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    [title] => Faithful to the Rule by Choice, Not by Obligation: The Path to a Mature Religious Life
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Economics and Charisms/5 - Amid rules and daily practices, there is a risk of losing the seed received at the beginning of one’s vocational journey. The challenge for communities is to move from viewing works as a measure of their “merits” to a style of trust and free responsibility
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on July 26, 2026
The God revealed in the Bible has many aspects, but first and foremost He is a God of liberation, a giver of freedom. The liberation from slavery in Egypt is the paradigm for all liberations from every form of slavery. Jesus brings the experience of liberation to its culmination, and Paul has shown us with extraordinary force that without this liberation, no mature spiritual freedom is possible. Yet believers struggle greatly to live out this freedom. Even in religious life, the famous opening line of J.J. Rousseau’s The Social Contract often rings true: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” What, then, happens in the development of religious life if what is meant to be a great place of freedom can turn into an experience of “chains”?

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The problem lies in the idea, deeply rooted in every homo religiosus, that one’s “justification” (being righteous) and salvation can be earned through works. The do-ut-des principle, for example, was not only the law of Roman commercial life; it was also the foundation of its religion—of its “commercial” relationship with the deities—managed by the complex machinery of sacrifices. And unfortunately, despite Jesus and Paul, we have not yet managed to free ourselves from the sacrificial logic of faith—“When a family realizes that the daily Mass commemorates other deceased people besides their own, they often ask me, ‘But what portion of the Mass goes to my deceased loved one? Is the price the same?’” a priest told me yesterday.
What are the consequences of this “Pelagian” view in the life of religious communities?
A preliminary remark.
When a person discovers a religious vocation, they feel no conflict between their own freedom and binding themselves closely to a Rule; and if they did feel such a conflict, this would be the first sign of an absent or immature vocation. Binding oneself “forever” is perceived as an enhancement of freedom. Fidelity to the Rule—and to the many religious practices—is therefore lived with enthusiasm, and everything speaks solely of liberation. And so their early years pass, even if spent in a cloister—and it is this distinct freedom and joy that captivates so many.
However, the critical issues emerge when we look at how people develop over time. Once their youth is over, religious practices and norms—“the Rule”—are internalized day after day, and without realizing it, fidelity “to the vocation” becomes fidelity “to the Rule.” The faith of the initial vocation is gradually “operationalized”; the promise of the beginning becomes a technique, and day after day, the what I do comes to coincide with the who I am. And at the same time, another tendency takes root: if righteousness is measured by conformity to the Law, one lives with a growing sense of inadequacy and guilt, because the Law’s ideal standards highlight the gap between what we ought to do and how (little) we actually do. Confession ends up becoming a neurotic practice, which paradoxically reinforces the feeling of being in a state of sin, in a life increasingly centered on oneself: “The power of sin is the Law” (1 Cor 15:56). The pursuit of holiness becomes a moral matter of conformity to the Law, in individualistic exercises where people become believers, priests, and gods of the cult of their own ever-more-distant perfection. The search for one’s own spiritual “well-being” turns into a trap: “One should think more about doing good than about feeling good: and in this way one would end up feeling better as well” (The Betrothed).
The encounter with Jesus—which was supposed to overturn religious logic—fails miserably, resulting in a return to the pre-Christian ethic of salvation through works and its meritocracy. All meritocracies cause great moral harm, and religious ones even more so, because they produce oceans of guilt in people who always feel unworthy. Religious meritocracy amplifies the sense of imperfection and guilt to an extreme degree—the double-entry ledger of earth and heaven, recording faults and merits, is always in the red; one feels like a perpetual, insolvent debtor burdened by a debt that grows even due to accumulated interest: and the archaic Vedic man returns, the one who was born with four debts to settle in the course of his life.
This happens when conformity to one’s charism or vocation is understood as the perfect fulfillment of the Rule and its works, and the vows are viewed as meritorious “works”—the most meritorious, because they entail the greatest sacrifice in the three decisive spheres of human freedom: sexuality, autonomy, and possessions. And if the Rule takes the place of the Law, “Christ died in vain” (Gal 2:21), and monasticism reverts to that ascetic experience well known in the pre-Christian world (the Essenes, for example).
How, then, can one live out one’s relationship with the Rule, with the practices, and with all those “techniques” linked to the identity of a vocation in the Christian-Pauline spirit?
Simply—though in reality this is very difficult and rare from an empirical standpoint—by experiencing the development of a religious vocation as a gradual liberation from the Rule-Law, granting it, with Paul, only the status of a “tutor” for the young (Gal 3:24). The growth of a vocation should therefore consist in a liberation from the entire set of practices and norms that constitute the “work” of a religious; the experience of “faith” should free us from “religion.” Thus, one should participate in Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours, and spiritual retreats because one chooses to do so in the spirit, and not because it is written in the Rule. And if at times, or for a period, a nun does not feel the need to participate in the liturgy, this should not be interpreted as a sign of betrayal, but only as the evolution of a vocation toward freedom from the Law. And yet, what is unfortunately often observed among the “consecrated” is a Pelagian obsession with not missing any devotional practice—I have known quite a few people who, if they fail to say the rosary today, say two tomorrow; if they miss a Mass, they feel compelled to make it up, caught up, in good faith, in a pagan conception of religion.
But—and here lies the crucial point—how can we hold together a community of people where each individual participates in or abstains from the liturgy based on their own stage of spiritual development? This is also because the strength (and beauty) of a monastic community lies precisely in seeing people remain faithful to their practices regardless of the desires and choices of each member. We shouldn’t forget, however, that a community where members participate in the liturgy every day because they haven’t attained the spiritual freedom to choose not to attend is very different from a community where (almost) all members participate by choosing to do so out of the freedom they’ve attained to choose not to. To an outside observer, they may seem the same, but they’re very different—a difference that also implies different prospects for a bright future.

This fifth installment concludes this brief journey through communities and the economy (and beyond). I hope it has been useful in some way, and if we have bored you, know that, to quote Manzoni once more, “it was not done on purpose.” Thanks to those who have accompanied me, thanks to Editor Marco Girardo, and to Matteo Liut, editor-in-chief of *Cattolica*, who welcomed me into its pages. Goodbye.
 
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Economics and Charisms/5 - Amid rules and daily practices, there is a risk of losing the seed received at the beginning of one’s vocational journey. The challenge for communities is to move from viewing works as a measure of their “merits” to a style of trust and free responsibility
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on July 26, 2026
The God revealed in the Bible has many aspects, but first and foremost He is a God of liberation, a giver of freedom. The liberation from slavery in Egypt is the paradigm for all liberations from every form of slavery. Jesus brings the experience of liberation to its culmination, and Paul has shown us with extraordinary force that without this liberation, no mature spiritual freedom is possible. Yet believers struggle greatly to live out this freedom. Even in religious life, the famous opening line of J.J. Rousseau’s The Social Contract often rings true: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” What, then, happens in the development of religious life if what is meant to be a great place of freedom can turn into an experience of “chains”?

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    [title] => Poverty that truly sets us free. An economy at the service of one’s vocation
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Economics and Charisms/3 - In communities of consecrated persons, one danger to avoid is that there are people who “stay” simply because they lack the means to start a new life. Here are some ideas to ensure that fidelity to one’s choice is always authentic
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on June 28, 2026
A few weeks ago, during a conference, the discussion turned to the importance of people’s economic autonomy within communities. At the end, a young nun asked to speak and said to me: “I have taken the vow of poverty: how do your remarks on economic autonomy fit in with that vow?”

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To try to answer this, let’s start with a paradoxical situation. Let’s imagine the hypothetical thoughts of a nun who has just taken her vows: “Now I’ve finally solved all my problems. I won’t have to deal with complicated relationships with men or the ambivalence of sexuality anymore; no more problems stemming from married life or children. Furthermore, with the vow of obedience, I won’t have to worry about my life plan—a superior will guide my choices. Finally, no worries about work, managing bank accounts or bills—no financial responsibilities at all. I’ll put three crosses on all that and think only of my vocation.”
We all understand that this line of thinking, similar to that of the “rich fool” (Lk 12), is a parody of the good religious life—even if, every now and then, it would be wise to start from this fiction for the sake of discernment: money (poverty), freedom (obedience), and sexuality (chastity) are the radical and vital moral realms of human beings, and the temptation to control them is never fully overcome, because keeping free and autonomous people together is extremely complicated (but beautiful). Communities should not be built with the cement of individual people’s lack of freedom.
Let’s limit ourselves to the economic sphere. The economy, as we know, is not just about economics. When a person lacks control over the material conditions of their existence, all other aspects—even the most spiritual ones—depend on this lack of autonomy. In my work accompanying individuals and groups in religious communities, I have met people who, despite no longer having any interest in consecrated life (life is a process of self-discovery, and we do not always manage to grow while preserving the forms of the promises of youth), remained in the community simply because they had no Plan B: they were over fifty, without paid work, “out of the job market,” and without wealthy relatives. Staying, in and of itself, does not say enough about a person’s life: staying when I could leave but choose not to is very different from staying when leaving is not a viable option. As the great economist and philosopher Amartya Sen has taught us, the quality of a person’s life is not measured solely on the basis of what they do, but also—and above all—on what they could do but do not. There are many unhappy ways of “staying” and “remaining,” some of them deeply sorrowful. Over time, those “forced to stay” come to resemble, psychologically speaking, prisoners, and their transgressions become their “recreation time.” And woe betide us if, today, people were kept in a state of non-autonomy as a tool of governance to keep them in the community (these are serious abuses).
It becomes clear, then, that if we hope to live in a healthy community made up of thriving individuals, we must do everything possible to reduce the number of those who, during the necessary crisis that marks the transition to adulthood, remain only because they lack the financial independence to build a new life for themselves. For only if the number of these disillusioned and uninspired individuals remains below an acceptable threshold (around 10–15%) can the community’s overall dynamics absorb them without incurring excessively high relational and economic costs. Incidentally, people who remain in the community without believing in it anymore tend to tell many “financial lies”—they inflate medical expenses, exaggerate the costs of visiting relatives, with the intention of securing a secret nest egg “just in case”—and their childishness grows stronger.
And here we return to the vow of poverty.
The Gospel meaning of Francis’s “sine proprio” is entirely prophetic. The renunciation of economic and material goods has two major, interrelated rationales in the Gospel: (a) choosing to make oneself small in order to try to pass through the eye of the needle, and beyond that to find the Kingdom (Mt 19); (b) sharing one’s possessions in a poor and open community (Acts 4). The renunciation of possessions makes prophetic and Gospel sense—it is meaningful—if and when it becomes a gateway to a greater good, for us and for many, for everyone. If, on the other hand, as we have said, the renunciation of autonomy (which does not mean independence) becomes a means of controlling people, all the beauty and prophecy of evangelical poverty vanishes immediately and turns into its opposite. It is not enough simply to have no possessions to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
How, then, should we respond to that nun’s difficult question? First, by reminding ourselves that the vow of poverty does not mean irresponsibility regarding the material aspects of one’s own life (and that of the community), because this form of responsibility is part of the repertoire of every adult life. Reaching the age of 30 or 40 in the 21st century without knowing how a bank account works and without being able to manage at least one’s own expenses is not, in itself, an expression of any kind of prophecy, but perhaps of civic immaturity. In the past, religious communities managed their collective finances by requiring individual sisters and brothers (note: those who were not clerics) to renounce all economic autonomy—a renunciation sanctified and reinforced by their vow. Management was centralized in the superiors, and individual members had to ask permission even to buy a sandwich, because no one had even a minimal budget to manage. This situation was not very different from that experienced by our mothers and grandmothers who were homemakers.
In my “humble opinion,” to bring young people back into charismatic communities (and ensure the well-being of those already there), a profound and courageous rethinking is needed regarding how to reconcile evangelical poverty with the reality of adulthood. There are some ongoing initiatives, but to my knowledge, they are unsatisfactory. Some ecclesial movements, for example, have tried to resolve this tension by giving each “consecrated” member a small monthly sum (25 or 50 euros) to manage independently—a solution that is, in effect, identical to the “allowance” we give our children, a practice that does nothing but fuel infantilism, the great ailment of communities and movements.
Few bold experiments are undertaken, either out of laziness or because there is a sense that granting people economic autonomy means, on the one hand, risking a loss of control over them, and on the other, that the community will be reduced to a student apartment where people share expenses and a few meals. But continuing with the old way of managing people means failing to attract vocations and, instead, selecting people who want to settle down to resolve their own problems of lack of autonomy.
We should also address the civil recognition of the work of nuns and consecrated persons who labor within community structures. And not only in lay movements, where the process has begun, but also in religious communities of both the active and contemplative life. Why, let us ask ourselves, not recognize the legitimacy of a salary (at least part-time) for nuns and sisters who work in infirmaries, vegetable gardens, kitchens, schools…? In monastic life, work is not an accidens: it is a charism, and today the medieval “ora et labora” must evolve thanks to the rights and freedoms of our time. Individuals would contribute their salaries to the community, in a different and new kind of freedom, in a reciprocity of dignity. Work done seriously and competently—the first true women’s professions emerged in monasteries and convents, from embroidery to teaching. And anyone who one day wishes to leave will be able to do so with greater freedom, only to discover, perhaps at times, that this freedom to be able to leave has given them the new freedom to stay—and a resurrection begins, within the very same life they have always lived.
There is no community more beautiful than one made up of people who do not stay because of vows made yesterday, but because of the dreams of today and tomorrow.
 
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Economics and Charisms/3 - In communities of consecrated persons, one danger to avoid is that there are people who “stay” simply because they lack the means to start a new life. Here are some ideas to ensure that fidelity to one’s choice is always authentic
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on June 28, 2026
A few weeks ago, during a conference, the discussion turned to the importance of people’s economic autonomy within communities. At the end, a young nun asked to speak and said to me: “I have taken the vow of poverty: how do your remarks on economic autonomy fit in with that vow?”

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Economics and Charisms/1 - Today marks the start of a new series on the economic-theological dimensions of religious communities, particularly monastic ones. A journey to discover the value of money and contracts in the spiritual life
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on May 31, 2026
The oldest text in vernacular Italian, the ‘Placito Capuano’ (circa 960), contains the name ‘Saint Benedict’: “Sao ko kelle terre, per kelle fini que ki contene, trenta anni le possette parte sancti Benedicti.” The manuscript refers to a dispute over the lands of the Monastery of Montecassino.

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It is no coincidence that this contract mentions St. Benedict, because contracts and lands are an essential part of his charism, an expression of his ‘ora et labora’. In the West, Benedictine monasteries were among the first charismatic Christian communities, which, while on the one hand drawing on ancient traditions (think of the Essenes), on the other introduced important innovations linked to Christ and his Gospel. We must bear in mind—we will return to this—that when the word “charism” is used to describe the great monastic tradition, it takes on a meaning that is partly and significantly different from the same word (charism) used to refer to more recent movements and communities clearly linked to a charismatic founder. In the founding of monasteries, the “leader” was not, in fact, the founding abbot, but the Rule. Not depending on the personality of a charismatic founder is also a secret to the longevity of medieval European monasteries: a study by Swiss economist Bruno Frey and his colleagues on 134 monasteries in Northern Europe reported an average lifespan of about 600 years (The corporate governance of Benedictine abbeys, 2010).
That “labora,” therefore, is not merely a practical and contingent matter of communities composed of many people who had to work to live. No: work and the economy are part of the DNA of Christian charisms. Francis defined his charism in relation to money as well, but he wanted his friars to work, if possible; and even cloistered nuns have always worked and continue to do so, and when they stopped working—to consider themselves purely servants of the sacred—they entered into a profound crisis.
Let us, then, begin to explore some of the characteristics of the economy of charisms, exercises we will undertake over five Sundays (every two weeks), to reflect on wealth, real estate, governance, and the poverty of individuals and communities (including the meaning of the ‘vow’), to try to understand the challenges of the new realities of the Church and of our magnificent humanity.
The first point of departure is an obvious fact: there is a great deal of economics in the life of spiritual and charismatic communities. Monks and friars, through their practices and their thinking, were at the origin of the market economy itself, which thus arose from a Christian spirit; and today we should all ask ourselves—believers and non-believers alike—whether it will still be possible to work, do business, and produce without a “spirit”—AI can do many things for our economy, but it cannot give us the spirit.
Monasticism and Christian communities have learned the importance of the economy from the Old and New Testaments, which use economic language to speak of the Covenant and sacrifices to God; and when the discourse in the Bible becomes particularly solemn and significant, we find money and contracts. Consider Jeremiah’s purchase of the field of Anathoth (Jer 32), the contract between Abraham and the Hittites for the purchase of a tomb for his wife Sarah (Gen 23), or Judas’s thirty pieces of silver. Contracts and economics become the necessary language at life’s decisive moments, such as in the prophetic purchase of a field to declare, “We will return from exile,” and we will once again have work, children, and happiness; or to solemnize the burial of a wife, mother of the new people of the Covenant. In the Bible, moreover, some decisive callings take place while people are working. Elisha, Moses, Ruth, the first apostles. This is the great secularity of biblical faith, which holds such a grand and worthy vision of humanity that it enables people to converse with angels in the fields, in workshops, in shops.
We have lost this secularity, both within and outside the Church, within and outside Christian communities. Because we believe that the words and actions of the economy, of work, and of contracts are too human and ordinary to contain prophetic words and messages; and because we think that the only acts and words worthy of God must be those performed within the temple, during worship services and liturgies. And so we continue to speak of a God who is increasingly distant from people’s real lives, from the Gospel, and from the Bible.
Today, the life of Christian spiritual communities is under pressure in many areas, and some observers—attentive but perhaps cynical—have already proclaimed the end of the era of charisms in the Church.
This new crisis also manifests itself, and often primarily, in the economic and financial sphere, as a lack of money, bank credit lines, mortgages, or inactive or vacant properties that one would like to sell but cannot find buyers for (or buyers worthy of the history of the charism). Because the economy is the sign that reveals deeper crises: among young people, in vocations, in the sense of charism, in community life, in God, or in the meaning of being poor by choice in a world full of people who are poor not by choice. And faced with economic crises that are becoming increasingly difficult to understand and explain, given the complexity of the language, we end up either not wanting to look at them, or entrusting their management solely to the treasurer, or, worse, solely to external consultants who, with their invoices, certainly exacerbate the economic crisis, without any guarantee of a solution. Because this is not found on the economic-financial level, we know, we are learning; but, and this is the key point, sustainability cannot be found without looking at budgets and loans with attention, care, and respect. Ora et labora.
If the biblical God chose to reveal himself through the language of the economy and work, if the Word of God is also the language of contracts and money, then that same God continues to speak to us every day, using the language of economics and finance as well.
We must therefore learn to read financial statements as we read the Scriptures: they are not the same thing, but they have the same value, the same dignity, and the same spiritual meaning. There is a true “mysticism of the financial statement,” which we miss when we consider the economy a language too lowly, and relegate it to a technical field for accountants alone.
The language of numbers, accruals, and interest, on the other hand, lends seriousness and dignity to our discourse, to our mission, and to our charismatic credibility—even, and especially, when the numbers point to crisis and fragility. And when, for the most varied reasons (sale of real estate, income from investments…), the economy is functioning while everything else is struggling (vocations, evangelical and missionary life…), the ‘charismatic’ question regarding the economy becomes even more urgent. Because, in charisms, wealth is more problematic than poverty, in that it can act as a smokescreen, delude us, and prevent us from seeing the crises in other dimensions of the charism. An economy that is “doing poorly” must be taken very seriously, but an economy that is “doing well” must be taken even more seriously if it is not accompanied by the overall charismatic health of the community.
 
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Economics and Charisms/1 - Today marks the start of a new series on the economic-theological dimensions of religious communities, particularly monastic ones. A journey to discover the value of money and contracts in the spiritual life
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on May 31, 2026
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