Monastic vows
From Freepedia
Monastic vows are the public vows of poverty, chastity and obedience professed by the monks in the Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox tradition. They express the commitment to the service of God through the monastic life. Through these vows, novices become professed brothers and sisters, and enter the monastic order.
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In the Roman Catholic Church
In the Roman Catholic Church, the monastic vows are regulated by canons 654-658 of the canon law. The vows are taken in two steps: first vows (temporary), and, after a few years, final vows (permanent).
First vows
The novice may be allowed to profess his first vows after at least one year of the novitiate. The first vows are temporary and have to renewed. Through these vows, the novice joins the order as a temporarily professed brother or sister.
Final vows
After at least three years of temporary profession, but not more than five, the professed may be allowed to pronounce final vows and become a permanent member of the order.
The Society of Jesus
One additional vow was unique to the Jesuit order. Most members of the Society of Jesus made the three vows common to all religious and monastic orders: poverty, chastity and obedience, but a small cadre of highly skilled and well regarded Jesuits were allowed to make a fourth vow, that of obedience to the Pope for the purpose of missionary work. In theory they could be ordered to any place at any time without even the money needed to make the journey; in practice, these "professed" formed a small elite group within the Jesuit community.
This "fourth vow" became an integral part of Jesuit missionary culture, allowing the rapid expansion of Christianity to areas only recently discovered by Europeans.
