“A desire and hunger after our perfection, a determined will to be constantly tending towards it with all our strength—­let this be always our chief object and our greatest care.  Let us bear in mind that this care is more of the essence of religion [i.e., of a religious order] than vows themselves; for it is on this that our whole spiritual progress depends.  Herein consists the difference between true religious and those who are so only in appearance and in the sight of men.  Without this care to advance in perfection the religious state does not secure our salvation; but nothing is more common than to deceive ourselves on this point.” (The Spiritual Doctrine of Father Louis Lallemant, S.J, p. 111.  New York:  Sadlier & Co.)

With regard to stability, men of stable character need no vow to guarantee adherence to a divine vocation, and men of feeble character may indeed vow themselves into an outward stability, but it is of little fruit to themselves personally, and their irremovability is often of infinite distress to their superiors and brethren.  The episcopate is the one religious order founded by Our Lord, and its members are in the highest state of evangelical perfection; yet they are neither required nor advised to take the oaths or vows of religious orders.

Neither Father Hecker nor any of his associates had the least aversion to the vows.  On the contrary, they had lived contentedly under them for many of their most active years, and it will be remembered of Father Hecker that he never found them irksome, had never known a temptation against them.

The question which arose was a choice between two kinds of community, the one fast-bound by external obligations to the Church in the form of vows, placing the members in a relation of peculiar strictness to the Canon Law; or another kind, in which the members trusted wholly to the strength of Divine grace, and their own conscious purpose never to give up the fight for perfection; which of these states would better facilitate the action of the Holy Spirit in the present Providence of God; and which of them would tend to produce a type of character fitted to evangelize a nation of independent and self-reliant men and women?  The free community was chosen.

No doubt this involved some risk of criticism, particularly in the beginning, for it was a wonder to many that men should organize for a life-long endeavor after perfection and not swear to it, especially as none of the free communities existing in Europe had houses in America, for the Sulpicians belong to the secular clergy.  And there was also danger of unworthy subjects creeping in under favor of a freedom they were unfit to enjoy.  For it may be reproached against us that we are apt to be victimized by men ruled by caprice, indulging in extravagant schemes or deluded by wandering fancies; and also by superiors who would let everybody do as he pleased.  No doubt such dangers are to be guarded against.  But vowed communities do not claim to be free from difficulties.  No state of life and no organization claims to be so perfect as totally to prevent abuse of power on the part of superiors or caprice and sloth on the part of members.