This makes it sound like a promise is just a weak vow and can be broken.
So what kind of a promise is a promise? What value does it have? In what way is it weaker than a vow?
Are the promises that diocesan priests make for celibacy and obedience therefore not solemn promises? They are, after all, made in the context of a sacrament (unlike the vows taken by those in the consecrated life). I would expect they would be solemn indeed.
Your question arises very simply from a misunderstanding of the theology of vows and the theology of consecrated life.
The public profession of vows is normally tied to certain institutes of consecrated life…note that I said normally. Since the 1983 code, there are provisions for the diocesan bishop to receive profession of vows for consecrated souls in his diocese but this is novel and an exception.
The norm, however, is that the emission of public vows is regulated by the code of canon law and the rule or constitutions of the institute of consecrated life. There is a distinction between solemn vows and simple vows, between institutes which admit perpetual vows as opposed to temporary vows.
Monastic communities descended from Saint Benedict use the traditional monastic vows: Obedience, stability and conversion of manners. Mendicants that descend from the friars movement will use either one vow (Obedience – The Dominicans) or the three vows (Poverty, Chastity and Obedience). Some Orders, such as the Trinitarians and the Mercedarians, add a fourth vow particular to the charism of their institute and this remains extant in various more modern institutes of consecrated life.
The explosion of active congregations in the post-Reformation Church will also greatly diversify consecrated life, moving toward the 20th century when we have the proliferation of the “new ecclesial movements” and secular institutes.
Secular Institutes and Societies of Apostolic Life will often use other sacred bonds, instead of vows, to express definitive incorporation into their institutes. These are matters that touch upon the theology and the charism particular to the institute. It would be wrong to think of one as “weaker” – as we read in Chapter 6 of
Lumen Gentium. This paragraph may help to make it clearer
44. The faithful of Christ bind themselves to the three aforesaid counsels either by vows, or by other sacred bonds, which are like vows in their purpose. By such a bond, a person is totally dedicated to God, loved beyond all things. In this way, that person is ordained to the honor and service of God under a new and special title. Indeed through Baptism a person dies to sin and is consecrated to God. However, in order that he may be capable of deriving more abundant fruit from this baptismal grace, he intends, by the profession of the evangelical counsels in the Church, to free himself from those obstacles, which might draw him away from the fervor of charity and the perfection of divine worship. By his profession of the evangelical counsels, then, he is more intimately consecrated to divine service.(4) This consecration will be the more perfect, in as much as the indissoluble bond of the union of Christ and His bride, the Church, is represented by firm and more stable bonds.*
The Holy Spirit effects in the soul of the person pronouncing vows or other sacred bonds, as a member of an institute of consecrated life, a consecration.
This is complementary to but distinctly different from my life as a diocesan priest. I am ordained by my bishop to serve as his co-worker and to his successors. The expectation is that I will serve out my life in my diocese, as a member of the presbyterate and the promises I take are ordered to that life – which is not at all an institute of consecrated life. By the sacred promises I pronounce at my ordinations as Deacon and as Priest, a real bond is created to the diocese in which I am incardinated. I have a serious moral responsibility to fulfill the promises I made in the hands of my bishop.
The promises assuredly binds seriously and only the Holy See can grant a re-script from the bond that is effected. I would be in as grave of a moral situation by refusing a directive under my promise of obedience as would a monk disobeying his abbot…although the canonical mechanisms are different.
Assuredly, I do not see the promises I emitted at ordination as any less or any weaker than those of Religious Order priests made at their religious profession. They are ordered differently because we have distinctly differing lives and missions.
So it is misunderstanding the nature of things to think of what I do as a “weak” alternative to what Religious priests do.
On the other hand, one who is incorporated into an institute of consecrated life is in a state of perfection in a way that a diocesan priest is not…which is why the Code of Canon Law mandates that if a diocesan priest wishes to become a monk or a friar or otherwise enter consecrated life, his bishop is to release him to pursue that vocation, since it is a higher calling – and the theology of vows and consecrated life exemplifies that.
