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Contemplative Life in the World?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2024

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In the May issue of Life Of The Spirit, ‘A Challenge from inside the Cloister’ by a Carmelite nun denied with considerable force that there could be any real contemplative life in the world—mainly ‘because the essential “stripping” could never be accomplished outside Enclosure or the Rule nor could it be born', (p. 556.) It is true that the writer says that it is ‘A Carmelite life in the world’ that does not seem possible, but she goes on to say: ‘May I suggest that it is a great pity so much is made of “contemplative fife” in the world now'; so that evidently it is not only the Carmelite form of that life which is considered impossible outside the cloister.

This ‘challenge’ has given rise to a series of replies—some of which have appeared in the following numbers of Life Of The Spirit—all of which have protested quite decidedly against the theory expressed in the ‘challenge'.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1951 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

page 235 note 1 In the context of ‘Perfection’ this particular form of life is called a ‘state'; that is, the State of Perfection made static by public vows, as distinguished from the life of perfection or perfect living which is to be found among all estates of man.

page 237 note 1 Platonisme et Théologie Mystique: Essai sur la Doctrine Spirituelle de Saint Grégoire de Nysse. Jean Daniélou. (Aubier Editions Montaigne.) See especially pp. 260, 261, 264, 266, 271, 273, 288.