What is the difference between a ”promise”and a “vow” of celibacy?
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What is the difference between a “promise” and a “vow” of celibacy?
In essence the two are the same.
Secular priests pronounce a promise of obedience and chastity to their bishop.
Religious pronounce vows of poverty, obedience and chastity. Vows may be temporary (generally for a duration of three (3) or solemn (for life). Solemn vows are sometimes called perpetual vows.
As I already said vows and promises are essentially the same. A promise made to God is equivalent to a vow.
A declaration telling God or another person that one will or will not do something. A promise made to God is equivalently a vow, and it binds in conscience according to the gravity of the promise and the intention to obligate oneself under pain of sin. Promises made to people must be kept, and they oblige in justice or charity, with more or less seriousness depending on one's ability to fulfill a promise and the harm caused to another by not keeping one's word.
A free, deliberate promise made to God to do something that is good and that is more pleasing to God than its omission would be. The one vowing must realize that a special sin is committed by violating the promise. A vow binds under pain of sin (grave or slight) according to the intention of the one taking the vow. If one vows with regard to grave matter, one is presumed to intend to bind oneself under pain of serious sin. Vows enhance the moral value of human actions on several counts. They unite the soul to God by a new bond of religion, and so the acts included under the vow become also acts of religion. Hence they are more meritorious. By taking a vow, a person surrenders to God the moral freedom of acting otherwise, like the one who not only gives at times the fruit of the tree, but gives up the tree itself. And vows forestall human weakness, since they do not leave matters to the indecision or caprice of the moment. Their very purpose is to invoke divine grace to sustain one's resolution until the vow expires or, in the case of perpetual vows, even until death.
Upvote:3
The 1917 Code of Canon Law canon 1307 §1 clearly defines a vow as
a deliberate and free promise made to God about a possible and better good, [that] must be fulfilled in [accord with] the virtue of religion.
Canon 1308 defines the different types of vows:
§ 1. A vow is public if it is accepted in the name of the Church by a legitimate ecclesiastical Superior; otherwise it is private.
§ 2. [It is] solemn if it is recognized by the Church as such; otherwise, it is simple.
§ 3. [It is] reserved when only the Apostolic See can grant dispensation from it.
§ 4. [It is] personal when an action of the one vowing is promised; real, when some thing is promised; mixed when the nature of a person and a thing participate [in it].
"Secular priest" means a non-religious priest (a priest who doesn't belong to a religious order). They simply promise celibacy.
Monks are members of a religious order, so they take vows.
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