
More than ever must we insist on the fact that the present crisis in the world is a crisis caused through the lowering of legitimate authority by the sin and disobedience to authority and the disobedience of authority: But the greater and more disastrous sin is the disobedience of authority.
16. To sum up. Every individual must be poor. Every individual must be chaste, with virginal or conjugal chastity. Every individual must be obedient.
Every State must be poor. Every State must be chaste. Every State must be obedient.
These three virtues are of such need and value to the individual and to the State that the State should encourage individuals to undertake them under public vow.