1.2.    Consecrated life essential element of the Church

The question of the ecclesiality of consecrated life is also a Christological and evangelical one.

It is basically a matter of knowing and maintaining the truth about the type of Church that Christ wanted and passed on in the Gospel.

            In history there has not been a lack of churches and church movements that dispensed completely with consecrated life. For them it was something simply nonessential. The Church of God could have been fully such, even doing completely without consecrated life.

            Picking up and studying the doctrine of the Council, the Pope offers in the brilliant apostolic exhortation Vita consecrata “this certainty” (VC 3b): the profession of the evangelical councils is “an integral part of the life of the Church”. (VC 3b) For a Catholic it must be clear that consecrated life can never be missing in the Church: “…the profession of the evangelical councils…belongs inseparably to her life and holiness.” (Lumen Gentium 44) This means that consecrated life, present in the Church from the very beginning, can never fail to be one of her essential and characteristic elements, for it expresses her very nature.” (VC 29b)

            If Christ is the founder of the Church, he is also founder of consecrated life, an  unquestionable part of the Church. Therefore the title of “founder par excellence” belongs to Christ: “The idea of a Church made up only of sacred ministers and lay people does not therefore conform to the intentions of her divine Founder, as revealed to us by the Gospels and the other writings of the New Testament.” (VC 29c)