Rigorism and Clericalism in the Vocational Discernment Culture of the Nineteenth-Century Catholic Revival

Abstract

Abstract: Seventeenth-century reformers had developed rigorist approaches to vocational discernment and the choice of a state of life (marriage, religion, or the priesthood) that endured in western Catholic religious culture. The author argues that, during the nineteenth-century Catholic revival, clerical leaders adapted this tradition in a manner that strengthened the culture of clericalism. While maintaining the principle that one's salvation depended on choosing the state of life to which one was called, they downplayed the concept of lay vocation, since the revival of Catholic institutions demanded that large numbers of youth voluntarily enter religious life and the priesthood. This strengthened the perception, in the pre-Vatican-II era, that vocation was not a concept relevant to the laity.